20 best AI tools for nonprofits: Unlock efficiency & funding

Has your nonprofit adopted any AI tools yet? Artificial intelligence technology is quickly changing how organizations of all shapes and sizes conduct research, create content, organize their data, and make smarter decisions.

But while many nonprofits have already embraced AI, there are still major opportunity gaps for the nonprofit sector. 

A 2024 Stanford study found that while 66% of nonprofit respondents use some form of AI technology in their work, many more lack organizational policies guiding its usage (78%), and a majority also believe they’d benefit from finding more ways to use AI (77%).

Close this opportunity gap, and you can see significant benefits. After all, efficiency is AI's core value and promise—not replacing your work but empowering it, helping you make smarter decisions to overcome capacity limitations.

Whether your organization has already integrated AI tools into its workflows or wants to begin using one for the first time, you likely have a few questions. The AI space has grown rapidly, with a dizzying number of products and services available today.

We’ll cut through the noise to highlight 20 top options with use cases that span key areas of nonprofit work. We’ll also review extra tips for choosing and implementing your new AI tools.

Best AI tools for fundraising

Grant Assistant

Best for: Securing more funding through grant writing

FreeWill’s Grant Assistant is the leading AI grant writing tool for nonprofits. It offers a full range of advanced features for your grant writing workflow without sacrificing usability. This easy-to-use and expertly-trained platform (with deep learning from over 7,000 winning grant proposals) gives you the rich, nonprofit-specific grant writing support you need to secure more funding.

Use Grant Assistant to:

• Quickly understand and prioritize grant opportunities.
• Prepare, research, and draft grant proposals.
• Analyze RFPs and other documents to generate preliminary responses and summaries.
• Infuse your proposals with the right tone and rich, relevant details.
• Adapt to diverse funder requirements, including federal and international development opportunities.

Grant Assistant users report completing entire proposals three times faster than usual. Plus, it’s entirely secure and private, with no AI models trained using user data. 

Secure, easy-to-use, expertly-built—Grant Assistant can transform your ability to secure funding and grow your nonprofit’s impact.

Learn more about Grant Assistant’s cutting-edge features or contact the FreeWill team to test the platform for yourself.

DonorSearch AI

Best for: AI-driven prospect research

‍DonorSearch Ai is a machine learning solution designed to help nonprofits improve every aspect of their prospect research processes.

As part of the industry’s leading suite of prospect research tools and databases, this AI platform recognizes deep giving patterns in your fundraising data. Use its insights to:

• Identify likely new major donors.
• Boost donor retention.
• Increase average gift sizes.
• Streamline and accelerate your development pipeline.

DonorSearch Ai users have reported some stellar results—85% increases in appeal response rates, 20% increases in average gift size, and sourcing new major donors with 20 times greater than average lifetime value.

For nonprofits with robust development programs (especially those that already trust and rely on DonorSearch research tools), this AI solution could help drive significant fundraising improvements over time.

Momentum

Best for: Streamlining and boosting donor engagement

Momentum is an AI tool designed to help nonprofits save time, improve donor relationships, and streamline communication. All together, its features and benefits can lead to serious improvements in your donor engagement and retention efforts.

Specifically, the Momentum AI Inbox is the hub of Momentum’s smart engagement tools. You can use it like a typical email inbox to communicate with donors while also tapping into powerful engagement suggestions, custom engagement plans, stewardship cadences, and AI-generated first drafts.

Plus, Momentum offers seamless integrations with leading nonprofit CRMs, meaning all new touchpoints sync with your database, ensuring you don’t lose a single valuable insight.

Funraise AppealAI

Best for: Quick fundraising appeal brainstorming

Appeal AI is a set of free tools for nonprofits from Funraise, a donor management and fundraising platform.

These easy tools help you quickly draft fundraising emails, website content, and social posts to promote your campaigns and connect with donors. They work similarly to other generative AI tools like ChatGPT but stand out because they’re designed specifically for nonprofits—meaning their outputs are typically more relevant and reliable without the need for endless prompting and editing.

Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud’s Built-in AI Features

Best for: Streamlining work and analyzing data for large nonprofits or Salesforce users

Salesforce, the world’s leading cloud-based CRM platform, offers a wide range of built-in, advanced AI features. 

Specific AI features included in Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud include AI-generated fundraising proposals based on your actual, individualized donor engagement records. The platform can also quickly generate summaries and analyses of program performance, segmented donor engagement trends, grantmaking program impact, and more.

If you already use Salesforce, take the time to ensure your organization currently makes the most of its available AI tools. For larger organizations looking to upgrade their CRM and invest in AI capabilities, Salesforce Nonprofit Cloud could be the right choice to accomplish both at once.

Best AI tools for nonprofit marketing

Owlywriter AI by Hootsuite

Best for: Social media content generation

Hootsuite, a popular set of social media tools, now offers an innovative AI solution designed for social media use cases—Owlywriter.

While not built specifically for nonprofits, Hootsuite is a trusted provider in the social media marketing space. Owlywriter can help any organization take the time and guesswork out of generating captions and coming up with ideas for new posts.

Owlywriter can auto-generate high-quality captions and social media posts, help you come up with new ideas, refine your brand voice, and even find creative ways to repurpose your most engaging content into fresh posts.

As part of Hootsuite, this tool comes alongside other advanced social media scheduling, analytics, and listening features, making it a potentially smart choice for nonprofits looking to invest in their social media reach.

Grammarly 

Best for: Polishing internal and external communications

There’s a good chance your team or someone in it already uses Grammarly. This powerful spellcheck tool now includes advanced AI features that can support all of your nonprofit’s marketing and communications (both internal and external).

Use Grammarly’s built-in AI tools to refine your communication, better adapt to your audience, and craft more impactful messages. Free and paid versions offer a range of AI functionalities that can effortlessly boost your nonprofit’s fundraising and internal messaging.

Jasper

Best for: Improving your large-scale marketing strategy

If you’re looking for a heavier-duty AI solution for your nonprofit’s marketing needs, consider Jasper. This generative AI platform is explicitly designed for a wide range of marketing use cases.

Jasper can help you edit your marketing copy, refine your brand voice, establish (and stick to) a style guide, generate images, and more. But Jasper is more than just a generative AI platform—it also offers innovative workflow design and automation features to help larger marketing shops drastically streamline their work.

For nonprofits looking for dedicated, purpose-built AI marketing tools, Jasper may be a valuable investment. 

Top AI tools for nonprofit data analysis

AI excels at data-related tasks—and many nonprofits have yet to tap into this valuable use case. Consider these top picks for AI tools that can improve your nonprofit’s data analysis, management, and reporting tasks:

• Coefficient. This powerful AI tool connects your spreadsheets, databases, and other tools to generate real-time dashboards, send triggered alerts and notifications, and send regular digest reports. Highly customizable and adaptable to a wide variety of needs, Coefficient can help your nonprofit streamline internal and external reporting. 
• Infogram. This platform makes it easy to create interactive data visualizations with minimal input and configuration. Perfect for your next annual report or other important data roundups, Infogram can help you tell your data’s story beautifully. 
• Google Analytics. The industry standard for web analytics, Google Analytics now includes a range of AI-driven Insights features that detect unusual trends in your website analytics, generate custom reports, model visitor behavior, and more. If you already use Google Analytics to guide your organization’s marketing decisions, ensure you’re taking advantage of its most recent AI features.
• Google Looker Studio. Google Looker Studio is Google’s data visualization tool that offers both free and paid options for creating intuitive data dashboards for your nonprofit’s reports. With additional customization, you can infuse your Looker dashboards with AI to summarize data, suggest next steps, and more. This may take extra know-how on your end, but you can’t beat a free and highly customizable way to take your organization’s data operations to the next level.

AI software for nonprofit project management and productivity

AI tech is increasingly used to power productivity tools of all shapes and sizes, allowing organizations like your nonprofit to boost efficiency and get more done with less time. Here are a few of the most popular and accessible options for productivity-focused AI tools for nonprofits: 

• ClickUp. This “everything app” for projects, communication, time tracking, reporting, and more includes a powerful array of AI features that make it easy to share information, automate tasks, and save time. ClickUp could be a transformational tool for organizations looking to make broader improvements to how they work.
• Slack’s AI tools. Slack is a popular communication and productivity tool for all types of organizations, and its built-in AI features help you find information, summarize chats, and more, all in one place. If your nonprofit already uses Slack, take the time to learn how to make the most of its AI tools.
• Smartsheet. Smartsheet offers a set of advanced productivity and connection tools to help streamline all aspects of your work. AI capabilities supercharge its helpfulness in building task automation, pulling reports, analyzing data, creating formulas, and more. 
• Asana’s AI tools. A trusted project management platform for many nonprofits, Asana also includes innovative AI features that allow you to create smarter workflows, find today’s top priorities, learn more about your team’s productivity, and more.

Honorable mentions: Best supplemental AI for nonprofit toolkits

Let’s take a look at some AI tools with broader use cases. While not designed specifically for nonprofits or specific communication or productivity purposes, these flexible apps and platforms could be extremely helpful to have in your organization’s toolkit:

• ChatGPT. The leader in generative AI, ChatGPT has quickly become a go-to tool for individuals and professionals alike, in all kinds of organizations. Use it to generate text and images, brainstorm ideas, refine your writing, analyze data, and more—just be mindful of the potential pitfalls of using broad, hallucination-prone generative AI.
• Canva. You might already use Canva to create graphics, presentations, and other visual assets for your nonprofit. Did you know Canva also includes AI features to help you create designs faster? The paid Magic Design feature allows you to generate high-quality visuals in seconds, which you can then perfect to suit your needs.
• Fireflies. Fireflies is your new digital transcription and efficiency assistant. This AI notetaking tool can transcribe, summarize, and analyze your meetings and chats to help you find information faster, record crucial insights, and more. Most importantly, it integrates with the most popular meeting platforms to ensure seamless functionality.
• Otter. Otter is another AI notetaking tool that can transform your productivity and collaboration. It includes similar features as Fireflies, plus tools for automatically composing action item emails and lists. If a transcription tool sounds like a helpful investment for your organization, take a moment to compare these two top providers.

How to choose and implement new AI tools for your nonprofit

As you explore the wide range of AI tools for nonprofits available today, you’ll need to consider a few essential factors before deciding to invest in one.

Start any search by defining your needs and goals. Why are you looking for a new tool? What do you hope or need to accomplish with it? Consider writing your answers down to keep them front of mind—it can be easy to get carried away by all the options and functionalities available, and as your search loses focus, you’ll run a greater risk of making the wrong choice.

Next, define your budget. What is your organization willing and able to spend on new tech right now? Your budget depends on the urgency or importance of your needs. An expensive, nice-to-have, but unnecessary tool isn’t as justifiable as an alternative that addresses your immediate needs for a lower cost. 

However, it’s also useful to consider the potential ROI that a new investment in an AI tool could generate. All of the tools in the list above are designed to help organizations create more value—either directly through revenue or indirectly through saved time or increased efficiency. Software for grants (both writing and managing them) are great examples—the right tools will help you secure more funding and build lucrative relationships with funders, and although they may represent a hefty upfront cost, their overall benefits create a net positive over time.

To learn more about the importance of ROI when choosing software and how to conduct a cost-benefit analysis, check out our buyer’s guide to grant management software.

The initial guardrails of your needs/goals and budget will allow you to start your software search confidently. As you find potential tools, compare them by considering a few additional factors:

• Ease of implementation
• Integrations with your existing tools
• Their complexity or learning curves
• Privacy and security features and policies
• Testimonials and reviews
• Level of hands-on support from the vendors

Once you find the perfect addition to your nonprofit’s toolkit, what next? 

After purchasing new AI software, take a deliberate approach to implementation. Haphazardly introducing a new tool without clearly defining how it should be used and what it’s intended to accomplish can lead to poor or sporadic adoption. Try following these steps:

1. Define the new tool’s use cases and purpose. What will it accomplish for your organization? Who will use it regularly?
2. Pilot the software yourself before rolling it out to your broader team. Use this time to learn the basics, troubleshoot any initial issues, and get clarification from the vendor as needed.
3. Introduce your team to the new tool and train them on how to use it, either yourself or with resources from the vendor.
4. Monitor adoption—are team members using the new tool correctly and consistently?
5. Make adjustments if needed to improve adoption, troubleshoot other issues as they arise, and check that the tool is beginning to drive the intended impact.
6. Get team feedback on the tool. Are there further fixes or customizations that would make it easier to use or more valuable for them?

Regardless of whether you’re implementing a hefty enterprise-level solution or a quick new productivity app, having a clear methodology will be invaluable. After all, you can’t realize an ROI on your new technology if your team barely uses it or uses it incorrectly!

Key considerations to keep in mind

AI technology brings unique considerations and risks that you’ll need to thoroughly understand before committing resources to a new tool for your nonprofit:

• Be aware of the types of AI technology available. General categories you’ll find include nonprofit-specific platforms, purpose-built tools designed to accomplish a specific set of tasks, and general AI engines or LLMs (like ChatGPT). Depending on your exact needs, nonprofit-specific and purpose-built tools are generally your best bet. Note, however, that software providers can promise a lot while going light on the details, so take the time to fully understand a solution’s actual capabilities before investing.
• Using AI opens up your organization to a few risks. AI platforms can generate incorrect answers and responses. They also bring privacy and bias risks. Talk to your vendors about any concerns beforehand, vet their privacy and security policies, and build workflows that ensure AI outputs are always screened by your team for incorrectness, bias, or other issues before using them.
• Be transparent with donors. Let your donors know if you’ll use any donor data to train an AI tool (for example, a prospect research tool that integrates with your database to find giving trends). Explain exactly what information is used and reiterate both your and your vendor’s policies. Give donors an option to opt out of having their information used in these ways and then adhere to their preferences.
• Stay aware of changes both with your tools and the wider AI space. AI platforms evolve quickly, with new improvements and features deploying constantly. Keep an eye on emerging best practices, security concerns, or more by subscribing to your vendors’ newsletters and following nonprofit technology publications or accounts.

Understanding these considerations will help you find the best possible options and set you up for long-term success with your nonprofit’s new AI tools. 

Grant Assistant by FreeWill is a great example of a purpose-built, nonprofit-specific, expert-trained, and fully private AI platform for nonprofits—learn more about Grant Assistant and look for these qualities in other software you consider.

To see more AI technology recommendations and best practices, check out these additional resources from the FreeWill team:

• Can you use AI for grant writing? What you need to know
• AI grant writing tools for nonprofits: The top 15 platforms
• Webinar: 5 practical AI uses for nonprofit fundraising

‍