Utilizing generative AI might just be the smartest move for your nonprofit's communication strategy. It's like having an extra pair of hands, ready to help you get your message out there in a clear, cohesive way. Achieving your desired outcome from AI all boils down to how you ask for what you need.
Once you get the hang of straightforward, precise prompts, you'll be crafting engaging content with ease. This isn't just about saving time—it's about making every word count and connecting with your audience more consistently.
Let’s talk about ensuring your prompts are focused on clarity, specificity, and desired outcome, so you can become a pro prompter in no time! 
Step 1: Clearly Define your Desired Outcome
Before Prompting your AI tool, like Ignite AI, be clear about what you need. Whether it's content for a fundraising page, data analysis for donor engagement, or templates for volunteer recruitment emails, the clearer your request, the more accurate the AI's output will be.
For example, let's say you need a donation page for your summer camp campaign. The end goal of a donation page is to convert an individual into a donor. That is what we want to focus on when setting up this prompt.
So, we need to ensure this prompt says something like, "...a donation page with the purpose of quickly converting as many donors as possible. This year our goal is to double last year's goal."
Step 2: Provide Context
Your AI tool relies on you to provide relevant background information. Ensure you are providing AI with info on your organization's mission, tone, target audience, and past communication strategies, etc. Including details on your organization's tone and voice will ensure that the generated content aligns with your brand identity.
Sharing information about your target audience, like demographics, interests, and preferences, will help the AI tailor its outputs to resonate with your targeted constituents effectively.
Providing insights into past communication strategies and their outcomes can guide the AI in producing content that builds upon previous successes and avoids past pitfalls.
Continuing with our summer camp donation page example, we want to build upon the prompt to provide context: "Write our nonprofit's youth summer camp donation page, using an uplifting tone. It should resonate with parents and adults keen on supporting youth education. Highlight our achievement of providing scholarships last year and our goal to offer more this year. Emphasize the camp's benefits like making friends, creating memories, and educational engagement to combat the summer slide."
See how context can provide a richer wealth of knowledge for the AI to work with?
Step 3: Be Specific
AI can only work with the details you have given it. If you are not specific on how you would like to see the output, AI will make an inference and may give you an undesired output. Focus on detailed specifications, like the format, length, and any specific elements that need to be included in the output, such as calls-to-action, donor testimonials, or statistical data.
Rolling up your sleeves and really digging into the details with AI is a bit like chatting with a new assistant — you need to be clear about what you're asking for. Just like any good conversation, the more you put in, the more you get out. If your details are vague, AI might take a guess, and you may receive an undesired output, like a 5 paragraph essay rather than a short, bulleted list.
So, when you're writing out your prompt, be as clear as you'd be with that new team member: lay out the blueprint of what you need, from the structure right down to the nuts and bolts.
Want a blog post? Great — how long should it be? Need to sprinkle in some heartfelt donor stories or hard-hitting stats? Say the word and provide those stats. And don’t forget to ask it to add in a punchy call-to-action; after all, the AI doesn't know what you don't tell it.
Let's give our example that rich, specific input the AI craves: "Craft a two-paragraph appeal for our nonprofit's youth summer camp donation page, using an uplifting tone. It should resonate with parents and adults keen on supporting youth education. Highlight our achievement of providing 150 scholarships last year and our goal to offer 300 this year in Springfield County. Emphasize the camp's benefits like making friends, creating memories, and educational engagement to combat the summer slide. Conclude with an effective call to action for donations, incorporating tiers."
Notice how adding those specifications begins to tell the story better than before?
Step 4: Incorporate Keywords or Themes
Keywords are necessary for your donation page to show up within various google searches, so your page can get as many eyes on it as possible. Tools like StratusLIVE Ignite AI come with pre-programmed options to help ensure your page is loaded with the right keywords for your nonprofit's engagement pages to rank higher than they would without the tool. When using tools outside of Ignite, make sure you are specifying the important keywords or themes within the prompt.
For example, I would add a sentence to the end of our prompt to make sure AI knows to plug in those keywords: "...Please weave in keywords such as 'youth summer camp', 'summer reading program', 'sponsor a child', and 'Springfield County scholarships' for SEO."
If you aren't sure about what kind of keywords to add, a tip you can try is to ask ChatGPT or Copilot to analyze your prompt and suggest keywords. It will typically give you a list of keywords and from there you can select a few that seem the most applicable to the situation.
Step 5: Review and Revise
Use the AI's output as a draft and review it to ensure it meets your standards and objectives. Provide feedback to the AI if the first pass wasn't up to your standard. This is where you may want to provide even more detail about your exact desired output, or what your nonprofit's branding guidelines are. That kind of detail can help the AI understand what didn't work originally and correct course.
Let's see this in action using our prompt and ChatGPT pro:
This sounds good, but it just doesn't have the sparkle our nonprofit radiates. I also noticed that we forgot to include the name of our camp! Let's fix that and see what we get:
This output aligns much better with the overall tone of the nonprofit. I think this is the winner! Now all that we would need to do is paste this into our donation page! (P.S. Ignite AI is integrated into your page builder, so you don't have to leave the site to update your text using AI!)
Next Steps
This may seem like a long process to get a couple of paragraphs out of an AI, but think beyond the donation page. You have an entire campaign attached to the page, which means you have an opportunity to build upon the content you've started with!
Let's take a look at a few ways we can build upon the momentum you've already started...
Jumpstart your social media campaign:
Craft tailored emails:
Give your fundraising team some inspiration:
By leveraging generative AI for your nonprofit's communication strategy, you can create engaging content with ease. Remember, the key is to communicate effectively with the AI by giving it detailed instructions. So, take the time to craft precise prompts that align with your organization's goals and brand identity. When you craft an exceptional prompt, don't be afraid to save it! Effective prompts make great templates to make your next prompting journey even easier.
Start implementing these strategies today and watch your communication efforts thrive. Let's continue to explore the endless possibilities AI can offer for your nonprofit's success and contact us to find out how we are using AI within our product.
