How Nonprofits Can Use AI: +50 Use Cases

There are thousands of tasks where AI can help us. It’s impossible to list here all the possible use cases for a nonprofit organization, but in this article you will see the most relevant AI use cases for nonprofits, divided into practical categories.

Discover how AI can empower your nonprofit to achieve more. Dozens of ideas and examples to use these powerful tools to enhance efficiency, amplify impact, and unlock new opportunities across various aspects of your mission.

*️⃣ Pro tip

This article is a summary of a big database that we have created with all the relevant AI uses for nonprofits. It includes +300 specific examples of using AI for common nonprofit tasks, +50 recommended AI tools and +200 useful tips to get the best results & minimize risks for each task. This database is part of our “AI for nonprofits” Course (which includes many other useful guides, templates, etc.)

🧭 Strategy

Brainstorming

AI can help nonprofits generate dozens of creative ideas very quickly and overcome mental blocks during planning sessions. It provides fresh perspectives and diverse solutions that teams might not consider on their own. This accelerates innovation and strategic thinking across all organizational areas. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Fundraising campaign themes
• Volunteer engagement activities
• Grant proposal strategies
• Social media content ideas
• Community outreach methods
• Board retreat activities

Define strategies

AI can help you develop clear and actionable strategies. It helps nonprofits think through complex strategic challenges, identify opportunities, and refine existing approaches based on best practices and your specific context. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Fundraising diversification
• Program expansion planning
• Program launch plans
• Advocacy campaign development
• Crisis response planning
• Risk management

Goal setting & tracking

AI can help nonprofits set realistic targets, design tracking methods, and generate regular reports that demonstrate impact to funders, boards, and stakeholders. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Fundraising targets
• Volunteer hours tracking
• Program KPIs monitoring
• Campaign milestone updates
• Board scorecards
• Grant deliverables tracking

Identify risks & opportunities

AI can analyze large amounts of data to spot potential problems and risks before they grow, and also find new opportunities for your organization to grow or improve. For example, your nonprofit can use AI to:

• Identify quick wins
• Discover tech opportunities
• Identify corporate partners
• Summarize research
• Monitor policy changes
• Spot sector trends

Get an “AI coach”

Access personalized guidance, feedback, and coaching on nonprofit leadership, fundraising, program development, and organizational challenges. AI mentors provide 24/7 support tailored to your specific situation without the cost or scheduling constraints of human consultants. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Leadership development
• Grant writing coaching
• Communications training
• Crisis management coaching
• Wellbeing and resilience
• Board facilitation advice

Create surveys

AI can help you design effective surveys by generating relevant questions, suggesting different formats, and even reviewing your text for bias. This saves time and helps you get higher quality feedback from your community, donors, and volunteers. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Donor satisfaction surveys
• Program impact assessment
• Volunteer feedback collection
• Community needs assessment
• Event feedback forms
• Board governance evaluation

Review surveys & feedback

AI can quickly analyze and summarize large volumes of survey responses and feedback to identify key themes, patterns, and actionable insights. This saves nonprofits countless hours of manual review while ensuring no important feedback gets overlooked. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Donor survey analysis
• Grant reporting
• Funder feedback interpretation
• Advocacy strategy
• Program evaluation synthesis
• Volunteer exit interview review

🔎 Research

Research & summarize

AI can sift through huge amounts of data, summarize complex documents, and identify key insights. It saves hours of manual searching and improves grant applications, program design, advocacy efforts, and strategic decision-making, among other things. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Grant research and targeting
• Best practices analysis
• Donor prospect research
• Competitive landscape mapping
• Evidence-based program development
• Volunteer recruitment insights

Find the best tools & providers

AI can help nonprofits quickly discover and compare software and platforms that fit their needs and budgets. It saves hours of manual research and lowers the risk of picking the wrong solution. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Personalized recommendations
• Identifying tool categories
• Feature comparison matrices
• Analyzing user reviews
• Finding integrations
• Evaluating security

Monitoring & alerts

AI can continuously watch different sources and metrics, automatically notifying you of important changes, risks, or opportunities. This helps your nonprofit react quickly to problems, stay informed, and make timely decisions. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Funding opportunity alerts
• Policy and regulation tracking
• Crisis and emergency monitoring
• Media mention tracking
• Reputation management
• Competitor activity

✍️ Text

Create texts

AI helps nonprofits generate written content quickly and consistently across all communication channels. It saves time, boosts consistency, and ensures your messaging is clear and impactful. For example, your nonprofit can use AI to:

• Generate donation appeals
• Create social media content
• Draft grant narratives
• Write volunteer materials
• Generate newsletter articles
• Update website copy

Improve texts

AI can review and improve your writing by correcting grammar, clarifying meaning, adjusting tone, and suggesting better structure. It’s like having an always-available editor for faster, clearer, and more confident communication. For example, your nonprofit can use AI to:

• Shorten verbose text
• “Humanize” AI drafts
• Change tone of voice
• Reformat content
• Detect grammatical errors
• Improve sentence flow

Repurpose content

AI can help nonprofits transform existing content into new formats for different platforms and audiences. This maximizes the value of your efforts, extends your reach, and saves significant time and resources compared to creating new content from scratch. For example, your nonprofit can use AI to:

• Turn reports into social snippets
• Convert webinars to blog posts
• Generate email series
• Develop presentation slides
• Produce FAQs from Q&A
• Transform case studies

Create Knowledge Bases

AI can help you organize, summarize, and generate content for internal knowledge bases (FAQs, onboarding docs, training guides, etc.). This preserves organizational memory, reduces training time for new staff, and ensures critical information doesn’t get lost when employees leave or retire. For example, your nonprofit can use AI to:

• Turn docs into central FAQ
• Build help centers
• Summarize policies
• Create onboarding materials
• Generate glossary entries
• Update outdated documents

Create websites or landing pages

AI can help you plan, design, and build websites or landing pages much faster and cheaper. You can use AI for everything from layout ideas to writing content and even generating the full site with AI-powered website builders. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Complete website generation
• Landing page creation
• Code generation
• Content structure planning
• SEO optimization
• Accessibility compliance

Translation

AI can translate text, audio, or even documents instantly into many languages. This helps nonprofits reach more people, serve multilingual communities, and save money on professional translation services. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Program materials translation
• Website and social media
• Community outreach materials
• Grant applications
• Emergency communications
• Event materials translation

🎨 Multimedia

Image generation

Enables nonprofits to quickly create custom visuals (illustrations, infographics, campaign banners, social media posts, posters, etc.). It’s cheaper and faster than hiring designers or even buying stock images. For example, your nonprofit can use AI to:

• Create social media banners
• Generate fundraising visuals
• Design event materials
• Illustrate educational content
• Design donor recognition graphics
• Create advocacy campaign headers

Image editing

Transform existing photos and graphics using AI to fix issues, enhance quality, or adapt them for different purposes. Save time and money on photo editing while maintaining professional standards for your visual communications. For example, your nonprofit can use AI to:

• Remove unwanted objects
• Replace backgrounds
• Crop and resize images
• Add missing elements
• Protect privacy
• Update old photos

Video generation

AI can help you quickly create videos from text, images, or short clips, with no editing skills needed. Useful for promoting your cause, explaining your work, and increasing engagement on social media or fundraising pages. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Donor impact stories
• Social media explainers
• Volunteer recruitment videos
• Annual report summaries
• Educational content
• Event promotion clips

Video edit

Enhance and modify existing videos using AI to improve quality, add elements, remove unwanted content, or adapt footage for different platforms. Transform raw event footage and program videos into polished, professional content without expensive editing software or skills. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Automatic subtitle generation
• Background noise removal
• Video cropping and resizing
• Removing unwanted elements
• Scene detection and highlights
• Face blurring for privacy

Voice generation

AI voice generation (also known as text-to-speech) creates realistic human-like narration from written text. This helps nonprofits produce high-quality audio content, like voiceovers for videos, audio articles, or automated messages, without the need for expensive recording equipment or voice actors, saving time and resources. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Video voiceovers
• Audio articles/blog posts
• Automated phone messages
• Podcast intros/outros
• Educational audio content
• Multilingual content

Voice recognition & processing

AI can transcribe, recognize, and analyze speech in real time or from recordings. This helps nonprofits save time on manual note-taking, improve accessibility, and extract insights from voice content (like interviews or meetings). For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Meeting transcription
• Interview documentation
• Event notes capture
• Accessibility services
• Multilingual translation
• Voice-activated data entry

Music & sounds generation

AI can create custom music and sound effects from a simple prompt. This helps nonprofits add emotion, energy, and professionalism to videos, podcasts, events, and social media, without needing a composer or expensive licenses. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Event background music
• Video soundtracks
• Meditation audio
• Educational sound effects
• Phone hold music
• Social media audio

Slides generation

Create professional presentation slides automatically from text content, data, or topics using AI. This dramatically reduces the time and effort spent on design and layout, allowing nonprofits to focus on refining their message. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Board meeting presentations
• Donor pitch decks
• Grant proposal presentations
• Volunteer training modules
• Community education workshops
• Annual report presentations

Design feedback

AI provides instant, objective feedback on your visual materials (logos, flyers, websites, social media posts, reports, etc.) by analyzing design principles, accessibility, and audience impact. This helps nonprofits create more professional and effective communications without expensive design consultants. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Website homepage analysis
• Fundraising material feedback
• Social media post optimization
• Annual report design review
• Event materials critique
• Logo and brand identity feedback

📣 Marketing

Social Media Management

AI can help nonprofits plan, create, schedule, and analyze social media content more efficiently. It saves time, boosts consistency, and helps you reach more people with better content. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• AI scheduling tools
• Content calendar
• Post creation
• Caption and hashtag help
• Post variations
• Image suggestions

Ad management

AI helps you create, test, optimize, and manage ads faster. It saves time, improves performance, and helps you get better results from platforms like Google Ads, Meta Ads or YouTube. For example, your nonprofit can use AI to:

• Write better ad copy
• Create keyword lists
• Test headlines and descriptions
• Summarize landing pages
• Fix disapproved ads
• Segment your audience

Database & CRM optimization

AI can clean, organize, and analyze your data quickly and with minimal effort. This makes your CRM, spreadsheets or databases easier to use, more accurate, and more valuable for decision-making. For example, your nonprofit can use AI to:

• Remove duplicates
• Enrich contact information
• Standardize contact info
• Tag contacts automatically
• Segment your database
• Summarize supporter notes

Ecommerce

AI can help nonprofits improve their online store (or donation shop) by saving time, increasing sales, and creating a smoother experience for supporters. It can boost visibility, write product content, recommend items, and even automate customer support. For example, your nonprofit can use AI to:

• Write product descriptions
• Personalize recommendations
• Summarize inventory
• Generate images
• Suggest upsells
• Write abandoned cart emails

📈 Analysis

Data analysis and insights

AI examines your organization’s data to uncover hidden patterns, trends, and actionable insights that human analysis might miss. This helps nonprofits understand what’s working, identify problems early, and make evidence-based decisions to improve programs and operations. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Donor behavior pattern analysis
• Program effectiveness evaluation
• Volunteer engagement insights
• Financial trend analysis
• Website user behavior
• Grant funding correlation

Data visualization and reporting

AI can help you turn raw data into engaging charts, dashboards, and summaries. This makes it easier to understand your results, share insights, and make better decisions. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Impact dashboard creation
• Donor analytics visualization
• Grant reporting automation
• Annual report infographics
• Board meeting presentations
• Social media impact graphics

Predictive analytics and forecasting

AI can analyze historical data to predict future trends, donor behavior, and organizational needs. This helps nonprofits make smarter decisions, avoid future problems, and adapt to new trends. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Donor retention prediction
• Fundraising revenue forecasting
• Volunteer churn analysis
• Grant success probability
• Program demand forecasting
• Event attendance estimationç

Financial management & budgeting

AI can help nonprofits create accurate budgets, track expenses, analyze financial trends, and generate reports without needing advanced financial or accounting expertise. This improves financial transparency, reduces errors in grant reporting, and helps boards make better funding decisions while saving time on routine financial tasks. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Budget forecasting
• Grant budget creation
• Expense categorization
• Automated invoice processing
• Cash flow analysis
• Anomaly detection in spending

A/B testing

AI can improve or even automate the process of creating, running, and analyzing experiments to test different versions of your content, campaigns, or website elements. This helps nonprofits make data-driven decisions about what resonates best with donors, beneficiaries, and other stakeholders. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Email subject line testing
• Donation page optimization
• Social media post variations
• Ad variations
• Website element testing
• Grant proposal approaches

🧑‍🤝‍👩 HR

Recruiting

AI can help you find better candidates, save time in interviews, and simplify onboarding. It speeds up repetitive tasks and improves consistency, so you can focus on building relationships. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Job description optimization
• Pre-screening chatbots
• Resume screening automation
• Interview question generation
• Skill assessments
• Role fit analysis

Training & capacity building

AI can help you create personalized training materials that build staff and volunteer capabilities. This helps nonprofits improve performance, reduce training costs, and ensure consistent knowledge transfer across the organization. For example, your nonprofit can use AI to:

• Create training materials
• Generate slides/visuals
• Simulate real-life situations
• Summarize long content
• Tailor training to roles
• Make content engaging

Employee wellness & team building

AI supports staff wellbeing, retention, and team cohesion through personalized wellness programs and data-driven insights about workplace satisfaction. This helps nonprofits reduce burnout, improve morale, and create sustainable work environments despite high-stress missions and limited resources. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Wellness check-ins
• Personalized suggestions
• Anonymous surveys
• Team building ideas
• Motivation boosters
• Time-off planning

🚀 Productivity

Automation

AI can handle repetitive tasks without human intervention, allowing nonprofit staff to focus on relationship-building and mission-critical work. This reduces manual errors, ensures consistency, and operates 24/7 to improve responsiveness and efficiency. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Email response automation
• Social media posting
• Donor acknowledgment
• Volunteer scheduling
• Grant deadline reminders
• Client follow-up sequences

Calendar & time management

AI can help you schedule, plan, and manage your time more efficiently. It reduces back-and-forth, avoids conflicts, and makes your calendar work for your priorities. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Smart scheduling
• Auto-booking
• Daily briefings
• Focus time protection
• Task reminders
• Rescheduling help

Classify information

AI can automatically sort and label large amounts of text or data into predefined categories. You can use it to make sense of surveys, feedback, emails, grant applications, and other unstructured information quickly. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Support request classification
• Volunteer application screening
• Grant opportunity identification
• Donor feedback analysis
• Social media monitoring
• Survey response grouping

Data extraction & transformation

AI helps you quickly extract useful data from emails, PDFs, forms, websites, or spreadsheets. It saves time, reduces manual errors, and makes data easier to use across your tools and systems. For example, your nonprofit can use AI to:

• Extract donor details
• Extract info from web pages
• Clean messy spreadsheets
• Convert PDFs to data
• Summarize survey responses
• Extract info from meeting notes

Email management

AI can help you manage emails faster and more effectively. It can summarize, prioritize, draft replies, and automate follow-ups, saving time and reducing inbox overload. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Drafting responses
• Summarizing long emails
• Smart follow-ups
• Inbox cleanup
• Tone checking
• Bulk reply assistance

Improve meetings

AI can transform your meetings by automating note-taking, generating action items, and creating summaries. This saves staff time and ensures nothing important gets missed, making meetings more productive and focused. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Meeting agenda generation
• Icebreaker suggestions
• Automated meeting summaries
• Transcript of discussions
• Action item extraction
• Brainstorming organization

Negotiating

AI can help nonprofits prepare for negotiations by analyzing counterpart positions, generating strategic responses, and practicing scenarios. This builds staff confidence, improves outcomes, and saves time. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Major donor negotiations
• Vendor contract discussions
• Grant award modifications
• Partnership terms discussions
• Salary negotiations
• Lease renewal discussions

Create/review contracts & policies

AI can help nonprofits draft, review, and improve contracts more efficiently by suggesting standard clauses, identifying potential issues, and ensuring nothing important is missed. It saves time and reduces legal risks. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Drafting service agreements
• Reviewing grant agreements
• Creating volunteer agreements
• Analyzing vendor contracts
• Generating partnership MOUs
• Checking for compliance

Project Management & team collaboration

AI can help plan, track, and coordinate team work with less manual effort. It keeps projects on time, improves communication, and reduces confusion in small teams. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Smart task planning
• Automatic progress updates
• AI project assistance
• Meeting recaps
• Collaborative notes
• Quick onboarding

💡 Tech

Analyze websites

AI can scan and review websites to provide insights about design, content, SEO, accessibility, and user experience. This helps nonprofits improve their site to attract more visitors, increase donations, and better serve their community. For example, your nonprofit can use AI to:

• Get quick website audits
• Check readability
• Summarize competitor sites
• Review donation pages
• Identify missing keywords
• Spot accessibility issues

Coding & creating apps

AI can help you write, explain, and fix code without needing advanced programming skills. It speeds up development, reduces errors, and makes it easier for small teams to build or maintain digital tools. For example, your nonprofit can use AI to:

• Create custom internal tools
• Explain or debug code
• Refactor code for readability
• Write tests
• Optimize performance
• Integrate third-party tools and APIs

Chatbots

AI chatbots can handle routine inquiries, guide users, and automate conversations in real time. This frees up staff time, provides instant support, and improves engagement with donors, volunteers, and beneficiaries. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Website FAQ assistance
• Volunteer intake
• Donor support
• Internal helpdesk
• Event registration
• Multilingual support

Computer vision & OCR

AI can turn images or scanned documents into searchable text, and recognize objects or scenes in photos and videos. This helps nonprofits digitize records, automate data entry, and gain insights from visual content. For example, your nonprofit can use AI to:

• Digitize paper forms
• Process receipts
• Analyze social media images
• Enhance accessibility
• Read ID badges
• Monitor signage

3D model generation

AI can create 3D digital models from text descriptions or images. It enables nonprofits to visualize projects, create educational materials, and develop prototypes without expensive 3D modeling software or technical expertise. For example, your nonprofit can use AI to:

• Develop educational materials
• Visualize projects for funders
• Create fundraising visuals
• Prototype program materials
• Generate product mockups
• Build virtual tour environments

Cybersecurity

AI can help nonprofits identify threats, monitor suspicious activities, and strengthen their security posture without needing dedicated IT security staff. This protects sensitive donor data, financial information, and program details from cyberattacks while reducing costs compared to traditional security solutions. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Email threat detection
• Password security analysis
• Data breach risk assessment
• Social media monitoring
• Web moderation
• Network activity monitoring

IT & troubleshooting

AI can assist in troubleshooting by analyzing error messages, system logs, and user descriptions to diagnose problems quickly. It can also suggest solutions, automate fixes, and provide instant support, reducing downtime and freeing up valuable staff time. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Automated IT helpdesk
• Software error diagnosis
• Network connectivity issues
• Device compatibility checks
• Website bug resolution
• Data migration problems

Make advanced calculations

AI can perform complex mathematical analysis, statistical modeling, and financial projections that would typically require specialized software or expertise. This enables nonprofits to make data-driven decisions, optimize resource allocation, and create sophisticated reports without hiring statisticians or analysts. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Budget forecasting
• Scenario modeling
• Donor lifetime value
• Break-even analysis
• ROI measurement
• Resource allocation

Recommendation systems

AI analyzes patterns in data to provide personalized suggestions for donors, volunteers, programs, and resources. This helps nonprofits match people with the most relevant opportunities while improving engagement and outcomes through targeted recommendations. For example, your nonprofit can use AI for:

• Donor giving suggestions
• Volunteer opportunity matching
• Program participant recommendations
• Grant funding suggestions
• Event attendance optimization
• Advocacy action suggestions

I hope this article give you a few useful ideas. If you want to learn more, check our “AI for nonprofits” Course (which includes many useful guides, templates, examples, etc.)

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