Find your nonprofit's donors
February 10, 2025
Finding your donors can be hard. Tailoring your messages to those donors can be even harder. That's why marketers suggest that you create donor "personas" -- characteristics of the people most likely to give to your organization. Here are six prompts you can use to get ChatGPT to help perform this analysis:
Act as an expert marketer, using best practices from that discipline. Create three ideal personas for donors to a $2 million nonprofit in Arlington, Virginia, that works on offender aid and restoration. [Obviously, change the prompts to reflect your circumstances.]
For each persona you listed, describe in detail the factual basis for your profile.
Look back at your original response to see whether you had any hallucinations or need to correct something to make it more accurate.
Applying the same analysis, research XYZ.org. In light of that research, modify your proposed personas in any way that would make your profiles more accurate for XYZ.
Generate 20 statements that the [Profile 1] would use, in their own words, to express why it is important to donate to a $2 million nonprofit in Arlington, Virginia, that works on offender aid and restoration.
Generate 5 emails that XYZ could use to persuade [Profile 1] to donate to XYZ.
Is your research over? No, of course not. As AI guru Geoff Woods notes, an AI answer rarely gets you more than 60% there. But what a way to start!
Please share your reactions and results. Did you learn anything from these prompts? Did you receive confirmation that you are on the right track? Did you tweak these prompts or follow them with creative efforts of your own? As always, your feedback will be the basis of future newsletters.
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