🗞️ AI for Non Profits Network: Weekly Briefing 02/24

The weekly digest from a network of non-profits interested in AI. What's in this week's Briefing: Stomach Cancer Charity Deploy AI Support & Thoughts from the 2026 State of the Nonprofits report.

In The Briefing this week:

1. 👀 What’s Caught our Eye: The First Stomach Cancer Charity to Deploy AI Support

2. 💭 Thought for the Week: Your Donors Are Changing. Is Your Fundraising? Thoughts from the Forvis Mazars 2026 State of the Nonprofit Sector Report.

3. 🌟 Interesting News & Funding Calls

4. 🌐 From Across the Network

1) 👀 What Caught Our Eye: The First Stomach Cancer Charity to Deploy AI Support

No Stomach For Cancer has become the first stomach cancer advocacy organization to launch an AI-powered patient support tool, Karen, marking a significant moment in how disease-specific charities are embracing technology to serve their communities.

The tool delivers something deceptively simple: 24/7 access to reliable guidance for patients and caregivers navigating one of cancer’s most challenging journeys.

Stomach cancer patients face uniquely complex needs - dramatic dietary restrictions following gastrectomy, rapidly evolving treatment landscapes, and questions that don’t wait for office hours. Traditional patient support, however compassionate, operates on human schedules. This AI assistant fills the gaps by being trained on vetted medical information and resources specific to stomach cancer care.

What makes this initiative particularly noteworthy isn’t the technology itself – it’s the deployment model. By partnering with AI for nonprofit providers Whitelabel, rather than building from scratch, No Stomach For Cancer has sidestepped the common nonprofit trap of reinventing the wheel. The tool has been extensively tested with survivors and caregivers, ensuring it addresses real needs whilst maintaining the organization’s signature supportive tone.

Critically, the tool is designed to complement, not replace, human support. It provides immediate information and guidance, then signposts to relevant resources when appropriate.

Lessons for nonprofit leaders:

Don’t wait for the perfect moment to explore AI. Sector specific organizations possess deep community knowledge, making them ideal candidates for thoughtful AI deployment. Partnership models can accelerate implementation without requiring extensive technical expertise or resources. And perhaps most importantly: the organizations that move first will shape how AI serves their communities, rather than having solutions imposed upon them.

Don’t leave AI governance to chance — join us on March 4th

A handful of places remain on our free workshop (March 4, 2pm EST) designed specifically for nonprofit leaders navigating AI governance and policy.

Here’s the mindset shift we’ll be exploring: AI governance isn’t a brake on innovation - it’s the thing that makes innovation possible. When your organization has the right guardrails in place, your team can move faster and more confidently, exploring what AI can do for your mission without exposing the organization to unnecessary risk.

Walk away with a ready-to-adapt AI use policy template, a risk-tiering framework for evaluating new tools, and clarity on how to bring your board along on AI governance without losing momentum.

Reserve your spot by replying to this email or writing to us at hello@aifornonprofitsnetwork.org.

2) 💭 Thought of the Week: Your Donors Are Changing. Is Your Fundraising?

Something fundamental is shifting in philanthropy, and I think most nonprofit leaders can sense it; even if they haven’t yet said it at a board meeting. The context couldn’t be more pressured; federal funding is being pulled back, grant freezes are disrupting programs that communities depend on, and new floors in charitable deductions will likely accelerate donor bunching; larger gifts, less frequently, from fewer people. Meanwhile, demand for nonprofit services keeps climbing. The sector is being asked to do more with less, at the precise moment that the traditional funding relationships it has relied on are fracturing.

The donor who wrote your organization a reliable annual check, came to your gala, and asked relatively few questions about outcomes? That person is getting older. Their children give differently, expect different things, and are harder to reach through the channels you’ve spent decades building. And the generation after them barely thinks of “donating to a nonprofit” as a distinct category of activity at all.

Four Generations, Four Philanthropic Languages

The Forvis Mazars 2026 State of the Nonprofit Sector report maps out a generational divide that is useful reading for every development director: Boomers give by mail and at events. Gen X wants data and monthly giving structures. Millennials respond to crowdfunding and peer-to-peer campaigns. Gen Z is activism-driven, mobile-first, and crypto-friendly.

Four completely different philanthropic languages and most non-profits we encounter haven’t fully leaned into this.

This is not a communications problem dressed up as a fundraising problem. It is a structural one. The pipeline of donors that sustained the nonprofit sector through the latter half of the twentieth century was built on particular assumptions; that giving was a private, tax-motivated act, that loyalty to an organization was built over years, and that impact was something you took largely on faith. Those assumptions are changing rapidly.

What’s Replacing Them

What’s emerging is something more transactional, more digital, and, I’d argue, ultimately more democratic. Younger donors want to see what their money actually does. They want to give through their phones, on their terms, in recurring amounts that feel manageable. They want to feel affiliated with a cause rather than an institution. And increasingly, they want to participate in how resources are used, not just fund them from a distance.

The Make-A-Wish example in the report is instructive. The organization didn’t wait for younger donors to find their way through traditional channels. They went to where those donors already were - gaming platforms, social media, peer challenges, and built fundraising mechanisms that felt native to those environments. It worked not because it was gimmicky, but because it was honest about how this generation actually engages with the world.

Digital Fundraising Is Not a Strategy on Its Own

I want to be careful here, because I’ve seen too many nonprofits chase digital fundraising trends without the strategic foundation to make them work. A TikTok account is not a Millennial donor strategy. An app is not a pipeline.

Genuine engagement means rethinking the donor relationship from the first touchpoint. Simple mobile donation pages. Impact updates that arrive as a text or a story, not a PDF annual report. Peer-to-peer fundraising baked into your programming. And radical, public transparency about what you’re achieving - because that transparency is the currency through which trust is built with donors who have never met you in person and never will.

The Danger for Smaller Organizations

The organizations best positioned to make this shift are already the largest and most resourced in the sector. Smaller nonprofits - often doing the most essential, community-embedded work - lack the development teams, data analysts, and communications capacity to compete.

This is where AI enters the picture not as a futurist fantasy but as a practical leveler. Personalized donor outreach, impact storytelling, campaign copy, social media content - AI tools can now help generate all of these at a fraction of the traditional cost. The question isn’t whether smaller nonprofits can match the big players on digital fundraising. It’s whether they can use available tools to get close enough to matter.

What This Means for You

Start by auditing your donor base by generation. If you don’t know the age breakdown of your giving pipeline, that’s the first problem to solve - you cannot speak four philanthropic languages without knowing which one your audience speaks.

Next, look honestly at your digital giving infrastructure. Is your donation page mobile-optimized? Can someone give $10 a month from their phone in under two minutes? If not, you’re leaving a generation of potential donors on the table.

Finally, don’t treat peer-to-peer fundraising as a one-off campaign. The organizations doing it well have made it a core part of how they build community - turning donors into advocates and mission alignment into social reach. That kind of network doesn’t get built overnight. But it starts with the decision to try.

The floor has shifted. Donors are not going back to the channels and assumptions that shaped giving twenty years ago. The organizations that accept that now will be in a fundamentally stronger position than those still waiting for things to settle.

We’re holding our next AI for Non Profits Network Workshop on Wednesday 4th March (2pm EST) on AI governance and policies - the practical frameworks you actually need to adopt AI and put it in place across your organization. For early access, reply to this email.

3) 🌟 Interesting News

LinkedIn Future of Work Fund closes on 15th March - is focused on supporting nonprofit organizations using AI innovation to expand economic opportunity. If you are thinking of applying for this - we can support - email us (hello@aifornonprofitsnetwork.org). (LinkedIn)

Global ovarian cancer research consortium awards $1 million USD AI accelerator grant in partnership with Microsoft’s AI for good lab (Newswire)

Youth Mental Health in the AI Era: How GenAI Enters Help-Seeking Pathways (JED)

4) 🌐 From Across the Network

• Have an event, case study, gathering or interesting insight you’d like to share with the network? Drop us a note by replying to this email.

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