Why Autonomous AI Is Measured in Revenue, Not Efficiencies

The best question you can ask yourself when evaluating AI is “Will this directly drive revenue or will this create efficiencies?”

If your answer is revenue, you're probably looking at Autonomous AI. If your answer is efficiency, you’re looking at AI Enablement.

Developing a clear grasp of Autonomous AI versus AI Enablement is a skill all fundraising leaders need to develop now, because today’s choices will drive tomorrow’s growth.

Nearly a decade ago, our founder Adam Martel was a frontline fundraiser who needed to operate more efficiently to reach more of the donors in his portfolio. That experience led him to co-found Gravyty and create the first AI Enablement tool for fundraising, a system that could draft emails for fundraisers to edit and send in order to stay on top of outreach. This is a great example of AI Enablement, tools that draft emails, summarize insights, predict giving potential, analyze CRM data, or prioritize donor outreach lists. Those key words–draft, summarize, predict, analyze, prioritize–are often akin to AI Enablement.

AI Enablement tools are measured in the efficiencies that they produce, essentially helping employees do their current job well.

Autonomous AI is an entirely different category. Unlike AI-enabled tools, Autonomous AI is responsible for an entire job from start to finish, independent of its human colleagues, as a standalone solution. In fundraising, this critical difference means that it is accountable for the same outcomes as a staff member. Unlike AI Enablement, in our industry, Autonomous AI can be measured on direct revenue generation and pipeline growth.

Autonomous Fundraising, and the work of the Virtual Engagement Officer, exemplifies this difference. Bucknell University’s VEO, Lauren, manages a 1,000 donor portfolio and has raised $450,000 while outperforming a control group on every metric: dollars raised, renewals, participation, and gift increases. The VEO operates just as a traditional gift officer would, using cultivation activities that lead donors to give. For this reason, we can measure the VEO by the same revenue-generating standards as every other fundraiser on the team.

Rather than focusing on doing the current scope of work well, Autonomous AI has the unique ability to be applied to scale areas of growth that were previously thought impossible.

As we evaluate AI and bring it into our organizations to improve fundraising, the donor experience, and ultimately our missions, asking critical questions about outcomes will become increasingly important.

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The future of fundraising is already here. Schedule a demo to learn how a Virtual Engagement Officer can expand your team’s capacity today.