In today’s episode, we have a special guest joining us: Robby Fowler. Together, we’ll explore the game-changing potential of ChatGPT in the world of fundraising.
ChatGPT, powered by OpenAI, is an AI language model that’s creating waves in the fundraising landscape. Nonprofits, listen up! Get ready to unlock the true power of ChatGPT and take your fundraising efforts to new heights.
Picture this: 🖼️ Donors engage with your organization like never before. ChatGPT enables personalized interactions, where donors can ask questions and receive tailored responses in real-time. It’s like having a 24/7 assistant at their fingertips.
Campaign planning just got a major boost! ChatGPT becomes your brainstorming buddy, refining your strategies through interactive chats. Fresh ideas and concepts are just a conversation away, empowering you to create impactful campaigns.
Prospecting made easy! 🎯 ChatGPT leverages its data-processing abilities to identify potential donors and provide valuable insights. It’s like having a prospect research expert right by your side, guiding you towards fundraising success.
Say goodbye to mundane tasks! ChatGPT automates routine activities such as follow-ups and acknowledgment emails. This time-saving feature allows you to focus on building meaningful relationships with donors, amplifying your fundraising efforts.
Ready to revolutionize your fundraising efforts with AI? Don’t miss out on my ChatGPT bundle, available at Chat GPT for fundraising: https://learn.rheawong.com/courses/ch…
To connect with Robby and get his Chat GPT course, visit: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robbyfowler/
“The fact that you can just crank out mediocre content is not necessarily a win for fundraising, nor for your donor if you actually want to serve them” – Robby
Episode Transcript
RHEA 0:05
Welcome to nonprofit lowdown. I’m your host Rhea Wong. Hey by gasless nerds, it’s Rhea Wong with you once again with nonprofit low down. Today we have a very popular 107 people registered for this call. Unprecedented. You’re like the Beyonce, Robbie Farah. Today we are talking about using chat GPT for fundraising. So welcome, Robbie.
ROBBY 0:31
Thank you. I’m super excited and glad to be in the same class as Beyonce. It’s a good life aspiration, we should all be so lucky. That’s right. Okay, before we jump into it, I’d love for you to introduce yourself. You are a branding and marketing strategist, I was reading your LinkedIn, I liked that you said, Stop random acts of marketing. But before we jump into the nitty gritty details of chalky beauty, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Sure. So I help people start, grow and monetize an online business. The key is an online business that’s worth giving your life to. And I do that, especially with folks when your name and your reputation are synonymous with the brand and with the business.
ROBBY 1:12
So that tends to be consultants and coaches and maybe course creators, solopreneurs, anyone that’s trying to build an online business where your name and your reputation are synonymous with the business, I think you should build one worth giving your life to because it is going to be what you give yourself to.
RHEA 1:30
Robby, you’re talking to nonprofit folks right now. These are people who have given Blood Sweat Tears and their lives to a cause. So I feel like a lot of folks are resonating with that. But before we get into the real technical nitty gritty, because I have so many questions about prompts and chanting and all that good stuff. For those of us who are very near to chat GPT probably what is chat GPT? And how can people use it to build their business?
ROBBY 1:54
Chat GPT is an online resource that uses AI, which stands for artificial intelligence. And you can skip all the techie stuff and think of it as if somebody gave you like a free robot assistant.
ROBBY 2:13
So it is there to help you do lots of stuff. One of the unique things about it, though, is that how you interact with it is fairly straightforward. It’s pretty similar to how you would type out instructions to an assistant if you had an assistant that you can see face to face, because you’re remote, and you’re just typing instructions back and forth. It works like that. So it uses natural language, it can understand what you ask, you can ask it if it understands and it will tell you yes or no for it needs more detail. So it’s an online resource, you can sign up and get a free account. And then there is a pro version that’s $20 a month, but it’s easy for anybody to go try.
ROBBY 2:56
And it’s the kind of thing probably that’s best understood as you mess with it a little bit than it is to try to understand it in theory, but essentially think of like text messaging, a robot that can be your assistant and help you do stuff is pretty fascinating.
RHEA 3:11
Yeah, Robbie. And for those folks on the call I created, you inspired me I created a chat GPT bundle for nonprofit fundraiser, because I think we’re all trying to get our heads around this technology. I don’t even know where to begin. There’s so many interesting use cases. But I think on the on the early end of things, people can use it to do things like write emails, or for those other writing grants, like maybe getting a start on grant proposals on the more sophisticated and you can use it to as personas, which we’ll get into. But what would you recommend to folks who are totally new to it, find it to be super overwhelming. And just don’t really even know where to get started. Where to begin?
ROBBY 3:52
Yes, where to begin is first of all begin with one AI tool. Because there are while we’re on this call Ria, there’s going to be like 10 more new AI tools likely that come out while we’re doing this call. So it can get real easy to just get overwhelmed with all of the different places you could go to do different AI thing. So in this instance, we’re talking about one tool, which happens to be one of the most popular tools and it’s chat TPTs and the first thing just start there. Okay, so I would if I was you, I would create a free account at Chet GPT.
ROBBY 4:28
And I’m sure we can throw the link for that, like, where do I go do that or you can just search for that and you will find it real quick. So that’s the first thing start with one thing. I would recommend chat GPT because it is very popular. There’s lots of articles and resources you can find and it’s free. Okay. Once you sign up, I would also recommend, grab at least one resource to help you begin to use that process. Again. There are lots and lots of places RIA just mentioned one
ROBBY 5:00
And I have a buddy. Now we’ve created one. So you can find them all over the place for free resources to blog articles or whatever, but find at least one resource to help you get started using chat GPT. And then the last thing I would add, this takes a little getting used to until you understand when you go to chat GP chat GPT and you get started, you’re just going to ask it a question. The challenge would be you can imagine, again, the easiest thing to do is think of this like an assistant like you just hired a new assistant. So let’s say I’m a nonprofit leader, and I meet Rhea somewhere, just bumped into her.
ROBBY 5:37
I know her because she’s super famous and like, oh my gosh, I can’t believe I get to talk to her. And I just come right up to her out of nowhere. She’s never met me before. And I say, Rhea, could you give me five ideas for fundraising for my nonprofit? Now, Ria is probably going to be very gracious and generous. If she’s really busy, maybe she’ll just be like, Ally, I don’t want to just cut you off. And she will just give me five generic things I might go do. And five, depending on my experience, so that those may be helpful, but it’s very likely that those are super generic, that they’re not going to be real helpful not gonna apply to me. And also, she wouldn’t do that. She’s going to say, Oh, I would like love to help. She’s going to catch our breath. Super.
ROBBY 6:19
She’s gonna, let’s hug it out. Okay, now, tell me a little bit about your nonprofit. Make sense? So this is the same way we need to think of when you’re getting started with chat GPT, you need to tell it, what you need help with. And essentially, what you’re going to find is you start messing around with it, there are things called personas, and you’re going to tell it to take on the persona, like I want you to take on the persona, you are a helpful assistant, you are a copywriter, you are a marketing expert, you are a social media expert. So you assign it, so knows what role you’re hiring it for. Okay. And I think it’ll start with that understanding.
ROBBY 7:00
Because if you just go ask it some generic stuff, give me five fundraising ideas for my nonprofit, that’s not going to be again, it might give you something, but that would be just like walking into Korea and just going, Hey, I’ve listened to your podcast, give me five ideas for my nonprofit.
RHEA 7:15
You’d be surprised at how often it happens. Okay, wait. So before we get into the technical stuff, because I really love the technical stuff, a lot of what I’ve heard, and I’d be curious about your thoughts is, oh, my gosh, Robbie, this is gonna, this is gonna pull people out of work, which funny enough with nonprofits, like the common complaint is that we don’t have enough people to do the work. So I’m like, this actually should be great for you anyway, what is your response to this is going to put people out of work? And I think this speaks to the technical aspects of chat GPT?
ROBBY 7:44
Sure. Ultimately, I don’t know that anybody exactly knows the full impact it will have it has the feel of a fairly significant disrupter, like the printing press, something like that time will tell like the internet, maybe like the iPhone. So has that feel what impact is that going to have on particular jobs? I think likely again, I’m just guessing, I don’t know. I think likely, yes, it will have an impact on those whose job primarily is maybe niched down execution. Here’s what I mean. I’m a copywriter that writes copy for an email copywriter. Okay, we’ll chat GPT take my job today.
ROBBY 8:31
Not likely. Will it take some of my revenue today? It could, if somebody’s smart and realizes, hey, chat, GPT could get me 80% down the road. And then I could come to you expert human, for the last 20%. So it might take a little bit of my revenue, what it can’t do, which is good for nonprofit. Anyone on the nonprofit that’s on this call. Couple things that can’t do. It can’t do. I don’t think it’s going to replace strategy anytime soon. I can give some kind of generic strategy. But if you’re on the heavy execution side, create social media campaigns.
ROBBY 9:09
Yeah, it might start creeping into your revenue a little bit. But if you on the strategy side or the other thing it can’t do. Okay, so cheer nonprofits, it can’t tell your story. So transformation. Can’t do it. Can’t produce it and can’t tell it.
RHEA 9:25
So much of what I find interesting, and I think you did this in the training is they can’t it’s not very good at conveying emotion, the warmth. It’s not very good at storytelling because it has no actual expertise to draw on. And frankly, it’s not very good at what I think it’ll get better at it’s not very good at capturing brand voice and I know as somebody who works on brand voice like you are your personality, you are the brand as it were. Can you talk to us a little bit about is that right? And do you see a world in which chatty PT can stay harder to get into those lanes?
ROBBY 10:02
Yes, it can, if you know how to teach it, you can create something called a voice paragraph. So you could feed it examples of your writing. And you can say, now I need you to help me this is how I write, create a basic like a stamp imprint, do you have a feel for my style, whatever, because remember, it’s artificial intelligence. So it’s learning as you continue to give it information, it doesn’t forget the last thing, you totally can keep track of that. And so you can actually teach it some of that I don’t obviously think it’s a full replacement. But you don’t, you’re not starting from zero, I have done that with Fair Success.
ROBBY 10:41
Again, as long as you’re feeding lots of information like you would a new assistant that you just hired, like they’ve got to be around your nonprofit organization for a little bit before they get what you do, and how you do it and your vibe and how you speak to donors and how you answer the phone and all that stuff. It’s the same kind of thing. So there is some of that you can do on the brand, or kind of the writing style, or their brand voice, you can teach it and it can begin to learn some of that over time, again, not 100%. To replace that I think completely. Again, what I don’t think it can do is it cannot help you spot stories of transformation is not like out in the field with you is not getting those stories of what’s going on.
ROBBY 11:22
And it could maybe help you craft that story a little bit or maybe improve the writing. But it’s not going to be able to write the story, the way that you can write the story, it’s not going to know that the story exists without you knowing it. And that is one of the most effective tools for fundraising research shows, right? It’s not the stats and facts and figures. What raises funds, is when you tell a single compelling story. That’s the most effective fundraising, you can do. smart folks have already done the research and figured that out.
RHEA 11:54
Yeah, we can get into the brain science of it, but essentially ignites the, the part of the brain that is correlated with emotion and family. And as we all know, family doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. There you go. Talk to me about some of the ways in which Chad GPT revolutionising nonprofits, and specifically fundraising.
ROBBY 12:11
I actually have a client that is a nonprofit. And it’s a faith based nonprofit raising, thinks they’re always raising money. Right now. They’re in a capital campaign for things like 6 million coming up on their 50th year anniversary. And so we’ve used it, that we started this campaign really before chat GPT jumped on the scene, really, December, January is when it really took off, and people really started noticing it. So the campaign’s had been going before that, but we’ve used it for some fairly simple things like helped me write a compelling subject line for this important email that’s going on as part of the campaign. No more, your email that’s connected to your fundraising campaign is only as good as that subject line.
ROBBY 12:59
So even something as simple as that most of us aren’t compelling copywriters. And it can write something that is far more likely to get open. And you can ask it, for example, give me five subject lines for this, tell it about the email, even insert the text to the email and say, create five subject lines that will increase open rates for this email, you can ask it for help with social media around campaigns, you could ask it for ideas on how to promote a fundraising campaign if you tell it a little bit of information. And so there’s lots of ways big and small, to begin to get help from it. And as you try it out, and go could it help me with this particular this one email.
ROBBY 13:45
So those are a few ways you could research you can ask it to go do research on your behalf either about donors or about a particular topic or subject just one thing to keep in mind is the natural language resources behind AI Chat GPT was fed a ton of information from the internet and then it cut off in 2021. So it’s not going to know anything from when they like close the gate. Onward. So don’t look for I want the late literally the latest trends from quarter one of 2023 about blah, blah, blah, blah, it’s not gonna know that it might guess.
ROBBY 14:25
So you need to be smart enough to know if it guesses and convinces be that I know that maybe an educated guess it can’t be right because it doesn’t have information from quarter one of 2023. But those are some things you can begin to do and you can ask it like you would an assistant. Hey, I know you’ve had other experiences assistant, right? Because you’re not like a one year old. You’ve lived some life. You’re 25 you’re 35 or 45. You brought some other experiences. Anything else you see that you could help us with fund them with fundraising. You can ask it. I’m trying to do a fundraiser. What are some ways you can help aid.
RHEA 15:00
Oh, that’s it. So method as good, that’s good. Yeah, a couple of things that I’ve been using it for. So it’s been really helpful to develop a donor avatar. So folks who’ve been through my training know that, if I’m trying to think about the my potential ideal donor, and I want to create an avatar, to be able to speak to that donor, it creates like a really interesting profile, which actually is like scarily accurate, with some of the donors that I had, I also had to do data analysis for me. So I cut and pasted in some a spreadsheet with donors, giving history, I would put in engagement numbers, etc, and asked her to come up with some insights based on the data that I fed it.
ROBBY 15:41
Yep. Yeah, you can ask it stats. So you could feed it information about donor and say you tell it whatever you want, Hey, break that down into kind of three groups of donors, large, medium, small, whatever you want to call it, right? Tell me how many are in each, what percentage they represent, and what the average gift is in that group, like you can, and it’ll go away like a good little assistant. And it’ll come back and spit that out. You can, as you start to learn to use it, you can say, put that in a table that I can use, and you can grab it and pull it over into Excel or Google Sheets or something like that. But you can Yeah, you can have it go look through data that you feed it and ask it for pretty nerdy, geeky stuff.
RHEA 16:25
Okay, let me ask you this, because I think our donors are savvy, right. And so they also know that Chat GPT is out there. So how is it that we can leverage Chat GPT without also making it seem like we’re robots talking to our donors? And because content is now cheap?
ROBBY 16:42
Yes, you can, yeah, we have the ability to crank out content like never before. The challenge is, before Chet TPT really took off in the last couple of months, I don’t know if you know, this little secret, your donors are busy. Right, so what I tell like anybody that I’m working with in this space, Xena and I sit down, take a deep breath. Okay? Here’s what you’ve got to remember, your donor is just as busy today as you are, it’s just not what raising the funds for your nonprofit.
ROBBY 17:18
They’re just as busy compelled, they’re getting emails from their family from their co workers, right. And then when your email lands in the middle, like, have a super busy Monday afternoon, when their daughter has called them four times already, because the apartment lease just fell through or whatever the case may be. So the fact that you can just crank out mediocre content is not necessarily a win for fundraising, nor for your donor, if you actually want to serve, part of what you want to do is don’t turn your humanity off. Don’t turn your intelligence off, you’re using it as an assistant as a general rule, check. GPT Think of it this way can get you 80% of the way there, whatever that is, in general, it can usually get you 80% of the way there, it can help you craft a story.
ROBBY 18:05
If you feed it some facts and information and get you about 80% of the way there. If you have a really important fundraising letter that you’re trying to write, and you want it to help with the first draft. And again, you feed it some facts and figures, boom, it’s going to just get you at 85% of the way there much faster, it’s still your job to come back and go Well, we wouldn’t really say it that way. Rather than trying to go back and totally tweak it again, it will learn some of that over time. But it still needs you to insert yourself as a human that knows exactly what’s going on in the world. What just happened, I know, I’m from a particular part of the country that was just affected by some pretty major stuff that happened over the weekend. Chat GPt does not know that.
ROBBY 18:47
And it might suggest a subject line of an email, or something around a fundraiser that I would know as a human, that’s not a good idea, given my context, right where I am. So you still need to insert yourself, you still have the ability, like it’s not in charge, you’re in charge. So you can go and unlike and it’s five ideas, give me five more. Or I’ve done this a lot. Oh, that’s brilliant. It’s not quite what I want. But it gets me where I need to go. So I can insert a couple of words that improve it ready to go. So use your human discretion, like you always have, and just like you would with a real assistant, right? If you hire an assistant, this person is helping you.
ROBBY 19:24
You’re still your job to kind of look and go, Oh, that’s wonderful. I’m going to couple things and then as is ready to go out the door. So I’ve been scouring the internet and watching YouTube and your trainings and all the rest of it. And there’s some really interesting use cases out there. So what are some of the more interesting use cases using one of my favorites is someone tried to make catch up though therapist? Yeah, so some interesting use cases I’ve seen is you can turn it into an extremely effective like prompt generator. Like you can tell it to
ROBBY 20:00
Here’s what I’m trying to do. Here’s what I’m trying to get out of you. Can you write a prompt that will start? We haven’t really talked about this yet. But when you get in chat, GPT is much messaging on your phone. Right? So if you started a text message with me, just you and I, right, and we’re talking about stuff, and then you start a separate text message with your best friend that I’m not in, that’s separate. And then you start another text message with Ria, that’s, so we got three different messages going on. And no one in any of those messages knows what’s going on the other messages. That’s the way you need to think about chat GPT, when you start a new conversation, it starts a thread.
ROBBY 20:40
And you want to keep that thread, essentially, you want one thread, per topic or function, and want social media help. So you don’t go to the social media help one and then say, Ooh, and I also want help with email subject lines, who and I also want you to run these stats, right? It’s a persona, you can hire as many assistants as you want. Keep one thread connected to one function, right. And when you do that, one of those things you could do is you create a thread that says, This is the thread that helps me write prompts for chat GPT, which is extremely weird and meta, what I’m trying to create, you create a prop, that’s going to just crush it for me, and help get the best out of you.
RHEA 21:25
So let’s talk about prompts. Because for anyone who’s played around with catchy btw, the answer that you get is only as good as your prompt. What makes a good prompt versus a bad prompt? Or, I should say bad prompt generic prompt.
ROBBY 21:37
Yeah, usually, it’s, I find it maybe works best if your personal personality happens to be a little bit detail driven, happens to be a little bit like slower, let’s get it right the first time kind of thing, if you just start firing away, it might take you a little bit longer to get there. So for those in the room that have a natural inclination towards patients, in detail, welcome, finally, right. But a bunch of New Yorkers, nobody is patient here on this kind of please continue. So yeah, just you’re stuck in traffic, okay, so just relax, you’re not gonna get anywhere any faster. So it’s really the amount of detail that you’re able to give it particularly up front, right up front.
ROBBY 22:20
So normally, when I’m starting something for you, if you’re just doing this for your nonprofit org, then what I would recommend is maybe you keep like a document, like a Google Doc or whatever, we’ve got all of the kind of basic information about your nonprofit, that you can copy and paste when you start a new chat thread. So you’re in chat GPT in your life, I need help with social media. So I’m going to create a social media expert, I’m going to tell this to take on a persona a social media expert, and have it helped me with some social media around my nonprofit organization. So when you do that, you’re gonna give it an initial starting prompt, and then you’re gonna, you’re gonna have to tell it stuff about your nonprofit.
ROBBY 23:03
And the best way, and the easiest way I often do that is go to your homepage of your site. And you say, in order for you to help me with my social media, I’m gonna tell you a little bit more about my nonprofit organization. Here’s some messaging from my homepage found at this URL, you can go ahead and give it the URL. Because if you’re working for something huge, like the American Cancer Society that existed before 2021, okay, secondly, that’s really big. And there’s a very good chance chat GPT already goes, Oh, I know, a fair amount of information about the American Cancer Society. If you just started your nonprofit last week, it’s probably not going to know that.
ROBBY 23:42
If it’s a smaller niche, nonprofit, niche or niche for my Canadian friends, then you’re, it’s not going to know and you’re gonna have to tell us, I will usually start a new prompt thread. And then I would be telling it, this is my nonprofit. Here’s the information from the homepage, maybe about page, right? And you just paste like copy that information. You paste it in and you say, do you understand you ask it. Understand, yes, I understand that your nonprofits focuses on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I usually the first four or five threads and feeding it the same information about my personal brain and business, if that’s what, that’s what it’s focused on, for every new prompt, and I found myself doing that again. And again, it takes a little patience upfront, but then every prompt from now on out results are way improved. Because it now knows about you’re not just helped me with a nonprofit, my nonprofit that you now know about.
RHEA 24:36
You’re saying that you go through that process per thread, and then you cut and paste it for each because you’re starting.
ROBBY 24:45
If I’m starting a social media prompt thread, you are a social media expert that’s going to help with conversions and grow my social media accounts do blah, blah, blah, blah, blah for my nonprofit organization. Okay, that’s the prompt you that’s how you start The whole thread, then you’re gonna say, first, let me tell you about the nonprofit that I run or I’m a part of, or whatever it is, that was founded and you give it some basic information. And then you’re gonna say found nonprofit found at this website, your URL. Here’s the messaging from my homepage, copy my homepage text that’s on the homepage of my nonprofit organization website, paste it into chat GPT. And then at the end of that, before I hit Enter, I say yes, if you understand.
ROBBY 25:30
And it reads it just an intern would an assistant would Irisa. There it goes. All got a little bit. Yeah, I understand that. Great. Here’s the section. Here’s the messaging from our about page for our nonprofit that tells you a little bit more about our history and blah, blah, blah, blah, and set the text. Before you hit return. You add a line that says say yes, if you understand it goes, Yes, I get it Ebola. Because if you don’t say that, what I’ve learned is you don’t say that if you just paste in your about page information, or let’s say you’ve created a page or two about the your big fundraising event or your capital campaign that you’re in, and you just throw it in there, paste it in there and hit enter. It’s going to try to start helping you out.
ROBBY 26:09
And it’s I’m usually like, I don’t want you to help me out yet. I need you to understand a few more things about me. So to finish it with say yes, if you understand, it knows, yes, I understand. You’re gonna keep feeding me information before you really want something from me. Does that make sense? Yeah, every time if you that’s a social media expert. Now if you say, Hey, you’re a fund fundraising expert, right? There’s a new thread. Again, just back to the text message thread. You guys have no idea where we’re at. And I’ve been texting now. So I got to start over from the top and build out the knowledge base about and I’m going to end up doing the same thing every time to get it to know my, because in any chat thread, it’s starting from ground zero, it can’t appeal to another thread and go already know about your nonprofit because you told me in that thread. It’s like syndrome silos.
RHEA 26:56
Yeah. So let’s back up a second because I’ve been playing with Chat GPT. And I found that all of the different chats get a little bit unruly. So you talked a little bit about a tool that you found helpful, because I’m like, if you’ve been using it for a while, you basically just have a bajillion chat threads. And you’re like, I don’t remember what I was talking about.
ROBBY 27:13
Yeah, so I one of the things that we’ll do in chat GPT, if you just stay there, one, you want to name those threads very carefully. So when you start a new chat, it’ll start a new little thing up there. And it’s gonna give it a generic name, you can click the little button that says rename that thread, kind of like you can rename a group message or whatever, in your phone, if you’re get caught in one of those group groups. And like, I don’t know, this group from that group. So you can give it a name. And then what I would what I have found helpful is you give it a name according to the persona, or like what you heard it to do. So like fundraising expert, GPT, social media expert, GPT, copywriting expert, GPT, marketing specialist, GPT, business strategist, DPD, legal counsel, GPT, whatever. And then if you happen to be working with more than one nonprofit, then I’d put a dash, right.
ROBBY 28:08
So it’s social media, GPT dash, the name of the nonprofit. So I’ll do that for clients. Right, I’ve got client work. So I may have copywriting, conversion, copywriting expert, GPT, for real conversion, copywriting, for client to or whatever. And I’m because each one of those threads is independent. So if you’ll keep them named that way, particularly if all you’re doing is working with your nonprofit, there’s probably I don’t know, there’s if you started off, like you’re just getting started today, and you’ll follow this advice, then you could look through your chat threads. I’ve got about 12 experts that I’ve hired. And once you start that thread, you can just run with it as long as you want for Social Media related to your nonprofit. You go to the copywriting one for copywriting related to that you don’t have to start over. So that’s super helpful when you’re getting started. Because really, it starts to get oh my lord, where did I put that? And so it’s really about starting off organized.
ROBBY 29:03
And you’ll save yourself a ton. There is there are several resources the one RIA is talking about is I have a buddy that created one called Magi M A G A I.co. I think, think it’s dot co. About it’s it sits on top of chat GBT. So it’s using the same engine underneath to do the stuff. But it sits on top of it. It allows you to create folders, it allows you to save prompts. It allows you to organize those chats. So here’s all my chats about this particular fundraiser Have you would normally organize folders, you can do it in there and organize your chats that way and in a second. I can throw I’ll find the official link and throw it in there. You don’t have it yet. But yeah, there’s lots of those kinds of tools that can sit on top and organize. There’s some plugins but that’s one I’ve used. It’s actually again, it’s a friend of mine, so I know him and it’s done very well.
RHEA 29:56
Okay, I’m going to jump around a little bit because there’s some questions coming in from the chat aboutData security. So we know that we work with lots of sensitive data, particularly as it pertains to donors and donations and personal information. Should we be worried about this information being fed into the giant algorithms and or privacy?
ROBBY 30:18
I would think so. So whatever estrous Chat GPT, and my lawyer would tell me to tell you right now that I’m not giving you legal advice, and I’m not a lawyer, bla bla, bla, bla, bla, let’s assume all that common sense would say, you have a huge donor. Bill Gates is a secret donor, I know it, but he doesn’t want anybody else to know it, I wouldn’t be feeding his name and social security number and all that into chat GPT. Right, that not a smart idea. So some things to consider. Because they’re using the data that we inserted to improve the model to improve chat GPT and to improve the AI. So it is not completely some secret top secret vault. So know that.
ROBBY 31:01
So some things to consider if you’re using it for anything related to a story or a person connected to your nonprofit. And so RIAs nonprofit, let’s say, served me, okay, when you’re in chat, GPT, asking it for help with a story. Maybe you don’t use my real name, just to protect, right, you can use a fake name, whatever. So those would be some examples in maybe RIA mentioned, you can you could dump some donor information in there, and then have it to spit back some information, some stats, summaries, whatever you want to do, leave off the first name, last name, when you insert it in there, right? When you export it out of your fundraising database or whatever, your donor management system, then okay, well, don’t paste that part in there.
ROBBY 31:43
So one of the big ones would be names, right? Obviously, if you’re in a location that’s super sensitive for political reasons, or religious affiliation reasons, or whatever, then you know, you might just be aware of that.
RHEA 32:00
All right, good thinking. Let’s talk about in jesting information. So a question coming in. Katie, if you want to jump in here to ask your question about reading different foundations, Katie?
KATIE 32:13
Yeah, sure. So I am a communications manager and also grant writer for my nonprofit. And I was just wondering, one of the things we like to do when we do write grants is to match the tone and the wording that they use on their own websites. But would you say this is a good use case for just doing a quick analysis of that kind of thing?
ROBBY 32:32
Yes, it is a remarkable research assistant. The downside is to really get that accurate. Again, you probably need to copy the information from that site and paste the messaging in. If that grant is coming from an organization that is well known and has existed before 2021, you can start by asking it, are you familiar with or insert? Whatever it is the blah, blah, blah, foundation? Yes, tell me some things about it. Because I’ve put my you can put a website and address in there and ask it if it knows something. And it will, at the very least take an educated guess. Okay, so I did that for mine. And at first, I was like, look at you reading up on me. And then I looked and I was like, Look at you, you didn’t read up on me, you’re totally bluffing it, you made some educated guesses.
ROBBY 33:23
At the moment, I this won’t be this way for long at the moment, you can’t have it, it cannot go out and access a live website. You can stick that URL in there and tell it to go read the messaging, whatever it can guess, or it can guess based on if it’s a well known thing before 2020 21 and may have information about it. But if it’s it’s a brand new website that got put up two weeks ago, it can’t go read that now there are plugins and stuff that kind of allow you to go do that. But for our instance, yes, you could do that.
ROBBY 33:54
Paste in the information and have it do that, which a good cousin of this is. If it’s a well known book, fundraising book, you can ask it, right? Hey, summarize the book, what are the key takeaways from this resource? And then you can say, Ooh, apply that cool takeaway from that resource to this fundraising project. So there’s some cool ways you can get it to about match that or go learn something about? Yeah, and you once you feed it that information, you can ask it? What did you notice about the tone or whatever of the organization’s homepage or brand?
RHEA 34:30
So let’s ask a kind of technical question, because I certainly have run into this myself. What do you do, Bobby? When the cut and paste thing that you have is too long? Yeah, there’s a there’s a limit to how much.
ROBBY 34:44
There’s a limit to how many characters you can put in a thread and how many characters will output so if you say write a 10, 10 chapter novella, on whatever, it’s not going to be able to fit all that in one prompt. I forget, I’ve looked I forget, I thinkIs 5000 ish characters per what you can insert and what it will output per prompt before it like stops and wait. So this is very common if you’re, if you have, if real wants to take the transcript from this call and paste it into chat GPT and then tell it to summarize our call and pull out any key takeaways. That’s not all gonna fit in one. Like, you can’t just copy the whole 45 minute transcript and dump it in there.
ROBBY 35:25
So you can tell it, the best thing I’ve found is you can tell it over the next seven prompts, I’m going to paste in the transcript from a call. Okay, I will tell you when the transcript is complete after Prop seven. And then I will usually be very meticulous, at times it like tracks with me one or two and I go to paste that third one in and it starts generating I’m like, stop talking. Right? Didn’t tell you. I didn’t need your help yet. So I will say part one of one of seven that, paste that part in. And before I hit Enter, let’s say in the next prompt, I will I’ll give you part two, say yes, if you understand, it’ll say yes, I will say part two of seven, paste it in. Before hit enter, say in the next prompt, I’ll paste part three, say yes, if you understand yes.
ROBBY 36:16
And if you’ll just meticulously do that at the start. And at the close of each one of those then you can get to all seven, you can parse it out and seven. And then you can say, All right, now you have the information go do XYZ, whatever you want to do.
RHEA 36:30
Wait, can you tell us that prompt again, just sent where.
ROBBY 36:33
I have said, I had a consulting call with Ria, I will I’m going to paste the transcript in from the call and I need your help. To summarize the call, pull out any key takeaways. highlight any action steps that RHEA needs to take? And listing the resources mentioned during our conversation. Okay, so yes, if you understand, yes, I understand. That’s what you want me to do. And then my next prompt, I’ll say, I will paste the transcript from our call over the next seven prompts. And then output part one of seven, hit Shift and return. That’s how you like it returned without it, submitting it, paste a section of the transcript in that I know I feel like I’ll do that sometimes if that’s a transcript, I’ll maybe do it in five minute blocks, right? If your transcript has time markers, like so that way you don’t get lost. Oh my gosh, whatever. Right? So some chunk that you’re like add that’ll fit in five minute blocks.
ROBBY 37:31
One of seven, right? So you can go look 45 minutes, go do some math or as Chat GPT 45 minutes divided by five minutes. What is that you forgot your basic division? And then so this is one of one of five. So this is part one of five of the transcript. Okay, hit Shift, return, paste in that part of the transcript that five minutes of text. I usually put close quote, still on that same prompt. I will say this is the end of part One say yes. If you understand. Yes. Okay. Okay, that’s about all it’ll say, then you start the next problem. You say this is part two of five, paste in the transcript before you hit submit, you say this is part this is the end of part two of five, say yes, if you understand, yes. Okay.
ROBBY 38:15
So that’s how you handle something long that you’re trying to paste in that’s too long to fit. And one problem when it generates something that’s too long for it to fit in one problem, you can usually tell because it finishes like mid sentence and you’re like, oh, Cliff, you can just tell it to continue, or continue where it left off. But you can literally usually you can just say continue, and it’ll pick up right there and keep on cruising.
RHEA 38:39
So we’ve been talking a lot about the creation of content. But I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about analysis, ingestion of content and questions coming in about will foundations use this to, quote unquote, read proposals, and I think that they probably already are, I know, for profit companies are using this as a way to parse through job applicants. Tell us a little bit about your predictions for how foundations might be using this to, to read proposals at scale. And my keywords come into play here.
ROBBY 39:15
I think fairly soon. I’ve seen some talk out there about I think it’s slowly rolled out to a few early testers within chat GBT. So no other outside plugins, no other you’re not on some other tool or resource, our software that’s using chat GPT underneath it, but native inside of chat GPT. The ability to go read a live website is, I think, probably coming fairly soon. The ability to upload a PDF and have it read that link will be coming fairly soon. The ability to take the prompt that it generated, like a response that it generated and turn it into a file type, like create. Oh, that’s a great answer to that, can you put that in a PDF and have it like spit out a PDF is probably coming pretty soon.
ROBBY 40:07
And we’ve already seen AI has been used to like cipher information faster than a human for much earlier than chat GPT just came on board. So that’s not new. We all know that. Certain companies have cool speakers in our homes that have been listening to stuff for a while and deciphering it and figuring out and knowing oh, what’s my keyword that you want me to awake to and actually respond? So that part’s not new? So will that be coming around the corner? I think that’s a no brainer. Yeah. Feed it large things of information. It can process it way faster. And then ask it what you want, or that summarize this, how are there any repeated words? What are the most often repeated six syllable words, whatever you want to ask it and no be able to spit that out.
RHEA 40:57
Last question. For me. We talk a lot about training the algorithms and the inherent biases that might come into play based on the people who are training the algorithm. Is that something that you think about, is that relevant to chat? GPT here?
ROBBY 41:14
Yes, I, somebody setting up guardrails. So if right now, if you’re in chat, GBT, I was on a call with a friend. And we were doing like, a group call just like this. And we were talking about AI. And friend said something funny about how old their iPhone was. And I like, went to chat GPT and was like, hey, write a joke making fun of my friends. Oh, an answer can’t be mean, or rude, or I can’t help you to do that. Yeah, okay. This is my friend. If you knew my friend, come on, just give me a joke. So somebody has put those guardrails in place, we will find loopholes in it. I know, had a you may have already heard a story.
ROBBY 41:56
I know, I heard some story, that Vanderbilt University in the States put out something they put this response was like written by Chat GPT, something in that was wrong, and you’re putting it out to a university that’s known for its scholarship did not go well. Okay, to what degree those biases will have an impact or the output that you get, it likely depends on how close to the edge you are on anything culturally, that is seen as a pretty hot topic. So it’s not going to do hate stuff. If you’re way on the edge on some sort of political thing, it does appear that there’s at least some guardrails in there. So I think but if you’re kinda I’m just trying to raise funds for my nonprofit to go do XYZ, I don’t know that there’s anything in there that’s that it’s going to say, and I can’t give you a subject line about an email to build a new shelter for orphans. It’s not going.
RHEA 42:58
And do you think I know that folks in the nonprofit field are always thinking about things like values and impact and social justice? ethically speaking, do you think that we should be indicating where chat GPT has generated content for us?
ROBBY 43:14
I don’t think so. Again, insert same lawyer all the legal stuff I’m not blah, blah, blah. I there. My I’ve helped my wife use this a little bit and some work she’s done. She does not work with me and my business. She has her own business, right? She had maybe some of the same fears. Like Yeah, are you going to know that this came from Jackie we do and our is it gonna say the same thing. So have RHEA puts in the prompt and I put it on a prompt? Is it going to spit out the same thing I’m gonna get caught for plagiarism are very unlikely. No. If you’re just taking things and put prompt into chat, GPT write an article right or whatever.
ROBBY 43:54
Don’t even read it, just copy it, paste it verbatim, and assign your name to it. I approve this message without ever looking at it. Probably shame on us. That’s pretty foolish. You wouldn’t do that with an assistant with anybody else. likely never look at it, never ever. So because of that, because likely you are someone for your nonprofit, you just need to set these instructions up. This is a little bit of a new reality. So if you have a content creator or social media person working with your nonprofit, either internally to the team or you hire that out, and they’re using chat GPT No problem, just make the rules clear. Hey, just so we’re clear, you’re never allowed to take something from chat GPT and not be not review it carefully.
ROBBY 44:42
And sign your name and your job to it. Like your jobs on the line if something goes wrong. So don’t ever just throw something out there without being willing. Am I willing to get fired over this? Because I didn’t read it or review it or look at it. So because that’s coming through a human’s handsIf you’re not just churning out content and copy paste directly over, I don’t really see a need. Because it’s unlikely that you will absolutely not edit anything. It’s going to get you 80% of the way there, you’re going to put some final touches on it. So I don’t see any reason to go at 83.2% of this was originally generated last year for that.
RHEA 45:23
Last question. I have a new accounting last question, but I know we have to let it go. When this is changing so quickly. We’re thinking about new issues every day there are new apps online. How would you recommend that folks keep abreast of things that are coming down the pike? Because I’m in it right now? I’m like watching YouTube, I’m looking at tutorials, I’m looking at your Twitter. I mean, it’s a lot. How do we stay abreast of the newest and greatest without feeling totally overwhelmed, like our head is gonna explode?
ROBBY 45:52
It’s yeah, it’s much easier to have head explosion than it is to not recognize stuff is going on. If I was you, there’s a couple of things. One, you need to figure out what your role is, and the nonprofit that you’re a part of, and use some wisdom as to the time constraints that puts on you, right? And then factor in your life, like your real life, I get clients that ask me this all the time when I’m asking them strategy stuff, and they’re like, done, but like at work or at home, I’m like, unless you figured out how to live two lives. I’m talking about one thing I’m talking about you, okay, all of us are in different life stages, maybe you have small kids maybe have apartment with six other people that you share it with. So you take all of that, use wisdom, take all that in. And then I would find a trusted resource or two that you want to listen to, to keep track of this.
ROBBY 46:45
Because if you listened to 10 voices, you’re gonna get overwhelmed. If you start just doing searches, there’s list after list of keeping up with all the tools and limit who you listen to, if it’s big like this, you find out about a guy, I don’t know anything about this, that came across my desk. I’ve heard of this. And so I hopped on today’s call, right. So if it’s big, like you’ll find out about it, number one. Number two, same thing with the resources out there. There’s a bazillion AI resources. So keep it limited, like start with chat GPT. Get comfortable using it, see if it is helpful for you, before you worry about like 10 other tools out there, don’t do that. Because you’re immediately going to get overwhelmed and overloaded.
ROBBY 47:30
So be very limited of the voices that you’re listening to where you’re getting information. And be cool not being like unless you want to quit your nonprofit and be futuristic AI. Get the finger on the pulse of AI, then don’t worry about it. Listen to one or two places. Follow RHEA. Let her do all the hard work. And let her summarize that for you. And then secondly, same thing with the tools that you use of all the AI tools. Pick one, master that one, maybe add one more, don’t worry about having more than three in your toolkit I use. Right now I use pretty much Chat GPT and that’s it. I know there are other ones out there.
RHEA 48:06
But yeah, good, good. Yeah. And I have a couple of resources that I will link in the show notes. There’s a directory of new AI tools that are coming out all the time, which can be a little overwhelming. But I want to direct people to the chat GPT bundle that I put together, it’s 45 minutes of ways that you can use chat GPT for fundraising, and it’s probably already outdated. And I just did it last week. So there you go. Technology. Robby, this has been awesome. Thank you so much for everything I will I put your information in the show notes. If folks want to get in touch with you. Is there anything else that you want to share with the audience? Do you want to talk about your chat GPT bundle?
ROBBY 48:41
Oh, yeah, if you’re interested, my buddy and I who really knows very well, we put together a chat TPT prompt Bible that has a lot of what we’ve talked about. It’s extremely well organized. So if you’re like I’m looking for help with social media, it’s got a real long section about that. I’m looking for help for copywriting. I’m looking for some basic help. I’m looking for advanced help, Hey, show me how to take this content owner right and put it in a popular content framework, a copywriting framework that is proven effective. And I will tell you how to write like a particular copywriting expert, right. So write this like in a certain framework. Okay.
ROBBY 49:21
To proven framework. I’ll get that link to Rhea and will that’s available. I think it’s 97 bucks. It includes some training, those are all broken down. And it includes that chat prompt Bible which has 250 Plus prompts all organized. So like you can you don’t have to read it from top to bottom. You just do a search for I want help with LinkedIn or I want to help with copywriting or email or research or business strategy or vision statements or whatever.
RHEA 49:50
Awesome. Robby, thank you so much for being on the call for dropping some chat GPT knowledge and you know what, y’all join my Slack community to It’s starting to grow and I’m want us to all just share our use cases and learn together because this is a new technology and we’re all going to learn. So thanks so much. Robby, have a good night.
ROBBY 50:09
All right, you too
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