Have You Met the Twins Helping Nonprofits Transform Fundraising?

No, I did not just have “real” twins that I’m about to introduce you to — but I would like to introduce you to the idea of using digital twins. These are synthetic personas that mirror real donors. They use artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze your donors’ data and create digital replicas that allow you to interact and better understand their motives and decisions.

Numerous articles have been written about how nonprofits are and should be leveraging the power of AI to amplify their impact. Digital twins are just one example of how AI can not just increase productivity, but also increase the effectiveness of marketing and fundraising.

What Are Digital Twins?

Digital twins are AI-generated profiles that simulate the characteristics, preferences and behaviors of real donors. Unlike simple demographic segments, these synthetic personas incorporate multiple data points to create dynamic models that can predict how actual donors might respond to different approaches, messages and campaigns.

These virtual replicas aren't just static profiles. They can “think” and “respond” like the donors they represent. They're built using a combination of:

• Historical donation data.
• Communication preferences and response patterns.
• Demographic information.
• Psychographic insights.
• Engagement history across channels.
• Survey responses and feedback.
• And more.

As a result, they’re a cost-effective, in-house focus group that allows feedback on any number of topics.

This year’s M+R “Benchmarks” report found that 52% of participants use some form of audience research. This is a broad term that encompasses various approaches to data collection — surveys were used by 32% of nonprofits, focus groups and interviews by 24% and third-party research by 22%. Digital twins allow you to do all of this at a fraction of the price.

How Do You Create Effective Digital Twins?

Creating digital twins may sound scary, but it’s not difficult once you have the right ingredients.

• The data. The most important ingredient is data. As with any research, the more comprehensive the data set, the better the outcome.
• The tool. Another critical decision is selecting the right tool to create the digital twins. This is where privacy concerns should be discussed, as well as the way you want to interact with the twins.
• The process. Creating digital twins can be done in a number of ways, but here’s one approach.
  • Start by allowing the AI to define the top three to five donor personas. This should output general information (age ranges, giving patterns, geographic information, etc.).
  • From there, ask the AI to create three to five profiles that are representative of the personas. This allows you to get more specific and have a level of quality control. I usually have the system give each profile a name, so I can reference that name when engaging with the digital twins.
  • Finally, ask AI to enrich the profiles with third-party information. This allows the profiles to embody a personality similar to your donors’.
• The engagement. Now that the digital twins have been created, test them. One possible place to start is to ask for both positive and negative feedback on previous campaigns.

Once they are set up, teams can use digital twins to get feedback and have discussions that mimic real-world interactions in a safe, non-threatening space.

How Can Digital Twins Transform Fundraising?

Digital twins can have a huge impact on fundraising and marketing because they provide access to interactive profiles that are representative of actual donors. Here are a few ways to use digital twins.

Message Testing

Instead of A/B testing with actual donors, which limits variations and requires a budget, digital twins simulate responses to dozens of approaches before they ever reach real donors.

Personalization at Scale

Everyone talks about the impact of personalization — including me. This is because personalization is impactful. The thing about personalization is it requires a lot of strategy, from deciding the specifics of what should be personalized, how the personalization should manifest itself in communications, how you can personalize communications across channels, whether there is too much personalization — the list can go on and on. Digital twins can help nonprofits understand the specific triggers, stories and approaches that inspire different donor types to act, therefore removing some of the guesswork.

Predictive Giving Models

Digital twins can forecast future giving patterns based on a range of potential scenarios. This allows nonprofits to identify key moments in a person’s giving behavior and evolve the communication during key moments. They can help identify donors at risk of lapsing before they stop giving. They can identify major gift prospects earlier in their journey and optimize ask arrays. They can even analyze the long-term impact of stewardship investments, and recommend new ways to approach events that are more inclusive of your entire donor file.

Donor Journey Mapping

Because digital twins are created using AI, they are built with LOTS of data, and therefore excel at revealing complexity. Today, donor journeys are complex. They span channels and devices. They’re influenced by numerous outside factors. They are not simple, straightforward paths, which makes them challenging to optimize. Digital twins can help simplify this by analyzing moments throughout the journey and shedding light on motivations and decisions that may be overlooked by the human eye.

Digital Twins Are A Great Addition To Your Team

Digital twins represent a significant opportunity for nonprofits to deepen donor relationships while maximizing limited resources. They allow organizations to gain the insights of sophisticated market research at a fraction of the cost, delivering more meaningful donor experiences — and ultimately greater impact.

The preceding content was provided by a contributor unaffiliated with NonProfit PRO. The views expressed within may not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of the staff of NonProfit PRO.