How Nonprofits Can Use AI and Automation to Reclaim Time and Realize ROI

Created By: Terry Cangelosi
May 20, 2025

If someone handed you the blueprint for your new house or gave you that same house already 80% built, which would you choose? Most of us would pick the nearly finished home. The hard work of designing, framing, and installing systems is already done. What’s left are the personal touches: paint colors, furniture, and final walkthroughs, but you’re not starting from zero; you’re building on a foundation that’s already in place.

That is the promise of AI and automation in nonprofit workflows. It’s not about replacing a role or roles, but rather it’s about accelerating the ability to deliver results by getting to the final product faster, so energy can be focused where it matters.

Despite this potential, only 2% of nonprofits have fully integrated AI, according to a recent report highlighted by NonProfit PRO. For organizations with limited time and growing demands, that gap isn’t surprising, but it does highlight a missed opportunity: turning static workflows into ROI engines. When multiple workflow steps can be automated, staff can reinvest that saved time into the strategic, creative, and relationship-driven work that delivers the highest return on investment.

Let’s look at some examples of AI and automation in action in the nonprofit space.

Example 1: Automating Donor Research Profiles

A recurring step in a nonprofit’s fundraising efforts, creating a comprehensive donor profile often involves multiple systems, repetitive data pulls, and a lot of formatting. It’s important work, but it follows a repeatable pattern. Using a combination of AI and automation, a near-complete profile with relevant giving history, capacity indicators, and bios can be drafted into a single format.

By automating the data pulls, using AI to conduct research, and integrating that data directly into the CRM, your team cuts prep time dramatically. What used to take hours now takes minutes. The development officer still reviews and customizes the final product, but they start around 80% completion, not zero. The result? Faster outreach, higher confidence, and more time focused on cultivation, not copy-and-pasting.

Example 2: Automating New Donor Stewardship

Similarly, consider the welcome journey for a first-time donor. Instead of waiting for manual entry or delayed reporting, automation can instantly log the gift, screen the donor for capacity, trigger a welcome email, and update the CRM, all in an instant.

That kind of speed does not just impress, it ensures that no opportunity is missed and lets development officers prioritize follow-up where it matters most. This is not about cutting people out of the process. It’s about getting the right people involved as quickly and effectively as possible.

Why This Matters for ROI

Every nonprofit has heard the phrase “do more with less.” AI and automation make this possible, not by stretching teams thinner, but by freeing team members from the tedium to focus on higher-return activities.

Here is where the ROI becomes tangible:

• Time saved = more meaningful interactions.
• Faster execution = increased responsiveness.
• Cleaner data = better targeting and reporting.

Even small changes, like automating one of your team’s workflows or integrating AI into donor research, can compound over time, multiplying the return on your staff’s energy and effort. It’s all about taking the first steps to drive transformation with strategic AI implementation.

Realizing the ROI

Nonprofits do not need an enterprise AI tool or a six-figure tech investment to start seeing results. They can find where their team spends time on repeatable, low-value tasks, and use AI and automation to help get the team to 80% (or 60% or even 30%). 

Watch what happens when your staff can refocus saved time on things that drive your mission or fundraising goals. The ROI of AI and automation starts growing the moment you stop manually doing what a machine could handle, and your team gets to work on the things that only they can do.

At Orr Group, we’re enthusiastic about the future of AI and hope to share that enthusiasm with our nonprofit partners. We are ready to assist your organization in assessing your workflows and implementing AI & automation into your fundraising and other operational efforts. Contact us to learn how we can help elevate your organization.

Terry Cangelosi is a Senior Director and Head of Operations at Orr Group. Terry brings 10+ years of nonprofit operations experience to ensure the most efficient operations in Orr Group’s workflows, technology, and infrastructure. Terry is a member of Orr Group’s AI Taskforce.