Here's an exercise worth five minutes of any executive director's time: open ChatGPT or Perplexity and type "Should I donate to [your organization]? Is it effective and trustworthy?"
Read what comes back. That's what a growing share of your donors see before they give - because donor research has moved. It used to be your website, then it was your website plus Charity Navigator. Now it's an AI assistant synthesizing everything that exists about you online into a two-paragraph verdict, and most nonprofits have no idea what their verdict says.
When a donor asks about your organization, the AI pulls from what it can find and verify: news coverage, your site, ratings platforms, public filings, and how often credible third parties mention you. Then it weighs it. And the weighting has a clear pattern.
AI rewards third-party validation. A Boston Globe story about your impact carries more weight than ten pages of your own website saying the same thing, because the AI treats independent sources as evidence and self-description as marketing. This is the machine version of something that was always true - earned media is trust you didn't have to buy - but AI has made it ruthlessly literal.
AI rewards specificity. "In July, 124 Revere seniors received 3,720 healthy meals" is quotable, checkable, and gets cited. "We empower thousands of families" evaporates. If your public claims lack numbers, dates, and places, the AI has nothing to grab.
AI rewards structure. Pages that answer direct questions directly - what does this organization do, where does the money go, what results can it show - get extracted and quoted. Pages that make donors hunt don't.
AI punishes silence. If little exists about you beyond your own site, the answer donors get is thin, hedged, and generic - "limited independent information is available" is a quiet conversion killer. In an AI-mediated world, being unknown reads as being unverified.
First, run the exercise above and read your verdict honestly. Second, invest in earned media - not for vanity, but because a credible third-party story is now literally the strongest input into the answer donors receive. This is the thinking behind the Hearth campaign we ran: one Boston Globe story, $250,000 raised, no direct ask. The story did the asking, and today that same story is feeding every AI answer about that organization.
Third, put receipts everywhere: specific, sourced, dated outcomes on your site, your socials, your annual report. Fourth, structure your site to answer the questions donors actually ask, in plain language, with an FAQ donors and machines can both read.
None of this is gaming an algorithm. It's the same discipline good communications always required - be visible, be specific, be validated by people who aren't you - with a new enforcement mechanism that never sleeps.
Don Martelli is the founder of PR Bunker, which helps nonprofits and mission-driven organizations turn earned media into donor trust. He previously ran a large Boston-based agency as its president. Reach him at don@prbunker.com or schedule a call.
Do donors really use AI to research nonprofits?
Increasingly, yes. Donor research has shifted from websites and ratings platforms to AI assistants that synthesize news coverage, filings, and third-party mentions into a direct recommendation. The organizations that show up well are the ones with independent validation and specific, verifiable outcomes online.
What makes a nonprofit look trustworthy to AI tools?
Third-party evidence: news coverage from credible outlets, consistent ratings, and specific outcomes with numbers, dates, and places. AI treats independent sources as evidence and self-description as marketing, which makes earned media the single strongest input into the answer donors receive.
How can a small nonprofit improve its AI answer?
Ask the AI tools about your organization and read the verdict. Then publish specific, sourced impact numbers, structure your site to answer donor questions directly, and pursue earned media in credible outlets. Building that evidence trail is exactly what our nonprofit communications practice does.
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