The world is moving so fast. As someone in their 50s, I am astounded by the pace by which technology has evolved in the past twenty years or more. Yet I feel as though I am perpetually lagging behind the trends.
My family didn’t purchase our first home personal desktop computer until the late 1980s when I was in university. My partner and I lived without what used to be called the “information superhighway” until 2001. While the iPhone 15 Pro Max is fairly standard today, I remain content with my Blackberry.
With the advent of social media in the late 2000s, I must confess I predictably took slightly longer than others to buy into the hype. Although I opened my first Facebook account in 2007, I didn’t believe this platform and others like it would revolutionize human interaction permanently.
Reconnecting with old fiends and acquaintances was fun in the early days, but little did I know this medium would become the ultimate information dissemination machine. As social media evolved, it also transformed the worlds of business, politics and diplomacy. Sadly, social media has a dark and sinister side as many witnessed during the pandemic with the spread of disinformation, conspiracy theories, cyberbullying and hate speech.
In the charitable sector, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter are now key instruments in raising funds, forging new partners, recruiting volunteers and heightening awareness of various issues affecting life in our communities. In recent years I’ve come to deeply appreciate how critical social media is for sharing impact stories with donors, launching peer-to-peer and crowdfunding appeals, promoting special events, selling raffle tickets and sharing tips with other fund development professionals.
Since Artificial Intelligence (AI) has exploded on the scene, I fear falling behind the times once again. On a fundamental level, I realize AI helps us to understand our donors better, enhances storytelling and enables us to track relations more effectively.
Yet I know that this is only scratching the surface. How do you believe that AI is changing the world of philanthropy? Do you foresee any challenges or threats it might pose?
