As a tech-savvy nonprofit, you probably have an awesome website. And we’re sure you have all the basic tools necessary for a smooth donation experience: the donation buttons, donation form, and donor CRM. (And if your CRM is Funraise, you’re ahead of the curve—and we’re not even a little bit biased.) But it’s not just about checking off the boxes for your core digital fundraising tools. If you want to take a digital-first approach to encouraging prospects to become donors and encouraging donors to, well, keep donating, you need some (MP3) bells and (MP4) whistles in your tech toolbox. And one of our favorites is a chatbot.

A quick refresher: when we talk about chatbots, we mean those friendly little widgets that pop up in the corner of a website, offering help or guidance to unsuspecting website visitors. These robo-representatives have long been a fixture on e-commerce, banking, healthcare, and travel sites. And now, nonprofits are getting in on the game.

Consequently, today we’re spilling the digital beans on everything chatbot: what they are, what they do, why you want one, and whether they’ll one day become our robot overlords. (Answer to that last one: unlikely, but if it does happen, at least they make great small talk.)

Why is everything suddenly all chatbots, all the time?

We have a feeling most of your friends are software engineers. Still, you’ve got a point. Before March 2020, a lot of nonprofits were, shall we say, technology-averse. Technology, after all, can be expensive. It can also be complex and disruptive, making it a hard sell in a field where there are never enough hours in the day. Then, a pandemic came along.

“Looking back, I think we’ve witnessed a decade of digital transformation in the last two years,” Beth Kanter recently told us.

Give it to me straight: What’s a chatbot and how does it work?

A chatbot is a computer program that can process written or spoken language, allowing it to communicate with customers and address their needs—just like a real live person. You’ve probably interacted with them dozens of times, from getting automatic texts about your DoorDash order to rescheduling a doctor’s appointment online.

And why do I need a chatbot?

How does a chatbot work?

The simplest chatbots guide users through a conversation with pre-defined choices. The chatbot asks a question and offers a set number of answers; the user then selects one of them. It’s basic, but it works! If you want your chatbot to answer open-ended questions, it will use some combination of machine learning, artificial intelligence, and natural language processing to figure out what you need. Basically, the chatbot can convert text to data and vice versa. It recognizes patterns and learns from its interactions. Then it engages in conversations.

There’s a lot more to it than that, of course, but you get the idea.

I’ve heard chatbots are evil.

That was quite the leap. Here’s the thing: “Chatbots” are a type of “bot,” but people frequently get “chatbots” and “bots” confused. “Bots” are just a software that performs automated tasks. On occasion, they’ve been used by hackers, hence the bad rep. But this is rare, and this is not referring to chatbots. Chatbots are nice and helpful. They’re good listeners. They just want to make things easier for you.

But what about the human touch?

There’s no substitute for the relational nature of nonprofit work and fundraising in particular—and chatbots aren’t here to take over your jobs. They can’t build relationships and connect on an emotional level. But what they can do is answer basic questions quickly, which is good for donors and good for you.

“We [see smart tech and chatbots] as an opportunity to relieve staff of rote tasks, like answering the same questions all day or doing paperwork ad nauseum. It allows staff to do what people ought to do: build relationships, tell stories, plan, dream,” affirms Allison.  

So, if someone is considering joining your board, they’re not going to find what they need in a chatbot. If they want to know the drop-off hours for your food bank, a chatbot will prove very useful.  

That was a delightful discussion! Now, onto the cold, hard (but also very welcoming and non-threatening) chatbot facts.

Ok, I'm sold. How do I get a chatbot?

Chatbot benefits

There are a lot of reasons to add a chatbot to your nonprofit site, starting with:

Chatbots are convenient.

Chatbots are efficient.

Your staff members are busy, and chatbots can save everyone a lot of time. “[Many of us] work in these cultures of constant interruption, and it’s very hard to actually get to the work. So, anything that can engage with the public, treat people well, answer those questions, and allow staff to get on with more meaningful work would be an enormous benefit,” says Allison.

Chatbots save money.

Greater efficiency means cost savings. Chatbots can answer multiple people’s questions at the same time, freeing up your staff to do that important, strategic work we keep talking about.

Chatbots are easy to install.

‍High-tech though these widgets may be, a chatbot’s installation is as easy as copying and pasting a little bit of code, courtesy of your chatbot provider.

Chatbots give you leads and collect data.

Chatbots can learn a lot about the humans they’re chatting with—such as why they’re visiting your page.

Chatbots work 24/7.

These days, everyone expects a quick response—and that’s tough for short-staffed nonprofits. A chatbot is always available, even if someone has a question at 3:00 AM.

Where to use chatbots

Chatbots are everywhere these days! Well, not everywhere. They’re not, like, sitting at your favorite coffee shop, sipping a double caramel macchiato. Anyway, consider adding a chatbot to:

• Your website. As we’ve discussed, add a chatbot to your lonely lower-righthand corner to respond to frequently asked questions and collect visitor information.
• Facebook Messenger. Set up a custom chatbot to welcome visitors, provide them with automated responses, and direct them to the appropriate page on your website.
• Slack. Create bots for your workspace to monitor channel activity, post automated messages, and make messages interactive with buttons.
• Twitter. Build a chatbot to manage common questions and respond to people instantly.

How to use chatbots

If you’re interested in moving forward with this relationship, you’ll need to decide what system you’ll be using. Once you’ve handled that, here are some starting points:

1. Consider FAQs. What questions do your staff members get asked again and again? Make a list and build it out as a jumping-off point for your chatbot.
2. Think about voice. This is where your brand guidelines come into play. Your chatbot should reflect your organization, so make sure it “speaks” like you do.
3. Think about tone. Your organization’s voice doesn’t change, but your tone does, so a good chatbot changes its tone based on the situation. A donation question? Celebratory! A complaint? Remorseful.
4. Say hello. Decide what your chatbot will say when people first meet it. Remember, you want to encourage people to interact with it.
5. Account for errors. Even the best chatbots mess up, so make sure your error messages are helpful and straightforward.

Nonprofit chatbot examples

So, what can a chatbot do you? Here are a couple of stand-out chatbot examples to inspire your own, courtesy of Allison and Beth. And you can check out tons of examples of successful smart tech in their book.

• Lawyers’ Committee for Better Housing, a nonprofit organization, developed the Rentervention chatbot to help Chicago tenants navigate housing issues due to COVID-19. Renny, the chatbot, is “a tenant’s best friend,” teaching renters about their rights and connecting them with volunteer attorneys for free legal advice.
• Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières, the international humanitarian medical organization, created a chatbot to answer common questions about the COVID-19 pandemic. The chatbot freed up staff members to engage with the community on social media, discussing more nuanced issues like mental health and anxiety.

We've got one more example from Funraise customer Stop Soldier Suicide, a nonprofit that, in conjunction with Funraise and GoodUnited, raised $4M and gained 100k new donors in 2020 through Facebook fundraising. Their dedication to meeting donors where they're at (using chatbots) has led to phenomenal success.

So, sure: chatbots aren't a core digital fundraising tool—without one, you’ll be able to collect donations, keep track of your donors, and get the word out about your nonprofit’s mission. But they're undeniably useful. In the grand scheme of things, it takes very little effort to add and operate a chatbot on your nonprofit’s website—but it might make converting from a prospect to a donor a lot easier for someone who could have gone either way.

Chatbots: Key takeaways

• A chatbot is a piece of software that can process written or spoken language, allowing it to communicate in real-time with live human beings.
• Chatbots have a lot of benefits for nonprofits, but above all else, they free up busy staff members from answering rote questions.
• There are plenty of platforms that allow you to build AI chatbots with zero coding skills. You just add your text and drag-and-drop it to create user flows.
• Chatbots aren’t a good solution for nuanced or complicated questions. That’s why you have trained staff members!
• You can find chatbots on websites, Facebook Messenger, Slack, WhatsApp, Skype, and more.