Daffy, the donor-advised fund-focused charitable giving platform helmed by co-founder and CEO Adam Nash, announced a new set of AI-enabled features on Tuesday.
According to Nash, philanthropic planning in America is outdated, with too many friction points when it comes to gifting. Reliance on direct mail, non-intuitive online forms and minimal follow-up from recipients all impede well-intended donors. In fact, Nash cites research that shows 79% of donors who visit a donation page never complete their gifts.
Daffy’s new Quick Donate purports to eliminate some of these friction points by making personalized giving as simple as asking.
Using X’s Grok AI inference engine, the feature allows members to complete a gift by typing or speaking naturally (the example given in the release is “Give $100 to my local school in September”). Quick Donate identifies key details like amount, recipient and timing while also offering relevant suggestions. Additionally, Daffy incorporates contextual signals such as a user’s donation history, fund balance and preferences to ensure accuracy and to generate a scrolling list of recommendations as to the gift.
“The UI doesn’t just try and do what you tell it,” Nash said.
Though Quick Donate’s effectiveness will grow the more history a user has with giving on the platform, Nash stresses that it’s, nonetheless, useful directly out of the box for fresh members as well.
“If given a vague prompt by a fresh user, it will react the same way you or I would if faced with the same request—ask questions to clarify, except unlike you or me, it does so with a knowledge of every legal non-profit in the U.S.,” Nash said.
He said one of AI’s most exciting aspects is its potential to raise the base level of industry service that anyone can expect to receive.
“When billionaires want to donate, they have a team of advisors who understand their philanthropic priorities to make giving effortless,” he said. “Now, with Daffy’s AI-powered features, we’re bringing that same level of intelligence and convenience to the 60 million American households who donate every year, whether they’re giving $50 or $50,000.”
Nash likens Daffy’s AI functions to Robinhood’s newly released AI assistant Cortex in that they’re both tools that harness AI to attempt to help more people access personalized financial guidance. However, he cautions that treating giving as just another financial task would be a mistake. Giving requires attention and personalization, and he believes it shouldn’t ever happen as automatically as tax withholdings in a paycheck, for example.
In addition to the headline Quick Donate feature, the new AI suite will automate several other giving-related tasks, such as sending personalized thank-you messages to donors and generating campaign content for member fundraisers. According to Nash, these personal “human” touches are surprisingly valuable in encouraging donors to give again.
“Even though something like sending a personalized thank you to every donor seems easy, the truth is not all non-profits have the resources or the bandwidth to do so, even if they would like to. Ironically, we can leverage AI to help these organizations provide a more ‘human’ experience for donors.”
Ultimately, the goal is to help people be more generous more often.