Will The Future of Nonprofit Discoverability Be Donations on LLMs? Why We Think It’s Coming…And More! (news)

AI’s Impact on Nonprofit Visibility and the Changing Landscape of Foundation Support This week’s episode of the Nonprofit Newsfeed, the hosts delve into the evolving dynamics of AI’s influence on nonprofit visibility and the current state of foundation support. Main Topics: AI’s Knowledge Windows and Nonprofit Visibility: George and Nick discuss a new beta feature from OpenAI’s ChatGPT called “knowledge windows.” This feature presents information about organizations directly within the AI interface, potentially reducing website traffic as users get essential details without needing to visit the source. This development could significantly alter how nonprofits engage with potential donors and supporters, as AI becomes the gatekeeper of information. Foundation Support and Nonprofit Perception Gap: A report from the Center for Effective Philanthropy highlights a significant perception gap between foundations and nonprofits. While 93% of foundation leaders believe they understand grantee challenges, only 54% of nonprofits agree. The report also notes that foundation responses have weakened post-COVID, despite increased demand for nonprofit services. Podcast: Play in new window | Download View Episode Transcript This week on the Nonprofit News Feed, of course, brought to you by Whole Whale B Corp Digital Agency. My name is George Weiner. I’m the Chief Whaler of Whole Whale. And I have Nick Azulay, Digital Strategist at Whole Whale. And we’re here to, as always, geek out about nonprofit news, trends, things we are seeing. And Nick, why don’t we start off by something curious that I ran across on ChatGPT? Yeah, George. So our first story is an interesting one, an inside scoop, rather. We, George, have experienced among the first users to do so, apparently, a new beta feature inside of ChatGPT. What is that beta feature? It’s not particularly sexy, but for nonprofits, it’s really important. And that is the rollout of Knowledge Windows. So George, if you are subscribed to our newsletter, you’ll be able to see a picture of this. But what are Knowledge Windows, George? They are results that come up to a query or a prompt that you put into a AI chat. And essentially, what it is, is a window that, instead of linking out to a website, fills a window with knowledge, kind of ingesting that website, just as a Google AI overview might, for example. So George, we are seeing OpenAI testing Knowledge Windows inside AI chat services. What does this mean, George? That AI now has found another way to answer questions, reference your website, and in some cases, surface actual web content without ever sending anyone to your organization’s website. So George, for example, when someone asked ChatGPT, top animal welfare charities, they are now getting a slick pop-up card with your mission. They might get the foundation founding date, key facts, all pulled into the AI’s interface. No clicks, no visits to the website required. As an organization, what does this mean? People are learning about your organization without ever accessing your content at its source. George, this is a big development within AI, particularly as we’re studying user and donor behavior and how they’re using AI systems to interact with their organizations. And George, we suspect this is leading towards something very specific. But at this point in time, George, why don’t you just tell us a little bit more about these Knowledge Windows and what it means for organizations getting surfaced within AI prompts? So notice I am currently showing this. For those of you who are just listening, I am on ChatGPT 5.2. This is a paid subscription. So I have not been able to reproduce this on the free version of ChatGPT. And in this case, as I go through, I click on a link like the Humane Society of the United States, and I go and I get this little sidebar window, this knowledge source. Sometimes sources show up on the side. Sometimes they don’t. If I click on those sources, then I am sent somewhere else. Sometimes, honestly, I go to this sidebar, and on the sidebar, there are no sources whatsoever. So in this case, I am looking at the Best Friends Animal Society. I’m interested in animal welfare, and I have what seems to be a link that I could click on. I click on it. It opens the sidebar. There is nothing. And I repeat, zero things I can click on for the source of the information or to click to go to that website. So I’ll just pause on that and just be like, the logical second-order effect of this as a user interface is that you get a zero click, zero click from people that are exploring your concept with regard to your AI brand footprint, right? People that are surfacing your information inside of an AI interaction. Not great. The other sort of potential second-order effects, where I see this going is, what is the action I might want to take? Now, imagine this for shopping, right? And shopping, what happens? We try to disintermediate the endpoint. Could I shop and buy that thing right there? How do I make it easier for this person? How do I use AI agents to support my shopping? How do I use AI agents to potentially make a donation? Let’s say I wanted to donate. Oh, why can’t I just have a donate button or the actions I could take with this organization within this window right here, allowing ChatGPT to become the gatekeeper? What’s more, if I’m clicking on something like the ASPCA or AlleyCat Allies, I have key information that I could, I don’t know, say run ads against. In this case, there happened to be sources. There weren’t, and they’re not always. But I’ll tell you what you could also do. You could shove some advertising into this exploration window. What does ChatGPT need to do and begin to optimize for? Advertising real estate. Where might I find such real estate, you ask? Right here. I don’t know why we happen to get lucky and be able to see this side window. I don’t know why more people are not talking about this, but I think we should pay attention to this right meow, pun intended. Yikes. All right, George. Okay, so we have a demo of what these- Also, shameless plug here also for the fact that somebody, we need to start working around the verified giving protocol. Verified giving protocol, something that I’ve talked about before, is the concept of needing to find a way that would route not just the money, but also the data directly to the nonprofit. Because this is going to happen. They’re going to disintermediate your donation button, but it should still be under your control, under an official way of routing that information and access to your provider of choice, whoever it may be. So, all right. End rant. No, George. I think that’s so important, right? The theme here is ChatGPT, AI in general. They’re doing everything remotely possible to generate revenue for themselves while keeping you in their platform. And we need to be vigilant and see how those products develop and what that means when it comes to cultivating donor flows and recruiting volunteers and XYZ number of actions that your website is promoting, right? They are siphoning our audiences and it’s important that we are able to, in some ways, recuperate the flow. So, George, really important. I want to pivot slightly within the same theme here. We’re really studying very hard, George, what AI is doing for clients and the representation of our clients and our organization’s brands within platforms themselves, right? George, some of our clients are getting tens of thousands of real, authentic web sessions from LLMs directly, purely based on people seeing a result and clicking on a little link, taking them to the website. Tens of thousands of sessions. But, George, we’re starting to see that AI, at least for now, I don’t think this will be permanent, has a junk link problem. And we are seeing it increasingly within the social impact sector. What do I mean by that, George? If you Google, or I’m sorry, if you search, see, we’re no longer, I have to train myself not to use that terminology anymore. If I prompt an AI chat, like chat GPT, top human rights charities to donate to, the top two results are very predictable. It is Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. And you’d say, great, that makes a ton of sense. The link next to Amnesty International probably takes me to Amnesty International’s very, very large, complex global web infrastructure that includes a global organization, national organization, and probably 100 regional or country level websites. No. What does it link to? It links to, George, a super low quality, barely usable farm link website that was written by AI that just farms content for AdSense revenue. George, I don’t think this problem is going to exist in perpetuity. But right now, major organizations like Amnesty International, that probably have larger websites than 99.9% of the internet are losing out to, excuse my language, shitty websites that are siphoning away that traffic and siphoning away those donors. So something to watch out for if you are a nonprofit or a major NGO like Amnesty International, which has billion dollar revenue. Yeah. And to be clear, it’s the top list of this for this and top list of this for this. Those types of sites are getting ingested and used as validating entities for how to answer these questions. So yeah, yeah, it is something you surfaced and something we’re exploring. And I do think it is important to note that it’s for now, not forever. These rules are changing quickly. But right now as it’s played, I thought that was a little concerning as well. A tad bit concerning. All right, George, we have some interesting tidbits I want to turn to. This comes from The Nonprofit Times. George, Whole Whale and Nonprofit Ifs, that’s nonprofit.ist, have released their 2025 consult cost and compensation survey in partnership with The Nonprofit Times. And we have some blockbuster results from this survey. Once again, for listeners who may not know, Whole Whale is us. This is in many ways our survey in partnership, of course, with The Nonprofit Times. But George, the hourly nonprofit consultant rate hit $1.59 an hour. That’s up $8 from last year and a significant jump from $110 just five years ago in 2020. And solo consultants build an average of $97k annually. And those with partners averaged $188k annually. George, we also found that consultants with bachelor degrees actually outbuild those with master’s degrees and doctorates. So degree pedigree is not actually an indication necessarily of higher rates that consultants are charging. And George, most consultants build between 20 and 24 hours per week and spend another 5 to 14 hours on unbillable operational work. Reminder that independent means also running a business, not just doing the work for other people. So George, exciting results in this survey. What were your key takeaways? Yeah, we were excited that we are now the longest running survey for the salary indicators for consultants in the industry and love The Nonprofit Times partnership. They wrote it up. You’re able to get the entire survey. If you’re not a part of the nonprofit network of consultants, you can go and actually purchase all of that information, which has so many more insights, especially as you’re like, well, what about for fundraising? Well, what about for accounting? Well, what about for board development? You can find and parse through that information by going to The Nonprofit Times and paying for that survey. I think for me, this fact that we were $110 on average from 2020 to 159 now, that 43% increase is showing that it’s faster than inflation. That rate is increasing rapidly. And we’re maybe tapering off with only that $8 increase, finding the right price maybe for that. And so that solo consultants build an average of $97K annually, which that’s fairly legitimate for a solo operation, especially when you consider that average number of hours, like that 20 to 24 hours becomes pretty attractive, I’d say for the consultants, at least that we were able to survey. And again, I think we had an N of about 300 folks that took the survey over that number. The other piece that stood out to me, certainly the more degrees is not more money. This sector prizes experience, right? Read all the books you want about how to swim. I’m going to take the person who’s out there in the freaking water, spearfishing. That’s what this sector looks at. They’re looking at the person who’s in the water and actually knows what they’re doing. And that’s what seems to be prized. No offense to the academias out there, academics that you are probably among, but it is no proxy for experience. And then finally, I’d say this idea that spending another five to 14 hours on unbillable operational work screams to me that there is an opportunity for individuals to leverage AI in their own personal operations. The upside of that is tremendous, especially if you look at the value of the billable hour and every hour that you can get back from that operational unbillable monster seems to me very, very, very valuable. You could do it, you get that hour back, spend it however you want. But I’m excited for this industry because of the upside of operationalizing with AI. Yeah. George, once again, if you want to read the full survey, which we definitely encourage, check out the Nonprofit Times. And you can, again, access it, purchase it right through them directly. All right, George, I quickly want to take us to our next story. We have another interesting report that caught my eye. It was kind of teased back in the fall, but the full report itself actually just dropped and has been making some interesting rounds within the philanthropy community. And that is, George, the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s study on foundations and whether or not they’re helping nonprofits and grantees. George, I asked AI to pull out the punchiest insights from this report. It’s a long report. No, I didn’t read it all end to end. But George, this is what I found. And I thought this was interesting. George, 93% of foundation leaders believe they’re effectively understanding grantee challenges, but only 54% of nonprofits agree. Okay. Interesting. On nearly every measure, including responsiveness, communication, and risk-taking, foundations write themselves 30 to 40 points higher than nonprofits rate them. Okay, George, I have a little bit of a little battle of perception happening within the grantor-grantee relationship. Very interesting. That’s one side of it. Another side of it, George, I thought was really interesting is that foundation response has been all around weaker than it was during COVID, even though two-thirds of nonprofits report increased demand for services, and of course, threatening cuts. Only 30% of foundations have increased payout, which I think is particularly interesting, giving the kind of blockbuster bad year for American civil society we had in the year 2025, writ large. So the majority of foundations, George, not really moving here. And I think that might be causing the risk. And then, of course, funding cuts aren’t hitting equally right. Certain sectors are getting hit harder. So George, I think this is interesting. And I think some folks I’ve spoken to within philanthropy have said that the year 2025 is a wake-up call for the sector. This very, very neoliberal model of philanthropy we have in the States, not really meeting the moment. This survey seems to add some credence to that argument. Just wondering what you’re thinking as you hear these numbers. It’s unfair for me to parse out, but maybe you can look up quickly. This seems to be the first that I’ve seen of its kind. And I’m wondering about this 93, the delta, right? The essentially 40-point delta between what the perception of foundations is versus the grantees. How has that changed over time? Is part of this just the nature of an adversarial, I don’t mean to say adversarial, but other side of the marketplace delta? The only one of the major times where I see this type of delta actually comes from the organ donation surveying world. So in organ donations, roughly about when you actually ask people, would you accept a donated organ to save your life? About high 90s, right? High 90s, 95 plus. Say, yeah, I’m going to go ahead and accept that organ. Now, if you actually look at organ donation rates, you live in the mid 50s. That is that 40-point swing, right? And when you are on the other side of a market, give versus take. And in this, maybe I’m not that surprised to see that map out to this. Now, I want to also pause and this demand is worse than COVID. I agree with that, actually. And what I’ve heard just to sit in the chair of a foundation and in that room is that when the government cuts billions, hundreds of billions of dollars, right, from budgets across all of these different programs, state programs, I’ve sat in the foundation room where they’ve literally just done the math. They’re like, we could liquidate all of our assets. And literally, we would only cover maybe six months of that operating deficit that the government left. The scale is important of what these cuts have done. And so do you want that world where the foundation liquidates all of its assets in a flurry to simply keep up with what the government used to do and then have nothing after that six months? So just, I know that that is on the other side. And it’s just a function of math and also something that has been the other wake up call that honestly, I saw running this company, how dependent or the dependencies on frankly trickle down government money. We were more supported by government dollars than I frankly realized, exposed to that risk. And the sector is now really understanding that. And part of it is this new adjustment. You can label it good, you can label it bad, devastating. But the truth is, if you were to look at the numbers, there are some new truths to reliance on government funding and how if that is a variable and it goes away, you simply cannot continue to do business at that level and expect foundations to pick up that check. The truth is government has got a lot of freaking money when it deploys it and you can’t make up that delta. Yeah, George. So I actually asked AI if there was historical reference points within the report and it pulled this out, which is interesting. So in 2025, 54% of nonprofits thought foundations understood them. 93% of foundations thought they understood nonprofits. So George, in 2014, only 52% of nonprofit CEOs agreed their funders were aware of this challenge. So that nonprofit number hasn’t moved at all. But interestingly, in 2014, only 60% of foundations felt that they fully understood the nonprofit. So it seems that the foundation side of it has gotten a lot more confident and their ability to understand their grantees in relation to nonprofits, which is kind of interesting. That is the insight. That is the insight. Yeah. Yeah. I’ll go back. I’ll take a look through this and then read it myself. Someone needs to update this newsletter, I’ll tell you that. There we go. All right, George, I got two jokes for you. Are you ready? Okay. I’m prepared emotionally. Okay, George. Why did the nonprofit break up with the foundation? I don’t know. Why did the nonprofit break up with the foundation? They were being taken for granted. Get it? Granted? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The foundation makes grants. Great. Oh, man. That’s some of my best work, I have to say. My next one is not as good. George, what did the donor think after a chat GPT prompt for charity recommendations sent them to a content farm? No idea. These results are pretty seedy. Get it? Content farm, seedy. Okay. We’ll get rid of that one. And you know what? See in the newsletter, which people prefer less? Which- Vote one of these off the island. All right. Thanks, Nick. I’m giving us a solid A for this one. I felt like we explored some good topics. So huzzah. I agree. I’ll see you next week. Hats off. All right. See you, George. -------- NonprofitNewsfeed.com Summary of hundreds of news sources.The post Will The Future of Nonprofit Discoverability Be Donations on LLMs? Why We Think It’s Coming…And More! (news) first appeared on Nonprofit News Feed.