Interested in AI integration but not sure where to start?
With AI (artificial intelligence) seemingly integrated into every piece of software all at once, it can feel overwhelming to know where to start when it comes to planning for your website. We recommend looking at your nonprofit’s target audience and the pain points that they are facing with your website. Start with open-ended questions: What are our users’ pain points? Why are they coming to the website? What were they looking for? Then, narrow it down with close-ended questions: Can we solve these pain points? Are they in the right place? Did they find what they were looking for? Can AI make a meaningful impact for our organization and our users? In this article, we will discuss the value of AI chatbots for nonprofits.
When we were researching adding AI as a service, we started with pain points. Our web design and development team approaches every project with an extensive discovery. We approached adding AI to our own services in the same way. We found that intake processes and finding resources were two major pain points for users on nonprofit websites. Intake calls can have long waits for organizations with limited resources and high demand. And organizations that provide large resource databases have invaluable content that can make answers sometimes difficult to find, especially when the answers to a user’s question span multiple resources. AI was a good fit for helping in both these areas. When we say AI, we are referring to generative AI (large language models) with the capability of generating text on the fly. We found that for organizations with a large database of resources, AI can be utilized to generate strong answers to complex questions.
What is an AI Chatbot versus an AI assistant?
In our use cases, an AI chatbot and an AI assistant have different roles. An AI chatbot is a more rudimentary solution. Imagine a smart FAQ. You create an accordion with all of your organization’s frequently asked questions. An AI chatbot can easily provide those answers to users quickly and efficiently with a simple prompt. You may also have preprogrammed buttons to toggle certain answers from the chatbot. The advantage of AI integration in these cases is that users can ask questions different ways and the AI can provide a quick approved response and deliver a helpful fallback if the answer isn’t available.
An AI virtual assistant is more powerful. It’s trained on a larger data set. It’s designed to provide answers beyond a simple FAQ. An AI chatbot might help with hours, addresses, services offered, mission and vision information. An AI assistant will provide detailed answers to complex questions that might pull on data from multiple fact sheets. A virtual assistant has more context than AI chatbots for nonprofits.
How AI can support nonprofits with self-advocacy.
Many nonprofits provide resources to help people advocate for themselves. Self-advocacy allows people to have more agency and to make sure they know how to protect themselves and their loved ones in difficult situations. If your team has a lot of resources on the website, they may be well-positioned for an AI virtual assistant. Virtual assistants can take large amounts of information and serve it to users in manageable chunks. Imagine you wrote a fact sheet that covers several different scenarios on an important topic. The user may only need to see information about one of those scenarios. AI can provide the answer to just the one relevant scenario without the user having to wade through all of the information to get to the answer they need. AI reduces the cognitive burden on the user. The primary source content that you wrote can be used to train your AI model to help provide fast, helpful answers to your users.
Our team provides nonprofits with AI integration.
If your team is interested in AI chatbots for your nonprofits, reach out to our WordPress experts. CH Web Agency offers AI integration services and can provide professional web design and development support for organizations of any size. We have provided website support for nonprofits across the state of North Carolina and the US.
How much does AI integration cost for nonprofits?
The cost of AI integration for nonprofits depends on the traffic of the website and expected use cases for the AI chatbot. Dozens of users versus hundreds of users per day can impact your plan. Do you need an AI chatbot or an AI virtual assistant? What is the content on your website about? Are you providing resources or are you talking about the services your team offers? Reach out to our expert team today and we can help you determine what solution would work best for your organization and website visitors.
