Be Absurdly Human
Your donor received 47 emails yesterday.
Half were written by AI. The subject lines were optimized. The send times were perfect. The personalization tokens all worked. The storytelling followed a proven formula.
They all sounded exactly the same.
And then yours arrived. You misspelled “sincerely.” You started a sentence with “And.” Your PS rambled a bit about how the coffee shop where you’re writing smells like cinnamon rolls and reminds you of your grandmother who first taught you about generosity.
Guess which one they remembered?
AI can write your appeal letters. It can segment your donors. It can predict giving patterns. It can craft subject lines that get opened. It can even tell stories that make sense.
You can’t avoid it. In fact, you shouldn’t avoid it. Use it. It’s helpful.
But also … the more everyone uses AI, the more being absurdly human becomes a major competitive advantage.
Not just human. Absurdly human.
Messy. Specific. Weird. Vulnerable. Spontaneous.
All the things AI can’t be because it’s trained on averages, patterns, and what’s worked before.
AI can write, “Thank you for your generous gift.”
Only a human would write, “I literally did a happy dance in the office when I opened the mail and saw your gift today. Maria saw me and now she’s calling me ‘Dancing Dana’ and I don’t even care because your gift just housed three families FOR A YEAR and I have zero chill about it.”
AI can segment donors by giving history.
Only a human remembers that Mrs. Hernandez always sends her gifts in blue envelopes because blue was her late husband’s favorite color, and mentions that in her thank you note.
AI can schedule the perfect follow-up sequence.
Only a human calls a donor at 7 PM saying, “I know it’s dinner time and I’m sorry, but I just left the shelter and had to tell you what your gift did today.”
AI can analyze giving patterns.
Only a human notices that Tom always gives $500 on his daughter’s birthday and never asks why, just writes, “Happy Birthday to your daughter” every year at the bottom of the acknowledgement letter.
Need a few more?
AI can write, “Your consistent support makes our work possible.”
Only a human would say, “I was going to tell you about sustainability and planning in this email, but honestly? Your gift today saved us. We were stuck, and you unstuck us. That’s the truth.”
AI can send perfectly timed emails at optimal open rates.
Humans text at 9:47 PM, “Can’t stop thinking about what you said about legacy today. You were right. Thank you.”
AI always has an answer, a best practice, a proven strategy.
A human looks a donor in the eye and says, “I honestly don’t know if this will work. But I know we have to try. Will you try with us?”
AI remembers giving history, wealth markers, engagement scores.
Humans remember weird details. That he hates golf despite everyone assuming he loves it, that her grandson is named after her father, that she’s allergic to roses so they send sunflower thank-you cards instead.
AI would never send Fundraising Friday early on a Friday morning. Fridays are terrible for engagement. AI would send it at 10:30 am on Tuesdays.
Only a human is stubborn enough to keep sending it every Friday morning (a virtual middle finger at LinkedIn’s algorithm) simply because Fundraising Friday sounds more fun than Fundraising Tuesday, even though it would likely “perform better” earlier in the week.
Ummm. Yeah. Enough about me. Back to you.
How do you become more absurdly human in your fundraising?
Send a voice memo via text instead of a ringless voicemail. Don’t script it. Just hit record and talk. “Hi Sarah, I’m walking past the community garden you funded and … oh wow, the tomatoes are huge! Anyway, I wanted to say …”
Add handwritten notes to printed letters. Print the letter. Then grab a pen and add: “PS Ignore all the formal stuff above. I just wanted you to know we couldn’t do this without you.”
Share photos of actual moments. Not staged moments. Not professionally edited moments. Just real human moments. Share the blurry photo of your team celebrating when the matching gift came through. The screenshot of the Teams chat going crazy when you hit your goal.
Admit what went wrong. “Remember that program I was so excited about? It failed. Here’s what we learned and why your continued support matters even more now.”
Text like a human. “hey! weird question but do you still have that connection at the food bank? we have too many donated turkeys (good problem but still a problem)”
Celebrate the wrong things. Instead of, “We reached 10,000 donors!” try, “Our database crashed because too many people tried to give at once. Best. Problem. Ever.”
AI can’t be vulnerable. It can simulate vulnerability, but it can’t actually experience the stomach-drop of admitting failure or the voice-crack of overwhelming gratitude or the dread of being asked a question in a donor meeting that you have NO IDEA how to answer.
Only you can write, “I’m scared we won’t make our goal. There. I said it.”
Only you can call and say, “I saw your gift come through, and I’m about to ugly cry in this Starbucks because of what you just did for our families.”
Only you can admit, “I wrote five versions of this ask and deleted them all because I hate asking for money even though I’ve been doing this for 15 years.”
I call that being absurdly human.
And in a world of perfectly generated beige goo AI content, absurd humanity stops people in their tracks.
As AI gets better and better, we have a choice.
We can use it for a whole lot of stuff … To be more efficient. To scale better. To optimize everything.
It’s really helpful (and usually good) at those things.
But don’t stop there.
Add a layer only you can add. A weird, wonderful, imperfect, absurdly human layer that makes people feel something real.
Why?
Because people don’t give to perfect organizations.
People give to other people trying to solve problems that matter.
Can you do me a favor?
I want you to pick one piece of communication next week.
You can use AI to help structure it, optimize it, perfect it.
Then break it.
Add something absurdly human. Add that story that has nothing to do with anything, but reminds you why you do this work. Admit that you’re terrible at asking for money. Attach the voice note recorded from your car because you couldn’t wait to share good news. Send the photo of your chicken scratch notes from the board meeting where everything changed. Write a PS that says what you really think
In a world where everyone can generate perfect content, perfect is no longer the advantage.
Human is the advantage.
Absurdly, unapologetically, gloriously human.
