10 ways to use Candid’s new fundraising assistant
Candid’s new AI-powered fundraising assistant helps nonprofits find funders, check eligibility, and draft LOIs—all grounded in decades of real grants data. Here are 10 ways to use it.
Grantseeking—from finding the right opportunities, to writing compelling proposals, to following up on applications—takes time, money, and staff no nonprofit has enough of. And small organizations are the hardest hit, since many run without a dedicated fundraising staff or the budget to hire external fundraisers or grant writers.
The result: Many nonprofits don’t apply for funding they may qualify for, simply because they don’t have the time. That’s why we built Candid’s fundraising assistant—an AI-powered tool designed to give fundraisers their time back by handling the heavy lifting of prospect research and drafting letters of intent (LOIs).
We’ve completed the pilot phase, working with a select group of fundraisers to gather feedback and ensure the tool is truly solving the problems it was designed to address. It’s now available broadly to Candid search users.
What makes Candid’s fundraising assistant different
Plenty of AI chatbots can help fundraisers with their grant applications. What sets our fundraising assistant apart is what’s behind it: decades of Candid’s nonprofit and philanthropy data, built by tracking foundation grants and giving patterns long before “AI” was a household term. Every funder recommendation and every grant history it surfaces comes from real records. Most AI chatbots predict what a plausible answer looks like—pattern-matching from internet data to generate a response that sounds confident but may be outdated, incomplete, or wrong. With our fundraising assistant, every answer is grounded in Candid’s verified, continuously updated data.
Plus, we’re building this fundraising assistant in collaboration with the nonprofits it’s designed for. We’ve been working with a small and intentional group of fundraisers to help us learn about their actual needs and improve how we meet them.
How fundraisers can use it
Here’s how fundraisers can put Candid’s fundraising assistant to work. These examples are based on what fundraisers in our pilot group found useful in real testing sessions.
1. Match your mission to funders and refine as you go. Describe your organization and the population(s) and area(s) you serve, and you get a tiered list of foundations, starting with funders that already support similar groups nearby. Provide feedback on suggested funders, and you can drill down to more targeted results. For example, a user can start by searching for funders in their home base in Louisiana, then expand the search by stating, “We also work in Orlando and Atlanta”—and the fundraising assistant instantly surfaces funders in those additional areas.
2. Get intelligence on funder alignment. Ask how well your organization’s mission, size, and geography match a specific funder’s giving history to get insights based on real grants data. Simply ask: “How well does my org match the Ford Foundation?”
3. Find funders who have funded your peers. Ask which grantmakers support organizations like yours but haven’t given to you yet. The fundraising assistant compares grant histories across your peer group to surface new prospects worth approaching.
4. Dig into grants data by issue area, geography, etc. Ask for something specific, like the 20 largest grants to art museums in your county last year, and it pulls real grant records.
5. Check eligibility before you apply. Ask about eligibility rules for specific funders or grants, and it can flag requirements such as “three to five years of operating history” or “minimum annual operating budget of $150,000.”
6. Navigate complex eligibility nuances with confidence. For example, what if your organization is faith-affiliated but serves all communities with secular, non-proselytizing programming? The fundraising assistant can advise you on articulating that distinction transparently to funders that restrict funding to “religious purposes” or asking funders to clarify their policies. It can also reassess your eligibility for certain prospects or search for additional funders that explicitly fund faith-based organizations serving diverse populations.
7. Gauge the right “ask” size. Ask what amount to request from a specific funder, and you get a range based on that funder’s typical award sizes and your organization’s scale.
8. Get help drafting an LOI. Give the fundraising assistant your mission, program, and the funder you’re approaching, and it puts together the first draft you can refine, so you don’t have to start from scratch.
9. Ask questions beyond grantseeking. Beyond prospect research, nonprofitscan ask questions like: “Can I start a nonprofit?” and “How do I build a budget for a grant application?” The tool directs you to helpful articles, courses, and other Candid resources.
10. Build a pipeline of fundraising opportunities. You can ask for more prospects that would be a good fit and grow your list of fundraising opportunities. The fundraising assistant can provide additional prospects without repeating funders already covered.
Learn more about the fundraising assistant.
How and why we’re building the fundraising assistant
We’re developing the fundraising assistant based on the same principles we apply to every AI product at Candid:
User-centered design. Solve a real problem, and check in with real users early and often.
Feedback loops. Build ways to hear from users constantly and use what they say to improve the tool.
Human-in-the-loop model. We’re designing the fundraising assistant to surface the right information and options but leave the fundraiser to make decisions. AI should support a fundraiser’s judgment, not replace it.
Responsible AI. Watch for bias and unfairness—ensuring the assistant doesn’t systematically favor certain types of organizations, geographies, or funding profiles over others. Protect people’s data privacy at every stage.
Security and compliance. Protect user data and hold the product to Candid’s own standards, not just the minimum required.
Candid’s fundraising assistant is just the first in a new line of AI tools to be offered, built to help fundraisers spend less time searching and more time on the relationships and programs that matter.
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