AI for fundraising and development
Ultramarine Work drafts prospect briefs, grant proposals and gift agreements. Its acknowledgment letters carry the IRS substantiation elements. The board’s results dashboard comes from the exports and documents already in your folder.
Board-midyear-update.pptxExampleAsk it for
“Prospect brief on Roberta Okafor: SEC filings, property records, family foundation 990-PF grants and giving to us, capacity as a range, every line sourced.”
Okafor-research-brief.docx“Draft the Carrow Family Foundation renewal from their last proposal and this year’s after-school outcomes, in their required section order, within three pages.”
Carrow-renewal-proposal.docx“Put together the three-year summer literacy budget: two salaries, 28% fringe, 15% de minimis indirect on MTDC, the county’s $37,500 match. Notes per line.”
Summer-literacy-budget.xlsx“Write the acknowledgments for the 21 December gifts of $250 or more, plus quid pro quo wording for the two gala tables, with dinner valued at $40 a ticket.”
Dec-acknowledgments.docx“Draw up the $600,000 Delgado family endowment agreement for nursing scholarships. Purpose, restrictions, 4% spending on a three-year average, variance language.”
Delgado-gift-agreement.docx“Give the board the midyear dashboard showing funds raised against the $2.1m goal, donor retention, LYBUNT and SYBUNT counts, and fall appeal response.”
Board-midyear-dashboard.xlsx
How it works
- 1
Load the development folder
Put gift exports from your database, last year’s appeals and acknowledgments, signed gift agreements, contact reports, funder reports and the program team’s outcome data in the folder where the development work lives.
- 2
Ask for the next piece of work
Request a sourced prospect brief, a proposal in the funder’s format, a budget with its justification, or the midyear dashboard. Each file comes back in your house style, with a note on anything it could not reconcile.
- 3
Verify, then make the ask
Check the research against the sources it cites, run gift terms past your counsel, and have finance confirm the gift values. It sends nothing, and it posts nothing to your CRM.
Inside the Fundraising & Development mode
Prospect research and portfolio review
Prospect briefs pull from SEC filings, property records and foundation 990s, confirm identity, state the capacity method and keep sensitive details out.
Program grant proposal
Drafts the LOIs, proposals and renewal reports in each funder’s own format, and pulls the outcomes from the files your program team keeps.
Grant budget and justification
Multiyear budgets cover fringe, indirect and match, and every cost share and match line is checked for 2 CFR 200 allowability.
Donor acknowledgment and stewardship
Each acknowledgment carries the IRS substantiation elements and quid pro quo wording, and each appeal is checked against the state disclosure statements.
Gift agreement and fund terms
Writes gift agreements and named fund terms, from spending rules and restriction language to the clauses your counsel will rewrite.
Fundraising performance analysis
Results dashboards show retention, LYBUNT and SYBUNT counts, appeal response and campaign totals, with pledges counted in full under CASE standards.
- Office skills
- Excel, Word, PowerPoint, PDF
- Tools
- Read, edit and write files, Search files, Run code, Search and read the web, View images
- Connectors
- SharePoint, Google Drive, Gmail, and additional custom connectors
- House style
- Your fonts, layouts and rules, on every file
Who it’s for
Development officers and directors, major, planned and annual giving staff, foundation and corporate relations staff, donor relations, events and prospect research staff, and chief development officers.
Questions
Will it make up facts about donors?
No, the skills in this mode tell it to cite the source for every number and statement it uses, and to note what it could not find or reconcile instead of guessing. That catches many problems but not all of them, because two people can share a last name and a real article can exist without confirming the claim it was cited for. Verify anything you would not want in a donor’s record.
Can I load our donor database export?
Yes, an export is just another file. Whether it may leave your systems is your privacy office’s call. Ultramarine Work changes files only in the project’s folder. When a request needs it, it can read files elsewhere on your computer, never passwords, keys or app data, and you can turn that off in settings. The model runs on Paper Instruments’ servers, so the content it works on is sent there to be processed. Paper Instruments is SOC 2 Type II, and our security and compliance details are on our compliance page.
We run a grateful-patient program. What patient data can it use?
It can use only the PHI the HIPAA fundraising rule allows: demographics, contact details, dates of service, general department, treating physician, insurance status and outcome information. Anything clinical requires the patient’s written authorization. Every fundraising mailing still needs a clear opt-out, and your privacy office sets what crosses the line. The mode works from whatever files you give it, so strip clinical detail before anything goes in the folder.
Do we have to tell funders we used AI on a proposal?
No, we don’t require disclosure of AI use. Whether to tell a funder comes from their instructions and your organization’s policy. Some funders now ask directly, and Candid’s survey found only about a tenth of foundations say they accept AI-generated proposals, so read the guidelines before you submit. Because the tool drafts from your program data and outcome files with sources cited, the substance is yours to defend.
Do the acknowledgment letters meet IRS substantiation rules?
Yes, the mode drafts every acknowledgment with the elements the rules call for: your organization’s name, the gift date, the amount or a property description, a statement on whether goods or services came with the gift, and their good-faith estimate when they did, which you supply. It adds the quid pro quo disclosure for payments over $75 and the state statements for solicitations. You review every letter before it goes out, and the values come from finance, not the tool.