How AI Is Changing Donor Relationships

The most patented device in American history is the mousetrap: more than 4,400 patents, and almost none ever made money. Fundraising has spent forty years the same way, optimizing better segments, better subject lines, and better appeals while donor participation quietly collapsed.

In 2026, fewer than half of American households now give, and seven out of ten first-time donors never give again. In this webinar, host Mark Miller is joined by Nathan Chappell and Gabe Cooper, authors of new book N1 Philanthropy: Precision, Connection, and the Future of Generosity, to explore why we have been optimizing the wrong question.

Borrowing the founding insight of precision medicine, that the average patient does not exist, Nathan and Gabe show how predictive, generative, and agentic AI now make it possible, and affordable, to treat every supporter as an N-of-one.

With equal candor, they confront what happens if we get this wrong, from machine-scale persuasion to counterfeit generosity, and why humans must stay at the helm.