Unlocking Generosity with Peter Byrnes: How AI Is Transforming Fundraising

Summary

In this episode of AI Speed, Evan Cholfin interviews Peter Byrnes, CEO of Fundraise Up, about how AI is transforming nonprofit fundraising. They discuss the origins of Fundraise Up, its unique approach to donor experience, and the future of AI in payments and nonprofit tech.

Takeaways

AI-driven personalization
Conversion rate optimization
Data-driven donor modeling

Soundbites

"This is a billion dollar operation."
"We've been using AI for eight years."
"In 12 months, we want a big splash."

Chapters

00:03 Introduction to AI Speed and Fundraise Up
02:09 The Birth of Fundraise Up: A Personal Journey
05:20 Unique Approach: E-commerce Optimization in Nonprofits
08:51 Operationalizing AI for Nonprofit Success
09:43 Understanding the Ideal Customer Profile
11:34 Value Proposition: Increasing Nonprofit Revenue
13:32 Challenges in Growth: Hiring the Right Talent
16:03 The Impact of Fundraise Up on Nonprofits
16:59 Marketing Challenges and Strategies
18:40 Trends in AI and Payments for Nonprofits
20:58 Future Goals: Expanding into Europe

Video 

https://youtu.be/2HShCZqUX18

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:20

Welcome to AI Speed, the show where AI-powered companies talk about what actually works in the market right now. Business doesn't move at internet speed anymore. It moves at AI speed, and the people who figure out how to turn models into money will own the next decade. I'm Evan J. Chaulfin, founder of Luxhammer and growth partner to high-performing brands. Today I'm thrilled to be joined by Peter Burns, co-founder and CEO of FundraiseUp. Peter is building one of the leading AI-powered platforms in nonprofit technology, helping organizations dramatically increase online donations by optimizing the donor experience through personalization, automation, and modern payment infrastructure. His work is redefining how nonprofits engage donors and unlock revenue in the digital age. Peter, thanks for being here. Thanks, Evan. Happy to be here. So fundraise up started from a very relatable problem, frustration with the donation experience. What was the moment like and what made you decide this was a problem worth solving at scale?

SPEAKER_01 1:29

Yeah, sure. So uh I had a peer-to-peer marketplace development company with my two partners. And uh I was just having one of those really, really busy days, and I suddenly realized that it was the last day to make a donation to my friends, my friend who was raising money for Susan G. Coleman. And I wanted to support that because I used to do it myself, but that year I couldn't do it, so I said, Yeah, I definitely want to support you. So I was like, you know, all right, let me just stop everything for five minutes and just make this donation before I forget because your name goes up. So I want to make sure I did it, because I would feel bad if I did it later. And I got on and I filled out the form or did the whole process and it didn't like something. So I did it again, and then I did it again. And then it took and the fourth time it finally took my money. At this point, I'm really, really frustrated. And my business partner, Hamster, called me about something obviously unrelated, and I do what many of us do. I spent the next five minutes venting about this experience, how frustrating it was when trying to give people money and they're making it very, very frustrating. And he's like, Oh, it's like that everywhere. And I said, No, you don't understand. This is a billion-dollar operation. This is not some small, you know, charity. It's a really big deal. And he's like, No, no, it's like that everywhere. And we looked into it, and sure enough, it was true. It was pretty ubiquitous that the giving experience was not a good one. And we decided, could we bring value to the space? And for us, it was an absolutely we could bring value to the space. So we decided to do that. And then we had to decide, well, what does that value look like? What are we going to solve for? And we decided to solve for how do you get somebody who clicks on a button, feels warm and fuzzy to make a donation to Ukrainian orphans, for example. How do you get them to feel as warm and fuzzy at the end of that transaction as they did in the beginning of the transaction, if not more? And that became our sole laser focus. It's like solving for that. And five years in, Susan Gikoma became a customer, which is why I now can share their name. They were happy to hear it. Uh, whereas before I would say a very large breast cancer organization. Uh, and it's not their fault because that little piece is really critical. I mean, that's what e-commerce is all about. If it was that easy, everybody would have solved all of it long ago. It's not easy. The distillation of the experience is what's difficult. And the million varieties of what that looks like makes it really challenging. So that's what we set out to solve. Our whole mission is to unlock the generosity of the world. So the assumption being your belief that the world is generous. And I I actually know that to be true. It's just that if it's you've got to unlock it, you've got to allow it to flow. Because even in the last 40 years, if you look at it, giving has only gone up. No matter what happens in the economy, it just has creeped up, up, up, up, up. I think it's a I think it's quintessential to being human just to give get back. So that's how we get started.

SPEAKER_00 4:27

Wow. Yeah, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_01 4:29

Frustrated donor. Solving his own problems.

SPEAKER_00 4:31

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you found a problem and solved it in a big way. Yeah. So I'm curious what makes fundraise up's uh approach unique, particularly in how you're you bringing e-commerce level optimization and AI into onprofit fundraising.

SPEAKER_01 4:50

So I think fundamentally, uh we're the only ones that I'm aware of in the space that was a donor solving a donor problem, right? Weren't fundraisers, we weren't a nonprofit, we're donors solving a donor problem. We came into the industry without all of the the weight of how it's always been done. You know, we were able to just look at, I'm at A, I need to get to D. What is the fastest way to get there? Not our donors won't do that, our donors don't like that. They've never done that before. I mean, I remember early days when when we first launched and we had Apple Pay, I would say, you know, I would be talking to somebody and they say, Well, our donors don't use Apple Pay. I was like, Do you offer Apple Pay? And they're like, No. It's like, okay. So, like, I think the huge advantage we had walking in was really deeply understanding e-commerce and understanding that donors are the same people that purchase on Amazon and Google and Apple and Netflix. It's the same people, you know. Understanding that was a big help, you know, a big advantage, I would say. Second, we launched with AI eight years ago. So at that time, we didn't go around saying it's AI because it seemed like you know, voodoo witchcraft. We would talk about it, but people were very like, I don't know about that. And then uh a few years ago it did a 180 flip where now everybody has AI, right? So now the distinction is the quality of the of the models and the input are super critical, right? So just to give you an example, our data has been, our models have been home for eight years. Our the data that we have are donors giving to organizations purely, like hundreds of millions of transactions. There's it's very different than, for example, one company that uses data from people giving to people. So if I am making a donation because you're to your mom's breast cancer fund, right, doesn't really matter to me whether it's breast cancer or Alzheimer's or lupus. I'm giving a donation because my relationship with you is my college roommate and me wanting to help you. That's a very different giving motivation than me giving to a breast cancer fund, right? So it would make sense if I took the data between you and me, poured that into my model to try to get a good result for me to give to a nonprofit. It's not going to work well because it's it's modeling something that's not the same thing. Additionally, as we all know, you have to train the AI. Uh we've been eight years is a really long time to be doing that. So as a result, we get really good results uh from our AI, basically. So that's kind of stands us apart.

SPEAKER_00 7:37

That's great. Um so where are you focusing most of your energy right now?

SPEAKER_01 7:41

Me, you know, as in my role is to guide the company into the next level of AI, right? So we've had AI in our product since day one. So we're not afraid of AI. You know, we understand it, how it works deeply, where what it's good at, what it's not. And now it's about operationalizing that on every level of the company to maximize quality and efficiency and speed. So we're we're rolling that out, and everybody's really excited. You know, we're funding for every single person in the company to become fluent in AI usage. So that's that's been a big uh initiative we're just recently rolling out. So it's exciting.

SPEAKER_00 8:19

Yeah, that definitely is. So who do you serve best? What's your ideal uh profile that gets the most value from your platform?

SPEAKER_01 8:27

So large enterprise nonprofits is what we built the company for. That doesn't mean that mid-level and SMB or even self-serve cannot use our tech. They absolutely can. We're 100% consumption model. So what that means is we only get paid when our customers do well. Customers don't do well, we don't get paid. So it's really the distinction between a partnership and a vendor. A vendor gets paid up front, a vendor has a contract, a vendor hopes you do well because they have renewal, right? They want you to do well. But if you don't, they're not losing money. But with a consumption model, we make all the investment up front, right? Uh because you you we don't get paid until the transaction starts. So all the onboarding, all of the setting everything up, we do all of that free. We have zero lock-in contracts. I don't philosophically believe in the lock-in contract. I think if you're delivering, people don't leave. Um, which has been true for us since lifetime. We have less than 2% churn in eight years. And that's not because we lock people in. It's because we continually deliver. And we are forced or or motivated to constantly deliver because we that's how we make money ourselves. So if we just we just cannot sit on our laurels and say, okay, we accomplished a certain amount, let's just coast along until another set period, which sometimes for people can be renewal or whatever. Like that's not how it works here. I always tell my team every single day is renewal day at Fundraise Up. And you can never assume anything. You need to be constantly bringing value and articulating the value that you bring to the customers so they understand that.

SPEAKER_00 10:03

And what is that value that you have them articulate?

SPEAKER_01 10:07

I mean, the the bottom line is that we get nonprofits more revenue. So it it we we get nonprofits more recurring revenue, you know? So we increase conversion rates. Let's say the industry conversion rates about 15%, 12 to 15%. Our average is 30%. So they don't need to drive more traffic to their website. I mean, this is the thing. Nonprofits have done a great job of messaging, driving people to their site, even getting them to click on the donate button. And that's when it falls apart, right? So by doubling in conversion rate, it has a huge effect on revenue. By prompting people to become a recurring donor instead of a one-time donor, donors who want to leave, just like our customers, we make it easy. If they don't want to continue to be a recurring donor, we don't make that difficult. We make it easy because counterintuitively, if you make it easy, people stay. And if they do want to leave, you give them an offer them to skip a few months or lower the amount. Because very few people are just wake up one day and say, you know what? I'm done with UNSF. I don't want to deal with them anymore. I'm gonna kill them so much. It's usually not what's happening. What's happening is I don't know what's happening with my job, or I just lost my job. You know, it's more of those kind of things. Um, and if you give people a chance to let me just start it up, you know, a few months later, like a crazy number say yes that they go that way. I think it's something 90% or something, some big number. So it's all of these kind of upsells, like, hey, would you consider increasing your donation by $5? You know, never obnoxious or anything like that. Just subtle hints and stuff like that. And it really adds up.

SPEAKER_00 11:48

Yeah, absolutely. So what's been your biggest challenge growing fundraiser up this year this year?

SPEAKER_01 11:53

Hiring. I think hiring is always a challenge for every growing company. You're hiring, you are onboarding, uh, you're creating roles that didn't exist before. So it, you know, it's an exciting problem, but it's still, you know, I say that would be our biggest challenge is hiring the right people. I think we're doing pretty good though.

SPEAKER_00 12:13

Yeah. Um, is it just making sure that you find the right people?

SPEAKER_01 12:17

Yeah. You know, we have a very we have a culture of candor, of transparency, of, you know, results-oriented culture. So you want to make sure that you're hiring people that are on board for that, you know, that are excited about the mission. You know, uh at the end of the day, what you do really, really matters here. So, like what I love to share with my team, we know what the the amount of money our customers were making annually when we brought them on as customers. We know what the delta is, what they're making after having us. When we look at that delta, we're looking at an additional billion dollars into the nonprofit ecosystem that were we not here would not exist. It'd be sitting in someone's bank account because it never got optimized to come out, right? Instead, it's actually in the hands of these organizations. So I, you know, I tell everybody if you look at that number and you divide it by the number of employees, you know, each of you represent $3 million into the nonprofit ecosystem that wouldn't be there otherwise. And if you take a minute and you think about what situation would you be in in order to give away $3 million, right? So it's not that you have $3 million, that you're gonna give away $3 million. That means you're you got a great salary, you probably own a house, maybe two. You obviously have no student loan debt or anything like that. And you have enough money in your bank, you're like, you know what, let me give away three million dollars. So that's like philanthropist kind of, you know, level of giving. And I think that's a big motivator for our team, you know, that they can go to sleep at night and say, yeah, I worked hard today, but you know, I also made sure that, you know, my actions had, you know, make more elderly a dinner tonight, or, you know, kids' books, or saved a bunch of animals from being euthanized. So we're very I feel really, really blessed to be doing this kind of tech in in a growing, exciting company and have that be the outcome.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's so amazing to and rewarding, I'm sure, to uh to do that.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

Yeah, it really is. And uh every year we have the companies get together and I like to show certain videos from our customers, you know, and uh it's at those moments you get like for Clint, you know, it's like, oh God, you know, it hits you when you see like, for example, IRC or UNICEF, they do these beautiful videos about the work that they do, and you show it to the team to remind them that's what you're doing every day. And that it hits you. You're saving kids from sex trafficking, literally. You know, these are the videos we we share because it's because it matters.

SPEAKER_00 14:54

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's so important. Um and what what challenges do you face raising awareness about the company and your products and services?

SPEAKER_01 15:03

I think every company has their marketing challenges, you know, it's how to get out to be it to be heard above all the noise. I think that one of the challenges that we're very we're very into like authenticity, you know. So for us, like it matters how we show up. So we have um a bespoke conference twice a year here in Brooklyn, or actually we just did one in London instead. And for us, it's really important that we are bringing value to the space, to the to the level of people that you know that are running these organizations, and that we have that brand awareness with them, that we're here to like really help them move the needle in their mission. So we'll have very bespoke conferences and dinners and stuff like that that work really well. Because for me, there's nothing like getting in front of somebody face to face. I think that's really matters a lot.

SPEAKER_00 15:52

Yeah, definitely. I mean, face to face, there's nothing like that, I think. No, especially in in your world.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

Yeah, over a Google ad or something, you know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:02

Yeah, definitely. So uh do Google ads work? Uh the do ads work for you?

SPEAKER_01 16:08

I have to ask my marketing department. I do see we're paying for them, so I'm hoping.

SPEAKER_00 16:14

Yeah, hopefully they're doing something for you.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Yeah. But I think now the real move is obviously to get, you know, to be found in chat, et cetera, and quad.

SPEAKER_00 16:25

Yeah, absolutely. So what trends are you seeing in AI payments, nonprofit tech that excite you the most right now?

SPEAKER_01 16:32

I guess for me, it doesn't seem all that radical or exciting because we've been doing it for eight years. It's like what we in in our payment flow, I mean, we're looking at the experience that you have is gonna be bespoke for you, right? So RA will determine are you likely a large donor or a small donor? If you're a large donor, we're gonna serve up a different experience. We're gonna ask for your name early on in the process. If small donor, it'll come later. We're gonna figure out we have a lot of different payment options, but which ones is Evan most likely to want or to use? Serve up those first, right, to make sure that those are there for you. How much should we ask Evan? You know, we're looking at patterns of behavior, not based on what you did a year ago, but based on exactly how you're behaving right now. All of this is none of this is PII. So it's, you know, we're not delving into your personal life or anything like that. We're simply looking at how are you behaving and what device, where are you located, all of those kind of things to help determine what are you likely to find as an optimal amount of money to give, right? Now, why does that matter? Well, first of all, if we ask for too much, if you know the algorithm says it's too much, you're gonna be feel like your gift doesn't really matter, like it's not gonna make an impact. If you ask for too little, you're most likely going to give much less. And that has a negative impact on the org. So it's that Goldilocks area that AI is particularly good at finding of what makes Evan feel good about giving and will want to give more and you know, I mean, and it's in reoccurring and uh build that really great relationship with you. And also how to foster that going ahead for years in advance, you know, years going forward using AI to help make sure that you know that work shows up in the way that makes sense for you and is able to get more money for their mission.

SPEAKER_00 18:18

Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. So if we were to have this conversation again in 12 months, what would it need to happen for you to feel like it was a big win? Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:29

Yeah. Well, in 12 months, you know, I would expect to see us much more visible in Europe, make a big splash in Europe. That would that would be what I would expect to see in 12 months.

SPEAKER_00 18:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:39

Well, that would be built for international from day one, so we're not retrofitting tech in order to make it work globally. We built it from day one to be multilingual. You know, we're already in 23 languages. You know, it's about payment options and tax compliance and data residency. It's complicated, but it's something we prepped for and prepared for since we since we launched. So now we're executing on that. That's great.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

Well, that's it for today's episode of AI Speed. A huge thank you to Peter Burns for sharing. Thank you for sharing your invaluable insights into fundraise up and helping nonprofits turn better experiences into more revenue and for navigating the future of AI-powered fundraising. Well, thank you, Evan. Yeah, absolutely. And um, and if our listeners, um, if you're building or leading an AI native company or a service-based business that uses AI under the hood and you care about revenue adoption and market share, make sure to subscribe to AI Speed. Learn how the best AI operators ship faster, sell smarter, and stay ahead. Thanks for listening. Until next time, keep building, keep selling, and keep moving at AI speed.