AI for Fundraising: A Masterclass Series for Nonprofits (Cohort 2)

A four-part, cohort-based learning journey for organisations with an annual budget below ₹5 Cr, focused on applying AI across the fundraising lifecycle, responsibly and in your own organisational context.

About the series

Most nonprofits have heard that AI can help with fundraising. Far fewer have turned that into everyday practice. Learning tends to stop at a one-off webinar, while donor research, proposals, communication and reporting keep eating the same lean team's time.

This series is built to close that gap. Over four sessions, structured around the fundraising lifecycle (Identify, Attract, Convert, Retain and Grow), you work with AI on your own organisation's material rather than generic examples. Each session pairs a live, hands-on exercise with practical principles: which tool to use, how to prompt, what is safe to share, how to check output, and where AI should not be used at all. You leave with working outputs, not just slides and recordings.

Past versions of this series 

Cohort 1 ran in September and October 2026 with 20 fundraisers from 19 organisations, most of them founders or senior leaders. Participants who completed both the baseline and endline surveys rated their confidence in using AI for fundraising at 2.3 out of 5 before the series and 4.2 after the series. The series earned an average post-series feedback rating of 4.9 out of 5. 

Here is what some participants of cohort 1 said: 

“Very insightful 4 weeks of learning. A lot of takeaways which I am already implementing to improve the donor lifecycle using AI. “

“Smashing session. Manohar brings humour and fresh perspective to everything and Riya makes complicated data super easy to work with. Both are patient and excellent trainers and paced the class according to the group's needs. The course in itself offers many ways to think about finding and approaching donors which leaves one feeling like there were so many gaps in what they were doing before.”

“The four session course AI for Fundraising was crisp and very well articulated. Highly recommended for those of us who would like to harness the power of technology for the work we do.”

Note: This series is an expanded version of a highly successful 2-hour masterclass delivered to consecutive cohorts of the ILSS Fundraising programme. Both these sessions received a rating of 6.5/7, with the participants calling the session “Absolutely Stunning” “Amazing” “Highly engaging”. ILSS summarised the session as “An eye-opening introduction to the practical use of AI in Fundraising.”

Programme details

• 4 live online sessions, one a week, 1.5 hours each

• A small, closed cohort of 20–25 participants, one per organisation

• Hands-on learning using your own annual reports, donor lists and proposals, with light assignments between sessions

• Peer learning through a dedicated WhatsApp group

• Language: English

• Programme fee: ₹4999 per participant, inclusive of GST. The fee covers the full series; individual sessions are not available separately.

What you will take away

Beyond learning the fundamentals of how to use AI effectively and responsibly through the fundraising lifecycle, each participant will take away:    

• An Ideal Donor Profile and a prioritised shortlist of aligned CSR donors, built from your own material

• A map of warm connections between your board, advisors and leadership and your target funders

• A reusable donor intelligence project in ChatGPT, Claude or NotebookLM

• A past proposal scored against proposal evaluation and donor fitment rubrics, with a list of improvements

• A draft quarterly donor report and a working donor dashboard built from MIS data

• A draft AI policy, staff quick guide and implementation checklist, using our AI policy generator

• A peer cohort of fundraisers working through the same questions

Series structure

1. Identify: Finding the right donors. How AI has evolved and how to work with it. Build your Ideal Donor Profile, shortlist donors from the ~29,000 companies in the MCA CSR dataset, and learn where human judgement must stay in the loop. Includes family philanthropy and HNI prospecting.
   

2. Attract: Opening doors through warm connections. Cold outreach rarely converts. Use deep research to map your internal connectors against your donor shortlist, find the decision-makers who matter, and choose fundraising events deliberately. Then shape a pitch narrative for a specific donor, along with habits that keep AI output reliable.
   

3. Convert: Donor intelligence, collaterals and proposal review. Set up a donor intelligence project you can reuse for every pitch. Explore AI for grounded research, creating campaign collaterals, and reviewing proposal. We also look at how donors view AI, when to use AI and when not to.
   

4. Retain and Grow: Reporting, dashboards and AI governance. Generate donor reports from anonymised MIS data, build an interactive dashboard, and use AI to find growth options with existing donors. Learn how to anonymise beneficiary data safely, and draft your organisation's AI policy.
   

Who should attend

• Small and mid-sized nonprofits with an annual budget below ₹5 Cr

• Fundraising leads or NGO leadership

• Participants who can commit to all four sessions and the exercises between them

• Participants already comfortable with the basics of a tool like ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini; the series moves at a hands-on pace

Note: A paid subscription to ChatGPT or Claude is strongly recommended, since free tiers limit file uploads. At minimum, you will need a Gmail account.

How the programme runs

• Before: onboarding, a baseline survey and pre-reads

• During: four live, interactive sessions with hands-on exercises

• Between sessions: light assignments applied inside your own organisation

• After: Access to the WhatsApp group, recordings, prompts and rubrics.

Session dates and timings

1. 6 Nov, Friday | 3:00-4:30 PM

2. 13 Nov, Friday | 3:00-4:30 PM

3. 20 Nov, Friday | 3:00-4:30 PM

4. 27 Nov, Friday | 3:00-4:30 PM

For queries, write to ipn@indiapartnernetwork.org