Gravyty Refocuses Version 3.0 to Center on Driving Revenue through Fundraising During Crisis

Gravyty, the market-defining provider of fundraiser enablement powered by artificial intelligence (AI), announced new product capabilities that help nonprofit, higher education, and health care leaders continue to secure fundraising revenue during the challenging times caused by the COVID-19 crisis. This includes the immediate availability of Gravyty Crisis Management for frontline fundraisers managing donor relations during the COVID-19 crisis, along with the Gravyty Guarantee program to widely spread AI and transformative fundraising efficiency to social good organizations, especially in these difficult financial times. Version 3.0 also includes deep and radical technological enhancements to Gravyty’s AI engine that redefine the relationship cycle between fundraisers and donors.

As organizations navigate the challenges presented by the COVID-19 crisis, IDC reports that “AI is a technology that can play a significant role in helping businesses and societies deal with and solve large scale disruption caused by quarantines and lockdowns.”

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In fundraising, AI is proven to empower fundraisers to cultivate more relationships with prospects and donors. Now, more than ever the social good sector needs fundraising to drive revenue that keeps operations running. Colleges and universities are grappling with the financial realities of possibly canceling the fall semester, nonprofits are competing to stay in the black and serve their communities, and hospitals on the frontlines of the health crisis are dealing with major and unexpected changes to their business models. This release is about using AI to create fundraising efficiencies that place organizations in the best possible position to drive revenue during this crisis.

Gravyty Crisis Management, an AI solution, and the Gravyty Guarantee, a first-of-its-kind AI assurance, come in direct response to the new and unexpected challenges faced by thousands of frontline fundraisers at nonprofits, colleges and universities, hospitals, and health care organizations caused by the COVID-19 outbreak.

“We are living through an unprecedented crisis affecting every industry, and our world is changing minute-by-minute. Nonprofit organizations themselves are in crisis mode because of the financial strains that COVID-19 places on our economy. Artificial intelligence exists for operational efficiency and I am proud of the technology solutions we poured into Gravyty 3.0 so fundraisers can quickly and personally connect with as many donors as possible as they work to secure the future of their organizations,” said Adam Martel, CEO of Gravyty. “The frontline fundraisers Gravyty serves have a unique role during these troubling times. Not only are they identifying unexpected and emerging needs, they’re also finding donors to address these needs. And, when the time comes to rebuild our communities, it will be frontline fundraisers who lead that charge. We are honored to serve the frontline fundraisers who are working to make our world a better place during this crisis.”

Gravyty’s AI makes relationship-building 2-3x more efficient, rather than completely changing the way fundraising works. With Gravyty 3.0 and AI, frontline fundraisers are greatly expanding outreach to personally engage more donors, in a time where significant gaps in donation revenues are emerging — putting organizations at risk. Gravyty 3.0 includes:

Gravyty Crisis Management

Crises have a penchant for derailing revenue-driving activities and communication, while increasing operational challenges and unexpected needs. Gravyty Crisis Management removes these barriers by using AI to suggest new messaging during a time of crisis, who that message needs to reach, and prompts personalized outreach through frontline fundraisers.

Within the first week of the COVID-19 crisis, a half a dozen Gravyty customers turned on a beta version of Crisis Management. Through fast feedback, we’ve developed this into a full-scale product used to reach thousands of potential donors. Towson University, for example, was one of the first organizations to use Gravyty Crisis Management, empowering its frontline fundraisers to reach thousands of donors with personalized and updated messaging on Towson’s response to COVID-19.

“Now, more than ever, it’s critical that we reach all members of the Towson community to express how we’re adapting amid COVID-19 and to highlight immediate needs that potential donors can help with,” said Todd Langenberg, Associate Vice President, Development, at Towson University. “Gravyty Crisis Management has allowed my team to expand outreach and proactively build relationships. With Gravyty, one frontline fundraiser alone personalized outreach to almost 800 potential donors in less than two weeks. That’s exactly the activity we need to see during this time.”

Gravyty Guarantee

Through a first-of-its-kind AI assurance, Gravyty now guarantees that organizations will raise double the value of their contract in a single year, or the next year is free.

Gravyty understands that during times of crisis, organizations can only invest in must-haves. To make up for any unforeseen gaps in revenue or emerging needs, frontline fundraisers must reach more prospects and donors than they ever have before. With the Gravyty Guarantee, any organization that wants to use AI to empower frontline fundraisers now can, without risk.

This is not new territory. Gravyty customers such as The College of Charleston used Gravyty and AI to inspire 400 new gifts totaling more than $800,000 in a single fiscal year. During this same fiscal year, Gravyty also optimized the College of Charleston to work as a fundraising team 2.6x its size, without making any additional hires.

The Gravyty Guarantee is supported by the Gravyty Live team, each with an average of 10+ years in fundraising, and by incredible new enhancements throughout version 3.0 of the Gravyty product suite.

“In a market dominated with claims of artificial intelligence breakthroughs, Gravyty is leading the way with what matters most: ROI,” said Lisa Alvezi, Director of Customer Success at Gravyty. “Gravyty has spent three years proving that AI is the catalyst that pushes philanthropy forward. Last year, we introduced Gravyty Live to prove that when AI is supported by people, it produces results. The Gravyty Guarantee is a natural progression, and it’s the right thing to offer organizations that are trying to improve our world during these challenging times.”

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Dynamic Engagement Roadmap

The financial impact of the COVID-19 crisis forces organizations to expand fundraising outreach beyond anything we have seen in the past. To accommodate constantly changing priorities, Gravyty created a new Dynamic Engagement Roadmap. As a fundraiser’s focus shifts, so does Gravyty’s AI recommendations. For example, as needs grow or the fiscal year close comes near, the language and strategy of Gravyty prompts will change to focus on inspiring gifts from nondonors, LYBUNTS, SYBUNTS, and new prospects.

Inspire Engagement with Custom Segmentation
When AI adapts to a fundraiser’s specific focus at any given time, the opportunity for meaningful engagement increases exponentially. This is important, especially in today’s changing world. Frontline fundraisers have asked for the ability to customize how they segment outreach to donors and prospects, and Gravyty delivers with customizable segmentation tools that prompt engagement. With these new features, fundraisers can segment their outreach strategy based on geographical regions, donor types, and even affinity.

Upgraded Engine

As the COVID-19 crisis has evolved, it is clear that fundraisers need to expand their reach to more donors than ever before. Under the hood, Gravyty’s engine received major upgrades that unlock previously untapped capacity for fundraisers.

“When we talk about building artificial intelligence for fundraising efficiency at Gravyty, everything centers around enabling fundraisers to spend more time building relationships and interacting with donors. Tasks like syncing outreach to a CRM, tracking responses, and combing through myriad datasets to determine the perfect piece of prose are all necessary, but they are time-intensive and not the best spend of human capital. New capabilities within our AI take these tasks on for fundraisers, which is especially important in today’s ever-changing environment. By leveraging big data and distributed systems, we’re constantly learning faster and at scale so Gravyty’s applications of neural networks, reinforcement learning, computational linguistics, and more pair hand-in-hand with a fundraiser’s specific use case,” explained Rich Palmer, CTO, Gravyty.

For example, Gravyty now serves fundraisers with their next steps faster than ever before. And, optimized algorithms allow our AI to self-write personalized First Drafts in less than a second, so you spend less time with your data and more time with your donors.

Gravyty AI-Enablement for Managers

The organizations that successfully navigate this crisis will be those that increase meaningful frontline fundraiser activity and understand how those activities generate revenue and impact outcomes. However, at a time when managers are now tasked with motivating and keeping remote workforces on task, this challenge just became harder. Gravyty Manager Dashboards provide a continuous feed into AI-enabled fundraising programs on a single screen. With Manager Dashboards, managers ensure fundraisers are reaching individual goals and organizational objectives via real-time metrics. These metrics include weekly activity outcome comparisons, year-to-date giving, retention from previous-year giving, year-over-year participation, portfolio saturation, moves management, and more.

Instant accessibility to this information means managers are always tracking the health of fundraising operations while directing impactful outcomes.

Redesigned with Purpose

Gravyty’s entire product suite has been redesigned from the ground up to fit the workflow of fundraisers and to empower them to evolve what’s possible. We started with the question: How can we increase the capacity for an organization to fundraise? Amid COVID-19, that question is more relevant now than ever before. Throughout the product suite, our new intuitive interface empowers fundraisers to transform fundraising like never before, while also giving them self-serve personalization preferences.

And, Gravyty’s entire suite of fundraiser enablement tools also receives significant enhancements to increase fundraising capacity.

First Draft

A newly redesigned First Draft brings all the information you need to know about a donor or prospect into a simple view. This includes a visual biography snapshot, so there’s no need to wander in the CRM. Fundraisers also gain a view into Gravyty’s AI with insight on why they are prompted to reach out to this person at this particular time.

Additionally, fundraisers have easy access into their portfolio progress with each First Draft received, and a week-by-week comparison of KPIs — including outreach, responses, and gifts received.

Proving efficacy is key to any AI solution. Now with deeper integrations, UI-less email, and radical technological enhancements to Gravyty’s AI, fundraisers gain rich insight into every email sent and will redefine relationship cycles with their donors. They’ll know precisely who is reading their messages and how to strategically engage the donor or prospect in the best way possible. And, with this knowledge, our AI will adapt messaging to cater to that specific donor.

This update also includes a calendar integration that makes scheduling a breeze. Fundraisers save time with real-time bi-directional calendar sync that enables appointment reminders, bookings, cancellations, and more.

Connect

Spread a culture of philanthropy. Gravyty Connect empowers organizations to strategically execute fundraising efforts outside of the central advancement office. With new updates, advancement leadership can choose to bring in deans, doctors, or other key stakeholders into their organization’s stewardship initiatives. In fact, during the COVID-19 response, many Gravyty customers have expanded their outreach to supporters and donors through Gravyty Connect. Whether it’s for a specific campaign, fund, or giving threshold, Gravyty customizes this experience to meet your organization’s needs.

Guide

The new focus of Gravyty Guide is to streamline and enhance donor cultivation. Guide now provides fundraisers with easy access to three key cultivation touchpoints: follow-ups, birthdays, and stewardship opportunities. And, the weekly Guide also rewards fundraisers with a status check on the progress made over the last five business days — always reinforcing how individual goals add up to organizational success.

Stewardship

Updates to Gravyty Stewardship are all about helping organizations build pipelines. With a streamlined look and feel, Gravyty makes it easy for a stewardship team or individual fundraisers to promptly and effectively show gratitude to donors. For example, organizations can set Stewardship Milestone parameters for specific giving levels or types of donors to ensure they receive the perfect personalized touch.

Speaking of a personalized touch, fundraisers know that it goes beyond the message itself — delivery is also critical. In an entirely new evolution of fundraiser enablement, Gravyty now uses AI to engage robotics and handwrite physical letters to donors and supporters.

John A. Farkas, Jr., Major and Planned Giving Officer for WVIA Public Media uses Gravyty’s handwritten notes feature to increase engagement with donors and build deeper relationships.

“People want a special touch. With Gravyty’s handwritten notes, I can inspire donors and prospects at a much faster pace than ever before. What would take me 15 to 20 minutes per touchpoint takes me only a couple of minutes, looks professional, and makes all donors and prospects feel special,” said Farkas.

Through our partnership with IgnitePost, John Farkas has opened previously closed doors. By asking Gravyty to send a handwritten note, crafted by a robot, he’s securing more meetings and calls with the donors who he’s working to build relationships with.

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