As the buzzword of the hour, everyone seems to be digging into the promises and perils of AI. But often, these conversations center around the parts of AI that are easiest to tackle first for grassroots advocacy—like content generation and safety.

Content generation and copywriting speed up our work and make it more creative. Safety and organizational AI policies ensure we're protecting the data and privacy of our organization and supporters. Both are important, but they barely scratch the surface of how AI will transform our industry.

It's a confusing time for advocacy professionals who want to know what AI really means and how we prepare our organizations for the integration of this technology, far beyond coming up with creative subject lines.

AI's role in managing our workflows, data, and personalized communication will grow significantly over the next year. Here's how this will change the nature of our work:

1. Personalized communication. Every time.

Gone are the days of having "a list" of advocates.

Organizations that treat their supporters like a "list" may start to lose credibility and trust. We're quickly heading towards a future where even the shows and movies we watch are automatically personalized to our own interests. Advocates will start to expect personalization on an entirely new level to stay engaged.

AI allows advocacy professionals to engage with their audiences according to personas, interest areas, action types, and more. This ultra-personalized grassroots communication not only increases action rates and engagement; it also gives grassroots advocacy organizations the chance to develop deeper, more meaningful relationships with their supporters online and offline.

2. More grassroots engagement

In-person and digital supporters and networks can grow together.

Human stories and emotions power the work we do as grassroots advocacy professionals, but finding those stories, categorizing them, and using them in a meaningful way takes a ton of work and staff time. Not anymore.

We can extract the same meaning and human connection out of digital sign-ups and communications as we do from in-person coffee meet-ups—on a massive scale—thanks to the power of AI machine learning.

By combining digital petitions, event sign-ups, story-collecting, and surveys all into one machine learning-powered platform, we can easily meet our digital relationships with the same nuance and individualism as our in-person advocacy. It's like AI-powered advocate networking in the palm of your hand.

3. Data-driven strategy

A data scientist for every organization.

Advocacy professionals produce a LOT of data. But a "data-backed" strategy often means just picking one or two metrics and figuring out a few hacks for beefing them up.

While increasing email open rates and advocate actions with a few A/B tests is great, without understanding the full who, what, and why, we risk drying up our lists, tiring out our supporters, and losing steam after a few years.

Now, imagine your fundraising team, marketing team, public affairs agency, and advertising specialist running thousands of tests a day, over thousands of variables, without even trying. When your data is in one place, AI can help organizations very quickly figure out extremely niche strategic answers like: How can we reframe our policy issue for different audiences? Are legislators more likely to open one email over another? What is the party affiliation or voter turnout of our advocates? Which messaging is most effective for each advocate persona?

While machine learning is the less glamorous, more nerdy aspect of AI, it certainly holds the most power when it comes to strategic high-level decision-making for grassroots advocacy organizations.

4. More efficient workflows

No more static to-do lists or Excel spreadsheet exports.

Nonprofits and industry associations know better than most—we wear a lot of hats. Keeping up with the day-to-day, while responding to constantly changing priorities, policy, and news means important strategic work sometimes falls by the wayside.

It seems like we can never keep up. But AI can.

AI campaigns and automation evolve in real-time, changing tempo, frequency, and even copy based on results as they happen—not as you see them or have time to dig through an Excel spreadsheet.

5. The role of AI platforms in advocacy

Our data grows and learns alongside us.

With AI in the picture, your tech stack should function like a command center, integrating analytics, communications, and automation seamlessly into marketing, advertising, fundraising, and in-person lobbying and recruitment.

But there’s a difference between AI-native and AI-“tacked-on” technology.

If your tech stack struggles to keep up with the work you’re doing, it’s like digging through an enormous, unorganized warehouse to see the results of your work—time-consuming and inefficient.

Your data should not only be stored securely but also be readily accessible for real-time decision-making.

Join us in shaping the future of advocacy

As practitioners of advocacy campaigns ourselves, we're dedicated to driving innovation and developing technology that serves the needs of our field. That's why we built AdvocacyAI - the first and only AI-native advocacy platform built by advocacy professionals for advocacy professionals. AdvocacyAI powers the full advocacy lifecycle through modern message personalization, insights, and action.

Interested in seeing what AdvocacyAI can do? Snag a personalized demo or drop us a line.