6 min read · 416 Strategy
AI is only as good as the context you give it. Here's exactly what to include in your prompt before you ask it to write anything.
Most people open an AI tool and type something like "write a fundraising email for my nonprofit." The result is smooth, generic, and interchangeable with the output from 10,000 other organizations who typed the same thing. This is not the tool's fault. The tool was given almost no information to work with. It filled in the gaps with statistical averages — which is to say, with the most common nonprofit language it has ever encountered. If you want copy that sounds like your organization, you have to give the tool your organization. That means context.
1. Who you are: a short description of your organization, who you serve, and what makes your approach distinct.
2. Who you're writing to: a specific description of the audience — not "our donors" but "donors who gave once in the last 12 months and haven't given since."
3. What you want them to understand: the one insight or shift you want this piece of writing to produce in the reader.
4. What you want them to do: one specific action, not a list of options.
5. Tone: describe the feeling you want, or give an example sentence in your own voice.
6. Phrases to avoid: list your organizational clichés and generic nonprofit language you want the model to steer clear of.
7. A real story or specific detail: one concrete example the copy can build around.
Bad prompt: "Write a donor email for our nonprofit."
Good prompt: "We are a Christian nonprofit in Dallas that provides job training and transitional housing to refugees in their first 18 months after resettlement. Write a warm, plainspoken re-engagement email to donors who gave in the last year but haven't given in six months. The goal is to invite them back with a $75 gift toward our fall job readiness program, which starts in September. Avoid phrases like 'transform lives,' 'make an impact,' or 'partner with us.' Use the story of Maria, a Congolese woman who completed our program in May and started a job at a food distribution company two weeks later. The tone should feel like a personal note from our executive director, not a mass email."
The second prompt will produce a first draft that is specific, human, and usable with light editing. The first prompt will produce a template.
Even with a strong prompt, AI output needs a final human editing pass. Read it out loud. Does it sound like someone from your organization actually wrote it? Are there any phrases that feel smooth but hollow? Is the story detail specific enough that a reader could picture a real person? Did it actually use the specific ask you requested, or did it drift into vague generosity language? The edit is not optional — it's the last mile that makes AI-assisted copy credible rather than merely competent.
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