Agentic giving is already changing how donors find and support your nonprofit. Learn how it works, what you can do to prepare, and how to accept agentic donations with Donorbox.
Join the fundraising movement! Join the fundraising movement!Agentic giving is an emerging form of charitable giving where a donor asks an AI assistant to find a nonprofit or campaign and make a donation on their behalf.
While agentic giving is still emerging, how donors discover and support nonprofits is already changing.
A recent study revealed that 4.5% of 1,728 surveyed donors use AI to find and research causes to support. While that number may seem small, it highlights a change in the way donors are finding nonprofits like yours.
Preparing for this shift in giving behavior now can help your organization become more discoverable to AI tools and better positioned to capture more generosity.
Below, I’ll explain how agentic giving works, how your organization can start preparing, and how to accept agentic donations with Donorbox.
Agentic giving refers to a new way of discovering and supporting a cause for donors through AI agents. A donor’s giving journey begins with asking their AI agent to identify a charitable organization or initiative, make a recommendation, and even donate on their behalf.
For example, a donor might prompt their AI agent with the following:
Show me a list of well-known nonprofits in my community addressing food insecurity.
The AI agent will then provide recommended options. Once a donor confirms a campaign to donate to, chooses a donation amount, and authorizes the transaction, the AI agent completes the donation.
If donors aren’t comfortable with an AI agent completing the gift, it can instead find and recommend an organization or campaign, present donation options for the donor’s input, then hand the process back to the donor to complete the transaction themselves.
Where generative AI tools like ChatGPT may influence who a donor gives to, AI agents help them complete the action.
While the donor remains in charge of whether to donate or not, the AI agent recommends which organization to give to and completes the donation once authorized.
The table below breaks down the key differences between generative AI and agentic AI based on donor usage:
| Generative AI | Agentic AI |
|---|---|
| Generates, summarizes, and explains information | Autonomously plans and executes multi-step workflows to achieve goals |
| Helps donors research and compare nonprofits and their specific causes (e.g., nonprofits supporting clean-water initiatives) | Researches, finds, and recommends fundraising campaigns, and facilitates an authorized donation based on a prompt (e.g., Give me a list of nonprofits supporting clean-water initiatives) |
| Tends to guide the conversation | Sets the goal and authorizes relevant actions after being prompted |
| Supports donor research and decision-making | Supports the full donor journey (from research to completing a donation) |
AI is already changing the way donors search online. Zero-click search, chatbot queries, and AI summaries are replacing traditional search for many donors.
Website traffic from AI tools has grown by 10x across the U.S. nonprofit sector since January 2024.
Donors who find your donation page through AI tend to be highly engaged. AI visitors stay more than 70% longer on nonprofit websites than other visitors, including organic search visitors.
And when AI-referred donors do give, their value is stronger and higher than many other traffic sources, with an average gift size of $250.
A recent study also showed that 43% of donors say AI would have a positive or neutral impact on their giving behavior, with 14% saying they’d be more likely to donate.
While AI isn’t replacing the conventional donor journey right now, agentic giving is already bridging the gap between the discovery phase and the act of donating itself.
Donorbox has officially partnered with Stripe to become the world’s first fundraising platform integrated with Stripe Directory, enabling nonprofits to accept agentic donations.
Personal AI agents can now search Stripe Directory, recommend fundraising campaigns created on Donorbox to donors, and complete agentic donations on their behalf once authorized.
Donorbox’s Agentic Donations feature gives your organization an early opportunity to reach donors who use AI to find and support causes they care about.
This revolutionary partnership with Stripe enables Donorbox to connect the full AI-powered giving journey, from initial search and discovery to completing a secure, authorized donation.
Organizations with a U.S. Stripe account can enjoy early access to the feature and securely accept agentic donations with Donorbox.
Donors can now ask personal AI agents like Hermes, Instinct, Meta’s Muse, and Grok Bot to search Stripe Directory for nonprofit recommendations and complete their gift right inside the chat or through a seamless prefilled checkout.
Here’s how it works:
Traditionally, donors interested in a specific cause search online to find organizations whose missions align with their interests.
They then navigate to relevant nonprofit websites that appear in search engine results to research further and decide whether or not to support a specific cause.
The traditional donor journey looks something like this:
Agentic giving is revolutionizing the entire donor journey. It removes the need for donors to manually research and narrow down a list of causes to give to – and helps them complete a donation.
The new donor journey with agentic giving looks something like this:
Now, let’s discuss the steps to prepare for agentic giving.
While agentic donations have not yet replaced traditional giving methods, it’s important to start preparing now so your nonprofit is discoverable when it becomes the norm.
Use these four steps to ensure you’re discoverable by AI-referred donors:
While agentic giving is still a novel concept, it has the potential to uproot traditional giving behavior. With AI already changing the way donors discover and support nonprofits like yours, preparing now can set your organization apart and increase your AI visibility in the future.
Using a fundraising platform that supports agentic donations is crucial here, too. Donorbox is the first fundraising platform to integrate with Stripe Directory. This positions nonprofits like yours to stay ahead of AI-driven fundraising by making your campaigns discoverable and enabling frictionless giving for donors looking to support causes through AI agents.
Ready to lead? Sign up and create your first campaign, and Donorbox will help you get ahead of the shift. Or, if you’re already a Donorbox customer, contact the customer support team to get your campaigns at the forefront of the AI ecosystem.
For more fundraising insights and ideas, visit the Nonprofit Blog. Subscribe to the monthly newsletter to receive the best resources in your inbox.
Agentic donations are charitable contributions facilitated by an autonomous AI agent. The AI agent can research and recommend causes to donate to based on a donor’s preferences and complete a gift once the donor authorizes it.
Organizations with a U.S. Stripe account can gain early access to Donorbox’s Agentic Donations feature, enabling them to accept agentic donations to campaigns created on the platform. This means AI agents can find your campaign on Stripe Directory, recommend it to a donor, and fill in the gift amount and other donation details based on the donor’s input before handing it over to the donor to complete the transaction on your Donorbox campaign page. If Stripe Link is pre-configured, the AI agent can also complete the donation within the chat with the donor’s authorization.
Agentic giving is still an emerging concept and has not yet replaced traditional giving methods. However, as more donors turn to AI tools to find nonprofits, agentic giving is already connecting the discovery phase to the act of giving.
Zero-click search and chatbot queries are replacing traditional online search behavior. Ensuring your fundraising campaigns and/or nonprofit website are credible and easy for AI tools to find and understand will strengthen your ability to capture more donations from donors who use AI to search for and donate to causes.
Jamy-Lee has over 7 years of experience in copywriting and content marketing. With experience teaching in underserved communities and volunteering for animal rescue organizations, she has a first-hand understanding of the challenges faced by mission-driven organizations. She now uses her passion for writing to share practical insights that help nonprofits fulfill their missions.
Join the fundraising movement! Join the fundraising movement!
