The AI tornado has ripped through the web, and everything familiar seems to have been blown away. Your nonprofit certainly isn’t in the cyberworld you once knew, and you’re being told this digital yellow brick road will lead you to an all-knowing agent that will solve all your problems. You are, of course, skeptical. When’s the last time a billionaire tech bro with a god complex really helped anyone, anyway?
So what’s a nonprofit to do and, as importantly, not to do—especially when it comes to your website?
Well, let’s do a deep dive and take a peek behind the AI green screen to find out…
“Pay No Attention to that Man Behind the Curtain”
I’ve worked in the nonprofit digital space for over 25 years now, and, based on my experience, I still see humans playing central, foundational roles in successful organizations across the nonprofit sector. So let’s start with areas that nonprofits should continue to rely on natural intelligence and the power of human connection.
The Joy of Discovery
Humans understand the point of following brick roads isn’t just to end up at some known destination at the end, it’s finding the unexpected companions and unpredictable side quests along the way. AI might give you an instant roadmap to an instantly forgettable place, but humans are better at conducting audience research to inform relatable content and design decisions.
Your website, for example, should be designed and built to serve the human needs of your target audience, making primary research critical to the website design and development process. Hearing from people firsthand via interviews, focus groups, and surveys is essential because humans bring emotional intelligence, empathy, and contextual understanding to conversations that robots can’t match. Humans also are better at picking up on the nuanced needs of specific target audiences, which leads to content and design choices that are accessible, culturally appropriate, and supportive of important communities and niche opportunities.
Creative with a Conscience™
If you want to read a generic story about getting lost, meeting some people, and figuring out a way home, ask ChatGPT. If you want an iconic story about getting lost (with your cute dog!) via tornado in another world, meeting a brainless scarecrow, a heartless tinman, and a spineless lion, and figuring out the meaning of home, well, you’d better ask an amazingly creative human who has a strong moral compass.
While the robots have us beat when it comes to generating templates, humans are much better at delivering a branded experience that is authentic to you. Humans create unique, innovative, original designs that reflect a brand’s personality, rather than producing cookie-cutter, average-looking websites. This is because humans are empathetic and can tell emotional stories that evoke specific feelings, rather than just optimizing for soulless, technical metrics. We also are better at maintaining a consistent voice and message; making inclusive, ethical decisions; incorporating unexpected moments of delight; and aligning everything with organizational goals.
The Why of It All
If the Wizard of Oz—the AI of Emerald City—had his way (and actual power, of course), Dorothy would have gone on an adventure of what and how and returned home without ever understanding why. Human insight makes for a stronger, more balanced strategy because we consider a wide range of quantitative and qualitative factors and understand how they specifically affect our own organization and people. Dorothy quickly concluded that helping her companions become more human would eventually serve her better than the fake Oz news.
AI can provide metrics, tell how other organizations have done something, and give examples of industry best practices. AI can even, to some extent, tailor this information to be more relevant to your situation. There may be a lot of data points (like analytics and website performance) that must be considered when putting together a website strategy, but there also a lot of perspectives (like audience needs, internal objectives, and personnel considerations) to think about too. Only humans will know the true priorities of an organization and how those priorities should be weighed in comparison to each other.
Now, a quick word on a quintessential human weakness—impatience. I’ve seen many nonprofits want to jump into website design and development without having a strategy in place first. At minimum, your website should include clear, measurable objectives, defined target audiences, a draft sitemap and content outline, and a high-level functional specification. If you don’t do this upfront, get ready for scope creep, last minute opinions about what should go on the website, and ‘oops, we forgot about that’ moments. (Want to learn more about how to put together a solid website strategy? Drop me a note!)
I tell Teal’s clients all the time, “Just because you build it, doesn’t mean they will come.” This is especially true now with Google search results displaying AI Overviews and people finding your content on ChatGPT and other AI search tools—people might not even come to your website! In fact, many organizations have seen a 30%+ drop in website traffic because of features like Google AI Overviews.
This makes sense when you think about your own personal behavior on websites. Are you visiting the website of your favorite organization on a regular basis to see what they are doing? Most likely not. Instead, you are likely receiving an email or seeing a social post that piques your interest to click the link that brings you back to their website. This is why a fully integrated campaign with cohesive and consistent messaging across all of your channels (email, social media, paid advertising, and more) is more critical now than ever.
“Of course, some people do go both ways.”
Now, having praised the power of humans, that’s not to say that AI cannot be useful and even necessary. Nonprofits must learn to adapt to and incorporate AI effectively to complement their amazing human staff, especially in two pivotal areas: technical optimization and personalized user experiences.
Not in Kansas Anymore
AI has ushered in a whole new world of how the internet works. It’s no longer enough to pander to Google search crawlers to ensure your beautiful website is indexed and searchable for others to find. You must now master Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), not just Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
GEO is the practice of optimizing the structure and substance of your content so that AI-powered search tools (e.g. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, etc.) surface your content in their responses and citations. Unlike traditional SEO, which prioritizes keywords and links from other websites, GEO focuses on concise, direct, high-quality, and authoritative content. Additionally, SEO tracks performance by user clicks and traffic volume, while GEO tracks brand mentions in AI-powered responses.
In other words, both SEO and GEO require structured, logical code for users to find your content, but optimizing your site for SEO assumes users will actually come to your website. They can then see for themselves that a posted reported is historical and outdated and follow a link to your new, updated content. GEO assumes users will access your content through an AI interface, which may summarize or present the content without the user ever seeing your website. Insufficient GEO increases the risk that AI may misrepresent old information as current, summarize content in a misleading way, or outright hallucinate a wrong answer that still credits you as the source.
So, what can you do to optimize your website for GEO?
- Think about the common questions people have about your organization and provide clear, concise answers to these questions, followed by depth and context. Put your bottom line up front!
- Follow the E-E-A-T method for creating content:
- E (Experience): Does the content creator have firsthand, real-life experience with the subject matter?
- E (Expertise): Does the author possess the necessary knowledge, credentials, or skills?
- A (Authoritativeness): Is the organization or author recognized as the go-to source in their niche?
- T (Trustworthiness): Is the site secure, accurate, and transparent. Trust is the most important element of GEO.
- Write clearly, directly, and in plain language. No jargon! (See my other post about this problem.)
- Build your website with the highest quality coding practices (e.g., clean HTML, clear headings and bullet points, and proper schema mark-up) to make content easy for AI-powered search engines to crawl and index.
- Ensure your website meets security, privacy, and accessibility standards.
AI = Avoiding Inefficiency
Nonprofits are notoriously strapped for resources and time, so take advantage of AI-powered tools for content optimization and accessibility. I strongly recommend you take advantage of some helpful AI-powered tools that will make your website more usable and compliant. (By the way, all these features and more come standard in Teal Media’s website work. Want to know more? Ping me.)
- Article summaries. Use AI to auto-generate summaries or key takeaways of long form content. This improves the experience, since most website visitors scan vs. read. Plus, AI models love easy-to-parse content like TL;DR (To Long; Didn’t Read) sections, bullet points, and Q&A formats. But remember your GEO!
- Alt tags. Meeting modern accessibility standards means all meaningful images must include alt tags (i.e., text description of an image), which are essential for users who cannot see images and require screen readers to browse a website. Use AI to auto-generate these alt tags so you are in full compliance (you can always go back and edit the text afterwards, but at least you are in compliance from the get-go!)
- Taxonomy. AI is great at suggesting appropriate tags for your content based on your site taxonomy.
- Language and format translations. AI has made it much easier to translate your content into multiple languages and create features like text-to-speech.
- SEO/GEO improvements. AI can suggest improvements that will make your content more ‘findable’ on search and AI engines. You can also use AI to identify what content might be missing from your website to better meet user needs and of course improve your SEO/GEO performance.
Ruby Red Slippers > Yellow Brick Road
People aren’t navigating websites like they used to. They no longer want to follow a roadmap—no matter how golden or carefully curated. The patience it takes to read and orient ourselves with how a website is organized has worn thin. They want to teleport instantly to where they want to go, because Google has trained us to enter what we’re looking for in a search bar to get immediate results. This is why a powerful, easy-to-use onsite search is so critical.
On-site search used to be limited to key words or phrases, but AI now allows us to integrate semantic search (i.e., a search technique that improves accuracy by understanding the context, intent, and meaning behind a user’s query) with the natural way humans speak. As a result, on-site search results are more relevant, specific, and easy-to-understand when you integrate an AI-powered on-site search engine. Your site visitors are now able to find what they’re looking for more quickly and easily.
But why is on-site search so important?
- A seamless search experience builds trust and encourages repeat visits because they know they can quickly and easily find what they need.
- People who use on-site search are often already familiar with and further along in their journey with your organization and are more likely to engage with your content and convert compared to folks who are just browsing.
- When people enter search terms directly into your website, we can analyze these queries to inform content development and optimization.
Homeward Bound
Internet users have become more sophisticated and increasingly expect supportive, tailor-made online experiences over static, brochure-style websites. Thankfully, the advent of AI has introduced a whole other level of website personalization. By analyzing user behaviors, browsing history, and location and device data, we can create highly relevant, engaging, and predictive interactions that increase loyalty, engagement, and conversion rates. Homepages can now feel like home.
Nonprofits must move away from the telling their audiences what they “should” know about the organization to enabling their audiences to tell the organization what they want to know.
Here are some ways that Teal Media creates more personalized website experiences for our nonprofit clients:
- Guided experiences. Introducing dynamic, in-context help like, “You seem to be looking for resources about how to protect freshwater in Minnesota. Here are some quick links for you.”
- Dynamic content. AI makes it possible to display content specific to a user’s interest and browsing behavior, rather than simply relying on the taxonomy of the website. Some examples include:
- Related or ‘you might also like’ content
- Menus and navigation
- Personalized search results
- Call-to-Action targeting. Encourage conversions by speaking directly to the person’s interests and online behavior.
- Personalized calls-to-action
- Default donation amounts
“I won’t look any further than my own backyard”
Nonprofits cannot ignore artificial intelligence, yet they shouldn’t be intimidated by it either. Successful organizations will continue to rely on their incredible staff while properly deploying AI tools to increase and strengthen their human connections. There is no doubt that AI is transforming both the web and real life, but AI is not a destination—nor is it something that is happening to you. AI is happening for you and your human-centric mission. As Dorothy famously discovered:
“You’ve always had the power…you just had to learn it for yourself.”
Written with the power of human creativity and researched with the efficiency of AI
