Let's Talk Fundraising
Welcome to "Let's Talk Fundraising" with Keith Greer, CFRE! This podcast is your go-to resource for mastering the essentials of fundraising while discovering how innovative tools and technology can supercharge your efforts. Whether you're a new fundraiser looking to level up your skills or a seasoned professional seeking timely reminders and fresh insights, each episode is packed with practical advice, creative ideas, and inspiring stories.
Join Keith as he explores the core principles that drive successful fundraising and uncovers the latest strategies to make your job easier, more enjoyable, and incredibly impactful. From relationship-building and storytelling to leveraging the newest tech, "Let's Talk Fundraising" is here to help you transform your approach and achieve remarkable results for your organization.
Subscribe now and be part of a community dedicated to elevating the art and science of fundraising. Together, we'll make a bigger impact, one episode at a time.
Let's Talk Fundraising
Turn Prompts into AI Assistants: CustomGPTs for Fundraisers
Ever wish you could clone yourself on Monday morning?
In this mini-episode, I’ll show you how to turn your favorite prompts into something far more powerful: CustomGPTs—personalized AI assistants trained on your best fundraising language and strategy.
You’ll learn how to build three fundraisers’ essentials:
• An Email Writer that drafts thank-you notes, follow-ups, and appeals
• A Board Report Builder that turns CRM data into clear, mission-driven insights
• A Prospect Profile Generator that compiles ethical, actionable donor briefs
And here’s the key: we’ll also walk through how to keep them fresh with a simple weekly reset. In just two focused hours a week, your AI tools stay sharp and strategic—so you spend less time retyping and more time fundraising.
Whether you’re brand new to ChatGPT or already experimenting with prompts, this episode gives you the clarity and confidence to start using AI as a real partner in your work.
🎓 Ready to build your first CustomGPT?
Join my new digital course: The Fundraiser’s AI Starter Suite
🖱 Enroll now at letstalkfundraising.com/startersuite
Inside, you'll get:
• Bite-sized lessons (5–20 min each)
• Step-by-step builds of your first CustomGPTs
• Tools to protect donor data and write better prompts
• Lifetime access and all future updates
📌 Visit letstalkfundraising.com/startersuite to get started.
💡 Want to take the next small step?
→ Free Download: 12 Fundraising Prompts You'll Actually Use
→ Course: The Fundraiser's AI Starter Suite
Hey there, my friend, I've got a mini episode for you this week. That's all about starting Mondays with momentum instead of deja vu. We're taking the prompts we've explored over the past three episodes and transforming them into powerful custom GPTs. And if you're new to custom GPTs, don't worry. I've got something special to share at the end of the episode. So let's dive in.
Keith Greer, CFRE:Do you ever start your Mondays with that uneasy sense of deja vu, wondering where did my momentum from last week go? Your inbox is overflowing, your board updates feel stale and prospect research tabs multiply again. Now imagine pressing play on a clearly defined system three tailored AI assistants, updated and ready to tackle emails, board reports and donor profiles instantly. So let's talk fundraising. Let's start by clarifying something vital about fundraising success Consistency multiplies your results, and consistency doesn't just mean repeating tasks mindlessly. It means creating systems that reliably support your best strategic work. But let's get practical.
Keith Greer, CFRE:Fundraisers face the same challenges every week crafting impactful emails, delivering clear and timely board updates and producing insightful donor profiles. You already know AI shortcuts can dramatically streamline these tasks. But let's be honest without regular updates, even powerful AI tools quickly become outdated and unhelpful. You've probably heard of ChatGPT. Maybe you've even experimented with prompts to speed up your workflow. But here's the catch Generic prompts still require repeated manual adjustments, eating up your valuable time. To truly unlock your productivity, you need tailored AI assistants, tools custom built around your unique style, donors and workflows. These tailored AI assistants are called custom GPTs and they're game game changing for fundraisers. Imagine having an AI trained specifically on your best emails, your clearest board packet summaries and your most successful prospect research methods. Every interaction becomes faster, more accurate and genuinely helpful. But here's the key Custom GPTs need regular refreshes to stay effective. But here's the key Custom GPTs need regular refreshes to stay effective, like sharpening your fundraising toolkit every week. Without consistent updates, your custom GPT can drift, language becomes generic, references become outdated and insights become stale. Regular refreshes keep your tools sharp, your donor conversations fresh and your time freed up for strategic engagement instead of the repetitive tasks.
Keith Greer, CFRE:So let's face the truth Fundraisers who regularly update and consistently use custom GPTs dramatically outperform those who don't. Not because they work harder, but because their workflows are reliably efficient. Their donor conversations stay deeper, their board reports remain sharper and their prospect research is consistently insightful. Take a moment right now and reflect honestly. How much time last week did you lose searching for previous emails, rewriting board reports or updating stale prospect details. That lost time isn't trivial. It compounds weekly into hours that could have been spent deepening donor relationships or refining your strategies. A weekly two-hour reset to update your custom GPTs isn't administrative busy work. It's strategic leverage. It guarantees your AI stays current, your fundraising efforts stay focused and your conversations remain donor-centric rather than administration-heavy.
Keith Greer, CFRE:So today let's redefine your weekly routine clearly and practically, not around generic productivity advice, but around a strategic investment in building and updating your own custom GPTs. Let's clarify exactly what a custom GPT is and how you'll use it strategically each week. A custom GPT is simply your personal AI assistant, specifically trained on your best content to replicate your voice, clarity and insight. It's like creating an AI version of your most effective workflows. And here's the practical overview of how you set up and maintain custom GPTs for three critical areas. With the email draft custom GPT we talked about earlier this month, the first thing you want to do is create a custom GPT trained on your most successful email responses. Imagine having an AI assistant that crafts replies exactly as you would. How do you do this? What you need to know is that you want to upload samples of your best performing emails, whether they're donor follow-ups, acknowledgement updates, and then each Monday, you want to do a weekly refresh. When you get in on Monday morning, feed the custom GPT fresh examples from emails that performed well last week and make sure to add these to your knowledge files. Regular updating ensures your emails remain personal, relevant and highly effective.
Keith Greer, CFRE:You also want to update your board packet custom GPT. Next, build your custom GPT tailored to your board reports, trained to translate raw CRM data into clear, impactful, mission-driven insights instantly. And you can start by uploading a few examples of previous high-performing board summaries, the ones that led your board to take positive and decisive action. Then we'll move forward by doing our weekly refresh. Update this custom GPT each week by feeding in your newest CRM data and any new successful summaries. This ensures each board report stays consistently fresh, strategic and aligned with your mission. We also want to make sure that we're updating our prospect profile custom GPT and we want to create a custom GPT specifically for prospect research. It quickly compiles concise, ethically sourced insights about potential donors and then we train it with directions that gave us successful past prospect profiles that clearly identified philanthropic alignment, career milestones and giving interests.
Keith Greer, CFRE:And when it comes to the weekly refresh. Each Monday, update your prospect custom GPT by inputting new directions or refinements that you had to implement in last week's prospect research. In practice, each Monday, you dedicate two protected hours to refreshing your custom GPTs, ensuring every AI-driven output stays sharp, actionable and donor-centric. This regular rhythm isn't complicated or theoretical. It's straightforward, strategic and proven to save hours every week. But let's talk honestly about a hidden fear that you might have.
Keith Greer, CFRE:This structured custom GPT approach feels rigid and restrictive. Maybe you're thinking I need flexibility and I deeply understand that concern. Fundraisers, we thrive on flexibility, adapting quickly to donor needs and organizational shifts. Yet constant reactivity isn't true flexibility. It's chaos in disguise. Reactivity keeps you stuck in repetitive tasks, losing strategic focus. True flexibility requires consistent structures that free your mental energy for strategic responses, not repetitive administration. Think about your custom GPTs not as rigid obligations, but as a runway, clearly marked and consistently maintained. A structured runway doesn't limit a plane. It lets it safely take off land and respond quickly when conditions change. Your custom GPTs create that reliable runway, empowering you with the flexibility to pivot strategically without being derailed by routine tasks. The structured reset empowers your creativity. It doesn't restrict it. When your foundational processes are reliably managed, you have the mental bandwidth for deeper strategic thinking and more impactful donor conversations.
Keith Greer, CFRE:Embracing regular custom GPT updates isn't just about workflow efficiency. It shifts your entire professional experience from chaotic reactivity to clear strategic confidence. This week, let yourself embrace this new clarity. Invest two protected hours into building and refreshing your custom GPTs, knowing you're reclaiming hours weekly, sharpening your strategic focus and profoundly deepening your donor relationships. So today we've taken the powerful prompts from our recent episodes and supercharged them by turning each into practical, reusable custom GPTs.
Keith Greer, CFRE:Now imagine having tailored AI assistance at your fingertips, transforming your email outreach, your board reporting and your prospect research from tedious tasks into strategic superpowers. Today we've transformed your scattered AI prompts into three powerful custom GPTs your email writer, your board report builder and your prospect profile generator. Imagine starting every Monday clearly organized and ready to engage. Donors report confidently to your board and research prospects in minutes, not hours. And if you're thinking, keith, I love this, but how do I actually build these tools? Step by step, I've got your back.
Keith Greer, CFRE:I'm excited to introduce my first ever digital course, the Fundraiser's AI Starter Suite, designed specifically for busy nonprofit professionals who want practical, hands-on AI skills without all of the technical overwhelm. This isn't your typical tech tutorial In concise, practical lessons, each just 5 to 20 minutes, you'll master exactly what you need to do. Get set up quickly, where you'll select the right chat GPT plan, confidently flip those critical privacy toggles and protect donor data. From day one, you'll learn how to write prompts that work. You'll discover the anatomy of great prompts. Master iterative prompting techniques like yes, and, and critique this and use variables to effortlessly personalize your outreach. Right away, you'll craft polished donor emails faster than ever. And then master ChatGPT's best tools.
Keith Greer, CFRE:Explore ChatGPT's built-in web browsing, image and voice features, immediately enhancing your fundraising communications with credible, timely statistics and compelling visuals. And then we'll build your custom GPTs. Watch me build these three live custom GPTs step by step your email writer, your board report builder and your prospect profile generator. You'll finish the course with at least one powerful custom GPT ready for action. And the best part, you get lifetime on-demand access so you can revisit lessons anytime. You need a refresher Plus. As ChatGPT evolves, the course will update alongside it, ensuring you always have the latest tools and techniques. And enrollment is open now. Just visit letstalkfundraisingcom. Forward slash starter suite or click the link in today's show notes to sign up and get immediate access. This course is your shortcut to turning AI confusion into fundraising clarity. Ready to supercharge your productivity and focus more on the donor relationships that truly matter, let's dive in. I can't wait to see what you'll build. Talk again real soon.
