Fundraising insights, tech and targeted use of AI tools

Last week, Konna Beeson, Gifted's Director of Innovation and Co-Founder of Granted Giving unpacked what success looks like in a new era of trusts fundraising. Speaking at Fundraising Everywhere's North East event, he shared the latest research takeaways and highlighted the best ways to bring innovation into your trusts fundraising strategy.

The sector picture

Headline insights drawn from Granted Giving and Gifted Philanthropy’s sector-leading trusts insight survey, were based on an analysis of 20,591 UK funders since 2020. Konna outlined the current climate and how charities will need to adapt in response to key trends:

• There are 818 fewer funders than in 2020, yet £526m more in annual grant expenditure.
• Funder closures are accelerating: the gap between closures and new registrations widened from 240 in 2024 to 505 in 2025, with smaller funders closing fastest.
• A widening split between public giving (down from £15.4bn to £14bn year-on-year) and philanthropy/major giving, which keeps rising, and how this is likely to affect trusts fundraising plans.

Four advanced tools and techniques that can support trusts fundraising

Success will also be about having the right tools and tech at your fingertips. These include:

• Browser AI agents to pull accounts and extract named funders automatically.
• Boolean search tips and tools like Serper.dev to help in finding trustees and funders in a targeted and large-scale way.
• AI "deep research” modes to gather vital benchmarking and insights into your charity’s sector in minutes - useful for board reports and demonstrating need in applications.
• A free trusts-fundraising lookup tool (AskGranted).

The bigger message on AI

As Director of Innovation at Gifted, Konna often reminds us that impact and outcomes should always be what’s driving the tech. For us, this means thinking about how we use AI to provide better fundraising services for our clients. In the voluntary sector, it's about keeping the focus on your beneficiaries and using AI to support your charitable outcomes. This means:

• Adopting AI properly, not superficially - the risks of doing it badly outweigh the quick wins, so work with a genuine development specialist rather than just "using AI.”
• Rather than asking how can we use AI? - ask yourself what deliverable would make the biggest difference to your organisation, such as areas that cause the biggest drain on time internally. Work with a specialist to assess what could be done to support this goal.
• Developing warmer, meaningful relationships will continue to be more important than ever as pipelines shrink and funders continue to go invite-only. Embedding relationship building and networking into trusts fundraising teams is no longer optional.