Empower Your Mission
ACF Pilot Master Class Series

We are thrilled to announce that the Association for Christian Fundraising is presenting a virtual Pilot Master Class Series to increase engagement and opportunity throughout the year.

The first installment, June 16 and 23, will feature Nathan Chappell, CFRE.

This series is designed to meet the needs of a range of fundraising professionals, from daily practitioners to organization leaders who want to grow, adapt, and lead in a rapidly changing environment, with AI as one component of a broader conversation. The sessions are structured as a progression, combining mindset, practical application, and organizational perspective, with a focus on delivering an immersive experience and clear, usable takeaways.

Enhance your professional development journey - the course is being submitted for 4.0 CFRE CE points.

While final session titles and descriptions will be shared shortly, you may register now if you're ready to take flight with this pilot.

Join the Series to Empower Your Mission.
Introductory pricing:
ACF Members: $149
Nonmembers: $179

Register Today

What You'll Learn

Day 1 - The AI-Ready Fundraiser: Mindset, Skills, and the 90-Day Plan

Ninety-two percent of nonprofits report using AI. Only seven percent report mission-level impact from it. That gap is not a budget problem or a talent problem - it is a readiness problem. In this two-hour session, fundraisers and ministry staff will get a clear-eyed look at why some professionals are pulling ahead in the AI age while others are quietly falling behind, and what to do about it. Drawing on research from Harvard, Stanford, and work with thousands of mission-driven leaders worldwide, this session moves quickly from why it matters to what to do, closing with a personal 90-day roadmap participants will begin building in the room. This is not a session about tools. It is a session about becoming the kind of professional who knows how to use them well.

Learning objectives. By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

Identify the three readiness gaps separating AI-fluent fundraisers from those falling behind, and assess where they personally sit on each
Evaluate which AI skills, tools, and habits are worth their attention - and which are noise - using a practical decision framework
Construct a personal 90-day upskilling roadmap with specific weekly actions, learning resources, and measurable milestones

Day 2 - The Fundraiser's AI Playbook: A Hands-On Working Session

Day two takes everything from day one and puts it to work. In this two-hour working session, participants will move through real fundraising use cases - donor research, communications, segmentation, stewardship, gift officer prep - and leave with a working playbook of prompts, workflows, and tools they can use the next morning. We will work in real time with the AI tools most fundraisers already have access to, with specific attention to keeping the human-centered posture that mission work requires. This is the session where mindset becomes muscle memory.

Learning objectives. By the end of this session, participants will be able to:

Apply at least five AI-assisted workflows to common fundraising tasks, including donor research, written communications, and gift officer preparation
Construct effective prompts using a repeatable structure that produces consistent, mission-aligned output
Establish personal guardrails for responsible AI use in donor-facing work, including what to delegate to AI, what to keep human, and how to disclose appropriately

Meet Nathan Chappell, CFRE

Nathan Chappell, M.B.A., M.N.A., CFRE, AIGP, is a thought leader, public speaker, author, and AI inventor, recognized globally as an expert on the intersection of Artificial Intelligence and generosity. Nathan serves as Chief AI Officer at Virtuous Software, where he supports AI integration to help nonprofit organizations amplify mission at scale. In 2018, Nathan founded Fundraising.AI, a global advocacy organization for Responsible and Beneficial AI in the nonprofit sector. Additionally, he is author of two books, "Nonprofit AI: A Comprehensive Guide to Implementing Artificial Intelligence for Social Good" and the 2022 award-winning book, "The Generosity Crisis: The Case for Radical Connection to Solve Humanity’s Greatest Challenges," which has been deemed “required reading for this generation of fundraisers”. With over 20 years of nonprofit leadership experience, Nathan is a global keynote speaker and content contributor. His work has been featured in "The Chronicle of Philanthropy," NPR, "Forbes," "Fast Company," and more. His podcast, "Fundraising AI," is among the top nonprofit technology podcasts worldwide.

Nathan serves as an advisor for the OpenAI Users Forum, the AI for Good Foundation, the International Committee for Information Technology Standards (INCITS), and the Forbes Technology Council.

He holds a Master in Nonprofit Administration from University of Notre Dame, an M.B.A. from University of Redlands, a certificate in International Economics from University of Cambridge, a certificate in Artificial Intelligence from MIT, a certificate in Philanthropic Psychology from the Institute of Sustainable Philanthropy, is a certified fundraising executive (CFRE), and holds a credential by IAPP as an AI Governance Professional (AIGP).