Compassion Meets Innovation: Caritas of Austin’s Playbook to Smarter Stewardship

Every fundraiser knows the challenge: how do you build personal donor connections when your team is stretched thin?

Caritas of Austin has found a way to scale engagement without losing the human touch. With AI-powered tools, their fundraisers are able to focus on bringing lapsed donors back, boosting retention, and strengthening relationships across their portfolios. The result: more touchpoints, higher interaction rates, and a renewed focus on stewardship over solicitation.

Now preparing to expand with personalized video, they are shaping an even more thoughtful approach to donor engagement: one that blends automation with authenticity.

In this session presented in partnership with The Chronicle of Philanthropy, we explored how they:

• Equip fundraisers with prompts to reach the right donor at the right time.
• Segment and prioritize outreach without sacrificing personalization.
• Re-engage lapsed donors and strengthen retention through consistent touchpoints.
• Balance outreach across email, text, calls, and video.
• Build sustainable donor pipelines, even with limited staff capacity.