Dusty Rhodes “Moving From AI Experimentation..”

May 24, 2026

Moving From AI Experimentation to Exponential Impact

Your Staff Uses AI | Your Donors Use AI | Are You Leading or Lagging

When ChatGPT was launched to the public in late 2022 social media exploded with hilarious experiments as people discovered this new AI toy! We have all seen the crazy caricatures, other-worldly videos and self-created ‘action figures’ complete with misspellings. (see image)

Seriously though…

Now 3+ years later while some workers have grown concerned AI may take over their job, there has also been a rapid rise in the knowledge and usage of AI in various workplaces:

Employees commonly see AI tools taking online meeting notes and creating action items.
Other staff use it for simple routine tasks like helping draft communications and reports.
On a more sophisticated level engineers can prototype faster using AI for accelerated iteration.

AI and Christian Media

Closer to home the most recent Jacobs Media CMB Tech Survey revealed while there is continuing concern over AI’s impact, there’s been a dramatic increase in the regular use of AI by our own Christian Radio P1s.1 In 2024 13% said they used AI at least weekly or even daily. But just one year later in 2025 that percentage nearly doubled to 24%! (see image)

Imagine what that percentage might be now that we are nearly halfway into 2026!

What about those of us on this side of the mic who work in Christian media – what does AI adoption look like and how is it being used?

One radio Program Director said he and others in the building use AI to brainstorm promo and on-air breaks in preparation for fundraising campaigns on their stations. And because the stations are in the process of formulating policy, all their AI work is pretty much ‘ad hoc’ and by individual for now.
Tony Weir, CEO of The House FM/House of Praise/House Rewind, said he’s been using AI for a year now to “craft most communication with donors, both on-air and in donor emails.” Tony also reported that although he hasn’t tried much grant writing, he did use AI for one grant application. He discovered the content AI created “needed very little tweaking” and in the end he won a grant amount! He said that experience taught his team they should “not be intimidated by grant writing in the future.”

AI and Faith-based Nonprofits

To help see our organizations in a larger context, a new 2026 study of Christian ministries and other nonprofits reveals insights into our sector’s adoption and use of AI:2

92% of organizations use AI tools in some capacity and mostly for experimentation.
81% use AI on an ‘ad hoc’ basis and most of that use is reactive vs. proactive.
47% of nonprofits have no AI governance policy providing guidance for their staff.
Only 7% report major improvements in their team’s capacities to get things done at a scale that reduces staff execution time.

Likewise most organizations using AI are not seeing major improvements, and its not because the tools are bad. It is because most people are not using AI for the way it was designed. Think of it, not as a robust search engine but rather, as a highly capable assistant or a chief of staff or a subject matter expert X10. Just as you would want to onboard a new staff person in ways to increase their likelihood of success, AI will only be as helpful and valuable to you as you train it on you and your organization.

Context is everything. The organizations seeing significant results are ones who have built a knowledge space by teaching their AI who they are – their mission, history, leadership, target audience, donors, vision, accomplishments, new goals, budgets, etc. It is understandable some organizations will move more slowly in their adoption, especially if early experiences with AI output felt unreliable, ineffective or out of alignment with mission.

And let’s be honest, some CEOs are nervous when it comes to implementing new technology that touches revenues (ie: Donors). Just hearing the words fundraising and AI in the same sentence may trigger a boss into The Office Michael Scott’s panic mode who starts thinking, “No! God! Please! No!” However, the question is no longer whether to use AI but, as the study says, “how to use it in ways that strengthen trust, deepen relationships and actually improve fundraising outcomes.”

What significant results with funders might we see once we formally adopt and appropriately use AI in our organization? Here are two examples I learned about from a fundraising executive friend at a New York City college.

She identified 1,000 smaller gift donors who had capacity to give more and informed them in advance they would be hearing from a newly created (AI) Virtual Engagement Officer named Benita who would be engaging them via email and text. The result was not a single donor opted out, and 20 long-lapsed donors re-engaged their giving with several increasing their gift amounts!
She used AI to notify her of potential grant funders and to help prepare all content for submitting their application. In just 3 months, she secured a $500,000 grant unknown to her previously and, in her words, “also increased funding from two existing funders thanks to better and faster turnaround with more targeted content!”

What’s the Urgency?

Despite radio’s amazing success stories including being the top-rated station in a market, it has its growing challenges such as competing against multiple audio distribution channels, evolving vehicle dashboards making it harder to find radio stations, a proliferation of new donor-supported nonprofits every year – and the big one – a declining number of donors.

Last March I reported a news headline that last year we saw a decreasing number of donors even though there was an increasing amount of donated dollars – and for the 5^th consecutive year! It was true for nonprofits in general, but also true for faith-based organizations.

And now only 4 months into 2026, we can see donor-supported faith-based nonprofits are already seeing an estimated 3.7% fewer donors giving than this time last year! (see graph)

The donor issue is the big one! Because if we can maintain strong relationships with current donors, and implement ways of finding more like them who believe in our mission while re-engaging those who gave in the past, we can trust God for the resources we need to address the challenges coming our way and, ideally, bring all these donors with us wherever we go and however we continue impacting lives for Jesus into the future!

If adopted and implemented well, our use of AI will move beyond individual experimentation to teams and systems of organizational alignment, helping us manage funding relationships more efficiently and effectively.

How To Begin Moving from Experimentation to Exponential Impact

The following steps, outlined in more detail in the Nonprofit AI Adoption Report, can get you moving in the right direction:

Assign a cross-functional AI team for guiding how AI is used across the organization. This is the first step in moving from experimentation to capability. The purpose of this team is alignment, ensuring that AI use reflects your organizational mission, values, donor trust, and priorities before it scales.
Establish AI governance ownership to define how AI decisions get made and revisited over time. Governance is about ownership, accountability, and direction. This includes who evaluates new AI tools, who decides when experiments become standard practice, and how impact, risk, and priorities are reviewed at the organizational level.
Create an acceptable use policy to set direction and create action. An acceptable use policy translates governance into clear, day-to-day guidance staff can rely on. Its role is to remove uncertainty, not slow people down. When expectations are shared and explicit, teams use AI more confidently and more responsibly.
Document what works. Spend 30 minutes capturing the 5 AI approaches your team uses most often. Have your AI team create a shared document. Make it accessible to everyone. When someone discovers something new that works, add it.
Pair the right tools with the right strategy. Not all AI tools solve the same problems. Once priorities are clear, choose tools that reinforce the outcomes you want to achieve, not just general productivity gains. The goal is to move beyond experimentation and give teams consistent, repeatable support in their daily work.

1 – Jacobs Media CMB Tech Survey, a study of 15,000+ Christian Music Radio Listeners; Sep-Nov 2025.

2 – Nonprofit AI Adoption Report, a benchmark study of 346 organizations on their AI adoption, impact and readiness; Virtuous & FundraisingAi; December 2025.

Dusty Rhodes is a strategic executive leader helping Christian media and other nonprofits grow revenues to fulfill their missions for wider and deeper impact! He works alongside leadership creating visionary strategic plans and revenue strategies to fund them for sustainable growth. Dusty is a certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE), a member of the global Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP), and the national faith-based executive peer organization CEO Experience (CXP).

Contact Dusty: DustyRhodes777@Outlook.com and at www.LinkedIn.com/in/DustyRhodes777