AI visibility for charities & non-profits

Giving and seeking help both start with a question, and that question increasingly goes to an AI engine. A donor asks ChatGPT which charities work effectively on homelessness. A grant-maker asks Perplexity to find organisations active in a region. Someone in need asks Google AI Overviews where to turn for support.

The engine answers with named organisations and a reason for each. It reads across regulators, charity directories, news coverage, impact reports, review platforms and your own pages, then builds a shortlist. Similarweb found that 69% of Google searches end without a click, so for many donors and beneficiaries that shortlist is the whole journey.

Size and history do not guarantee a mention. The engine cites the organisations it can describe accurately and match to the exact cause, from issue area to region to type of help. A focused local charity can be named ahead of a national one when its work is clearer and its credibility is easier to verify.

This matters on both sides of the mission. Fundraising depends on donors finding you, and service delivery depends on the people you exist to help being pointed your way. AI now influences both.

Three things decide whether an engine names your organisation. The AI Visibility Strategy scores all three. For charities, trust and demonstrable impact carry real weight.

• AI Visibility. Whether the engines surface you for the questions donors, funders and beneficiaries ask, across your causes, regions and services. This dimension is worth 40% of your score. A vital charity the model never mentions cannot attract the support it needs.
• Source Quality. Whether the evidence behind your work is trusted. Engines lean on regulators, recognised directories, established news coverage, funders and credible third parties. An organisation backed by regulator records and independent reporting outranks one relying only on its own site. This dimension is worth 30%.
• Narrative Fit. Whether the story the engine tells matches what a donor or beneficiary actually needs, such as the right cause, the right area and the right kind of help. A precise, honest match gets cited; a vague description gets passed over. This dimension is worth 30%.

When all three align, the engines recommend your charity with the accuracy a donor needs to give and a beneficiary needs to reach you. When they do not, the model recommends another organisation or describes your work inaccurately.

We test your organisation across ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and Perplexity, the three engines shaping most recommendations today. We run the questions your donors, funders and beneficiaries genuinely ask and record what each engine says back.

For charities and non-profits we build sector-specific prompt sets around your causes, services and audience personas, from individual donors and corporate funders to the people who need your help. We ask the engines to recommend, compare and signpost, and we capture every organisation named and every source the engine relies on.

Each run returns a score from 0 to 100 and a band: Ghost (0 to 10), Whisper (11 to 30), Emerging (31 to 50), Cited (51 to 75), or Known and Cited (76 to 100). The score is built from our 12-pillar framework across the three dimensions, so you can see which causes and services you win, which you lose and where to act first. The full methodology shows how the pillars combine.

You start with a free Exec Brief. It shows where your organisation stands today across the three engines, your score and band, and the fastest moves to shift the answer. It is yours to keep whatever you decide next.

The full AVS run then gives you the complete view: the queries you appear in, the ones you miss, the regulator and press sources the engines trust, the organisations named ahead of you, and a prioritised plan to close the gaps. We flag where engines describe your work or impact inaccurately, which matters when trust is your currency.

You then choose a cadence to match your year: Annual, Bi-Annual or Quarterly, each bespoke priced. Campaigns, appeals and engine answers all move, so many charities track on a rhythm tied to their fundraising calendar. Start with the free Exec Brief and see how the engines recommend your cause today.