My role
I led the education and in-app adoption work for Intelligent Ask Amounts (IAA) over one year. My team advocated for making IAA the default, educated admins on the feature, and made it easier to turn on.
The problem
IAA uses machine learning to suggest a personalized gift amount to each donor. It helps campaigns raise more, but adoption sat at about 20% of eligible campaigns. Admins either didn’t know it existed or didn’t trust an automated ask.
What I did
- Explained the value in the admin’s terms: what IAA does, what stays in their control, and the evidence behind it, through Academy content and a short video on optimizing donation suggestions.
- Nudged at the moment of decision: in-app prompts in the campaign editor for eligible campaigns without IAA, plus timely announcements as IAA expanded to more campaign types and to recurring gifts.
- Pushed for the default. We made the case for IAA to be on by default, so education shifted from “turn it on” to “here’s why to keep it.” Each update and giving season brought a fresh, targeted prompt rather than one launch announcement.
Results
- IAA adoption grew from about 20% to over 75% of eligible campaigns within a year — nearly 4x.
The default did much of the lifting and that’s the point. Advocating for the default was part of the strategy; education kept admins from switching it off.
What I learned
Adoption of an automated feature depends on trust, and trust builds through repeated, well-timed explanations. Sometimes the most effective education is making the right choice the default.