AI Fundraising Build Pt. 3: Assessing Your Fundraising Program

 

Episode 10, September 29, 2026

 

 

Show Notes:

Before you build a fundraising program, do you know what you already have and what is missing?

 

In this episode, we begin building St. Jude Catholic Leadership Center’s annual giving program by using Pete AI to assess its current development infrastructure.  We provide Pete with background information about the organization and ask it to identify existing assets, missing components, and the most logical order for moving forward.  The assessment helps distinguish between what St. Jude already has, such as a strong mission, effective programs, and community goodwill, and what it lacks, including a formal case for support, consistent donor communications, reliable data systems, planning, stewardship, and clear fundraising goals.

 

You’ll see how AI can serve as a diagnostic tool that helps a fundraiser understand the current landscape, identify priorities, and determine where to begin.  A strong fundraising program starts with an honest assessment.

 

Episode Transcript:

Jenni: Welcome, everybody, to the Catholic Tech Table Podcast. My name is Jenni Riemer. I am a content developer, and I teach classes for Petrus Development. I am so happy to be joined today by Matt. Matt, do you want to tell the people a little bit about who you are?

Matt: Absolutely. As Jenni said, I'm Matt. I'm a senior consultant at Petrus Development. I work a lot with capital campaigns, but also, as a side gig within the company, I'm behind most of the AI that you see put on screen.

Jenni: Absolutely. We're going to get into the details of that very soon. Let me tell you a little about Petrus Development, if you're not familiar with us so far. We are a Catholic development company. We are a teach-to-fish fundraising organization. That means that all of our coaching, online courses, and capital campaign consulting are designed to help Catholic organizations learn how to raise money and build the kingdom of God on their own.

Jenni: In this podcast, over the course of 20 weeks, one episode at a time, we're going to build a holistic development program from scratch. We're going to start with the annual fund. One quick note: whatever program you're using to watch this, subscribe to the channel to follow along, because every single episode is going to build on the others.

Jenni: Also, this is a demonstration podcast, so we will have video in every single episode. We'll be sharing screens and showing you step by step what we're doing. So on whatever platform you're using, click the video to follow along with us step by step. That's basically our goal.

Jenni: By the end of these 20 weeks, we're going to have put together the plans, the documents, the timelines, everything that we need to build a holistic, sustainable annual fund. If that sounds a little ambitious, I can't blame you. Twenty weeks is not a very long time to build something from scratch. But we're going to be able to do this because we're using AI, Pete AI, a brand-new tool that we just launched at Petrus. It's going to help us get this work done more effectively and more efficiently, and allow us to do it in 20 weeks.

Jenni: So, Matt, you are the chief architect of Pete AI. Could you give us a little bit of background about what this tool is?

Matt: Mm-hmm. Yeah, for sure. Everybody has likely heard of Magnifica Humanitas, which is a new encyclical put out by Pope Leo talking specifically about AI. If you haven't read it, I would encourage you to. But well before then, we saw the writing on the wall that we needed to take a lead in AI, seeing the direction it was going, how quickly it was coming up in technology, and how useful it was in the workday.

Matt: As we got together, step one was to create what we have today, which is Pete AI. If you've seen it, it looks very familiar to your ChatGPT or your Claude Codes, your Geminis, all that. It looks very similar, with one huge, unique difference: it's 100% Catholic.

Matt: We built it in such a way that we've put in what are called guardrails to make sure that it stays in the Catholic direction and in the Catholic world. On top of that, we've taken all of the data and everything that the company has ever produced, from talks to podcasts to programs and teachings and things we've written. We've taken every piece of that and put it into Pete, in what we'll call a bucket, so that when you talk to Pete and ask questions, it's formed on that information.

Matt: On top of that, you have the ability to teach Pete who you are and what your organization is. From that, Pete learns you, learns how you work, what you've done, and what your history is, and therefore can put your history and your uniqueness into its replies, into how it writes, how it thinks, and how it guides you moving forward.

Matt: Those are two really unique pieces. We're continuing to grow, to build, and to teach Pete new things so that he learns more. But for us, a big piece of that is how can we make it Catholic? How can we make it good? And how can we help every ministry around the country fund their mission?

Jenni: Yeah. I'm so excited to use it. I've used it a little bit already. I've used AI a lot in my work up to this point, but this is really the beginning of all of us using AI, Pete AI, to build this development program. We're in this step by step with all of our listeners, figuring out how we can get the most out of it.

Jenni: This episode today is brought to you by The Harbor. If you are a member of Petrus' monthly membership community, you get access to Pete AI for free. The Harbor was a creation of Petrus specifically to help people who are doing fundraising for Catholic organizations. It gives you the guidance, the tools, the accountability, and the support that you need to figure everything out with a group and not feel like you're all alone.

Jenni: Like I mentioned, every Harbor membership includes Pete. If you haven't heard of that so far, I'd highly recommend it. Pete is also available on its own, if you'd like another way to use it. So why don't we start today by giving the people a little bit of background on St. Jude, which is the fictional development organization that we came up with to give people that real-life experience of what the process looks like. Matt, do you want to share with everybody a little bit of background on this organization?

Matt: Absolutely. I think it's fascinating, too. When I talk to a lot of programs, we have to talk hypothetically. I think it's beautiful to be able to put the hypothetical into an organization and walk it through the process the same way that we would, and that you should walk every organization, every ministry through the process of building a development program.

Matt: So, yes, St. Jude is a Catholic leadership center. It's got strong programming. It's got a decade's worth of goodwill. We're working with a $535,000 operating budget, but it doesn't have a formal development program, which, as we all know, means starting at the very beginning. How it's been alive for 10 years without a development program is a miracle.

Matt: But we're not going to question God's good work in that. The unique piece is that it not only has great programming, it's got great demand. The demand for all of the programs is increasing, but it's reached a point where informal fundraising, and what it's done to this point, isn't keeping up with the need and the demand for the ministry.

Matt: As we all say, "No money, no mission." The more money you have, the more mission you have. It's actually said with less grammar.

Jenni: We see this situation with so many of the organizations that we work with for coaching. Their ministry has been thriving, but their fundraising is just scraping by, and it's reactive. So this fictional organization is meant to represent everybody out there whose mission is so good and whose programs are so good, but who is really building development from scratch.

Jenni: What we're going to be working on today in this demo episode is a development assessment of what St. Jude has right now and what is missing. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen with you all and walk you through the process of how to do this. This is the home screen of Pete AI.

Jenni: Before I began this episode today, I uploaded a fact sheet about St. Jude in our drafts and letters section right over here, and that is going to give Pete context about my organization, about St. Jude, before we start any conversation. This is a really great benefit of Pete and a great place to start.

Jenni: The prompt that I'm going to give Pete today is, "Using the St. Jude Leadership Center document that's in drafts and letters, assess our current development program, what exists already, what is missing, and then give me what we need to work on in chronological order." One thing I always like to add at the end is "ask relevant questions." Sometimes that cuts down on the amount of bulk that you get back, when a simple question would have answered it.

Jenni: Right now, Pete is reading the document. It's accessing all of the information that Matt put into Pete, the over 20 years of development experience, and it is coming up with an assessment of what we've got. We're going to give it a second to catch up, and then I will walk you through these results. And how long did it take for it to come up with all of this assessment?  About 30 seconds, probably.

Matt: I would guess that's about right.

Jenni: All right, let's start from the top. The first section is what exists already. We're not starting from zero. Here's what we have to build on, and it lists the assets that already exist: a compelling impact story, trusted relationships, a proven mission, stuff like that. We... you know what? We already know that, basically.

Jenni: But where it really gets good is this section right here, with what is missing. Frankly, everything that constitutes a structured development program. All right, Pete, we agree with you there. We have no database, no development staff, no defined ask strategy for the annual fund, no planned giving, no major gifts, no endowment.

Jenni: A whole lot of noes. Then the next section gives us a phased approach of what to work on in chronological order. For phase one, it suggests that we start working on the database, building our master list, and defining our case for support. That's the whole first section.

Jenni: Then phase two gets into the nitty-gritty of the annual fund: launching our first appeal, building the stewardship calendar, starting to identify our top prospects, and making personal visits. It goes on to phase three and phase four, and it gives us a pretty good sense of where we're at.

Jenni: After that, it asks us this nice additional question: "Do you currently have a list of past participants, email lists, things like that?" So it asks these follow-up questions. But for right now, Matt, I want to know what you think about what it just gave us in 30 seconds.

 

Matt: Oh, okay. I think what he gave is phenomenal. Of course, he spit out what we already knew, which was what our assets were, but it also put in, very chronologically, what was missing. One thing I thought was beautiful is that not only did he say what was missing, but he gave data behind it.

Matt: If you look at it, 74% of our funding came from such-and-such. I couldn't finish reading that. You might pull that back up, Jenni. I think that was a really cool point. Scroll up just a little bit. Okay, down a little bit. Right there.

Matt: Right there. He could just turn around and say, "You've got a dangerous revenue concentration," but instead he said 70% of revenue comes from just two sources, program fees and diocesan support, and the diocese is signaling a reduction. So it's pointing out not only what's wrong, but why it's wrong.

Matt: As we all know, one of the biggest things we can get into is being too dependent on a single donor, a single granting organization, or a single revenue source, i.e., memberships. Think back to COVID, when it hit in 2020. Memberships for most organizations that depended on them tanked.

Matt: They had a real issue figuring out, "How do we continue to support our mission when our membership, which has supported our mission for years, has now tanked?" So I thought that was great. I love the chronological order, but also the beautiful piece that was the very last thing it said: "Do you have this, this, or this?"

Matt: It's giving us a starting point. Where can we start? As you know, that's a big part of development: trying to figure out, okay, there's so much to do, especially in an organization that doesn't have a well-defined program. Where do we start?

Jenni: Yeah. When I work with organizations that are truly starting from scratch, they seem almost overwhelmed. Even though we're teaching this systematic approach, the road ahead feels so long that they can't even see the end. But what this does is break it down into steps.

Jenni: All right, I don't need to try to imagine getting to the end right now. Right now, I just need to work on the first three steps of phase one. This work that we do is a spiritual and emotional activity, and to be able to settle our emotions down and say, "This is a system. This is a process.

Jenni: I know what I need to do to get there. I'll get to these steps along the way. I don't need to try to do it all right now."

Matt: Yeah. And Jamie, a fun story: this almost describes what I walked into in my first development job, except you were talking about the road and the end of the road and all of that. To be honest with you, I was farsighted and nearsighted when it came to it. I couldn't see the road, let alone the end of the road.

Matt: I didn't even know where to start to take that first step. Of course, I did. It was very difficult and took many, many months, but what Pete does is shorten that learning curve to figure out, okay, do this, do this, do this, do this. Not only that, I'll help you do each of those pieces.

Matt: We'll work through it, and we'll make sure that it's standardized for good work, for the mission work and the development work that we're doing, but also that it reads well and matches our mission.

Jenni: Yeah, absolutely. I'm very excited about this. Of course, our little asterisk, which I'm going to try to remind everybody of, is that Pete is a diagnostic tool. This does not replace human discernment. If you do this type of activity, you're going to get this recommended to-do list. You get to decide ultimately what order it goes in and how you apply it.

Jenni: That's just a reminder that this is a tool that helps us become the best, most efficient fundraisers that we can be, but it is not itself a fundraiser. All right, so today, wrapping this up, we talked about how fundraising is a process. There's a system that you can follow. But before you build that fundraising program, you need to understand what you already have in place.

Jenni: Is there anything that you want to highlight as a takeaway, Matt?

Matt: I think the biggest takeaway is where we started, and that was just having a clean understanding of where we've been, where we are, and where we need to go. Through our documentation and what we have, that was a great piece of it. So being able to understand what systems and practices we already have in place, being able to understand what our limitations are today, but also where we need to go, and then what's step one?

Jenni: That's a really good point. You talked about not being able to see the first steps or the end of the road when you started your own program from scratch. It's also often the case that not only can we not see that road, but we don't even know what's around us. We're sort of acting blind and isolated.

Jenni: So I think this is going to be a great tool to help people feel less isolated and to connect to a community of fundraisers in Petrus through Pete. Well, I really appreciate all of your input and your feedback, Matt, and I thank you for joining the podcast. Throughout the course of these episodes, we're going to be hearing from a lot of different people and a lot of different perspectives, and we really appreciate you joining us today.

Matt: It's my pleasure.

Jenni: So the next episode, on Friday, is our discussion episode, and we are going to build off what we did today. If we took the first steps of building the development program for St. Jude today, then on Friday we're going to talk about more of what Pete is and how it's different from other AIs. We just touched the surface of that today, and I'm excited that you'll be able to join us again as the chief architect and walk us through more of those details.

Jenni: All right. Thanks, everybody. We'll see you on Friday.