Givzey | Version2.ai, the company that built the Autonomous Fundraising category and deployed the first Autonomous AI fundraisers, today announced that its Virtual Engagement Officers (VEOs) have collectively raised more than $20 million in independently generated gifts across healthcare, nonprofit, and educational institutions. This rapid growth doubles the $10 million milestone the company reached just five months ago, in March 2026, and is fueled by donor response to VEOs, with 43% increasing giving compared to the prior year.

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Autonomous Fundraising was created in 2024, when Givzey | Version2.ai first applied Autonomous AI to address the fundraising labor shortage and capacity gap across nonprofit fundraising. Fundraising teams have a finite amount of capacity to reach rated donors with one-to-one communication and a labor shortage adds to this, resulting in a significant capacity gap where many teams are unable to reach large pools of high-potential donors. Version2.ai VEOs address this gap by using Autonomous AI to independently manage year-round one-to-one communication with donors, dramatically increasing the reach of fundraising teams.

The approach is complementary to the work of existing frontline fundraisers, allowing for those teams to continue the critical work of human outreach to the highest donors, while Autonomous Fundraising works independently alongside those teams to manage the next tier of high value donors. The solution works independently to bring donors closer to an institution’s mission and reengages lapsed donors, resulting in increased donor revenue.

“Since we invented and pioneered Autonomous Fundraising in 2024, we’ve had the privilege of working with 200 partners across more than 250 deployments, spanning more than 40 states and into Canada. This milestone of raising $20M for our partner institutions is a confirmation of the work that Autonomous Fundraising does to bring hundreds of thousands of donors closer to these institutions. Givzey’s rapid customer expansion and ROI growth is a direct result of the work we’re doing to drive actual revenue with Autonomous AI rather than incremental efficiency gains that other solutions provide,” said Adam Martel, founder and CEO, Givzey | Version2.ai. “As a team of former frontline fundraisers, we know that the future of Autonomous Fundraising is bright. When donors receive personalized communication, donors respond, they give, and they give more – because they feel closer to the missions they support.”

The VEO is the first and only AI-powered Autonomous Fundraiser that serves as an extension of an advancement team. Using year-round moves management, Autonomous Fundraisers independently work with portfolios of 1,000 donors through personalized text, email, video avatar, and robotically handwritten notes.

“Autonomous Fundraising empowers fundraising teams to reach more donors with the personalized communications that have proven to bring donors closer to an organization’s mission. At the same time, these fundraising teams are already stretching to engage their top donors in one-to-one moves management. This is where our VEOs drive the most impact, providing consistent, personalized communication throughout the year to the donors who are giving, but unassigned to gift officers,” said Emily Groccia, Vice President of Customer Success and Director of Version2.ai.

Frontline fundraising requires specialized approaches to address different donor bases. Givzey | Version2.ai built specialized Autonomous Fundraisers to address these unique needs, which include:

  • The Virtual Engagement Officer (VEO): engages donors throughout the year with communications personalized to the donor and their interests, which leads to the natural outcome of giving

  • The Virtual Planned Giving Officer (VPGO): surfaces unknown bequests and cultivates legacy giving through education and year-round engagement

  • The Grateful Patient VEO: built specifically for healthcare organizations, the Grateful Patient VEO runs six-month moves management journeys with touchpoints timed to the recency of the care experience to align when organizational interest is at its peak

Since October 2024, VEOs have been instrumental for Givzey | Version2.ai partners, functioning as trusted digital labor that expands fundraising capacity without adding headcount. The average partner sees a 4x annual ROI, and VEOs performing in the top 20% are achieving 8x ROI or higher. VEOs have reached hundreds of thousands of donors who had previously only ever received mass communication from their institution. The personalized communication has been welcomed by these donors, with only a 0.1% opt-out rate.

Donors respond well to the VEO cultivation, with 43% of donors giving a larger gift than the year before. Those upgrades are on average 66% more than the previous year’s giving, with one-in-five upgraded donors tripling their gift. Autonomous Fundraising also helps to recapture and retain donors, with VEOs recapturing the average one-year-lapsed donor in three months and the average two-year-lapsed donor in four months.

For universities like Macalester College, upgraded gift size and donor reengagement are part of their VEO strategy:

“When I think about the health of our donor pool, seeing those upgrades and lapsed recaptures is so important,” said Joanna Curtis, Vice President for Advancement at Macalester College, when speaking about her VEO’s ability to reach previously unmanaged donors. “Getting those donors back, and keeping them, is exactly what we need heading into the public phase of our campaign.”

Autonomous Fundraisers are currently deployed at higher education, healthcare and nonprofit organizations across the U.S. and Canada, including the Salk Institute, PETA, The Salvation Army, UNICEF USA, Bucknell University, Baylor University, Temple University, UC San Diego, Wake Forest University, and William & Mary.

About Givzey | Version2.ai

For advancement teams who have thousands of unmanaged donors and limited hiring capacity, Givzey | Version2.ai’s Virtual Engagement Officers are autonomous AI fundraisers that independently cultivate donors year round and drive them to the natural outcome of giving. Unlike AI tools that require human oversight to ‘do more with less,’ segmented marketing, and other solutions to address donors in the middle of the pyramid, VEOs operate completely independently to expand a fundraising team’s capacity and generate new revenue. Learn more at www.version2.ai.

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