Get Started with Development Agent

After onboarding, learn how your Development Agent engages constituents, how to monitor its activity, and where human oversight is needed.

See also our overview and FAQs.

What to Expect

Your Development Agent engages constituents through email and SMS to build relationships and guide each constituent from introduction through cultivation and solicitation.

The agent specializes in cultivating mid-level donors. By default, these are constituents with the capacity and likelihood to give between $500 and $9,999 over the next 12 months. You can adjust this range at any time.

During initial onboarding, the number of assigned constituents increases slowly to ensure accuracy and allow time for engagement message reviews, feedback, and adjustments. As constituents opt out, are reassigned, or become unassigned for any reason, new constituents are automatically assigned.

The agent cannot crawl the web. To help it communicate effectively, configure two settings under Settings on the Development Agent page:

  • Brand voice — Teach the agent your communication style by setting writing guidelines and adding voice samples such as past donor appeals and thank-you notes.

  • Knowledge — Provide information about your organization, such as programs, events, and impact stories, that the agent can reference when communicating with constituents.

You can add brand voice and knowledge during onboarding or at any time afterward under Settings on the Development Agent page.

Disclosure and Transparency

Promote transparency by adding a statement about automated engagement and fundraising to your website and identifying your Development Agent as part of your team.

Engagements

What to Expect

The agent builds a personalized engagement journey for each constituent. By default, each constituent can receive up to eight engagement interactions per year, with at least seven days between engagements. You can adjust this cadence at any time.

The agent schedules and generates messages one at a time, creating each new communication about seven days before its scheduled send date so it can reflect your latest Brand voice and Knowledge updates. Once a constituent is assigned to the agent, their engagement journey begins.

Each engagement plan generally follows this workflow:

Eligibility check

The agent confirms that a constituent:

  • Consents to contact

  • Is not assigned to another fundraiser

  • Was not contacted in the past seven days

Assignment and Schedule

The agent:

  • Assigns itself to the constituent

  • Collects general information to guide the engagement

  • Schedules the engagement, beginning with an introductory communication

Content Review

Scheduled content appears on the Engagements page on the Upcoming tab for 7 days for review. Access the page from the Scheduled communications link on the agent home page. Content regenerates when feedback is given.

When you provide written feedback and regenerate content, feedback applies to the current message by default. Select Apply this feedback to future engagements when you want the same feedback to also influence future generated messages.

Note: Thank You communications are scheduled to send 48 hours after a donation, leaving 48 hours for review.

Engagement and Logging

  1. The agent sends an introductory engagement

  2. The agent records the message history and adds an action to the constituent’s record

Human Oversight and Escalations

Development Agent is designed to work with human oversight. Review upcoming communications, provide feedback to improve future messages, and monitor the Needs Attention section for escalated interactions that require review or follow-up.

Progress and Outcomes

The agent tracks engagement outcomes, especially donations. If no donation is secured, the engagement plan continues with the next scheduled interaction.

Review the Agent’s Progress

Monitor Engagement Communications

Manage Escalations and Actions

From Work Center you can:

From each constituent’s record, you can use the Action tile to focus on actions completed for that specific individual. Actions appear shortly after the agent sends a communication. In some cases, there may be a brief delay before the action displays on a constituent’s record due to system processing and page refresh behavior.

Constituent Opt-outs

Constituents can opt out of agent communications at any time. You can also manually unassign constituents from the agent, such as when they are reassigned to a human fundraiser.