Raising cash with AI PART 4
Because of variations in application process we’ll be using a flexible prompt that takes into account the requirements.
First make sure you have your list of prospects from yesterday. For a particular prospect find their “how to apply” page or better yet their application form.
Here is an example of such a page:
You’ll find similar pages regardless of what source of funding you are pursuing - be it an angel, a bank, a government grant or whatever else. There will always be a page with details as a way for the funder to filter applicants.
Collect up these pages for your funding list from the last Part. You can ask ChatGPT to find these pages for you but I often find it faster to manually check.
Once you have this we’ll combine the information using this prompt:
Act as a fundraising strategist for my business.
Read my one-pager
And the funding instructions on this page: [webpage]
To generate the funding application
And a cover email
When you do not have specific information leave a placeholder for me to add the details laterIf you don’t have internet access (ie no GPT Plus) then copy/paste the details from the page.
ChatGPT will align your one pager and the funding requirements like so:
Notice how ChatGPT has aligned with the investment requirements mentioned on the website.
Importantly when it doesn’t have the information ChatGPT hasn’t just made things up - it’s left them blank so I can fill them in myself.
This is because we’ve specifically asked for ChatGPT to leave placeholders - otherwise it may have tried to make up details about my management team, funding history and more. We need to make sure to avoid this!
The prompt will also generate a cover letter:
Most applications will have some form of cover letter or introduction requirement which this additional output will help you fulfil.
You job now is to work through each of the prospects you previously generated using your one pager and their application requirements.
We don’t want to automate this too much. Fundraising is still a big task and just spamming 100% AI generated applications is unlikely to work. Instead use AI and the method I’ve been teaching you to accelerate your process rather than replace it wholesale.
Once you have your basic pitch you can go ahead and simply send out your request.
An extra step though is to do some footwork learning about the funder and use this to add some personalisation.
We’ll do this after generating the application and cover letter using this prompt:
Act as a fundraising strategist for my business.
Read my cover letter
Refer to these pages for further details on the investor:
[pages]
And subtly adapt the cover letter accordingly by making one or two references maximum.Give the prompt pages like the About Us or Mission/Vision page in order to collect the personalisation details you need. Or if it’s an individual grab details from their LinkedIn page.
ChatGPT will adapt your cover letter subtly:
In this case ChatGPT picks up on the prospect’s focus on female entrepreneurship. I personally do work with mother and baby refugee charities here in the UK and would feed in details about this to strengthen the letter due to alignment.
You should also match your application to their requirements using a combination of ChatGPT and common sense.
Pulling it together
Tomorrow we’ll start to research the people who need to see our one pager. We’ll use ChatGPT for research to build prospect lists.
A reminder of what we’ll be covering this week:
Part 1: Nailing our funding requirements
Part 2: Writing a one pager
Part 3: Building a funding list
Part 4: Reaching out to funders
Part 5: Killer pitch decks
Until then, keep PROMPTING!
Kyle