This as-told-to is based on a conversation with Keith Reed, the CEO of Neon One, a software platform for nonprofits that helps them manage fundraising, donor relationships, events, and more. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Neon One started in 2018 and has experienced slow, steady growth since then.
We’re a relationship management software for nonprofits. Our platform empowers nonprofit organizations to make and maintain personal connections that help them solve their missions through donor management, fundraising support, processing donations, and managing their constituent base, such as volunteers and members.
I joined the company last year with the specific intent of getting us back on a growth trajectory and focusing on customer experiences.
The nonprofit sector has gone through a lot of change over the past couple of years, with budget constraints shifting where donations are coming from. Our nonprofits are seeing a larger percentage of donations coming from high-net-worth donors, but there is still a good chunk of individual givers who want to give.
Our customers, which are nonprofits, have a passion for something. Our job is to help them serve that mission by giving them easy solutions to run fundraising campaigns and events to engage their volunteers and other constituents.
Neon One began using an AI tool to resolve customer support questions. Erin Fender for BI
We’ve improved customer satisfaction
At the start of 2025, customer support was one of our biggest liabilities. Negative reviews about support experiences were appearing online. That’s changed.
Every touchpoint our nonprofit customers have with us has to be easy. Over the past year, we trained our employees to make decisions in the moment to best serve customers and put processes in place to help our employees deliver.
We found that most customer contacts were “how do I” questions. Instead of having our employees research a nonprofit’s technical issues and sending information back to them, which was taking hours, we realized AI could be an easy solution.
We started using an AI tool embedded in our customer support program to resolve some of these questions. AI is great at indexing data fast and finding the right solution, so we can solve customer problems in about 60 seconds instead of hours.
Neon One’s platform analyzes donor history, which can help nonprofits target the right people. Erin Fender for BI
Now, we can better allocate our employee resources. They have more free time to solve more complicated problems that require empathy, decision-making, and judgment.
Our customer satisfaction scores have increased nearly 25% over the past year. Now, our CSAT score is almost at 85%.
Our customers aren’t seeing reviews about poor support experiences anymore. So they’re staying customers longer, referring us to their networks, and sharing stories about the real impact our platform has had on their organizations.
We have happier customers, and happy customers are your best marketing. Nonprofit organizations are deeply networked. They trust each other. When something is working, they share it. That creates a virtuous cycle of growth.
Using AI to help nonprofits increase fundraising
We sit on massive amounts of historical data from our customers, such as information from the fundraising campaigns they’ve launched, the constituents they’ve reached out to, and when.
Our platform analyzes donor history, identifies who’s likely to give again, and helps nonprofits figure out the best way to reach out. With AI, we can mine this data much faster and take the guesswork out of how to help our customers create great fundraising outcomes.
AI makes those insights easier to obtain. At the end of 2025, we launched a beta of our AI nonprofit assistant, Gen. Users can chat with Gen and get a snapshot of donor engagement to figure out who to reach out to and when.
Nonprofits have small teams wearing lots of hats, and time is their scarcest resource. Our AI tools give them speed and clarity, and faster access to insights that used to take hours to pull together. Enabling them to get the right information faster lets them spend more time on relationships that actually move their mission forward.
The company has increased sales by about 50% year over year. Erin Fender for BI
It’s a game changer, but it’s also something we’ve got to lean into, test, learn, and really understand how we can deliver the best benefit to the customers. It’s about ease of use — that’s what our customers want.
Improving customer service, which has helped retain customers and encouraged word of mouth, and using AI to streamline processes have helped us increase sales by about 50% year over year.
We expect to probably triple our growth rate in the next year. We’re also focused on better fundraising outcomes for our customers. How do we help the nonprofits that we serve engage the community? That gives them more fundraising, which means more funds to support their missions.
