Automated workflows help Big Brothers Big Sisters share more stories

Big Brothers Big Sisters is leveraging AI and automation to dramatically scale their impact storytelling capacity, enabling hundreds of meaningful narratives to be created efficiently each year. By integrating automation into their workflow, the organization has transformed how they communicate the life-changing relationships they foster between mentors and youth, making their impact more visible while reducing manual work for their team.

The big picture: Big Brothers Big Sisters uses Zapier and AI tools to generate 280 individual impact stories annually, demonstrating how nonprofit organizations can strategically implement technology to amplify their mission.

How it works: The organization created an automated workflow that collects, processes, and transforms mentor-mentee relationship data into compelling narratives without requiring extensive staff resources.

• The system automatically pulls information from various data sources, uses AI to craft initial narrative drafts, and enables staff to review and polish the final stories.
• This approach replaces what would otherwise require multiple full-time staff members dedicated solely to story creation and documentation.

Why this matters: Nonprofits often struggle with effectively communicating their impact, despite this being crucial for donor engagement, grant applications, and community support.

• Impact stories that highlight individual successes create emotional connections with stakeholders that raw statistics cannot achieve.
• By automating the process, the organization can focus more resources on their core mission while still producing the compelling content needed for fundraising and advocacy.

Key metrics: The automated system has significantly expanded Big Brothers Big Sisters’ storytelling capacity while reducing the administrative burden on their team.

• The organization now produces hundreds of stories annually that would have been impossible to create manually with their existing staff.
• The time saved through automation allows staff to focus on relationship-building with mentors and mentees rather than documentation.

The bottom line: Big Brothers Big Sisters demonstrates how nonprofits can thoughtfully implement AI and automation to solve critical operational challenges while enhancing their ability to communicate their impact to the world.