By Tripp Henderson | Staff Writer
Baylor is using artificial intelligence engagement officers to have curated interactions with under-reached donors, keeping them involved in university happenings.
On May 2, 2025, Version2.ai announced in a LinkedIn post that it had partnered with Baylor to develop and implement a Virtual Engagement Officer (VEO) called Faith. The artificial intelligence agent curates donor interactions and engages them with the university.
“Baylor is accelerating its efforts to increase donor engagement, leveraging Autonomous Fundraising to spark more connection and reflection with supporters in a personal, scalable way,” the post reads. “Faith will play a key role in strengthening relationships across the donor community, making it easier for the advancement team to listen, learn, and lead with insight.”
In addition to Faith, there is a second VEO called Sophia. Together, they help to maximize university outreach to a database of over 170,000 alumni and 300,000 friends of the university.
Sarah Kathryn Ricci, Associate Vice President of Alumni and Volunteer Engagement at Baylor, oversees donor and alumni engagement. She played a pivotal role in overseeing the Virtual Engagement Officers.
“[Faith and Sophia] are working to work with a group of people who we haven’t historically been able to get in touch with,” Ricci said. “As they engage with them and they start to interact, that’s really a place where we can say, this person would be wonderful to reach out to. How can we get them more involved in the life of the university?”
The implementation of Faith and Sophia comes amid a university-wide push to use new technology to drive efficiency.
“We’re working on how do we integrate [AI] into just the operations of the institution to make us more efficient and to support students in better ways, and frankly, potentially to reduce our operating costs over time,” President Linda Livingstone told the Lariat in May.
The University’s Vice President of University Advancement, Jason Diffenderfer, said roughly 60 staff members interact with donors regularly, and Faith and Sophia are meant to expand that work.
“Any one of those 60 individuals will work with roughly anywhere from 100 to maybe 200, which would be a lot of individual people at a time — Faith and Sophia, they work with 1,200 people at a time, and they’re able to interact with them on a unique basis,” Diffenderfer said.
The VEOs and donors interact via text or email. Diffenderfer gave the example of Faith or Sophia sending a question to a donor and, based on the response, curating a conversation that sources information on university happenings to get donors involved.
Naturally, ethical questions arise with the use of AI in fundraising, especially around privacy and data. Ricci said the university “takes privacy seriously,” and individuals can opt out of interacting with Faith or Sophia if they wish.
Baylor alumnus and donor Annette Boorman said she has not had any contact with Faith or Sophia, but if she did, she would opt out of the interaction in favor of the human connection she currently has with the university. Boorman said that “personal touch really reminds [me] of the real reason why [I] love Baylor so much.”
“It’s worth it for me to take the time with my in-person donor contact because I get the chance to encourage him as well, so there’s a much more reciprocal relationship,” Boorman said.
Ricci emphasizes that Faith and Sophia are not meant to replace human interaction with machines.
“We see [VEOs] as a way to actually create more relationships because we want to see more people raising their hand to do something with Baylor,” Ricci said.
Diffenderfer also echoed the importance of preserving human connection and its crucial role in success.
“Baylor is such a community-based university that builds community, that wants to foster community,” Diffenderfer said. “We look at this as an opportunity to continue to do that, but we never want it to lose that human connection. That’s very, very critical to our success in fundraising and engaging individuals.”
AI use in fundraising has yet to be widely implemented across colleges and universities. As Baylor pioneers new territory, Diffenderfer said he finds it “kind of exciting too, that we can be a leader in this space and demonstrate how to do it well.”
