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Got called out for using AI to draft my charity's donor emails
I work for a small animal rescue in Austin, and last week a regular donor forwarded our newsletter back to my boss with 'this sounds like a robot wrote it' in the subject line. I had been using ChatGPT to crank out our monthly updates because I was drowning in intake paperwork and foster coordination. My boss pulled me into her office and showed me how the language was too polished and generic compared to our usual scrappy tone. Now I'm rewriting everything by hand and I feel like an idiot for not realizing people would notice. Has anyone else had their attempts at saving time backfire like this with your own community?
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hugo_schmidt1mo ago
too polished and generic" kills the whole point of a small rescue's charm.
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piperb931mo ago
Hugo, you hit on something I've been thinking about for a while. When I was helping with a local shelter's website last year, we had a similar debate. People kept saying we needed a "professional" look with clean fonts and matching colors. But the photos of scruffy mutts and the slightly crooked shelter sign were what folks actually loved. We tried making things too neat and it felt like a chain store. We went back to the rough around the edges look and the donations picked right back up. That raw charm is what makes people feel connected to the animals, not some corporate logo.
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bettys511mo ago
Know exactly what you mean. We tried the same thing at our church's thrift store years ago, making everything matchy-matchy and it felt cold. People want the real, lived-in feel.
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