AI-generated charity descriptions
Charitable Impact uses artificial intelligence (AI) to create short descriptions for charities. These descriptions help donors understand what a charity does.
AI-generated charity descriptions:
- highlight a charity’s purpose, geographic focus, and key activities
- make it easier for people to discover charities
- reduce the need for charities to create or update descriptions manually
Charity pages may include AI-generated descriptions when the page is unclaimed. Claimed pages with descriptions added or edited by charity admins will not display AI-generated content.
How are charity descriptions generated?
Charity descriptions are generated using Perplexity, a large language model. The information comes from publicly available sources such as the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) or provincial charity registries.
How are charity descriptions validated?
To ensure each description matches the correct charity, the AI-generated text is checked against official records using three identifiers:
- Charity name: the registered legal or operating name
- Business number (BN): the unique number issued by the CRA
- Charity address: the registered address
A description is approved for display only when all three identifiers match. If one or more identifiers are missing, the description is marked for manual review before being published.
Note:
Even with these validation steps, AI-generated descriptions may still contain errors, omissions, or outdated information. If you notice an issue, use the 'Let us know' link on the charity’s page to report it.
How often are charity descriptions updated?
AI-generated charity descriptions are updated on a quarterly basis to ensure the information remains current.
When a change is identified in a charity’s T3010 filing, that page is flagged for regeneration in a future update.
Charity descriptions are not updated using AI if the page has been claimed and the description has been added or edited by charity admins.