Automated Charity Enquiry Inbox

For

Operations managers at small charities

Solves

A shared inbox fills with repetitive questions and spam, causing staff to miss volunteer enquiries and waste time on triage.

Delivers

Categorised email logs, automated replies for routine queries, and drafted responses for complex queries ready for review.

Built in

about 3 weeks of creation time, MVP in 3 days

Investment

$6,000 for the MVP, $19,500 for the full product

Run it

Inside your business, or as part of your offer to clients

For operations managers at small charities, turn incoming emails into categorised interactions and sent replies, and the problem it addresses is staff burnout caused by overflowing inboxes.

1. Classify incoming messages by type.
2. Generate instant replies from approved templates.
3. Personalise replies with sender details.
4. Draft complex messages for human review.
5. Log all interactions in a CRM or spreadsheet.
6. Flag urgent enquiries for immediate attention.

What goes in, what comes out

The workflow

1. In
   Start with

   Approved reply templates, email account credentials, classification rules, and existing CRM or spreadsheet integration details.

2. 1

   Connect email account

3. 2

   Define classification rules

4. 3

   Upload approved reply templates

5. 4

   Review daily draft digest

6. 5

   Approve or edit drafts

7. 6

   Send approved replies

8. 7

   Log interaction history

9. Out
   Finish with

   Categorised email logs, automated replies for routine queries, and drafted responses for complex queries ready for review.

AI does the heavy lifting, people stay in charge

Use language models to read and classify emails and generate text from templates. A human must review and approve any message involving money or personal data before sending.

What your team sees

Key screens: Inbox dashboard, template library, review queue. Use a central dashboard showing email volume and categories, a template editor for approved replies, and a queue panel for drafts needing human review. Display status flags for urgent items. In this product, the first view is the dashboard, followed by the template library and review queue.

Accounts and administration

User roles for admins and reviewers, version history of templates, approval workflows for drafts, audit logs of all email interactions, and access controls for sensitive data.

Integrations and data access

Gmail or Outlook, Google Sheets or Excel, and existing CRM systems.

We build with our own AI software development factory, so most implementations take days to a few weeks of creation time, not months. You see working software at every step, and exact timing depends on availability.

1. 1

   Scoping call

   Day 1

   Thirty minutes on your process, your data and how you want to run it: for your own team, or for your clients. You get a fixed scope and price for the MVP.

2. 2

   MVP

   3 days

   One buyer segment, one recurring use case. Manual review in the loop. Built by our AI software factory.

3. 3

   Paid pilot

   4 days

   Accounts, roles, review states, audit trail and the first integration, hardened for two to three paying pilot customers.

4. 4

   Full product

   6 days

   Self-serve onboarding, billing, monitoring and the wider integration set.

5. 5

   Run and improve

   Monthly

   We host, monitor and improve it for a fixed monthly fee, or hand it over to your team. How the retainer works.

Why we start with an MVP

An MVP, or minimum viable product, is the smallest version that your users can actually work with. It is not a cheap version of the full solution. It is a test, built to answer the questions that decide whether the rest is worth building.

1. Pick the riskiest assumption. Here: will operations managers at small charities use it to solve "A shared inbox fills with repetitive questions and spam, causing staff to miss volunteer enquiries and waste time on triage"?
2. Build only what tests it. One team, one use case, a few core modules. People do the rest by hand for now.
3. Run a paid pilot. Compare the time spent on email triage before and after implementation, and measure the percentage of volunteer enquiries answered within 24 hours.
4. Measure, then decide. Track hours saved per week on email triage and and increase in volunteer enquiry response rate. Then expand, change course or stop, with evidence instead of opinions.

MVP scope for this solution. One charity client, one shared email address, handling volunteer enquiries and donation receipts, with manual review of drafts.

After the MVP. Automated donation receipts, spam filtering, and integration with volunteer management software.

What the build depends on. Email API access, large language model integration, and secure data handling protocols.

A planning range to start the conversation, not a quote. You pay per phase, so you can stop after the MVP.

Running costs per month

A rough indication of monthly hosting and AI model costs once it is live, not tested. Real costs depend on usage, file sizes and the models chosen.

Your brand, or this one

Run it under your own brand, or start from this concept style.

Selling it to your own clients: the go-to-market playbook

Pricing to test

$500 per month per shared inbox.

Message to test

Never miss a volunteer enquiry again with an inbox that sorts itself.

Where to find buyers

Charity networking events, non-profit directories, and social media groups.

Lead magnet

A free audit of your current email response times and volume.

The first 30 days

1. Week 1: Connect to the shared inbox and map email types.
2. Week 2: Build and approve the top five reply templates.
3. Week 3: Launch the auto-reply and draft queue.
4. Week 4: Review the daily digest and optimise the template library.

Paid pilot

Compare the time spent on email triage before and after implementation, and measure the percentage of volunteer enquiries answered within 24 hours.

Success metrics

Hours saved per week on email triage, and increase in volunteer enquiry response rate.

Retention and expansion

Recurring monthly fees based on inbox volume and template library expansion.

Why clients would pick it

Building a library of high-quality templates for non-profits and fine-tuning the AI on the specific language used in charity communications.

Alternatives and positioning

Manual email sorting, generic CRM auto-replies, and shared spreadsheets for tracking enquiries.

Main delivery costs

AI compute costs, template development time, and ongoing maintenance.

Strict rules preventing AI from sending messages without human approval, especially those involving money or personal data, and a manual override for any flagged content.