A charity can improve the information available about its work, but it cannot guarantee a recommendation in an AI answer. Start with the questions a prospective supporter needs to resolve: what the organisation does, who it helps, how it is governed and what happens to a donation.
Make the organisation easy to verify
Use the same organisation name and contact details across your website and owned profiles. Describe your current legal and registration status accurately. If you have a registration number, link to the relevant public register. If an application is in progress, say so clearly instead of presenting the application as an approved registration.
Explain the work with evidence
Give each important programme a clear page that explains its purpose, location, activities and reporting period. Distinguish money raised, money spent and outcomes observed. Link to published accounts, reports or source records where appropriate. Explain the limits of estimates and avoid presenting targets as completed results.
A useful programme report might state when an activity took place, what was delivered, how the figures were collected and who can answer questions. This is an example of reporting structure, not a claim about a client project. Publish personal stories and images only when you have the appropriate permission and safeguarding review.
Help a supporter understand the donation journey
Explain whether a donation supports a specific appeal or the organisation’s wider work. Identify the payment provider, recurring donation options and how a supporter can get help. Check the journey on a phone, including confirmation and receipts. Keep any Gift Aid information accurate for your circumstances and link to current official guidance.
Check access separately from training preferences
Search discovery and model training are different activities. Review the crawler controls for each service you want to reach. OpenAI documents OAI-SearchBot for search and GPTBot for training; allowing one should not be described as requiring the other. Google’s AI-search guidance builds on existing search fundamentals and does not require a special AI text file.
Earn useful external references
Make reports and project information accessible to partners, journalists and sector organisations that have a real reason to refer to the work. Correct inaccurate listings and provide a clear contact for enquiries. A relevant external reference can help someone verify a claim; it does not prove that an AI system will recommend the charity.
Keep a record of what actually happens
Record the exact question, product, date, answer and cited URLs when reviewing AI search. Separate a mention from a link and record absent or inaccurate answers too. Compare these observations with search performance and completed donations or suitable enquiries. Do not assign an uplift or a financial return to a citation without supporting data.