Vered Siegel on Why Judgment Is the New Scarce Resource in Fundraising

by | Mar 2, 2026 | Learning Edge Blog, Major Gifts, Prospect Research

What happens when AI can generate a list or a prospect summary in seconds—but still can’t tell you what to do with it?

That’s the central question Vered Siegel lives and breathes every day as Director of Prospect Management and Research at American Friends of the Hebrew University. And her answer is both clarifying and a little bit provocative: information is no longer the scarce resource. Judgment is!

Vered has spent nearly two decades in advancement services and fundraising operations—holding almost every role a fundraising office has to offer. She started as a development assistant at a homeless shelter, worked in-house at social services nonprofits, then moved into the vendor world at Blackbaud as a senior consultant and program manager for Raiser’s Edge NXT. She led large-scale implementations, hosted webinars that reached thousands, and then spent two years at CCS Fundraising leading enterprise-level fundraising systems strategy.

So What Is Advancement Services, Exactly?

For those outside higher education, the term “advancement services” can sound abstract. Vered puts it plainly: it’s the part of fundraising that designs and manages the systems that make relationship-based fundraising possible at scale. That includes prospect research and management, but also data and reporting, CRM systems, gift and bio processing, compliance, analytics, and increasingly, governance.

As she explains it, if you’re a prospect researcher, you’re already working within this ecosystem—even if you’ve never used the label. And the “at scale” piece matters, even for small shops. You may be the only person doing database administration, prospect research, and gift entry—but the fundamentals of the work are the same everywhere.

Judgment Is the New Scarce Resource

Generative AI has shifted the landscape in a fundamental way. We can generate prospect lists, summaries, and signals faster than ever. But as Vered points out, faster doesn’t mean better.

“One of the biggest shifts generative AI has introduced is that information is no longer the scarce resource. Judgment is.”

For prospect researchers, this is actually good news—if you’re paying attention. As software handles more of the hunting and gathering, the researcher’s role shifts to something more valuable: being the person in the room who can slow things down, ask the right questions, and connect data to real decisions.

That means asking: What decision are we trying to make? What assumptions are embedded in this data? What are the risks of acting on this information? It also means knowing where AI adds value—and where it can sneak in bias, false confidence, or simply a wrong answer presented with authoritative polish.

The Data-to-Information-to-Knowledge Pipeline

Vered offers a framework that’s worth writing down—it’s the data-to-information-to-knowledge pipeline, and it goes like this:

  • Relevant data must be gathered. Software tools including generative A.I. are getting better at this every day.
  • The first transformation is organizing the data —and if the data is wrong to begin with, good luck. Correct data, correctly organized, gives you good information.
  • The second transformation is where researchers earn their seat at the table. Turning information into knowledge requires human judgment. Experience. Context. Values. And this is the transformation that AI simply cannot perform.

“Only human judgment can transform information into knowledge. Skip that final transformation at your own peril,” Vered warns us.

She puts it starkly: some practitioners convey information as if it were knowledge. Really good advancement services professionals—really good prospect researchers—insert themselves in that second transformation. They help fundraisers know what to apply to information to make it actionable.

Why This Conversation Matters Now

Researchers who weren’t paying close attention to the shifting expectations of their role are getting caught off guard. The expectation now—whether or not it’s been clearly articulated—is that researchers will translate information into insight and insight into strategy.

Vered gives us the framework, the philosophy, and the professional permission to step fully into that role. Listen to the full episode to hear her take on all of it.

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