GEO Tips for Impact Organisations

Imagine you want to donate or give grants to a charity in a specific area of focus. You might go to ChatGPT and ask ‘Which [area of focus] charities have the biggest real-world impact?’.

If your charity is going to come up in the answer, you’ll need to check out your GEO ranking. The shift from SEO to GEO (generative engine optimisation, and how your organisation is spoken about on LLMs), is fast moving and we don’t know yet what works for sure, but it’s likely that much of what worked for SEO will still help get you mentioned.

We asked 3 leading LLMs questions about 54 different impact organisations who attended the first webinar in our Summer School series, so they left with some useful insights about how LLMs talk about their organisation. We ran 2500 questions and analysed the answers to find common GEO tips for the sector.

Here’s a summary of GEO tips that kept coming up;

Our sample appeared to show LLMs (particularly ChatGPT and Claude) defining impact based on GiveWell frameworks (transparent, quantitative cost-effectiveness analysis that measures impact as lives changed, saved, or improved per pound spent). Being well known will get you on the list but proven impact, published in the right format might get you higher up the list.
See what the organisations ranked first are being quoted for and publish your own version of the same content.
Conflicting information about name, funding, history or other organisations your name could be mistaken for makes you harder to find. Make sure you have a thorough About page with founding date, history, funding details, any rebrands (formerly known as XXX), preferred name, etc. for accuracy and continuity.
Name your competitors and what puts you ahead of them. LLMs will make the comparison with or without your wording so give a version that focuses on your USP.
Scandals, criticisms (such as funding) or generic industry counter-narratives (such as inefficient) can surface alongside information about your organisation, so make sure your version is published so LLMs use your wording for the story.
Get into the third-party sources, shortlists and sector sources lists, not just your own site.