Artificial intelligence is accelerating progress in almost every field. But in the social realm, it exposed a gap.
Despite their critical role as the first line of defense for vulnerable communities, nonprofits still risk falling behind in the age of artificial intelligence. Society demands that nonprofits use 20th century technology to solve 21st century problems. At the same time, they face sociopolitical headwinds, lost funding and a fight for survival.
We cannot expect nonprofits to invest in technological innovation unless we join forces across sectors to provide them with resources. Engineers and activists, policymakers and philanthropists. If AI is to be a force for good, we need to fund the technology, fund the future, and fund it together.
The emerging class of creative entrepreneurs—AI-powered nonprofits—represent one of the most promising frontiers in social impact. While for-profit companies are building artificial intelligence that fundamentally changes daily life and the global economy, AI-driven nonprofits are using the same technology to solve humanity’s most pressing challenges. They are joining forces to transform education. Advance economic empowerment. Changing health outcomes. They are demonstrating resilience that the private sector alone cannot achieve.
take Vocational Village. Since 2011, CareerVillage has been democratizing access to career information and supporting those who need it most. CareerVillage isn’t shying away from the hard questions about how artificial intelligence will impact the labor market, but it’s jumping in. Their AI-powered “Coach” platform helps job seekers navigate the changing labor market by providing mock interviews, resume support, career navigation, and more. Coach has provided personalized instruction to 50,000 learners, the majority of whom are teenagers from low-income families, students of color, and women.
But this is just an example. new data Excerpted from Fast Forward’s 2025 AI for Humanity report, created with support from Google.org found that AI-powered nonprofits like CareerVillage are leading the early transformation of AI in the nonprofit sector. We find nonprofits building AI solutions of all sizes and stages. Of the AI-powered nonprofits surveyed, 40% have been using AI for a year or less. Nearly one-third (30%) have budgets of $500,000 or less.
It’s no surprise that the smallest, most nimble nonprofits are leading the charge. Nonprofits are always looking for ways to do more with less. In this way, AI-driven nonprofits are similar to traditional nonprofits—they care about impact and efficiency. But AI-powered nonprofits are organized differently, and they have different needs.
For one, AI-powered nonprofits need technical expertise from their executives and staff. Technology and data are not unrelated. They are core program costs. Building technology responsibly costs money and takes time to make an impact. This leaves many AI-driven nonprofits in a Catch-22: Capital is needed to prove impact, but proven impact is needed to unlock capital.
To do this, AI-driven nonprofits need support at every stage of the impact cycle: from research and development, to sustaining mid-term growth (where many nonprofits stall), to scaling proven models.
Importantly, 84% of AI-powered nonprofit respondents said funding would best help them further develop and scale AI. This insight is important because the data shows a clear relationship between resources and coverage. With minimal budgets, AI-powered nonprofits are serving thousands of people (median just under 2,000). When the budget exceeds $1 million, the median coverage jumps to 500,000 people. AI-powered nonprofits are more than $5 million in size and are reaching millions of people—impacting an average of 7 million lives.
To realize their full potential, they need the support of alliances, shared infrastructure, and cross-sector collaboration with technical experts, policymakers, and funders.
There is no better example than this Work. The smartphone-based platform employs workers in rural India to complete AI data tasks to train large language models, such as translating less commonly used languages. Karya seizes the opportunity to transform the AI economy—improving global technology while providing income and upskilling opportunities for more than 100,000 workers.
Karya also licenses its technology to local governments and peer organizations. Using Karya’s platform-as-a-service model, digital green Obtain voice data directly from Kenyan farmers to fine-tune agricultural AI models. Localized models outperform leading models on domain-specific tasks, proving that community-generated data can drive smarter, more relevant AI. Karya provides the technology, Digital Green leads the field operations, and philanthropic funding helps bridge the two.
Even within the nonprofit sector, partnerships can act as force multipliers. Artificial intelligence can bring positive benefits to humanity, but we all have a role to play in ensuring this happens.
Every once in a while, history shows us moments that require a fundamental shift in approach. This is one of them.
That starts with giving nonprofits a seat at the table.
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