A Landscape of Good
Mapping tech-tonic shifts in nonprofits.
I originally posted these thoughts in Stanford Social Innovation Review with Google.org's Brigitte Hoyer Gosselink.
If you're a regular reader of this newsletter, you know it’s all about spotlighting nonprofits using AI for social good. Each month, I share exciting stories (and the occasional pun) about AI-powered nonprofit builders. But lately, my team and I have noticed something bigger growing. We're not just seeing isolated peaks of innovation; we're witnessing the formation of a vast new landscape of AI-powered social impact. We found ourselves wondering how all these solutions fit together in this terrain. Our goal was to understand not just what kind of AI tools nonprofits were using, but how they were deploying them to drive impact. While plenty of private sector AI landscapes exist, the nonprofit sector has remained uncharted territory. So, we set out to map this exciting new ground ourselves.
The result is a growing AI-powered nonprofit (APN) landscape. After diving into nearly 100 use cases, picking the brains of tech-for-good leaders, and chatting with dozens of builders, we've identified four main categories of nonprofit AI use for impact: Advising, Structuring Data, Translating, and Platform. Each category contains sub-branches, which you can explore in our Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR) series. We also spoke with The Chronicle of Philanthropy about it. Over the next month, we'll publish three more SSIR articles on APNs’ impact in climate, health, and education. But for now, let's tour these categories:
Advising
This category is all about AI that scales human-to-human experiences. It’s the friendly, user-facing AI we chat with daily — think Gemini and ChatGPT. It's like having a wise mentor in your pocket, minus the lint. What sets AI-powered nonprofits apart in this space is their focus on creating products for highly specific, often overlooked audiences.
+ Joy Education exemplifies this in their work reducing inequities in literacy support for low-income communities. Young readers read to an AI-enabled friend for three minutes. The AI diagnoses the reader’s areas for growth and then provides teachers and parents with a customized learning plan.
Structuring Data
AI solutions in this category supercharge what humans can do with data. Before AI tools were common, we needed a data scientist to unravel big, messy datasets. We used to have to speak binary. Now, thanks to generative AI, machines respond to our language. These accessible AI tools mean that even those without technical expertise can make sense of — and interact with — data.
+ Reboot Rx uses AI to sort through hundreds of thousands of research papers to identify generic drugs suitable for cancer treatment. It would take years to review the thousands of published studies, but their tech reduces this time to a matter of weeks.
Translating
AI in this category is used to…translate! Quality translation is key to expanding access. We’re seeing AI for translation deployed across sectors, unlocking opportunities all over the globe. And it’s more than just translating language. With generative AI, nonprofits can bridge contexts too. This especially matters for nonprofits that work across communities, cultures — and even species.
+ Earth Species Project uses deep learning to visualize semantic representations of language to unlock communication with our non-human counterparts. It has already developed AI models that emulate a variety of species, with the aim of having “conversations” with animals.
Platform
Think of this as the "teach a person to fish" approach to AI. This type of AI empowers more nonprofits to deploy their own AI tools. Rather than delivering pre-packaged solutions, these nonprofits enable people to tailor tech, like customizable chatbots or open-source platforms, to meet their own needs.
+ Take Playlab. Educators have historically relied on others to build tools for them. Playlab enables teachers to create, remix, and share their own AI edtech tools.
Have thoughts on the landscape? Know an AI-powered nonprofit that's flying under the radar? Give us a shout!
Quick Bytes
Other Sector Stories
This newsletter is just a pixel in the bigger picture of our AI for Humanity work. Check out Fast Forward’s feature in TriplePundit to learn more about how we're supporting AI-powered nonprofits to create real-world impact.
Game recognizes game. Quill.org and aiEDU, two nonprofit orgs dedicated to building foundational AI literacy, have teamed up to curate a suite of resources that help build student knowledge of AI and its impact on society.
Google is using AI to predict severe flooding in advance — and the company’s nonprofit arm is working with humanitarian organizations to give people cash to prepare in the days before a flood happens.
APN Funding News
Data.org launched its Artificial Intelligence to Accelerate Inclusion Challenge (AI2AI Challenge), a global call for existing innovative AI solutions seeking scale to accelerate inclusion and economic empowerment.
Dell Technologies announced a special Pro Bono Consulting Workshop that aims to empower nonprofit organizations to adopt AI solutions.
Nonprofits creating climate solutions can express interest in the upcoming Salesforce Accelerator – AI for Impact cohort.
Let’s Talk
I am living and breathing AI for humanity these days. If you are too, let’s talk!
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Once again, an absolutely interesting and valuable framework is published and analyzed on Substack. This topic of publishing such relevant and fascinating ideas is very interesting and in my opinion also from a scientific and knowledge sharing point of view it is something worth observing. That said, I really appreciated this issue, and I think the focus on non-profit vs. for profit is very important in understanding how AI can impact different organizations differently. Thanks for sharing.