An education nonprofit uses artificial intelligence (AI) to support K-12 students individually to become stronger writers. A metropolitan county deploys AI to forecast which individuals accessing services are at risk of experiencing chronic homelessness and provides greater support to prevent that outcome. A suicide hotline leverages learning algorithms to analyze text messages and identify texters who are at the highest risk of self-harm so they can be helped first. AI is no longer a distant possibility in the social and education sectors — due to the recent AI wave, it is already reshaping workflows and program design — and enhancing outcomes.

Nonprofit practitioners are ahead of grantmakers in implementing AI, as Project Evident and the Stanford Center for Human-Centered AI uncovered in their report, “Inspiring Action: Identifying the Social Sector AI Opportunity Gap.” As more nonprofits embrace AI, they will need investment and support beyond the grant check from grantmakers to enhance and expand outcomes by deploying new technology. However, nonprofit practitioners face a discouraging reality: most program officers and philanthropic organizations are not confident in their ability to effectively evaluate grant proposals that contain AI implementation.

Moving From Reactive to Proactive on AI

Grantmakers tend to view AI through the lens of risk mitigation – ensuring that AI-driven projects do not introduce bias, compromise data privacy, or misalign with social impact goals. While these concerns are valid and extremely important, this perspective is fundamentally reactive.

Instead, philanthropy must take a proactive stance, seeing AI as an opportunity to drive more equitable, scalable, and effective solutions. This is a call to action for funders to plan in advance – not with just an eye to identify contingencies and avoid risk but toward the opportunity that will come with the inevitable increase in AI implementation requests.

Where Funders Are Now on the AI Wave

Project Evident recently released research that collected data about the AI grantmaking practices of 38 U.S. philanthropies. We saw that while funders acknowledge AI’s transformative potential, they remain in the early stages of understanding how to assess the technical feasibility and ethical impacts of AI proposals through their due diligence process.

Read the full article about the AI wave by Sarah Di Troia at The Center for Effective Philanthropy.