AI is everywhere we look today.
For some of our clients, this fact feels inspiring, and AI tools may already be helping them to change old work habits, break patterns of thought, or reach new audiences; for others, the ubiquity of AI – or at least of its mention and the uncertainty surrounding it – provokes anxiety and resistance.
Both of these responses – and everything in between – are natural. Wherever your organization is in the incorporation and use of AI and related technologies, we want to let you know about the existence of funding opportunities that can meet you where you are to provide you and your organization with the resources and guidance to incorporate AI in the service of your mission.
Whether you’re actively planning to use it or just wondering if it’s relevant to your work, the resources below can help you start thinking about, planning for, and maybe applying for support targeted toward your AI-related needs.
Open now and due soon
OpenAI Foundation’s 2026 People-First AI Fund. The Foundation has committed $50 million to nonprofits using AI to advance their missions, and applications are open through July 15, 2026. It’s built for U.S.-based 501(c)(3) organizations with annual budgets between $500,000 and $10 million, with priority for those in the $1 million to $8 million range. It funds three areas: community support services, community arts and cultural organizations, and community journalism and media. That first category is where a lot of our clients work, and this year’s priority goes to organizations helping people navigate complex systems and access critical resources, explicitly naming legal aid, public benefits, and disability and accessibility services.
These grants are unrestricted, awards can be up to 10% of your annual budget, and you don’t need any prior AI experience to apply. You must be an independent organization, and cannot be a fiscally sponsored project or a department inside a larger institution. The deadline is soon, but don’t let the application scare you off. It’s a few short narrative questions (all fewer than 300 words), plus basic organizational and financial documents, with no letters of support or outside recommendations required. For an organization whose financials and current board-approved budget are already in order, this is a manageable effort.
Just starting? AI fluency for your whole team
Before you chase any grant, it helps to build a shared vocabulary. AI Fluency for Nonprofits is a free, self-paced course from Anthropic (the makers of Claude), developed in partnership with GivingTuesday. It’s designed specifically for nonprofit staff across fundraising, communications, program delivery, operations, and leadership, and it takes only a few hours. It walks through a simple framework for delegating work to AI, describing tasks clearly, exercising judgment about outputs, and applying diligence around ethics and responsible use. I recently completed it, and it provides a solid starting point for thinking about and discussing ethical AI adoption with your team, board of directors, and stakeholders. No prior AI experience or coding required.
Free capacity-building
If you’re not ready to compete for funding yet, don’t count yourself out. Capacity-building funding is exactly where most organizations should start. The Google.org Accelerator: Generative AI pairs funding, ranging from $500,000 to more than $2 million, with six months of pro bono technical support, training, and Cloud credits. Recent focus areas have included resilient communities and crisis response, just as an example. Several cycles closed in spring 2026, so look out for the next open call and get your materials ready before the opportunity opens again.
Rolling and relationship-driven
Just like traditional foundations, some of the largest AI funders don’t run a traditional application process at all. They reward mission alignment and relationships built over time, which tends to favor organizations with more capacity and existing funder networks. This is worth knowing, so you can plan your outreach and stewardship accordingly. The Patrick J. McGovern Foundation is among the most active “AI-for-good” funders, with nearly $500 million awarded since its inception and a grants database updated weekly. Recent awards have supported work like AI-enabled emergency dispatch and public AI literacy, areas that overlap with safety-net and human services work. There’s no open portal here; the path is alignment and getting on their radar early.
Watch for the next cycle
One strong fund worth knowing runs on an annual cycle, and now is a good time to prepare before the next window opens. The GitLab Foundation’s AI for Economic Opportunity Fund, run in partnership with OpenAI, awards $250,000 in catalytic funding per organization, plus six months of technical support from OpenAI engineers, API credits, peer learning, and eligibility for larger scaling grants from partner funders. It backs U.S.-based nonprofits using AI to measurably improve economic mobility for low-income populations, and its priorities will feel familiar to many of us in the sector: benefits access, service delivery, skill-building, and job matching. The last concept-note window closed in the fall of 2025, and the fund typically reopens mid-year, making now the time to sketch a project idea and prepare to apply.
Federal and state pathways
Public AI money leans heavily toward research institutions, but there are openings for nonprofits, usually as the implementation partner. The NSF Civic Innovation Challenge (CIVIC) funds partnerships between researchers and community organizations to deploy emerging technologies, including AI, with Stage 1 planning grants up to $75,000 and Stage 2 awards up to $1 million. If you are a human-services nonprofit, your strongest position is likely to be as the community partner within a joint proposal, the one who actually understands the people served. The current cycle has already named its awardees, so watch for the next round, and start thinking now about who you might want to partner with. Collaboration funding in general is on the rise across the sector, and we predict there will be opportunities like this with other funders, so start your conversations now.
What funders actually want to see
Across nearly all of these, the same things separate strong applications from weak ones, and few of them are about being “fluent in AI” (which, again, the free Anthropic course above helps you build). Funders want a specific, bounded problem. “We want to use AI” gets you nowhere. “We want to cut case intake processing time so advocates can spend more time with clients” gets you further. They want evidence that you have basic data infrastructure. And increasingly, they want to see that you’ve thought about the ethics and governance of responsible use.
That last point is where I think our sector is quietly well-positioned. Many human service nonprofits are experts in protecting constituent safety, privileged legal information, and protected health data already, and we live and breathe confidentiality, consent, and duty of care. That instinct is exactly the responsible-AI thinking funders are asking about. Name it plainly in your proposal: you are the experts in what you do.
If you’re early in this, start small. A modest planning grant or a free technical assistance program can fund a proof of concept, and that becomes your strongest evidence in a bigger ask later. It’s important to those of us in the fundraising side of the nonprofit sector to help funding reach the organizations doing the hardest, most human-centered work, not just the ones with the most capacity to chase it. If that’s you, consider this your nudge to take a closer look.