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American Cancer Society Chief Executive Officer Shane Jacobson says he is currently in the process of creating a new plan that will look at how his nonprofit has leveraged data and artificial intelligence in the past and what future bets should be made on the technology to support its mission to eliminate cancer.
All of Jacobson’s technology investments will support three goals: cancer prevention, early detection, and treatment for patients. “We view technology and AI as an enabler across these strategies,” says Jacobson. “We do not approach artificial intelligence as the strategy, but a tool that’s meant to be tied to the mission and governed responsibly.”
By November, Jacobson hopes to have his board’s blessing on the new strategic roadmap. The American Cancer Society’s more concerted effort to focus its AI bets come as a recent study found that while seven out of ten nonprofits report that they believe there are meaningful opportunities to extract benefits from AI, only 8% have a formal roadmap for implementation over the next one to two years. AI is integrated into the workflows of just 4% of nonprofits, according to a survey of 917 industry leaders and staff that was published in September by the nonprofit organizations Bridgespan Group and Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network.
Nonprofits are a resource-constrained sector in terms of both staffing and funding and so embracing AI can be extra meaningful if done properly, but bad bets could also be especially bruising, especially when considering that 92% of nonprofits operate with less than $1 million a year, according to data from Nonprofit Impact Matters.
Industry insiders say some donors have been pressuring nonprofits to use AI to ensure the dollars they spend are effective. But this also requires a balancing act for a mission-driven industry and a workforce that can be more wary of the societal and environmental impact of AI.
“We have a lot of proximity to the community-level impacts of technologies like AI—the data centers, the carbon emissions, and the potential job displacement,” says Remy Reya, director of AI and thought leadership at Compass Pro Bono, a nonprofit that connects other nonprofits with business professionals to provide consulting services.
At Compass Pro Bono, Reya says his approach has been to roll out a broad set of AI tools from startups like OpenAI and Perplexity, authorize AI features in Slack and Google, and provide training, but never mandate usage. “It’s really important that people have the opportunity to try something out in an AI tool and not just report a success,” says Reya. “We really encourage people to share their roadblocks and their failures.”
In addition to piloting AI tools like Microsoft Copilot and Anthropic’s Claude, the American Cancer Society has deployed a medical content translation AI tool and has authorized the usage of legal AI contract tools from vendors including Sirion and Harvey AI. Another AI use case that’s being explored focuses on donor engagement.
“We’re using AI technology to try to more effectively organize groups of donors by areas of interest and the impact they are trying to accomplish, and then convert our engagement to be more customized,” says Jacobson, referring to the use of AI to generate more targeted outreach materials.
Jim Balfanz, CEO of City Year, says the education nonprofit has established an AI roadmap that’s focused on using the technology to enhance tutoring and mentorship—not replace humans—while also establishing responsible AI guardrails and piloting new tools before deploying them broadly.
City Year recruits thousands of young adults each year and trains them to serve as mentors and student coaches at 250 schools across the U.S., focusing on districts where a large percentage of students don’t complete high school. Balfanz says coaches spend a lot of their time lesson planning, learning each school’s curriculum requirements, and understanding the learning style of an individual student, but time for social and emotional connection is also critical for success.
In one district, City Year is testing a personalization planning AI tool that’s intended to streamline the process. Early results show it has led to 70% less planning time and a 30% improvement in academic outcomes.
Balfanz says that in leadership meetings with City Year’s staff, he reminds his team that “if our purpose is to create the conditions for young people to meet their potential, AI is going to be highly influential in ways that can be really positive and in ways that could potentially be detrimental and harmful. We need to engage with the pathways to the positive outcomes.”
Dan Rhoton, the CEO of Hopeworks, a nonprofit focused on professional training and career placement, says he is especially bullish about AI’s impact on the workforce. “AI has been a supercharger for better jobs and higher wages,” says Rhoton.
Hopeworks has established a partnership with PC maker Dell Technologies to invest in AI servers that can run large language models locally at all of the nonprofit’s locations. Dell has also given Hopeworks access to an AI tool that allows job seekers to upload a job listing and get feedback to improve their resume and prepare for a mock interview.
“We’re still doing in-person mock interviews,” says Erich Smith, Hopeworks’ director of learning and development. But using AI helps staff streamline some of their workflows and dedicate more time to in-person coaching, says Smith. Dell’s AI tool can perform an analysis of how many filler words were used in a mock interview, how fast the interview subject was talking, and the job seeker’s strengths and weaknesses.
Sagar Aryal, the chief technology officer at the environmental nonprofit Plant-for-the-Planet, says that he has to balance the organization’s sustainability mission with the benefits he lauds from AI. “There’s a part of the team that says we should not use AI because of water consumption,” says Aryal.
Others at Plant-for-the-Planet are more amenable, and for them, Aryal says project managers and researchers are starting to embrace AI for translation, to create documents and templates, and for data extraction. Plant-for-the-Planet also uses AI to automate payment transfers from international donors.
“I think there are going to be AI-led nonprofits where all the decisions are made by AI,” Aryal posits. “We will see people put money in a pot and let AI make the decisions.”
John Kell
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
