Some Austin nonprofits are now preparing to adopt artificial intelligence initiatives, thanks to support from Google.
Google.org, the tech giant’s philanthropic arm, is investing more than $10 million, channeled through community foundations, to encourage individualized AI training and initiatives for nonprofits in a few cities across the country, including Austin.
The Austin Community Foundation received $1 million through the Google.org AI Opportunity Fund, which it plans to spread through $50,000 unrestricted, multiyear grants to 20 nonprofit organizations in Central Texas, according to Austin Community Foundation CEO Mike Nellis.
‘We think that there’s an opportunity for nonprofits to enhance their mission by using AI,’ Nellis told the American-Statesman. ‘Certainly, organizational efficiency is one of those things. Certainly, there are opportunities in fundraising, in accounting. But really, I think nonprofits are just starting to adopt how to use AI for those operational pieces. It’s really the exploration of how can it enhance their mission in a bigger way that we’re interested in.’
Some of the organizations receiving grants from the Austin Community Foundation include Asian Family Support Services of Austin, Black Mamas ATX, Con Mi MADRE, and DicInc.
Nellis said the Austin Community Foundation decided to choose smaller or more ‘grassroots-types’ of organizations for these grants.
‘What we wanted to do is to provide this capital, provide this training, to organizations that typically may not have had access or resources to these types of opportunities,’ Nellis said. ‘We were real deliberate about those choices. … We’re in a learning phase, just like all these other organizations, and so for us, we aren’t the experts in this space.’
Over the course of about a year, the Austin Community Foundation will connect these nonprofits with industry experts and leaders who can guide and encourage the creation of AI initiatives, whatever they might be for each organization, Nellis said.
One partner helping with this is Project Evident, an organization that connects and advises nonprofits in increasing their use of innovative technologies and AI. Project Evident also received funding through Google’s fund.
Simon Morfit, senior director of OutcomesAI at Project Evident, told the American-Statesman that they spoke with the Austin Community Foundation over the course of five months to determine the grant program’s structure, timeline, and content.
‘Some practitioners and their funders are hesitant to engage with artificial intelligence, but AI is here, and it is not going away,’ Morfit said. ‘Over the past decade, AI has reshaped how we interact with nearly every consumer-facing company, from choosing what movies to watch to completing sentences in our emails or text messages. In the nonprofit sector, AI can unlock a host of efficiency gains and program delivery benefits.’
Google.org’s $75 million AI Opportunity Fund launched in April 2024 to support workforce development and education with the end goal of training more than 1 million Americans on AI skills.
The fund came after a Google study found that over 40% of nonprofit staff members in the U.S. said they were not trained, educated, or fluent in AI. Much of the training and funding from Google is tailored specifically for Google’s AI systems and AI-powered agent Gemini.
Along with Austin, this latest allocation of funding went toward community foundations in Atlanta, New York, San Francisco, and Columbia, South Carolina.
‘The pace of AI innovations and development introduces the concerns that some individuals and organizations may not be able to employ AI effectively, safely, or at all,’ Morfit said. ‘Increasing the number of nonprofits successfully using AI helps establish more proof points for other practitioners to follow, thereby facilitating the diffusion of AI use across the nonprofit sector more broadly.’
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- Community Development
- Google.org
- Nonprofit Sector