Nonprofits are embracing AI to advance their missions, but few have a road map for adoption

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.,........

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