Students Put AI to Work for the Common Good
Using AI to support nonprofit work is one of the most direct applications of the technology’s potential to contribute to the common good. The AI and Nonprofits workshop put this into practice.
Partnering with the McKeen Center for the Common Good, the Hastings Initiative for AI and Humanity hosted a daylong AI workshop for nonprofits on June 10. The workshop brought together representatives from nine local nonprofits and the Hastings Summer Fellows—Camily Guimarães Carvalho '29, Calvin Cecil '28, Aubrey Gifford '28, Sabina Gill '29, Henry Risch '28—for hands-on learning and collaboration across two sessions.
The workshop began by building a shared foundation of AI fluency. Hastings Post-baccalaureate Fellow Anya Workman guided nonprofit staff through Anthropic's course, demonstrating to participants how AI may be useful in their own work, empowering them to make informed decisions about when and whether to use AI, and how to do so effectively and safely. "The real challenge when it comes to implementing AI in a nonprofit setting isn't really the technical limitations," Gill '29 commented, "but rather how we can navigate using the technology responsibly."
For Gifford '28, this approach embodied her belief that "maintaining human integrity... and developing these technologies in ways that deepen our commitment to one another should ground our decisions surrounding AI."
The afternoon session consisted of the seven nonprofits that had participated in a project with students enrolled in Assistant Professor of Digital and Computational Studies Fernando Nascimento’s Technology and the Common Good class last spring. Nascimento described how students in the class worked directly with these nonprofit partners, "[applying] the course's technical concepts and ethical discussions to identify ways AI could be used responsibly to augment the impact of nonprofits' missions." He continued, "they identified several opportunities that Hastings postdocs and Summer Fellows are helping to bring to fruition in collaboration with these nonprofits."
Sam Cogswell, Associate Director of the McKeen Center for the Common Good, described the collaboration as "unique and iterative, evolving incrementally from a class unit project into an extended initiative to build nonprofit AI capacity in a community oriented setting and give space for difficult conversations about the rise of AI in the sector."
Building on this work, Nascimento and Hastings Postdoctoral Scholar Collin Lucken created a web dashboard populated with AI-powered tools designed to assist with tasks common across small nonprofits, including researching prospective donors, finding and drafting grants, and creating organizational AI policies.
During the afternoon session, Lucken and Cogswell demoed the tools on the dashboard. Hastings Fellows then collaborated with the nonprofits, exploring the tools together and gathering feedback on how best to align their functionalities with each organization’s goals and values.
Cecil '28 noted that "in speaking with the nonprofits, it is clear they understand the challenges they face and the steps needed to address them. Their primary limiting factor is a lack of time." AI, Cecil continued, can help "free up more time... to expand the reach of [the nonprofit's] vision."
The feedback gathered at the workshop will be the basis of an ongoing relationship between the Summer Fellows and the nonprofits throughout the summer, as the Fellows refine the dashboard based on the nonprofit’s feedback, ultimately creating a custom AI toolkit shaped around the specific needs and priorities of each organization. Risch '28 looks forward to continuing this work and exploring "a real, tangible good that [AI] can bring to our community."