Despite playing a crucial role as the first line of defense for vulnerable communities, nonprofits are at risk of being left behind in the age of AI. Society is asking nonprofits to solve 21st-century problems with 20th-century tech. At the same time, they are up against sociopolitical headwinds, loss of funding, and existential battles. 

We cannot expect nonprofits to invest in technological innovation unless we come together across sectors to provide them the resources. The engineers and the activists, the policymakers and the philanthropists. If AI is to be a force for good, we need to fund the tech, fund the future, and fund together.

An emerging, creative class of entrepreneurs — AI-powered nonprofits — represent one of the most promising fronts in social impact. While for-profit companies are building AI that’s fundamentally changing daily life and the global economy, AI-powered nonprofits are using the same tech to solve humanity’s most urgent challenges. They’re banding together to transform education. To advance economic empowerment. To change health outcomes. They are demonstrating resilience in ways the private sector alone cannot. 

Take CareerVillage. Since 2011, CareerVillage has been on a mission to democratize access to career information and support those who need it most. Rather than shying away from hard questions about how AI will impact the labor market, CareerVillage is leaning in. Their AI-powered “Coach” platform helps job seekers navigate the changing labor market by offering mock interviews, resume support, career navigation, and more. Coach has already delivered personalized guidance to 50,000 learners, the majority of which have been youth from low-income households, students of color, and women.

But that’s just one example. New data from Fast Forward’s 2025 AI for Humanity Report, created with support from Google.org, finds that AI-powered nonprofits like CareerVillage are leading an early-stage transformation of AI in the nonprofit sector. We found that nonprofits are building AI solutions at every size and every stage. 40% of AI-powered nonprofits surveyed have been using AI for a year or less. And nearly a third (30%) have budgets of $500K or less.

It isn’t a surprise that the smallest, nimblest nonprofits are leading the way. Nonprofits have always looked for ways to do more with less. In this way, AI-powered nonprofits are similar to traditional nonprofits — they care about impact and efficiency. But AI-powered nonprofits are organized differently, and they have a different set of needs. 

For one, AI-powered nonprofits need tech expertise in their C-suite and on their staff. Tech and data aren’t extraneous. They’re core program costs. It costs money to build the technology responsibly, and it takes time for impact to follow. This puts a lot of AI-powered nonprofits in a catch-22: needing capital to prove impact, but needing proven impact to unlock capital.

To that end, AI-powered nonprofits need support at every stage of the impact cycle: from research and development, to sustaining mid-stage growth — the point where many nonprofits otherwise stall — to scaling proven models.

Importantly, 84% of AI-powered nonprofit respondents said funding would most help them further develop and scale AI. This insight matters because the data shows a clear relationship between resources and reach. At the smallest budgets, AI-powered nonprofits are serving thousands, a median of just under 2,000 lives. By the time budgets cross $1 million, median reach jumps to half a million people. And at more than $5 million, AI-powered nonprofits are reaching millions of people — a median impact of 7 million lives.

To unlock their full potential, they need the support of coalitions, shared infrastructure, and cross-sector collaboration with technologists, policymakers, and funders. 

There is no better example of this than Karya. The smartphone-based platform employs workers in rural India to complete AI data tasks to train large language models, like translation for less-commonly spoken languages. Karya seized an opportunity to flip the script on the AI economy — improving global technologies while enabling income and upskilling opportunities for over 100,000 workers. 

Karya also licenses its technology to local governments and peer organizations. Using Karya’s Platform-as-a-Service model, Digital Green sourced speech data directly from farmers in Kenya to fine-tune an agricultural AI model. The localized model outperformed leading models on domain-specific tasks, proving that community-generated data can drive smarter, more relevant AI. Karya provided the technology, Digital Green led on-the-ground operations, and philanthropic funding helped bridge the two. 

Partnership, even within the nonprofit sector, acts as a force multiplier. AI can unlock positive benefits for humanity, but we all play a role in making sure that happens.

Every once in a while, history presents us with moments that demand a fundamental shift in approach. This is one of those moments. 

It starts with giving nonprofits a seat at the table.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

The source of the dispute is the fast-growing world of tokenized equities, which let users trade shares of popular companies but in a blockchain wrapper. The likes of Robinhood, Kraken, and even BlackRock are all dabbling in this technology, whose advantages include easy 24/7 trading and instant settlement. Holding stock on a blockchain also reduces middlemen, and expands opportunities to deploy equity-based collateral.

So what’s not to like? According to Citadel, the problem is DeFi platforms like Uniswap. Right now, traders use them to swap billions of dollars of crypto every day—and soon large volumes of tokenized Nvidia or Apple stock could be sloshing around these platforms, too. And if the SEC grants certain exemptions that Andreessen and its DeFi allies are seeking, Uniswap and others will get to operate as de facto brokerages—without taking on the legal responsibilities that go with that. These include displaying the price of every trade or ensuring customers get the best price. Citadel also warns of “fragmenting liquidity” as stock investing gets split between two parallel systems.

In response to the letter, the founder of Uniswap (one of Andreessen’s blue-ribbon portfolio companies) took to X to accuse Citadel of slandering DeFi in order to protect its lucrative role as the “king of shady tradfi market makers.” Other prominent names in crypto piled on as well, accusing the firm of trying to smother innovation.

At first glance, it appears both sides have a point. If tokenized stock trading breaks into the mainstream, it would threaten Citadel’s business model of paying firms like Robinhood for their orders and using that volume to make trading profits. So the company’s letter to the SEC is clearly based in self-interest. That said, Citadel’s concerns about liquidity are not unreasonable—if the pool of U.S. stocks is divided into two separate pools, doesn’t that make trading more expensive for everyone? Likewise, it’s fair to ask if the SEC would be wise to grant exemptions on investor protection rules that have historically served the public very well.

In reading the letter, it’s remarkable to read its claims that the likes of automated AMMs, block builders, validators and layer 2 blockchains are basically brokerages—less for the argument itself, than that Citadel and the SEC are discussing this stuff at all. It wasn’t long ago when only a handful of crypto diehards knew what these terms even meant. Now, they have become mainstream enough to be part of a non-crypto firm’s correspondence with the SEC, and there is no doubt they’re here to stay.

As for which side is going to prevail, it’s worth noting the fight pits two of the most powerful firms in the country against each other. On one side, there is Citadel, which is owned by Ken Griffin, one of the richest and most combative people in the country. On the other is Andreessen, an influential VC firm that doubles as a PR firm and lobbying agency with immense clout in Washington, DC. For now, it feels Griffin may be able to slow down the spread of tokenized equities but, as with any superior technology, he will be unable to stop it.

Jeff John Roberts
jeff.roberts@fortune.com
@jeffjohnroberts

DECENTRALIZED NEWS

Binance’s new look: The world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange announced Yi He as co-CEO, confirming her status as the most powerful woman in crypto, while also establishing a de facto corporate headquarters for the first time via major licenses in Abu Dhabi. (Fortune)

Alt-coin winter: The recent downturn has battered alts with the sector shedding $200 billion since market peak. Memecoins have been hit particularly hard, due in part to the sheer number of them, but also because they are competing with a growing number of other speculative opportunities like prediction markets. (Bloomberg)

If at first you don’t succeed: Coinbase plans to relaunch in India early next year. It first opened shop in 2022, but was forced to retreat a year later in the face of hostile regulators who blocked its access to the country’s national payments network. (TechCrunch)

Mining mischief: The Malaysian government is using drones and a cross-agency task force to go after thousands of illegal Bitcoin mining operations that hop from place to place, and have stolen over $1 billion of electricity. (Bloomberg)

Saylor selling? The fraught world of DATs got dicier as Strategy said it might sell Bitcoin as a last resort. The move comes as Strategy’s share price fell below mNAV as the firm faces looming dividend obligations—but there is also a case that Saylor’s corporate strategy wizardry means the firm will be just fine. (Fortune)

MAIN CHARACTER OF THE WEEK

Samsul Said—Bloomberg/Getty Images

CZ wins the main character title this week as his debate with goldbug Peter Schiff helped drive a flood of social media attention around the Binance founder who looks very much back in the crypto game.

MEME O’ THE MOMENT

@haonan

After the U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent co-opted beloved children’s character Franklin the Turtle to pitch T-bills, it didn’t take long for CT to expand the meme to stablecoins. 

Fortune Brainstorm AI returns to San Francisco Dec. 8–9 to convene the smartest people we know—technologists, entrepreneurs, Fortune Global 500 executives, investors, policymakers, and the brilliant minds in between—to explore and interrogate the most pressing questions about AI at another pivotal moment. Register here.

What do both employees and employers really want in a workplace of the future? It’s a topic that came up last week in my conversations with CEOs, designers, and thought leaders at Fortune’s Brainstorm Design conference in Macau.

If you ask Ray Yuen, office managing director at the design and architecture firm Gensler, the answer is food. A recent Gensler survey asked employees to rank the office spaces that were most important to them. The top three? The office food hall, cafe, or lounge. 

“It’s really about food and wellness,” Yuen said onstage. “They didn’t even mention anything about work. Everybody just picked the stuff that we really want as human beings.”

It’s worth listening to these human desires as companies try to bring people back into the office, Yuen said. He described a project he worked on recently for a large company’s new Tokyo headquarters, where 50% of the company’s employees were working remotely and he was tasked with finding a way to bring them back. One of the biggest successes was a lo-fi vinyl listening bar, where no tech or talking was allowed, he said. 

Flexibility is also key. In the past, Yuen said he used to heavily design about 80% of a company’s headquarters with built in furniture and modules like cubicles, and leave about 20% as “flexible space.” Now, the balance is more 50/50, so companies can transform their office spaces easily when needs arise, such as an office happy hour, he says.

“We’re no longer just designing workplaces. We’re actually designing experiences. Because [employees may] think, ‘Well, if I can work anywhere, why do I want to go to work? I can do it at home,’” Yuen said. “You’ve really got to make the campus or the workplace be more than work, and that’s the fun part of it.”

Kristin Stoller
Editorial Director, Fortune Live Media
kristin.stoller@fortune.com

Around the Table

A round-up of the most important HR headlines.

Employers used to frown on social media posting during work hours, but now employees at companies including Starbucks and Delta are being asked to post on-the-job social media content. Wall Street Journal

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, or EEOC, is reportedly blocking or stalling claims brought by transgender workers. Bloomberg

As automated systems come under fire for potentially allowing discriminating hiring practices, many states are expanding bans on discrimination to AI. Washington Post

Watercooler

Everything you need to know from Fortune.

Meeting shakeup. Instagram’s CEO is calling employees back to the office five days a week, but is canceling all unnecessary recurring meetings —Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez

Earnings report. In the U.K., Gen Z college graduates are earning 30% less than Millennials did at the same stage of life. —Preston Fore

Trade troubles. As Gen Zers opt for trade schools and blue-collar jobs, there is one sector they are hesitant to get involved in: manufacturing. —Emma Burleigh