AI for Civil Society and Philanthropy

How can we ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity?

This question is at the heart of OpenAI Foundation’s work. We are pursuing this mission on several fronts, exploring how advanced AI can accelerate scientific progress⁠, helping society build the resilience⁠ needed to navigate increasingly capable AI, and examining how the technology will shape jobs and the economy⁠. These investments are essential to ensuring AI benefits humanity over the long term.

It is equally important to ask how AI can help people and communities address the challenges they face today. We believe civil society is essential to making that happen.

That’s why the OpenAI Foundation is launching AI for Civil Society and Philanthropy, a new program dedicated to putting advanced AI to work on current challenges facing people and communities around the world.

Nonprofits, academic institutions, community coalitions, and philanthropic organizations are vital to our social fabric. They deliver essential services and are often closest to the challenges where technology could make the greatest impact. Through the People-First AI Fund⁠, we’ve seen firsthand how trusted organizations are engaging with AI to serve their communities—and how much more is possible.

Historically, organizations that provide critical local services have been among the last to adopt or benefit from new technologies. AI may be the most transformative technology yet, and we should not allow that pattern to repeat with AI. Breaking this cycle will require more than access to tools: it will take sustained investment at scale, technical expertise, and support for responsible implementation—all guided by shared decision-making with trusted organizations operating in the communities most affected.

We are starting with three priorities:

• Put AI to work in essential services where it can meaningfully improve access and outcomes.

• Equip civil society organizations with the tools, expertise, and support needed to adopt AI responsibly.

• Build shared infrastructure so that effective tools, evidence, and lessons can benefit the social sector as a whole.

We aim to help organizations determine where AI can genuinely strengthen their work—and give them the resources to put it into practice.

A $100 million commitment to strengthen care teams

Our first partnership is a $100 million commitment to the Common Health Coalition⁠—the nation’s largest multi-sector health collaborative—to launch Breakthroughs to Follow-Through (B2F), a national effort to use AI to help ensure lifesaving medical advances reach the people who can benefit from them.

B2F will work alongside state health departments, health systems, healthcare providers, and community organizations. It will begin with a goal of doubling hepatitis C cure rates in Alabama, Illinois, Louisiana, and Massachusetts to start, with additional regions to be announced.

Hepatitis C illustrates the challenge: a highly effective cure has been available for more than a decade, yet persistent barriers to access, diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up mean two-thirds of Americans living with the disease remain untreated. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people remain at risk of preventable liver disease.

AI-enabled tools could help care teams identify and reconnect patients who have fallen out of care, synthesizing records, tracking progress, and directing limited staff capacity where it can have the greatest impact. The goal is not to replace the people delivering care, but to help them reach more patients while reducing administrative burden. Over time, B2F will extend this infrastructure to other areas where proven treatments and interventions are not reaching the people who need them, including HIV prevention and certain curable cancers.

You can read more about this work in the announcement⁠ published today by the Common Health Coalition.

Looking ahead

B2F is just one example of how AI can be put to work for public benefit. We are engaging with organizations and communities across a broad range of challenges—from agriculture to legal aid to humanitarian response—to understand where AI could materially strengthen their work, what barriers stand in the way of adoption, and what kinds of investment and support are needed.

The people closest to these challenges should define the problems worth solving and lead and shape how solutions are implemented. Our role is to pair their expertise with ours—collaborating to test new ideas and solutions, and providing the capital, technical support, and partnerships to determine whether and how AI can help.

Technological progress should be measured by how many people benefit.

If you would like to reach our AI for Civil Society & Philanthropy team, we are at [email protected]⁠.