In 2024, leaders and about a dozen elected worker council members from the National Domestic Workers Alliance (NDWA), which organizes domestic workers in the United States to build power, secure dignity, and win economic and labor justice, traveled to Silicon Valley to better understand how artificial intelligence (AI) might change their field. The group met with representatives from Anthropic and Google, as well as ethicists, scholars, and lawmakers. What they heard was that these emerging systems had the potential to deepen already unequal power dynamics between workers and employers. But they also began to imagine how workers and communities could craft a positive vision for AI to advance their own goals.

“Could this technology, if used responsibly, actually help advance worker power, improve conditions, and support organizing?” asks Alistair Stephenson, chief strategy and impact officer at the NDWA. The alliance’s question reflects the choices facing many nonprofits: Where can AI improve how their organizations work, where can it advance their missions, and how can they help shape how AI is developed and governed? Whether AI could create meaningful opportunities for workers guided the NDWA’s exploration.

“Mission-driven organizations have always been focused on providing quality services to change lives. To continue doing that in a world where AI both makes new things possible and introduces risks, mission-driven organizations must determine the responsible path forward for themselves.” — Afua Bruce, CEO, ANB Advisory Group

AI is rapidly reshaping the social sector. It is changing how work is done, how decisions are made, how resources are allocated, and ultimately who benefits. “Mission-driven organizations have always been focused on providing quality services to change lives,” says Afua Bruce, CEO at ANB Advisory Group. “To continue doing that in a world where AI both makes new things possible and introduces risks, mission-driven organizations must determine the responsible path forward for themselves.”

Used well, AI may help organizations reduce administrative burdens, expand access to services, identify patterns in complex information, personalize support, and develop entirely new approaches to advancing impact. Here, we use AI broadly to include generative AI tools (such as ChatGPT and Claude), traditional machine-learning applications, and agentic AI systems that can take actions on a user’s behalf.

Read the full article about nonprofit strategic AI choices by Nate Wong, Derek Brine, Natalia Alarcon, Paige Boehmcke, Eliza Patterson, and Zach Slobig at The Bridgespan Group.