IBM Impact volunteering initiative
Your Roadmap to AI-Powered Impact
IBM AI Action Plan for Nonprofits, an IBM Impact program, matches skilled IBM volunteers with nonprofit organizations to provide a clear, practical plan for using AI to solve your organization's business challenges, at no cost.
Practical AI guidance using IBM's expertise
Nonprofit teams tell us the same thing: you know AI could save your organization time and unlock capacity, but you don't have the hours, or a trusted expert, to figure out where to start. As part of IBM's Impact work, the IBM AI Action Plan for Nonprofits program exists to close that gap.
You share a challenge your organization is facing in your day-to-day work. We match your case with IBM volunteers. They use AI tools to create a customized AI Action Plan: a practical, written roadmap helping your team use AI to find business solutions.
Free of charge
Action Plans provided by IBM volunteers
Actionable Next Steps
A customized plan your team can act on
Built for your reality
Free and low-cost tools recommended throughout
How it works
Tell us about your challenge
Complete a short intake form describing your organization and an operational or business challenge you're facing. It's confidential, takes about 15 minutes, and doesn't require any AI knowledge. Note: Nonprofits must be registered with Benevity in order to participate.
Get matched with an IBM Volunteer
IBMers around the globe will be matched with Nonprofit challenge submissions based on location, area of expertise, and interests.
IBM volunteers get to work
Throughout October 2026, IBM volunteers develop your AI Action Plan.
Receive your AI Action Plan
As IBMers work through the challenges, you'll receive your reviewed plan on a rolling basis, along with a short feedback survey. The plan is yours to keep and use.
The deliverable
What's inside an AI Action Plan?
Every plan follows the same rigorous five-part structure, so your team receives consistent, actionable guidance on how AI can help solve your business challenge.
Current state snapshot
A summary of your challenge, existing tools, team capacity, and constraints.
Recommended AI use cases
Two to three prioritized opportunities matched to your specific needs, with free and low-cost tools preferred.
Implementation roadmap
Step-by-step guidance across short, medium and long term, with realistic effort estimates for your team size.
Risks and responsible use
Data privacy considerations, honest limitations of the suggested tools, and what not to automate.
Quick wins
One or two actions your team can implement within a week, without outside help.
What kind of challenges can you bring?
IBM AI Action Plan for Nonprofits covers eight areas of nonprofit operations. Below each area are examples of the kinds of challenges IBM volunteers can help with. If yours doesn't fit any of them, the form lets you describe it in your own words.
Marketing & Communications
- Writing emails, newsletters, and social posts takes hours of manual work every month.
- It's hard to see which messages resonate with which audiences.
Fundraising & Partnerships
- Fundraising teams spend significant time researching grants and funding opportunities.
- Grant writing is time-consuming and competes with other organizational priorities.
- Managing funder and partner communications requires ongoing manual effort.
Volunteer & Workforce Engagement
- Volunteer screening, matching, and onboarding can strain limited staff resources.
- Creating training materials and keeping them current takes time many teams don't have.
Operations & Productivity
- Staff lose valuable time to note-taking, scheduling, and other administrative tasks.
- Board and leadership reporting often requires significant manual effort.
Technology & Infrastructure
- Limited budgets make it difficult to prioritize technology investments.
- Program and beneficiary data is often spread across disconnected systems and spreadsheets.
Automation
- Repetitive administrative processes consume time that could be spent on mission delivery.
- Staff manually move, clean, and update data across multiple systems.
Research & Impact Measurement
- Demonstrating impact to funders and stakeholders can be difficult and time-consuming.
- Survey responses and beneficiary feedback often go unanalyzed due to limited capacity.
Legal, Governance & Responsible AI
- Clear policies for responsible AI use are often missing.
- Protecting sensitive data while adopting new technologies presents growing challenges.
Is this for your organization?
IBM AI Action Plan for Nonprofits is designed for nonprofit organizations of any size and any level of AI experience.
If the statements below sound like you, we'd like to hear from you:
- You're a registered nonprofit or charitable organization with Benevity.
- You have at least one operational challenge that costs your team real time on a regular basis.
- You're curious about AI, whether you've never touched it or already use it daily.
- Someone on your team can spend about 15 minutes on the intake form.
Program Timeline
Now to September 2026
Nonprofits share challenges and priority briefs are scoped.
October 2026
IBM volunteers develop AI Action Plans.
November 2026
Reviewed plans are delivered to nonprofits on a rolling basis. We'll do our best to get to every submission as quickly as possible, but please note it may take some time depending on demand.
Request your action plan
Submitting a request takes about 15 minutes. Tell us what's slowing your team down and how an AI Action Plan may help you chart the way forward. Submitting a request does not guarantee that your challenge will be reviewed or selected or that you will receive an AI Action Plan.
Share Your Challenge