Can human-led AI spark a new era of generosity?

For 50 years, America’s generosity has been stuck in neutral with charitable giving frozen at 2.5% of GDP. But not because people stopped caring. In 2024, total giving hit record highs , and food banks saw donations surge as families faced delays in SNAP benefits. The heart is there. What’s missing is technology that turns generosity into lasting impact. We can’t solve today’s biggest problems, from food insecurity to climate change to health inequity, without unlocking the full potential of AI . For the first time, technology connects data across causes, predicts needs before they arise, and turns generosity into measurable progress. If generosity is the fuel, AI is the engine. As we look to reignite that engine, the clear path forward is to empower the social good ecosystem with smarter, more human technology. Enter the Generosity Generation. It’s not an age group, but a global movement of people across every generation using innovation to turn compassion into scale. The movement is built on the belief that connection beats competition, collaboration beats control, and impact grows when information flows freely. Achieving that scale requires a shift in how technology serves people. The next leap won’t come from software that asks humans to do more work, but from AI that helps them do more good. Human-led AI doesn’t replace purpose; it amplifies it. It’s how we break 50 years of stagnation and build a more generous world. THE HIDDEN COST OF SOFTWARE IN THE SOCIAL SECTOR Software is meant to save time. Instead, for many organizations, it feels like one more task to manage before the real work begins. In the corporate world, software transforms productivity . In the social sector, those same gains often require a level of investment, in time, training, and expertise, that smaller nonprofits can’t afford. Every new platform promises efficiency, but the cost of setup and maintenance may outweigh the benefits. Time meant for impact gets traded for time spent logging impact. Picture a grant-writing team adopting a “streamlined” new tool. Weeks later, they’re back in spreadsheets because the learning curve was too steep, the data entry too heavy, the payoff too slow. Agentic AI works quietly in the background, scanning thousands of grant opportunities overnight, drafting proposals, surfacing insights, and freeing people to do hands-on work: building relationships, telling stories, and driving missions forward. That’s the real shift, from software that creates work to software that creates capacity. But transformation doesn’t start with automation. It starts with trust. And that’s where every organization, from a grassroots nonprofit to a Fortune 500, must now lead. TRUST: THE REAL METRIC FOR AI AI’s most important metric isn’t speed or scale. It’s trust. Even the most tech-oriented nonprofits must ensure that the tools they use reflect their own values: transparency, security, and accountability. In the social sector, trust is currency. For nonprofits, a single breach undermines years of donor confidence. For companies, it erodes brand equity overnight. Across every mission-driven organization, trust is the shared foundation, and every...

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