The federal government’s DIGITAL Global Innovation Cluster, Toronto Metropolitan University’s The Dais think tank, and two non-profit organizations (Creative Destruction Lab and the Human Feedback Foundation) have launched a nationwide initiative to foster the ethical use of artificial intelligence (AI) by non-profits.
The Responsible AI Adoption for Social Impact (RAISE) program will develop a framework for AI governance with the Human Feedback Foundation’s help. It will focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as well as ethics and “measurable outcomes,” according to a statement.
“Equipping non-profit workers with the knowledge and skills to responsibly use AI is essential for ensuring these powerful technologies amplify the sector’s collective impact for Canada.”
André Côté
The Dais
The Dais will provide AI training for 500 non-profit staffers in areas like data management, policy, and service delivery. A one-year “AI Adoption Accelerator” from Creative Destruction Lab will help five major non-profits (the CAMH Foundation, Canadian Cancer Society, CanadaHelps, Achēv, and Furniture Bank) integrate AI in line with their goals.
“We at the Dais believe that equipping non-profit workers with the knowledge and skills to responsibly use AI is essential for ensuring these powerful technologies amplify the sector’s collective impact for Canada, while staying true to the principles of equity, transparency, and social good that guide our work,” The Dais interim executive director André Côté said in a statement.
The Dais aims to shape public policy and leadership at the “intersection of technology, education, and democracy,” according to the organization. Creative Destruction Lab aims to support seed-stage science and technology startups it sees as “massively scaleable.” Human Feedback Foundation hopes to spur AI development that helps Canadians through “human agency, input, and values.”
The news comes a day after DIGITAL announced $15 million in funding to support 16 AI-based training and career technology projects in Canada, including RAISE. The cluster said it would co-invest a total of $650,000 in RAISE, including $270,000 for Creative Destruction Lab, $250,000 for Toronto Metropolitan University, and $130,000 for the Human Feedback Foundation. Those partners are also investing a combined $650,000 of their own money in the initiative.
DIGITAL claimed there was a “significant” gap in AI adoption from the non-profit sector. It cited a 2024 Canadian Centre for Nonprofit Digital Resilience (CCNDR) report indicating that just 4.8 percent of Canadian non-profits were using AI, and that less than one percent of their workers were involved in technology-related roles. This limits their ability to use AI to “meet community needs,” the RAISE members claimed in a release.
This also follows the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) and Canadian AI Safety Institute providing grants to 10 AI safety research projects as part of an AI Safety Catalyst Grant program. The projects address issues like misinformation, trust in large language models (LLMs), and real-world dangers. Among the recipients are Université de Montréal AI expert Yoshua Bengio and multiple researchers affiliated with the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute (Amii).
There have been efforts to back technology adoption at Canadian non-profits before, such as software as a service (SaaS) startup Hopeful’s effort to help non-profits use their internal data more effectively. However, some non-profit organizations, such as independent media outlets, have also found themselves involved in copyright battles as their intellectual property has been scrounged to train their AI systems.
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