AI for Economic Opportunity Fund

📣 Inaugural Grantee Cohort Announced!

📣 Finalists Selected! Read more about their projects here.

All 200 submissions have been scored and finalists will be notified by EOD Sept 29th.

1. How many first round applications did you receive? We received 200 concept note applications from nearly 300 partnering organizations by the Sept 13th deadline! This was more than double our internal stretch goal, and we’re amazed by the quality, technical sophistication, partnerships and outcome potential we see in this first round. View a summary of all 200 applications we received here.

2. What is the AI for Economic Opportunity Fund?

   The Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Economic Opportunity Fund is a new grant making area of the GitLab Foundation.

   We are seeking to make grants to support development, adoption and use of AI tools and services to assist workers to receive training, skill development, and job growth opportunities. We believe there are many promising opportunities to further develop and implement these new technologies to improve economic mobility.

3. Who can apply for grants?

   Applicants should be US based nonprofit organizations for this first round. Preference will be given to organizations and projects impacting one of our three focus regions (the United States, Kenya, and Colombia).

   • We encourage partnerships between multiple organizations including partnerships between nonprofits and for-profit startups, consultants and other technology experts.
   • For profit social enterprises will be considered on a case by case basis for mission alignment, structure and opportunity to use a fiscal sponsor or nonprofit partner as an intermediary. While we love for-profit social impact business models, please consider applying through a nonprofit partner or fiscal sponsor for this round.

4. When are applications due?

   The first round of “concept note” applications are due on Sept 13, 2023, midnight PST.

   Once these are screened, we will invite a full application from a select group by September 29th. Full applications for finalists will be due on October 13, 2023.

   We do anticipate future grant rounds.

5. OpenAI Partnership & Awards: The GitLab Foundation and OpenAI have partnered to provide additional funding and technical support for select grantees. ****On top of the GitLab Foundation’s first round of $2 Million in grant funding, OpenAI will award up to two of the AI for Economic Opportunity grantees an OpenAI Social Impact Prize. The prize will include an additional $100,000 grant from OpenAI’s nonprofit organization, $10,000 in OpenAI API credits, and technical guidance from OpenAI engineers. All interested grantees will also receive $2,500 in OpenAI API credits.

6. When will awards be announced?

   First round of funding will be announced to grantees on or before Nov 3, 2023

7. How do we apply? Initial concept applications should be submitted using this form found on the main grant opportunity site. https://www.gitlabfoundation.org/futureofwork

   • You can find a template of the concept note here.

8. How will applications be evaluated?

   Applications will be reviewed by GitLab Foundation program officers, program advisors, select additional technical advisors, as well as other funders. Our review will include an economic impact model (performed by GitLab Foundation staff) as well as a rubric that will include the following (subject to modification):

   • Organization / Team - Is this a high functioning or higher capacity organization with a strong team representative of the skill sets needed to be successful?
   • Partnerships - Are they signaling creative partnerships with key customers, funders, networks or local partners?
   • Program structure & outcomes - Program structure shows strong potential for clear outcomes that will benefit low-income households or low-wage workers.
   • Data Availability - Applicant shows strong awareness of relevant data sources, how they can access that data, compliance or privacy concerns related to using that data, or other data collection, management and use capabilities.
   • Outcome Scale Potential - Does the program show sufficient potential to scale to positively impact large numbers of individuals, and do the outcomes sufficiently meet ROI targets?
   • Technical expertise: Applicant has internal technical expertise, or has shown clear ability to partner with relevant technical advisors, to execute toward project goals effectively.
   • Safety, Security, Bias and Ethics: Applicant has shown an awareness of relevant ethical or bias related concerns of the use of these technologies, and a reasonable plan for mitigation of those concerns.

9. Can my organization submit more than one concept?

   Yes, but please limit to three submissions per applying organization.

10. Can existing or future grantees of GitLab Foundation apply?

    Yes, we are treating the AI for Economic Opportunity grant decision process as a separate and distinct process. Being an existing grantee will not diminish your chances of selection.

11. How many grants will be awarded? What size are the grants?

    We expect to award up to 10 grants directly ranging from $100,000 to $350,000. We encourage grants to be structured as either an “experimentation” grant or a “scaling” grant.

    • Experimentation grants are focused on prototyping, testing viability of a solution, or building a minimum viable product (MVP).
    • Scaling grants should be focused on implementation of a proven or well tested technology, or scaling an existing service to increase outcomes.

    Additional funders are also reviewing this pipeline of applications and may award additional funding that may expand the range and type of funding available.

12. What is the grant award or project period?

    We value short cycle iteration and rapid learning, so we expect initial grant periods to be no longer than one year, with grant contracts expected to be executed by early December 2023. Full implementation of a project may take longer than one year, but please be clear about the goals and outcomes you seek to achieve by the end of your grant period.

13. Are we open to signing a non-disclosure agreement based on the proprietary nature of your submission?

    This is a very common question in early stage investment and technology related grantmaking, and a common stance that we agree with is that it’s generally not a good idea to sign NDAs. In short, early stage technologies and related ideas are quite rarely truly unique, but your ability to execute is everything. NDAs set up legal contention about idea sharing, which is not advised and may even be counterproductive to collaboration and progress.

    We also are specifically encouraging other funders interested in AI for Economic opportunity to review our pipeline of applications to encourage additional funding to flow to promising projects. NDAs would significantly limit our ability to do so.

    For the selected grantee cohort, if they believe it would be valuable, we will establish some form of mutually agreed upon privacy or non-disclosure norms or agreements to encourage open sharing of technical challenges and support with peer grantees and our technical advisors.

14. Can you tell me more about the cohort based activities for grant recipients?

    While these are still in planning phase, we expect to at a minimum convene all grantees for a monthly project status update Zoom call (from approximately January to June) with technical support present (from OpenAI and/or TribeAI, etc.) to work through any blockers or challenges that might arise in those early project months, share learnings along the way, and ideally involve additional funders or partners in the process of supporting your projects. Additional cohort based supports, including any potential project showcase events or in-person convenings, will be decided based on the final make-up of the selected grantees.

15. What outcomes is the GitLab Foundation hoping to achieve?

    We seek accelerate the adoption of these technologies to drive positive change in our population and outcome focus areas.

    Population Focus: We seek solutions that benefit populations least likely to experience economic mobility, which includes those from low-income households, populations with low educational attainment, and low-wage workers. While we don’t have a strict boundary on the target population, for reference, we define low-income households as those earning below regional living wage thresholds, define low educational attainment as those without or with limited postsecondary credentials, and define low-wage workers as those earning below two-thirds of area median wages.

    Outcome Focus: We seek to fund solutions that either have pre-existing evidence that demonstrates their effectiveness in improving economic mobility outcomes or have strong potential to do so.

    • We are looking for solutions that are focused on measurably improving economic mobility outcomes toward our north star metric such as:
      • Annual earnings / hourly wages
      • Career or job mobility
      • Workforce training enrollment
      • Credential attainment
      • Postsecondary enrollment
      • College completion rates
      • Skills and learning development
      • Employment rate
      • Access to public benefits

16. Why types of solutions is the GitLab Foundation looking for?

    Solutions we’re interested in are not just about jobs displaced or impacted by AI, but truly solutions across the entire labor market where AI tools such as large language models (LLMs), machine learning (ML) and generative AI may help improve systems and opportunities for education, training and skill development, job matching, mobility, career advancement, coaching, hiring, and other related processes, etc.

    We know there are many creative applications and approaches that are possible, and we’re excited to see what you have in the works.