We believe that emerging technologies, evolving ways of working, and increased connectivity will drive opportunities for outsized efficiencies in education, training, and work, driving costs down to deliver high income gains and economic opportunity.

Thesis Refresh (March 2024)

Activity since Sept 2023 Thesis Launch

  1. 17 grants made in this thesis area: 13 AI Fund grantees plus SkillUp, Risekit, PerScholas, and Generation.
  2. Analysis for AI Fund Grantees per Dec 2023 Grant Analysis
    1. 100% Meet DIL Threshold
    2. $94 - Relative ROI Cost to Double Lifetime Income (DIL)
    3. 4,554 - Projected North Star ROI Lifetime Income per Dollar
  3. Funder roundtable now includes 62 funder members meeting monthly since June 28th with senior speakers from Khan Academy, Project Evident, Merit America, Workshift, University of Chicago Researcher, Dr. Jens Ludwig.
  4. Launched thecusp.ai a new podcast of Workshift Media covering how AI is impacting education and work.
  5. Launched the AI for Economic Opportunity cohort beginning in January 2024, with monthly capacity building meetings including all 13 grantees with support from OpenAI, Tribe.AI, Project Evident and peer-to-peer support.

Learnings

  1. First mover advantage is catalytic by building trust in our brand, attracting opportunities for partnership from both funders and innovative grantees, encouraging action among peer organizations and creating learnings that others can build upon.
  2. Technology and data systems are very high NSROI areas for Gitlab Foundation to fund (note second chart here) due to their ability to reduce the cost-per-person served, increase the number of individuals served (scale reach), reduce barriers to access, or serve clients in novel ways.
  3. The GitLab Foundation can play a role in encouraging other funders to make technology-related investments through access to pipeline of grantees, sharing learnings from early investments, building capacity through convening.
  4. Public RFPs are an excellent source of deal flow and partner engagement if managed well, but keeping them lean and simple (e.g., by using easily accessible/sortable tools) is important to ensure cost-efficiency and transparency.
  5. Developing a broad early pipeline of grantees in niche but high ROI interventions will be important to driving outcomes, but is only possible with diligent outreach and networking. (e.g. we expected satellite connectivity to be a high-ROI interventions in places like rural Kenya, but we have not yet met with any organizations doing this systematically.)

Challenges

  1. Funders struggle to make experimental or prototype development focused grants in this area, or have challenges assessing these types of grants. This is largely due to a lack of comfort in assessing new types of technology based investments and the type of risk tolerance needed to invest in prototype development.
  2. Cohort-based activities for grantees can be valuable but do take significant resources, time and partnerships to execute well.
  3. Our outcomes data shows that AI and related technology infrastructure grants are often very high ROI, but nonprofits struggle to implement these projects due to poor data quality, lack of internal or cost-effective technical expertise and challenges in prioritizing internal infrastructure redesigns that disrupt legacy ways of doing business.

Priorities and Next Steps

  1. Significant cohort and grantmaking activity underway: By the end of FY25 we expect to have ~40 AI for Economic Opportunity grantees active with a total estimated impact of $27.3 Billion in increased lifetime earnings (using the 4,554X NSROI average projection from current AI grantees).
    1. 13 grantees are members of the current AI for Economic Opportunity cohort running Jan-June 2024, with expected follow-on funding for a subset based on performance later in the year, to be evaluated in fall 2024.
    2. Robin Hood AI Poverty Challenge applications will be due May 30th, and will be evaluated in partnership with GitLab Foundation.
    3. Our 2nd round AI for Economic Opportunity fund will be announced late summer 2024.
  2. Focus on technology, data systems, and capacity building investments.
    1. Technology is clearly transforming the sector and outcomes: We’ll explore how technology-driven trends are advancing economic mobility (e.g., the role of remote work and the gig economy).
    2. Funding social sector infrastructure and capabilities has a high NSROI: We’ll pursue technology- and data systems-focused grants, and expand access to technical advisors for grantees.
    3. Data quality is lacking in the nonprofit sector, and may provide an opportunity to invest in shared data systems. EQOS is an example where a core data need (credential wage and employment outcomes) is not readily accessible by users of the credential marketplace.
  3. Explore multi-funder collaboratives to drive systems change outcomes.
    1. Provide more formal collaboration opportunities for our AI for Economic Opportunity funder collaborative, now including more than 60 funders.
    2. Laboratory as a service: Explore formal “seed investor” follow-on funding partnerships with Ballmer Group, the Gates Foundation, Ascendium Foundation, and/or others.
    3. Expansion of industry partnerships: Continue to cultivate the OpenAI partnership, and explore collaborations with others such as Anthropic.
  4. Testing Cohort Design Value for the Effort: Assess the relative value of cohort-based capacity building activities for grantees.
    1. Value of one to many: Our hypothesis is that cohort based peer engagement will increase speed of development, more efficiently solve common problems across multiple teams, and increase cost effectiveness of specialized technical support.
    2. Synthesis & communication of lessons learned will be key: Effectively sharing learnings from these experimental grants with the field will be key to the success of this first cohort. Failure of a significant percentage of early prototypes is expected.