Community IT Innovators Nonprofit Technology Topics

Nonprofit AI: Claude Corps Announcement, Regulations News

• Community IT Innovators • Season 7 • Episode 45

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0:00 | 20:16

Carolyn Woodard covers Anthropic's announcement of Claude Corps, a $150 million national fellowship program placing trained AI fellows inside nonprofit organizations, and gives a quick regulatory update on AI liability and state-level regulation.

Claude Corps will train 1,000 early-career fellows on Claude and embed them full-time, in-person at host nonprofits for 12 months. Fellows are employed by CodePath, paid $85,000 plus benefits, and supported by Anthropic and Social Finance, which will handle measurement and evaluation. The first cohort of 100 fellows begins in October 2026, with applications closing July 17th. 

Host organization applications are also open, and at least 400 nonprofits will participate over the coming years. Carolyn reflects on what this kind of embedded AI capacity could mean for chronically under-resourced nonprofits, while also noting the program's strategic timing ahead of Anthropic's anticipated IPO.

On the regulatory front, a German regional court issued a preliminary injunction finding Google liable for false claims in its AI Overview search results, treating AI-generated summaries as the company's own speech rather than protected third-party content. Meanwhile, California's No Robo Bosses Act is advancing through the legislature again after being vetoed earlier, with legislation that would require human oversight when AI is used in workplace discipline and termination decisions. And a federal rule requiring energy and water efficiency assessments for data centers expires in September with no replacement in sight.

This episode covers:

  • What Claude Corps is, who can apply as a fellow or host, and what genuine AI capacity-building at a nonprofit could look like in practice.
  • Why Anthropic's investment in the nonprofit sector is both a real opportunity and a strategic brand play, and why that tension doesn't cancel either side out.
  • The German court ruling that could make AI companies liable for hallucinated search results, and what it means for the "just verify everything" standard nonprofits already practice.
  • California's renewed push to regulate AI in the workplace, and the expiring federal rule on data center efficiency.

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Carolyn Woodard

Hello and welcome to the Community IT Innovators Nonprofit AI Midweek Check-in. I'm Carolyn Woodard, your host. I'm not an AI expert. I always say that at the top. No one is at this point. Some people have more expertise than others. I'm really, really interested in how nonprofits are using AI and exploring those uses and best cases and news about AI that really directly impacts nonprofits. And so I'm happy that you're joining me for this journey and we'll all get smarter together.

Carolyn Woodard

So this week I wanted to talk about some big new news from Anthropic. I know it's a lot of Anthropic. It's a very clear signal that Anthropic is deliberately positioning itself as "the" AI company for the philanthropic sector. And then I also wanted to, you know, do a little callback to last week when we talked about regulations and where some of that stands and how it impacts nonprofits.

Carolyn Woodard

So my first thing I wanted to talk about was the announcement of Claude Corps from Anthropic. So if you haven't heard about it yet, I will share the link in the show notes. It is a new national fellowship program from Anthropic, is going to train 1,000 fellows on Claude, and they will be placed full-time in -person for 12 months at host nonprofits. The fellows will get an $85,000 salary plus benefits, mentorship, and ongoing training.

Carolyn Woodard

This is a three-way partnership from Anthropic, CodePath, which is doing is the employer, and Social Finance company, which is going to do the measurement and evaluation of how these fellows do.

Carolyn Woodard

It doesn't start with 1,000 fellows right away. The fellow applications close July 17th for the first cohort of 100, which will start in October. There will be rolling cohorts after that, the next one starting in January 2027 and then August 2027. So to a year. You can still apply. If you have someone in your life or at your organization that is your using Claude already, is your tech person, your accidental techie, you know, is graduating and trying to figure out what to do and is interested in this type of program, they can still apply. I imagine it's quite competitive for those 100 spots, but it's worth applying.

Carolyn Woodard

The applications to be a host organization are also open. At least 400 nonprofits will host and you can apply. I believe that is also rolling, but I can check that. Many of them are larger national organizations, and many are oriented toward workforce and economic mobility. Code for America, the IRC, International Rescue Committee, Goodwill is already signed up. Year Up United, RAIN, the YMCA, REEF, which is a marine conservation, a couple of food banks have already signed up. So there's a whole range. So it'll be interesting which nonprofits uh get in uh over the years to host uh the fellows over time.

Carolyn Woodard

This is just such an interesting story and interesting program. It seems to be genuine capacity-building investment. Uh, I've talked on this podcast earlier, I believe, about the importance of upskilling all of your staff, getting to real AI literacy, being intentional, you know, uh bringing the whole organization along with you on this AI journey, trying what you can do to uh not allow 20 different people to run off in 20 different directions using 20 different AI tools in 20 different ways, um, but trying to, you know, kind of gather what people are doing that is really working. It could be useful in other departments, other teams, uh, doing that sharing, doing shared learning together. And so,

Carolyn Woodard

As I understand it from the way they describe it in the announcements, um, this Fellow is also gonna be trained by and paid by Anthropic through these intermediaries. Um, and then they will be embedded at your organization to help your whole organization both utilize AI, upskill all of your people, and then see ways that you can use AI beyond the productivity gains. So maybe in the ways that you do your work or in the clients that you identify that you can serve. So, you know, kind of interesting pieces there. It's it's just such an amazing idea.

Carolyn Woodard

Of course, it's brand new, so we don't know how it's gonna work and how well the fellows are gonna be trained and how well they're gonna be able to integrate into you know getting a new volunteer, like a souped-up volunteer at your organization. So that'll be very interesting to see how that turns out.

Carolyn Woodard

It's great that they're gonna be doing measurement uh and evaluation along the way so that they can get better. So that is really a good impulse from a corporate donor or corporate volunteers uh to do get a little bit more in the weeds and do a little bit more of that matching and evaluation. So it's not just parachuting in, here's some Claude, and parachuting out.

Carolyn Woodard

It is kind of obvious that this announcement happened the same time as they are, well, may it may not be obvious. If you didn't know yet, Anthropic has filed to file their IPO, their initial public offering. Uh, they are one of uh I think OpenAI is also going to be filing, and of course, SpaceX, uh XAI just did their filing this week.

Carolyn Woodard

So they're positioning themselves as they're leading up to that filing to you know be a feel-good, have this feel-good announcement. So I think both things can be true. This is a real interesting investment in the nonprofit sector. Uh, of course, it's also strategic brand building.

Carolyn Woodard

I don't know if people know this story about Apple um doing the donations to get uh Macs in schools, in libraries, so you know kids could play Oregon Trail and uh Where in the World is Carmen San Diego? And that was, of course, a giveaway, but it also familiarized all of those school children with Apple products that then was a long-term strategy for them around their brand. It feels very similar to that. Uh, getting Claude into all of these nonprofits, so then they become very, you know, dependent on them on Claude is, you know, certainly part of the strategy.

Carolyn Woodard

But it doesn't mean that it's not a real investment. And it doesn't mean that the nonprofits that end up with these Fellows aren't going to really benefit from that fully trained person who's very fluent in how Claude works, being able to work with other people at the nonprofit, again, with upskilling and just imagining like, what are we gonna be able to do that we couldn't do before?

Carolyn Woodard

As we have talked many times, nonprofits are so under-resourced. We already have one person doing five people's jobs. So understanding ways that Claude can help with those issues of capacity, I think is gonna it'll be interesting to see a year from now. Let's check back in and see what happened with these fellows. Um,

Carolyn Woodard

This is a very similar structure and very similar to a story that we did, I don't know, a month or two ago about the ChangeMaker Fellowship from Microsoft around Copilot. Um, so which is another big tech firm funding nonprofit AI capacity. So this is two of these that we've seen. And um, yeah,

Carolyn Woodard

They're competing for the nonprofit sector, which is interesting because in previous, you know, tech rollouts, um, often the nonprofit sector is very much an afterthought. I mean, we very rarely have products that are really designed for us. It's like, here's the Microsoft suite, you can use it. It will give you, you know, like it's not designed specifically for nonprofits, but we'll give you a discount. Um, you know, Google Workspace, same thing. It's designed for small businesses and startups and, you know, uh very small businesses, um, founders, and it works really well for nonprofits, too. Um, so there you have, you know, Salesforce, same thing. It's a product done by a company, and oh, also you can use it at a nonprofit.

Carolyn Woodard

So often we are the last, we have to use tools and adapt them for our own uses. And we are kind of the last that uh, you know, companies think about when they think about their marketing. I'm often very suspicious of companies that suddenly want to, especially tech companies that suddenly want to market to nonprofits, that um, they really just see uh way to sell more product. They aren't as interested in making a product that really works for nonprofits or helping nonprofits really use their products. Well, this is maybe just my PTSD from previous jobs and trying to use a lot of these tools. But um,

Carolyn Woodard

It's very interesting, I think, that Anthropic is very focused on this sector to begin with. Of course, um, Gemini and Copilot are also very much in the nonprofit sector space. So very interesting to follow along. So I guess yay for our sector in a lot of ways, like we've talked about, like this is a game changer for a lot of organizations. Um,

Carolyn Woodard

But as we've talked before too, there's a lot of ethics, and I don't know what the equivalent of greenwashing is, AI washing. You can use my product, and you know, don't worry about those uh data centers or the ethics of how I got all of the information to create this model.

Carolyn Woodard

So, you know, a lot of very complicated, it's a lot to think about, but this podcast is trying to make sure we have a lot of information. We can draw our own judgments, and so I will put in the show notes the information about applying for to be a fellow at Claude or to be you know part of Claude Corp, or to um apply to host a fellow. So um just we'll be checking back in over time because I'm really interested to see what happens with this and with the Microsoft uh Changemaker Fellowship as well. So

Carolyn Woodard

I had just a quick couple of updates on regulation that we talked about uh last week. Uh, the rules for regulation are evolving quickly. There's lots of court cases. I'm not gonna say that this is list is in any way exhaustive, but I saw a couple things that I thought had real impact on nonprofits in this uh conversation that we're having around AI. So I just wanted to share those with you quickly, and I'll put them in the notes as well. Uh,

Carolyn Woodard

Aa couple of weeks ago, a German court found that Google could be held liable for AI overviews. What happened was there were a couple of companies that realized that when Google AI search pulled up their company information, when people did a search, it was linking their company to a different company that had been in the news, had problems, had financial problems, had liabilities, was in lawsuits, et cetera. It wasn't their company. And once the AI had identified them as the wrong company, it was really, it just kept coming up that they were that company that had the problems.

Carolyn Woodard

So they sued AI, they sued Google about the AI search results. Um and this is a preliminary injunction in a regional court in Germany, but the court found that they were correct in their lawsuit, it wasn't the case, you know,

Carolyn Woodard

All of the AI tools will say we can make mistakes, it's up to you to verify this. You need to, you know, before you, you know, share this uh description that AI has created for you, or this draft, or you know, this legal document, like you need to check it. The AI is not responsible for uh what it responds to you when you ask a question of a chat bot.

Carolyn Woodard

But this was a different situation of the AI search results. And the plaintiffs argued that they couldn't, it wasn't a case of someone double checking, it was a case of the AI search giving the wrong information. And that was, I don't know, slandering them and uh um influencing people's perception of their companies, which were not had were not involved in any of these problems that the Google AI said that they were.

Carolyn Woodard

Google is gonna appeal and we're gonna see what happens.

Carolyn Woodard

But you know, I've been saying over and over that the human in the loop is really, you need to be operating on that standard, that everything that goes out, you need to edit it the same that you would edit something written by a brand new intern at your organization. It's your name that's gonna be on it, and if there's a problem with it, the AI is not gonna go to jail. You are gonna go to jail.

Carolyn Woodard

But in this case, the AI might have to own up and pay up and um fess up to what they got wrong. So um, you know, just be aware that this is coming down. I don't imagine this is gonna be the first lawsuit or the first ruling on this, and of course, Google has a bazillion lawyers, so let's see what happens. But it's an interesting first case and um, you know, first attempt to hold an AI company responsible for an AI result. Uh,

Carolyn Woodard

There's also a quick story on uh something I talked about last week about the um executive orders uh trying to keep states from regulating AI in a patchwork and trying to get Congress to create an AI regulation that would be national, and one imagines would be more favorable to AI companies.

Carolyn Woodard

There are many states that are going ahead with regulation uh despite this pushback, uh, including California, which is advancing an act called the No Robo Bosses Act that was vetoed previously. It's back, and they're trying to get it through, which would regulate AI being used in hiring and other HR decisions in the state of California. So it'll be interesting to see what happens with that.

Carolyn Woodard

And then another thing to draw your attention to is that there is a federal rule requiring agencies to assess the energy and water efficiency for data centers, which expires at the end of September. At the moment, there is no replacement in view. So the White House is not interested in replacing this rule, and Congress does not seem motivated to take it up either.

Carolyn Woodard

We're gonna talk more, I'm sure, in the future about data centers and the resources that they take and regulating them. Uh, but it's just interesting to see. I'm not sure what agency we have around this particular rule that's expiring in September. Um, I will keep you informed if there is something that you know we can we can do about it, but just keep it in mind.

Carolyn Woodard

So, again, local regulations may be the way to go forward. And I know here where I am in Northern Virginia, which has the highest concentration of data centers in the world right now, there's a lot of local action around the data center regulation locally, and I will have more on that in a future episode.

Carolyn Woodard

So, in the resources, we're gonna have those two application and some description of Claude Corps to be a Fellow or to be a host. Um, we have our acceptable use of AI tools template that you can uh download if you are on your journey trying to figure out how to develop an AI literacy at your organization, maybe without a Claude Fellow. If you if you don't get one, you can of course forge on ahead with your own policy making and AI literacy at your own nonprofit. We have a lot of resources on that on our website, communityit.com.

Carolyn Woodard

If you're feeling overwhelmed, I'm I'm feeling a little overwhelmed. There's a lot of news, a lot is changing really quickly. Um, I just want to come back to you. As I always say, we do have agency in the choices that we're making, becoming as AI literate as you can, understanding as much as the policy and the policy changes as you can. This is like the bread and butter of nonprofits. Like we're always interested in grassroots organizations and how is this impacting the communities that we care about? And how much is our energy bill going up, our electricity bill, what's happening to the water.

Carolyn Woodard

So I hope that this is not overwhelming. I'm trying to just give a couple of snippets a week. But yeah, there's a lot out there.

Carolyn Woodard

If this is your wheelhouse, um, I would love to hear from you about uh the most important stories that you're tracking and what your nonprofit is working on around this angle of the energy use and the water use and local communities.

Carolyn Woodard

So I'll be back on Friday with our regular tech topic. Uh, we have a webinar this week on um securing Google workspace at your nonprofit. So you can join me for that. There's still time to register. And until Friday and until next week with more nonprofit AI, take care.