Anthropic expands Claude tools for nonprofits while pursuing an IPO

Proposed 5% share fund could aid nonprofits or AI-affected groups

Anthropic expanded its support for the nonprofit sector on Monday, even as the artificial intelligence company filed to sell shares to the public for the first time. The maker of the Claude assistant said the moves — a plugin built with 30 nonprofits, a widened corps program and a proposed public benefit fund — form part of a broader strategy for “compounding good.”

The two strands of that strategy sit at different stages. The plugin launched on Monday, while the proposed share commitment still depends on a shareholder vote that follows the company’s initial public offering, a sale that could come as early as November.

Claude tools built with 30 nonprofits

Anthropic launched a new Claude for Nonprofits plugin created with 30 nonprofits so the assistant would be more responsive to the specific needs of the participating organizations. The company also said it will broaden Claude Corps, the program that embeds fellows with nonprofits to help them use AI more effectively, by making consultants available to help organizations with smaller, shorter-term projects.

Elizabeth Kelly, Anthropic’s head of beneficial deployments, said in an interview with The Associated Press that the work defines the company. “This work is so core to who we are as a public benefit corporation,” she said. “We were founded to ensure that we’re both developing AI safely and responsibly and that we’re deploying it in a way that really benefits everyone, including those who are too often left behind.”

Kelly said Anthropic’s work with the nonprofit sector is part of the company’s mission, and the program reaches well beyond the organizations that helped build the plugin. The bulk of the 25,000 nonprofits currently using Claude for Nonprofits have fewer than 10 people on staff, Kelly said, so the company’s work often has a large impact on those organizations.

A 5% share commitment and the public benefit debate

Earlier this month, Anthropic announced plans to commit 5% of its shares to a new Anthropic Public Benefit Fund. The fund could be used for large-scale donations to nonprofits or directly distributed to groups of people adversely impacted by AI. It still needs to be approved by shareholders once Anthropic completes its IPO, which could come as early as November.

Critics say AI companies are using donations and nonprofit pledges as an attempt to generate goodwill with the public at a time when so many people are worried about the potential dangers of the technology and its impact on jobs. Anthropic says that, as a public benefit corporation, it balances its commercial interests with the interests of the public good.

Daniela Amodei, Anthropic’s president, made that case in a May interview with The Associated Press. “I think there’s something really valuable about that as a construct just to help investors and employees and outside people understand what our intentions are and hold us accountable to them,” she said. Anthropic does not hold the corporate form alone: other public benefit corporations include eyeglass maker Warby Parker, insurance company Lemonade and Amalgamated Bank.

Bella DeVaan, director of the Charity Reform Initiative at the Institute for Policy Studies, said public benefit corporations can be meaningful, but questioned whether the federal government properly regulates corporations. Without tax reform and a change in what she calls “the public permissiveness toward billionaire power in America,” DeVaan said, there is no guarantee that even public benefit corporations will act in the public interest.

DeVaan also framed philanthropy as an obligation rather than a favor. “Their wealth belongs to the public in the first place — it’s created by the country and there’s a sort of social wage owed to people who use their products,” she said. “I hope that when people use the ethos of Silicon Valley that gave birth to these companies that have grand designs of changing the world that they’ll also think about how philanthropy could actually achieve charitable aims.”

What nonprofits report from working with Claude

Scott Burns, president and CEO of the Montgomery County Food Bank, said his organization’s use of Claude has already generated significant savings that allow it to provide food to more people in his Texas county north of Houston. “Costs have gone up for fuel,” Burns said. “Costs have gone up in every area – for proteins, in particular… I still want to be able to do more without adding a bunch of additional resources and (Claude) will enable me to do that.”

The food bank is one of the 30 nonprofits working with Anthropic to customize Claude for its specific needs. Burns said his team has already used the tool to optimize scheduling for food pickup and delivery and to keep better contact with donors. He is looking forward to welcoming two Claude Corps fellows to tackle the organization’s outdated inventory system and the scheduling of its volunteers, and he hopes to share what he finds with other food banks. “Nonprofits – we’re kind of an open book,” he said. “Why would I not share? It’s only going to help get more people fed, right?”

Allies Against Slavery, a Texas-based nonprofit that fights human trafficking, used Claude through its only government affairs staffer, who analyzed more than 750 state-level anti-trafficking policies and turned them into recommendations for advocates. Kelly pointed to the work as an example of what she hopes the program can support: “This is basically compounding good,” she said. “That’s the kind of work that we’re so excited to support here at Anthropic.”

Cat Ward, CEO of the Taproot Foundation, said her nonprofit was excited about working with Anthropic to provide pro bono expertise to nonprofits for specific projects. “Nonprofits are as lean as they come,” Ward said. “They’ve got the ambition. They’ve got the vision. This is about empowering them with tools that’ll help them go further faster.”

Anthropic’s nonprofit programs and its proposed fund remain at different stages: the tools are in use, with 25,000 nonprofits currently using Claude for Nonprofits, while the 5% share commitment awaits shareholder approval after an IPO that could come as early as November. DeVaan’s objections turn on a separate question — how the federal government regulates corporations and what she called the public permissiveness toward billionaire power.