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Patrick J. McGovern Foundation

The Patrick J. McGovern Foundation (PJMF) is a $1.5 billion philanthropic organization that invests in artificial intelligence (AI) and data science for public purpose. Over the past decade, it has deployed over $500 million toward AI as public infrastructure. The foundation advocates for governing AI as a long-term civic infrastructure shaped by democratic institutions and civil society, rather than solely by private tech companies. PJMF focuses on applying technology to challenges in climate resilience, human rights, media and journalism, crisis response, digital literacy, and health equity. It emphasizes "IDEA" principles (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access) and advocates for nonprofits to serve as "data guardians" that protect the data and agency of vulnerable populations. Beyond financial support, the foundation provides in-house technical teams to advise grantees on data governance, risk assessment, and model evaluation.

Publications 2026 calendar Monday brief Language on the move Search their words

Patrick J. McGovern Foundation

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We have a responsibility to build AI that centers human dignity and is designed for the people who will use it.

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Every line of code carries a decision about what you value and who technology is meant to serve.

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At the World Governments Summit, global leaders are aligning on governance frameworks that will define the next decade o

Most AI pilots never reach the people they were built for. These three did.

AI will not scale globally without new infrastructure

The choices we make now on AI will shape the next decade of development, and who it reaches. We need to create systems t

Supply chain transparency starts with knowing what exists and where it operates.

Scaling AI responsibly calls upon community voices, local partnerships, and solutions designed for people facing challen

India's AI Trust Model Could Shape the Next Global Order

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When a community is left off the map, it is left out of decisions that shape its future.

In India, clearing the current court backlog could take an estimated 300 years. Millions of cases are still awaiting a h

Billions in bank financing continue to flow to companies expanding oil production worldwide. Without visibility into tho

Nearly 2 billion people still lack access to safe water.

PJMF partner CarbonPlan just launched Open Climate Risk: a public database of wildfire risk for every building in the U.

In his TEDx Talk, PJMF President Vilas Dhar frames how decisions about AI are made and who influences them. The technolo

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A Fortune 500 company spent millions on AI without seeing substantial productivity gains. A 23-year-old in rural India u

How should institutions with moral authority engage with the governance of AI?

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At Fund AI, leaders across philanthropy and technology came together to focus on a shared challenge: how to move from AI

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Nonprofits building AI for good don't need to start from scratch.

AI will transform billions of lives. Vilas Dhar, President of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, shares why private mar

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Open Knowledge Foundation's Open Data Editor was just named a Digital Public Good by the Digital Public Goods Alliance.

Teams across South America are tackling climate risk firsthand by building AI and open-data tools designed to protect th

A new op-ed from PJMF's Nick Cain, Fast Forward's Kevin Barenblat, and Center for Effective Philanthropy's Dr. Elisha Sm

The language we use to describe AI shapes who is responsible for it. Calling AI a product or an innovation offsets that

#EarthDay is a reminder that the most powerful climate tools must be built for the communities facing the greatest clima

Who receives care, and when, is increasingly determined by AI before a patient is ever seen.

Decades of investment in global immunization have delivered results that were once unimaginable. The next frontier is en

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"No matter how good the AI models get, they will always be better when they are paired with the data of local and lived

Is your organization grappling with questions about how to design and deploy AI products that serve multilingual, cultur

The clothes you wear and the food you eat travel through global supply chains that are hard to see and harder to hold ac

PJMF partner Earth Genome has launched Earth Index, an AI-powered tool that places environmental mapping in the hands of

Domestic work happens behind closed doors. So do the conversations that determine whether a nanny, house cleaner, or hom

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At a major news network, a reporter heading into a dangerous assignment has a security team behind them. A local journal

AI doesn't stop at national borders. Good governance can't either.

When civil society organizations are deciding whether to build technology solutions in-house, buy off-the-shelf options,

Last week, Jacqueline Watts, PJMF's Learning and Insights Lead, joined ReFED's Learning Lab to share practical ways nonp

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More than 2.2 million domestic workers in the U.S. care for families and homes. When problems with pay or fair treatment

Around the world, communities are asking questions about how the data centers that power AI will affect their communitie

Machines can generate. People create.

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Across digital media, misinformation travels faster than the truth, and AI chatbots have become its newest channel.

The Patrick J. McGovern Foundation is expanding its leadership team!

A single data center project can now require as much power as a small city.

Environmental accountability starts with accessible data.

Extreme heat is now one of the world's most dangerous climate risks, linked to nearly half a million deaths annually.

Every year, tens of thousands of people leave U.S. prisons and return home, a process known as reentry, yet roughly 40%

Most corporate cultures were built around scarcity. AI is about to test those assumptions for leaders in and out of the

What will the global AI landscape look like in 2035?

There's a shopping bag being developed right now that, once thrown away, sprouts seeds and grows into a plant.

Some of the most consequential climate decisions are buried in contracts few people ever read.

Social platforms are built to hold your attention. Real connection is a different design problem entirely.

Leaving the hospital is rarely the end of a patient’s care. It is often when a family member takes on the work of recove

Protecting human dignity has to be part of how we build and govern AI.

Last week, the conversation around AI took a more urgent turn as an Anthropic researcher left the company with a public

What does it take to fund data and AI that delivers for people?

Shaping AI isn't a job for technologists alone. People need the language, knowledge, and power to shape the systems that

Pope Leo XIV's encyclical Magnifica Humanitas asks what it takes to safeguard human dignity as AI reshapes work, communi

Where people go for the news has changed. What hasn’t is that trust still needs to be earned.

On the BBC World Service Newsday with David Wafula, Vilas Dhar addressed the question: Can developing economies share i

Too often, conversations about AI don’t consider the end result of the technology; not whether it will end the world, bu

(EXT) PJMF Fast Forward output (1)

Copy of Playbook Starting + growing a tech team

Students cannot learn from material they cannot access. Bookshare Plus from Benetech turns the materials teachers create

Newsrooms in the Global South struggle to protect their IP from LLM’s. With content licensing deals not in the foreseeab

AI’s future cannot be written by a handful of companies and handed down to everyone else.

(EXT) PJMF Climate Cabinet Partner Social (1)

Future of AI is a governance question, not a technology race: Vilas Dhar of Patrick J. McGovern Foundation | Interview

TIME “The U.N.’s AI Turning Point”