$150 Million, 1,000 Fellows: Inside Anthropic’s Plan to Bring AI to Nonprofits

Anthropic is committing $150 million to a new fellowship program designed to help nonprofit organizations nationwide use artificial intelligence more effectively in their work.

The initiative—dubbed Claude Corps after the AI company’s best-known chatbot—will place 1,000 early-career workers inside at least 400 nonprofits starting this fall.

The fellows will spend one year helping those organizations use AI tools to improve operations, expand services, and address community needs more efficiently.

In addition to working with Anthropic’s trained fellows, each nonprofit will receive a $10,000 grant and free credits to utilize the Claude platform.

By placing AI-savvy workers directly inside these organizations, Anthropic is betting that AI adoption will accelerate when expertise is embedded alongside the technology.

“We’re hoping it’s a good idea that can take root and that other people can build on and learn from, whether that’s public or private,” Anthropic president Daniela Amodei told the Associated Press. “But I think my hope is that we’ll learn, the people who do it will learn, and we’ll be able to come back and do it again next time even better.”

The selected fellows, aged 18 or older with less than two years of professional experience, will start out in an intensive bootcamp to learn how to use Claude in a wide range of nonprofit settings, from public health groups to educational programs.

Fellows will receive an $85,000 annual salary as well as full benefits, relocation assistance, and dedicated technical support.

Anthropic’s Claude Corps partner is CodePath, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that offers technical education and career support to underrepresented and low-income students interested in pursuing a tech career.

“We are intentionally trying to be extremely accessible,” said CEO Michael Ellison, who will help oversee the fellowship program. “We want the initial group of fellows to be representative of a broad section of the population of this country.”

The charitable venture comes as Anthropic moves toward a potential initial public offering. Amodei said the fellowships are just the latest example of Anthropic expressing its core values even as it pursues profits.

Earlier this year, the company clashed publicly with the Trump administration after refusing to provide the U.S. military with unrestricted access to its Claude AI tool.

More recently, Anthropic warned AI labs to pause development of their systems if humans are unable to control the rapidly advancing technology. The company also announced plans to donate $200 million to help workers displaced by escalating AI adoption and said it had assisted Pope Leo XIV as he prepared last month’s encyclical on AI.

“There’s decisions and choices that we might make that might feel in conflict with just the pure commercial interests of the business,” said Amodei, “and we’re going to be really open about that. I think we have been very well served by our inclination to just be very honest about who we are because people who like that really like us.”

The first group of nonprofits set to welcome Claude Corps fellows includes StriveTogether, a 27-state network that helps prepare young people for better economic opportunities.

“AI is a tool, not the whole strategy,” said Jennifer Blatz, president and CEO of the Cincinnati-based organization. “AI can help us work smarter, but trust building and community collaboration, that’s a deeply human part of the work—and that’s not going away just because we can use this tool.”

Applications for Claude Corps fellowships are being accepted through July 17. The first 100 fellows are slated to begin their assignments on October 19.

Amodei said Anthropic will evaluate the program after its first year to determine whether it should continue or expand.

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