The AI-Powered Nonprofit: How UnidosUS Affiliates Use AI to Work Smarter

By: Johanna Lara, program specialist, Workforce Development, and Claudia Ruiz, senior policy advisor, Civil Rights

UnidosUS is supporting a network of nearly 300 community-based organizations in adopting AI tools as a means of increasing operational efficiency, enhancing program delivery, and supporting communities through the AI transition. With an understanding that AI adoption is becoming a practical necessity to address the shifting labor landscape and increase in demand for services, UnidosUS is seizing the opportunity to serve as a leading voice for Latino communities and the community-based organizations that serve them: working to understand the rapid technological changes reshaping the U.S. economy and workforce, and sharing these learnings with our Affiliates.

Thousands of dedicated staff, caseworkers and volunteers power UnidosUS’s Affiliate Network of 300+ community-based organizations — and it’s their deep roots in the communities they serve that drive real, on-the-ground impact. This support is increasingly important as Latinos are living through an aggressive, hostile immigration enforcement regime and mounting economic pressure from the grocery store to the gas pump. As these forces are converging on families, community-based organizations are resurfacing as the front line for those struggling by providing basic, critical services households can depend on in crisis. Nearly three-quarters of nonprofits (73%) have seen increased demand for services since January 2025, according to a recent report from The Center for Effective Philanthropy. The report also found that about 30% of nonprofits have reduced staff over that same period. Demand for services and support is at an all-time high, but staff have never been stretched thinner. It’s an alarming reality we have heard across the board from our network of affiliate partners, with concerns touching on everything from individual employee caseload capacity to external program delivery.

Simultaneously, the private sector is increasingly focused on AI transition, investing heavily in AI tools that promise to do more with less: automate routine work, streamline operations, grow worker capacity and free up time for higher-value work. The core question for our network has been how to bring those same advantages to communities that need it most. If AI can help a private company cut costs and scale faster, what would it take for a chronically under-resourced nonprofit to capture some of that same benefit, without losing the trust and care that make community-based organizations effective in the first place?

How Our Affiliates are Forging New Paths

On June 24, UnidosUS convened approximately 100 staff from Affiliates across the country for our 2026 Digital Opportunity Community of Practice: Practitioners, Policy and the Promise of AI. It was an energizing day, and a clear marker of how communities are already positioning themselves to engage with the AI transition. Across training programs, community engagement, and policy and advocacy, this convening made it clear that our Affiliates are not awaiting instruction on how to capitalize on the promise of AI…they are chartering their own course.

Several Affiliates described using AI to draft case notes, intake summaries and reports — tasks that used to take up hours of staff time. Freeing up even a few hours each week means more time spent face-to-face with clients and families.

One Affiliate’s approach offers a representative case study of what we heard from many organizations across the network. Ellie Owen, director of Community Investments at the Latino Economic Development Center, described building buy-in by starting with a staff “wish list” (i.e., “Reports take too long, I wish there was a better way…”) rather than a “tool list,” then building the adoption roadmap around those pre-identified pain points. That roadmap classifies and addresses staff fears directly — spanning everything from cybersecurity concerns, data hygiene (retention policies (i.e., “What does AI and automations mean for job security?”) — and empowers the most skeptical staff to take charge of the rollout. This approach is critical since staff are often closest to the very problems AI is intending to solve.

Communities Working In Community

One thing has been made clear from our conversations with our Affiliates: Community-based organizations across the country are already implementing and innovating with AI, often faster than the training and policy conversations meant to ground and support them. The appetite for new technology and tools will likely continue to grow with urgency, and it is imperative that those needs are met as funding has tightened and burnout has deepened. Organizations experimenting under pressure, without a community to lean on and learn from, are the ones most vulnerable to the risks posed by a largely unregulated AI sector — a data misstep, a tool rolled out without buy-in or the erosion of staff trust and culture. Continued conversations and communities working in sync are vital for successful and safe adoption and implementation of AI in the workplace. Ultimately, how the field learns together, rather than each organization navigating new territory on their own, will result in the most optimal outcomes.