For more than a decade, Pursuit has been in the business of transformation. We find talented adults from underserved communities - people who have been systematically excluded from the tech economy — and equip them with the skills, support, and opportunities to build meaningful careers in technology. On average, our Fellows see their income jump from $18,000 to over $85,000. That's not just a career change. That's generational wealth. That's communities transformed.
As AI reshapes the economy, Pursuit is evolving with it. Our flagship program now trains Builders in AI skills. Our community programs introduce AI concepts early, making the technology accessible for those who've historically been locked out of it. And as we grow, we're asking a bigger question: what does it mean to build an AI-ready city and not just an AI-ready talent pipeline?
We believe the answer starts with the organizations closest to New York's communities.
New York City is home to more than 46,000 nonprofits. These organizations form the backbone of the city's social infrastructure, providing housing support, legal services, youth development, workforce training, and so much more. They serve the very communities Pursuit was built to uplift.
And yet, they are being left behind in the AI revolution.
A 2023 Robin Hood survey found that 85% of nonprofits wanted to learn more about AI — but fewer than 15% had ever engaged in any AI-related learning or activity. Research from Decoded Futures, a Tech:NYC initiative backed by Robin Hood and Google.org, found the same pattern: while interest is high, strategic AI adoption remains rare. Nonprofits struggle to identify where to start, and the support that exists is rarely right-sized for the sector. As their AI Adoption
Report noted, nonprofits need hands-on experience and a real bridge between the tech and social sectors to walk across.
Building that bridge, one rung at a time, is what Pursuit is doing.
This spring, in partnership with Goldman Sachs, Pursuit brought together 36 staff members from 18 Goldman Sachs Community Development Champions across the New York-New Jersey region for a hands-on AI literacy workshop — the first in what will be a series of sessions for these grantees. These organizations represent Goldman’s 2025 Equity Builders and Change Makers. This pilot was an extension of that investment, giving their teams the tools and confidence to begin integrating AI into their work.
The organizations represented the full breadth of New York's social sector, spanning legal services, housing and community development, financial empowerment, youth mentorship and development, public library and civic access, arts and culture, education, workforce development, and community health — a cross-section of the sector that reflects just how universal the need for AI literacy has become.
The session was intentionally practical. Rather than offering a theoretical overview of AI, we put tools directly in participants' hands, worked through real use cases, and focused on building a foundation people could take back to their organizations and act on immediately.
Critically, participants weren't learning from slides alone. Pursuit brought AI-native engineers into the room to provide deep, real-time coaching and support throughout the session — not as instructors delivering a curriculum, but as practitioners working side-by-side with nonprofit staff to tackle their specific questions and use cases. This is what set the experience apart: access to people who build with AI every day, making themselves available to organizations that rarely get that kind of proximity to technical talent.
Engagement was high: the majority of participants actively completed multiple tasks during the session, with several completing seven or more.
The feedback reflected what the research predicts — when AI training is accessible, hands-on, and grounded in real nonprofit contexts, it resonates. Gemma Martinelli of The Legal Aid Society captured it well:
"Thank you for a wonderful workshop! I have been to a few other introductory AI workshops, but this one was the most hands-on and really felt like it gave me some basic building blocks to get started. I am looking forward to sharing the learnings with other members of my organization."
That final line is the point. Gemma isn't just taking this back for herself - she's already thinking about how to spread it. Literacy becomes a multiplier.
It's important to be clear about what an AI literacy workshop is and what it isn't.
A workshop like this one is a critical first rung. It builds awareness, reduces fear, sparks curiosity, and gives participants the vocabulary and basic skills to engage with AI tools in their day-to-day work. For organizations at the beginning of their AI journey, it is exactly the right starting point. And the Goldman Sachs Community Development Champions who participated are exactly the right audience - established, mission-driven organizations with the leadership and community trust to put new capabilities to work.
But awareness alone doesn't transform an organization. The sector needs more than workshops. It needs capacity - real, sustained, embedded AI capability that lives inside organizations over time.
For a select group of participating organizations, the Goldman Sachs Pilot goes further. Pursuit will be embedding a trained AI Builder directly inside the organization to partner with their team on a high-value, high-effort initiative — the kind of project that has real potential to drive cost savings and operational efficiency, but that requires dedicated technical capacity to actually bring to life. These aren't small automations. They are the heavier-lift ideas that nonprofit leaders have long identified as transformative but never had the resources to execute.
This embedded model is the bridge between literacy and true organizational capacity. It's how a workshop becomes a turning point.
We are currently in the process of reviewing project proposals from participating organizations and matching them with the right Builders — and the early ideas coming in are exciting. To get a sense of the kind of work Pursuit Builders have already delivered across sectors, take a look at the Pursuit Project Lookbook.
This is what it looks like to Build in Public.
This is where Pursuit's broader vision comes in. As we build out our model for supporting the nonprofit sector, we see AI literacy programming as the foundation upon which deeper capacity must be built. The goal is not a sector that has attended a workshop. The goal is a sector that is genuinely AI-native — equipped not just to use AI tools, but to build with them, to deploy them responsibly, and to continuously evolve as the technology does.
The Goldman Sachs Pilot is an important contribution to that vision. It is the beginning, not the destination.
The appetite is clear. The need is urgent. And Pursuit is uniquely positioned to meet it — with a decade of experience building tech talent from underserved communities, a growing AI training program, and deep relationships across New York's nonprofit ecosystem.
The Goldman Sachs Pilot showed us what the first step looks like. Now we're focused on what comes next: building the infrastructure, the partnerships, and the talent pipelines that will allow the social sector to move from AI curiosity to AI capacity — at scale.
New York's nonprofits are ready. We're building the path forward with them.
Want to bring AI training to your organization or explore how Pursuit can support your grantees? Reach out to Devika Gopal-Agge, Chief Development and Employer Services Officer, at devika@pursuit.org.