When we partner with nonprofits, we ask ourselves a critical question: How can we give nonprofit employees their time back, so they can focus on what matters most — their mission?
The root of this question comes from a long-standing reality: passion alone cannot overcome administrative hurdles and staffing shortages. A student’s future doesn’t wait for summer break. Natural disasters don’t pause for the weekend. Community needs don’t end at 5 p.m. Nonprofit teams are often held back by the relentless pressure to do more with less — and in the face of our world’s most urgent challenges, there is simply no time to waste.
That’s why we launched the Salesforce Accelerator — Agents for Impact. At its core, the Accelerator is Salesforce’s 1-1-1 philanthropic model in action. This initiative provides technology, funding, and expertise to help nonprofits build and customize AI agents with Agentforce, enabling them to improve operational efficiency and scale community impact in an AI-driven future.
The Salesforce Accelerator has become a powerful proving ground for innovation, surfacing a clear blueprint for how AI can scale a mission. Learn how our nonprofit partners are working with AI agents to solve social and environmental challenges — and how you can do the same.
Top agentic use cases for nonprofits:
- Agents for fundraising and donor engagement
- Agents for coaching assistance
- Agents for operational efficiency and automation
- Agents for member and community engagement
AI for Impact
1. Agents for fundraising and donor engagement
Fundraising is the lifeblood of any nonprofit, yet the manual labor required to manage donor data and report on impact often takes fundraisers away from the very people they are trying to inspire. Agentic AI transforms this dynamic by automating the burden of data processing and impact reporting. By providing real-time insights and tailored communication, these agents ensure that every supporter feels seen and every dollar is tracked, allowing development teams to focus on building the authentic relationships that drive long-term loyalty.
Examples from our partners:
America on Tech: Automating the “proof of impact”
America On Tech creates pathways for the next generation of technology leaders, a mission that attracts significant foundation and corporate funding. However, the manual effort required to generate over 50 detailed funder reports annually used to strain their small team, often taking 24 to 48 hours just to pull relevant data for a single report. Their new grant reporting agent automates this process, answering real-time data queries and updating funder records instantly.
- The impact: Agentforce delivers tailored, real-time communications to funders about the impact of their investments, turning a 48-hour manual slog into an automated, high-touch engagement strategy.
(RED): Turning data into actionable fundraising insights
To help end the fight against AIDS, (RED) is transforming its private-sector fundraising strategy by deploying a partnerships agent to harness over a decade of unstructured data. Operating directly within Slack, this agent serves as a strategic partner, summarizing complex partner histories and delivering instant business development insights that would previously have taken hours to compile. It even assists in brainstorming creative campaign ideas for some of the world’s most recognizable brands, ensuring that every outreach effort is as impactful as possible.
- The impact: By streamlining how donor data is analyzed and used, this agent supports the organization’s ongoing success in a mission that has already raised over $800 million for the Global Fund. (RED) anticipates a 10% increase in prospect outreach and response rates and a 10% decrease in administrative time, allowing the (RED) team to focus on high-value strategies.
America On Tech Transforms Grant Reporting with Tableau Next
Learn how America On Tech helps prepare thousands of students from underestimated communities for careers in technology.
2. Agents for coaching assistance
Coaching is rarely one size fits all, yet nonprofits often lack the staffing to provide 1:1 attention to every constituent. AI agents bridge this gap by acting as 24/7 digital coaches and coaching assistants, providing tailored guidance that adapts to an individual’s specific needs, language, and pace. By automating these personalized interactions, organizations can ensure no one falls through the cracks while freeing up staff for deeper, high-touch mentorship.
Examples from our partners:
Rare: A digital coach for regenerative agriculture
Rare is using agent tierra, an AI-powered digital coach, to provide real-time, localized guidance to smallholder farmers via WhatsApp. Designed to scale to 100,000 users in the next two years, it delivers tailored recommendations based on soil conditions, crops, and local weather patterns, supporting disease identification, regenerative practices, and climate adaptation strategies instantly.
- The impact: By automating routine advisory, Rare anticipates significant efficiency gains, freeing up staff time to focus on behavior change, community engagement, and scaling regenerative agriculture across priority landscapes.
Compass Working Capital: A tailored assistant for financial coaches
Compass Working Capital is building a financial coaching assistant to support families working to exit poverty and build economic stability. By analyzing data from coaching sessions, Agentforce automates time-consuming data entry and suggests evidence-based coaching strategies. To ensure quality, the agent is trained on the same rigorous materials used for new hires, maintaining Compass’s high standards for culturally competent and effective care.
- The impact: Compass anticipates a staggering 80% improvement in coach workflow efficiency, giving coaches more time to focus on the families they serve rather than the screens in front of them.
3. Agents for operational efficiency and automation
Nonprofits are often forced to choose between thorough data management and direct community service, as administrative paperwork consumes hours of every workday. Agentic AI acts as a digital force multiplier, automating repetitive data entry and streamlining complex workflows with human-level accuracy. By handling the heavy lifting of back-office logistics, these agents allow staff to reclaim thousands of hours to focus on the high-value work only humans can do.
Examples from our partners:
Blue Star Families: The “STAR” agent for data integrity
Blue Star Families, which supports 1.5 million military family members, is developing the STAR (saving time and resources) agent. This agent streamlines data-driven decision-making by guiding every Salesforce user through the creation of account, opportunity, and interaction records. By proactively reducing errors and duplicates, Agentforce ensures the organization’s fundraising engine runs on a single, clean source of truth.
- The impact: Once fully adopted, Blue Star Families expects to reduce administrative time by 50% for their development team, ensuring that fundraisers spend less time on data entry and more time connecting with the military community.
Open Door Legal: Streamlining justice
In the legal world, intake is often a bottleneck; Open Door Legal staff previously spent over two hours on intake per client. To solve this, they are developing an intake agent designed to gather client information, route cases for support , and streamline case preparation. By transforming a rigid, scripted intake process into a natural, conversational experience, Agentforce makes the first step toward justice feel more human and efficient.
- The impact: Agentforce is projected to save 4,000 staff hours annually, enabling the organization to increase the number of clients served by up to 25%.
Ready to lead the way with AI?
The Salesforce Accelerator equips nonprofits with funding, cutting-edge technology, and pro bono expertise.
4. Agents for member and community engagement
Building a vibrant community requires constant, high-touch communication, but small teams often struggle to keep up with the volume of inquiries from members and partners. AI agents serve as a 24/7 digital concierge, helping community members find the right programs, resources, and connections exactly when they need them. By automating these routine touchpoints, nonprofits can foster deeper engagement at scale while allowing staff to focus on the human relationships that sit at the heart of their community.
Examples from our partners:
YMCA of San Diego County: Enhancing support for 400,000 participants
The YMCA of San Diego County is deploying a member services agent to help its 400,000 participants navigate a vast array of programs and support services. By automating routine tasks and offering intuitive self-service support in multiple languages, the agent ensures that every member receives timely, relevant information without the wait.
- The Impact: In just the first week of launch, YMCA of San Diego County leveraged Agentforce for over 1,000 sessions, allowing staff and volunteers to focus on building relationships and delivering high-quality programs that benefit the community. This agent is expected to reduce staff administrative time by 50% and improve customer satisfaction by 20%, allowing volunteers and staff to focus on delivering the high-quality programs the community relies on.
Forest Future Alliance: Steward the future of forests and our economies
The World Economic Forum is developing a self-serviced member agent for the Forest Future Alliance community (previously known as 1t.org) to accelerate responsible conservation, restoration and stewardship of forests – the lungs and heart of our planet. The agent is designed to support private sector and philanthropy investors on their journey navigating complexity, starting with a focus on mangrove conservation and restoration. By surfacing the best practices and resources, the agent helps potential partners move from interest to action more quickly.
- The impact: The goal is to deepen engagement and double the size of the current 200+ members of the community, with future versions of the agent designed to match these members directly with peers and projects for investment, in many more thematic areas beyond mangroves.
Human Ingenuity, Accelerated
The success stories of the Salesforce Accelerator — Agents for Impact initiative aren’t just isolated wins; they’re real use cases that can transform organizations. Whether it’s providing coaching for farmers, reclaiming thousands of hours from legal intake, or automating complex grant reporting, these nonprofits have shown that administrative burden is no longer an immovable obstacle.
As you look at your own organization, consider where an AI agent could sit by your side:
- Could a donor engagement agent help you build deeper trust with your supporters through real-time impact reporting?
- Could a coaching assistant help your staff meet the needs of their constituents more effectively?
- Could an operational assistant handle the data entry that keeps your team stuck behind a desk rather than out in the community?
- Could a member engagement agent provide your community with around-the-clock self-service support and personalized resources?
Identifying these opportunities is the first step toward reclaiming time for your mission. Ultimately, this work depends on human ingenuity, accelerated by trusted AI. It’s about making sure nonprofit leaders have the tools to match the scale of their ambition.
Trusted AI agents offer a new way to work, but the true breakthrough lies in what nonprofit leaders will achieve when they are finally free to focus on what they do best.
