What does trust-based grantmaking look like in the age of artificial intelligence? The Technology Association of Grantmakers (TAG), CAST Centre for the Acceleration of Social Technology, and Institute for Voluntary Action Research (IVAR) brought together 20 leaders from funders, nonprofits, and technology organizations in London to explore how philanthropy can build trust into the future of grantmaking.
The design studio centered on a deceptively simple question: How do we keep trust at the heart of grantmaking in the age of AI? What would we design if trust were a requirement, not just an aspiration?
This was the partners’ second design studio. In the previous session, participants examined why the traditional form-based grant application process is no longer serving the sector well. This year, more funders told us their current processes simply aren’t working, and they are actively looking for alternatives. At the same time, trust itself is under pressure.
IVAR’s research shows that nonprofits worry about whether AI is reviewing their applications, and about being judged for using it themselves. Funders want disclosure. The result is a transparency gap on both sides of the relationship.
Designing Grantmaking with Trust at the Center
Rather than starting with technology, participants stepped back and asked a broader question: What could a better way of finding, funding, and supporting communities look like if trust were designed into the system from the beginning?
Participants examined everyday mechanisms people use to establish trust, including seller ratings, passports, guides, and trusted community figures. They considered how AI is changing those mechanisms and where similar approaches could be useful in grantmaking. Working in groups, participants combined different trust mechanisms into new approaches, built pitches and prototypes, and then red-teamed their own concepts by asking two critical questions:
How could someone game this system, and who could it leave out?
Five Lessons About Trust, AI, and Grantmaking
1. Trust must become infrastructure.
Jean Westrick, TAG’s President and CEO, challenged participants to think of relationships as infrastructure and to build trust into governance, practice, and technology from the beginning. Technology can play an important role, but its greatest value comes when it strengthens human relationships rather than attempting to replace them.
2. AI is arriving in a space where trust was already fragile.
AI didn’t create the trust problem in grantmaking. It adds a new layer to a relationship already strained by power imbalances and burdensome processes. When applications are written with AI, a charity’s own words become a weaker signal of its voice and commitment, and there is not yet a universal understanding of what reasonable AI use looks like.
3. Nonprofit verification needs to be rebuilt and shared.
Almost every table moved from one-to-one verification toward one-to-many approaches, like a “nonprofit passport.” Instead of proving the same facts to every funder, a nonprofit would hold a verified, reusable record. That matters more as AI makes it easier to impersonate an organization in an application.
4. Put power and data in the hands of nonprofits.
Risk is the other side of the trust coin, and it isn’t evenly shared: an unfunded nonprofit may cut services or close, while a funder may get a disappointing impact report. Jean’s framing that “problem definition is power” made the case for co-design. Many ideas shifted control to grant seekers, who would choose what to share with each funder.
5. Free up time for human work and be actively inclusive.
Grant officers spend much of their time on credibility checks, not meeting communities and trusted local advisers. But trust mechanisms can also exclude. Community reputation favors those already in the community, and digital verification can leave behind groups without digital skills, a registration number, or an online presence.
Ideas for the Future
The studio produced several concepts worth exploring further:
■ A nonprofit passport. A verified digital record controlled by the nonprofit rather than a central owner. Participants built a working prototype based on the W3C Verifiable Credentials standard.
■ Give trust willingly. A model combining a nonprofit passport, a three-question application, and a randomized 20% “wildcard” fund, with time saved redirected toward learning conversations.
■ A shared discussion space. A Reddit-inspired forum where funders and nonprofits could ask questions and clarify funding requirements openly.
■ A layered route to trust. A process combining a nonprofit passport and peer endorsements with smaller initial grants before larger funding commitments.
■ Actively inclusive access. Proactive outreach to organizations unlikely to apply, paired with a clear eligibility checker and personalized feedback for unsuccessful applicants.
Lessons Learned
One participant noted that last year nearly every pitch was an AI solution. This year very few were, and most of what was proposed could be delivered now. Several solutions deliberately kept key moments, like visits and exit conversations, fully human. The conversation has moved from what AI can do to what grantmaking needs to be trusted.
Participants also shared a sense of urgency. As one participant put it, funders are in the middle of a system that is already broken, so there is little to lose by trying something different.
Questions remain open: Who should be responsible for verification? How do funders agree on what they need to know from each other? How do we build inclusive relationships that don’t favor those already in the network? And how can funders act as trust brokers, building trust between others and not only on their own behalf?
What Comes Next
TAG, CAST, and IVAR plan to keep the community connected, gather participant feedback, and identify funders interested in prototyping and de-risking promising concepts, particularly the nonprofit passport.
AI will continue to change. The goal should not be simply to keep chasing the technology. By putting people and trust first, philanthropy has an opportunity to design grantmaking systems that use technology in service of stronger relationships.
Read the full report from TAG, CAST, and IVAR to explore the design studio, concepts, and questions in greater depth.