Expertise-based volunteering for the AI period: Inside Cisco’s first Tech for Social Good Hackathon

Many nonprofits know they should embrace AI, and most are already feeling the strain to maneuver sooner than their sources enable.  AI is advancing at a pace that’s exhausting for them to maintain tempo with, not to mention undertake responsibly. For mission-driven organizations with lean groups and restricted sources, the query isn’t simply the right way to implement AI. It’s the right way to do it ethically and in ways in which help the long-term wellbeing of the communities they serve.

At Cisco, we imagine that technological experience, deployed with function, is likely one of the strongest sources we will provide our nonprofit companions. Past monetary funding and entry to know-how, what many nonprofits want is direct entry to individuals who perceive this AI second deeply and can assist them translate that information into observe.

That conviction formed our first annual Tech for Social Good Hackathon. In early 2026, greater than 160 Cisco consultants volunteered to kind 27 groups and spent one week constructing AI-powered options for seven Cisco Basis nonprofit companions working throughout local weather resilience and financial alternative. Every workforce began with an precise drawback assertion submitted by the nonprofit group and a mandate to resolve the issue responsibly.

Contained in the construct to develop moral AI options for nonprofit companions

Throughout all 27 groups, the simplest options shared one thing in frequent: they had been constructed by volunteers who thought as a lot concerning the folks implementing the instruments as the issues the instruments had been fixing. As Venkata Naga Rajesh Badveti, a Cisco engineer who designed a workflow resolution for Technology’s curriculum growth workforce, which creates classes for hundreds of learners worldwide, put it: “AI is a multiplier, not a standalone resolution. It really works greatest when it amplifies human experience relatively than changing it.”

That mindset prolonged to how groups thought concerning the communities their options would finally serve. Sathwik Kothapalli labored with Farmers for Forests on an AI instrument to automate the verification of handwritten paperwork in a number of regional languages, a prerequisite for farmers becoming a member of the nonprofit’s reforestation program in India. His workforce constructed for pace with out sacrificing accuracy, embedding human evaluation at each step with a clear-eyed understanding of what was at stake for every individual within the course of. “Realizing {that a} farmer in rural Maharashtra might get verified sooner and be part of a reforestation program sooner due to code I wrote made this essentially the most significant venture of my profession,” Sathwik shared.

“The Tech for Social Good Hackathon jogged my memory that the talents we hone and develop on daily basis at Cisco may be genuinely life-changing for communities which have by no means had entry to them.”
– Sathwik Kothapalli, Cisco engineer

Abhishek Kumar, who helped construct a donor prospect platform for Alternative Worldwide, introduced each hands-on engineering depth and the systems-level pondering that comes from managing technical groups. “These are the sorts of operational bottlenecks I assist my very own groups clear up on daily basis, and seeing that very same sample at a nonprofit bolstered how transferable our expertise actually are.” Greater than the technical output, although, he noticed the Hackathon as a logo of what partnership with Cisco appears like: “An occasion just like the Hackathon indicators that we see our companions as organizations with actual operational challenges that deserve the identical caliber of engineering we deliver to our clients.”

“Monetary contributions and company donations matter, however constructing a working AI resolution {that a} nonprofit can truly deploy — that’s a basically completely different type of partnership.”
– Abhishek Kumar, Cisco engineer

For Cisco volunteers, the expertise was significant. They deepened their AI experience, collaborated throughout groups, and noticed fast affect from their work, all of which strengthened each particular person talent and organizational tradition.

Deployable instruments, lasting affect

The suggestions from taking part organizations was equally constant: the volunteers got here able to pay attention and provide tailor-made options, and left their companions energized about what else was potential. “You not solely discovered nice one-stop-shop options for a number of points we’re making an attempt to resolve,” says Maja Cimpric, Digital Product Lead at Technology. “This whole expertise can also be triggering nice follow-up conversations on our workforce about our workflows and different potential for automations, which we’re assured will result in extra thrilling initiatives down the highway.”

That sample, an answer that solves the issue and reframes what’s potential, confirmed up throughout organizations. Jennifer Wolford, Operation Hope‘s Chief Innovation Officer, mirrored: “Working with Cisco’s workforce made it clear how shortly the fitting technical experience can flip concepts into actual, usable options that enhance how we serve our shoppers. That type of collaboration is what permits us to undertake rising know-how in a means that really scales affect.”

For some nonprofits, the Hackathon represented one thing extra elementary: an opportunity to maneuver previous the guide, resource-intensive methods of working which have traditionally restricted their attain. Jessica White, Director of Knowledge Analytics and Methods Integrations at Alternative Worldwide, described it in concrete phrases: “They took a course of that was beforehand inconsistent and exhausting to scale and turned it into one thing actionable. That shift from guide effort to strategic motion has actual potential to extend fundraising and develop our affect for the shoppers we serve.”

The case for skills-based volunteering as a social affect technique

Cisco has lengthy invested in its nonprofit companions by offering funding and know-how, however skills-based volunteering, at this degree of rigor and technical depth, represents one thing additive: a possibility for the type of engaged, purposeful experience that helps organizations construct actual AI functionality from the within out.

“As we live and evolving within the AI period, we at Cisco have a novel alternative to make a right away affect with nonprofits by way of our state-of-the-art know-how,” stated Tim Barnes, Cisco engineer who labored with NESsT. “Think about if we did this for all of society’s challenges? We might streamline and improve nonprofit operations, liberating funds for them to elongate attain, widen scope, and allow them to higher assist these in want.”

The Tech for Social Good program will continue to grow. We’re bringing extra volunteers and companions into this mannequin — our subsequent cohort will develop into Disaster Response and Schooling sectors — as a result of the outcomes counsel it’s price scaling. In a second when AI fluency is changing into a prerequisite for nonprofit effectiveness, that is yet one more means Cisco can assist shut the hole.