Nonprofit Director

Nonprofit directors run organizations like food banks, shelters, youth programs and arts groups. They raise money, manage staff and budgets, answer to a board, and keep the trust of the community they serve. AI is already common in this work, mostly for writing. In a 2025 survey of 451 nonprofit leaders by the Center for Effective Philanthropy, almost two-thirds said their organization uses AI. Among nonprofits using it, 84% use it for communications and 61% for fundraising, including drafting grant applications, grant reports and donor materials. Grant proposals and reports to funders are a routine part of this job, so AI can take real work off a director's desk.

The core of the job is harder to hand off: deciding what programs to run, hiring and leading staff, and raising money through relationships with donors, funders and the community. The closest job BLS tracks is social and community service managers, many of whom work for nonprofits. BLS projects that job to grow 7% from 2025 to 2035, much faster than the average, with about 18,500 openings a year, mainly because an aging population needs more social services. A 2025 Microsoft Research study of how much of each job's tasks AI chatbots can help with put social and community service managers in the middle of 785 jobs (360th).

We rate this a 3, a little higher than those numbers alone suggest. Our reason is the jobs under the director: grant writers, communications staff and program assistants do exactly the writing AI now does well, and nonprofits run on tight budgets, so time saved is more likely to mean fewer hires than more programs. That is our judgment. We have not found data showing nonprofit hiring falling because of AI.

What would change this score. If nonprofit management jobs keep growing as BLS projects while AI use spreads, this should come down to 2. If surveys start showing nonprofits cutting writing and coordinator roles because of AI, it goes to 4.