As Salesforce’s Accelerator, Agents for Impact rolls out in India, we sat down with Nandini George, Senior Director – Sites & Business Operations and Amy Guterman, Senior Director, AI for Impact, two leaders driving this work from India and globally, to talk about what’s changed, what’s next, and why AI-powered nonprofits are just the beginning.
The Global Lens
Q. The Accelerator started as a global initiative. How does the India cohort’s progress compare to, or build on, what you’ve seen in other markets?
Amy: What’s struck me about the India cohort is how the scale of the challenge shapes the solution. In other markets, nonprofits are often solving for a few thousand people. In India, the organisations we partnered with are building for a scale of need that’s an order of magnitude larger, and that pushes them to think about AI not as a nice-to-have but as a way to responsibly meet that scale.
Something else that distinctly came through to me in this cohort was the critical need for translation. Multilingual and multi-dialect delivery is core to whether a solution actually reaches the people it’s meant to serve. Latika Foundation‘s project is a great example: they built Asli Intelligence, a legal services navigation agent, in Hindi, because this was the primary language spoken by the people served.
Q. What’s the broader vision behind pairing AI access with pro bono expertise, rather than funding alone, and what have global cohorts taught you about what actually moves the needle for non-profits?
Amy: We designed the Salesforce Accelerator – Agents for Impact to leverage Salesforce’s innovative 1-1-1 model, which includes 56 hours of Volunteer Time Off for each employee. With the Accelerator, employees can direct that volunteer time and expertise into a nonprofit’s AI work.
It’s proven to be a win on both sides. For nonprofits, we’ve delivered $1+ million in specialised consulting through the Accelerator, and 100% of participating nonprofits said the support from the Accelerator advanced use of AI for their organization. For our employees, 95% say they expanded their own AI skills through the fellowship.
If I had to name the single biggest unlock for nonprofits, it’s the pro bono technical support. Technology alone is not enough if you don’t have the technical expertise to set it up, and technical expertise is hard to access if you don’t have funding to pay for it. Volunteer technical experts ensure that nonprofits actually use the technology to its full capacity.
Q. Looking ahead, what does success look like for the Accelerator programme globally in the next few years?
Amy: Interest in AI among the nonprofit sector is sky-high, surveys put usage around 92%, but actual impact on core mission work is still surprisingly low. Only about 7.4% of nonprofits have successfully deployed AI against a mission goal. Success for the Accelerator globally, over the next few years, means closing that gap: moving more organisations from experimentation to getting real value out of AI in their mission work.
Closing that gap also means keeping pace with where the technology is heading. Going headless is a good example. It lets organisations meet their users wherever they are, rather than boxing them into a single channel or interface. The more we can meet nonprofits and their constituents where they are at the faster we close the gap between interest and real-world impact.
The India Blueprint
Q. India’s cohort, Teach For India, Foundation For Excellence, Latika, and Antarang Foundation, built very different agents. What did seeing their Demo Day presentations tell you about where India’s non-profit sector is heading with AI?
Nandini: Watching Teach For India, Foundation For Excellence, Latika, and Antarang Foundation present felt like watching four very different chapters of the same story. Each organisation took Agentforce and pointed it at the problem closest to their mission: a Teaching Assistant Agent for Teach For India that coaches teachers on pedagogy across 9 States, a Career Facilitator Agent from Antarang Foundation giving every Grade 9–12 government-school student tailored career guidance, a Scholarship Agent from Foundation For Excellence that cut screening time by 40% and let them process 30–35% more scholarships, and Latika’s ‘Asli Intelligence’ Legal Support Agent giving persons with disabilities and their families step-by-step roadmaps to benefits and documentation. What struck me is that none of these are pilots for AI’s sake. They’re solving real operational bottlenecks. That tells me India’s nonprofit sector isn’t asking ‘should we use AI,’ it’s asking ‘where does AI free up our people to do more human work.
Q How do you think about balancing a global programme framework with the specific needs of India’s non-profits, diverse languages, and grassroots communities?
Nandini: The global Accelerator framework gives us the scaffolding, the 1-1-1 model of technology, funding, and pro bono expertise. But India’s non-profits work across language, literacy, and connectivity realities that a one-size template can’t anticipate. That’s where our 15+ pro bono fellows mattered. They didn’t just implement a global playbook, they sat with each grassroots partner to figure out what ‘access’ actually means for their specific community, whether that’s a teacher in a small town or a family navigating disability benefits for the first time. Localising, for us, is mostly about building that infrastructure and trust layer around the global model, not replacing it.
Q What’s the vision for scaling this work in India, more cohorts, deeper tech access, or mobilising employees in new ways?
Nandini: This first cohort proved the model works. Four non-profits, six months, real agents in production. Scaling from here means growing on three fronts: more cohorts, so more non-profits can access Agentforce and funding; deeper technology access, so partners aren’t held back by infrastructure limitations; and greater employee participation, building on the contribution of more than 15 pro bono fellows who supported this cohort. Their expertise was as valuable as the technology itself.
The opportunity now is to build on this foundation, extending the programme to more non-profits, causes and communities across India. Longer term, I hope the learnings from India’s experience can contribute to the programme’s evolution across other markets, while keeping local needs and realities at the centre.
