“We think that AI can be used both to broaden the reach of nonprofits,” says Ellie Bertani, president and CEO with GitLab Foundation.

Bertani joined WorkingNation’s editor-in-chief Ramona Schindelheim for WorkingNation Overheard at SXSW EDU 2024 in Austin.

She explains, “We are in a very fortunate position of starting to build a philanthropy from the ground up. Our team has had a wide variety of experience working in the for-profit, nonprofit, philanthropic sectors, and the public sector. We’re trying to glean great learnings from all of those experiences that we’ve had collectively as a team.”

Bertani says, “For us, what really effective philanthropy looks like is as follows – we care a lot about outcomes. In my experience, many philanthropies both have a very diffuse and wide range of thinking about impact.”

She explains, “That means they may collect 12, 15, 20 different metrics to try to determine if they’ve been effective. We are hyper-focused on one single metric and one alone. For us, that is how much can we increase earnings for people that we try to support? And we think in terms of return on investment, kind of like a company would.”

Learn more about GitLab Foundation.