Why? What? How?
The first article on this blog answers the three questions anyone should ask of a new initiative. No detours.
Why?
Those of us who work in technology are living through a strange moment. Today's Artificial Intelligence tools give us a capacity to build that didn't exist three years ago. What took weeks now takes hours. With the same time and the same people, we can deliver far more.
Companies understood this quickly. They're integrating AI into their processes, their products. And that's fine, it's their job.
But one part of society has been left out: the organisations that exist to help people. Associations, foundations, non-profits. Small teams, tight budgets, and hours spent on tasks technology could solve in minutes. They don't have access to these tools, or don't have anyone who knows how to apply them, and they can't afford to pay someone who does.
This inequality isn't technical. It's a matter of priority. And priority is something we can give.
That's why AImpact exists.
What?
AImpact is a volunteer collective of technology professionals. We build tools and optimise processes for non-profit organisations in Portugal. We don't charge. We don't sell. There's no hidden catch.
In practice, we do three things:
We build solutions that make processes more efficient and communication simpler: reports, request triage, organising information, the bureaucratic work that eats up the hours of people who should be caring for others.
We optimise workflows where technology can save time, money and wear. Sometimes the answer isn't even AI, it's a simpler process. We won't put AI into a problem just to say we did.
We publicly share what we build and what we learn, so other organisations can replicate it without depending on us.
And we're realistic. Not every problem has a technology solution, and we can't do everything we're asked. When we can't help, we say so. When we can, we give it everything we have.
How?
Volunteer time and organisation time are both scarce. To waste neither, every project follows the same six-step process.
It starts with an application: a five-minute form on our site. Then triage, where we reply with an honest estimate of when we'll analyse the request. Next, a conversation of 30 to 60 minutes to understand the problem properly. With that, a feasibility analysis: we decide by consensus whether we can build something useful in reasonable time. If so, we formalise it in a Letter of Commitment: what we will do and, just as important, what we won't. Finally, delivery and handover: the solution in production and everything the organisation needs to manage it on its own.
The Letter of Commitment is also where any running costs of the solution are spelled out, such as application hosting. These aren't our costs and they aren't our revenue: they're the cost of the infrastructure the solution lives on. We always try to optimise them down to zero, but there are situations where that isn't possible. In those cases, the organisation knows exactly what to expect before moving forward.
At every step, the same principles: transparency about timelines, decisions by consensus, and privacy and dignity present in every choice, not bolted on at the end.
What now?
If you lead a non-profit organisation and your team is drowning in tasks technology could simplify, apply with your organisation. It takes five minutes.
AImpact. Where AI meets purpose.