Introducing an AI assistant to help navigate Candid’s resources 

Beyond providing data on grants, nonprofits, and foundations, Candid offers extensive subject matter expertise about the social sector as well as learning opportunities. These resources, which range from YouTube training videos to help articles, can get you the support you need regardless of skill or experience level.  

Now we’re pairing these knowledge sources with AI tools to answer your questions more holistically and guide you to the most essential information more effectively. And we’re taking it a step further by recommending next actions or linking to relevant data, depending on the context. We’re excited to announce an early version of Candid’s AI assistant, now available to try out on Candid labs. 

Why an AI assistant? 

User expectations of how search engines should behave are evolving as generative AI tools become increasingly more commonplace. The prevalence of AI-generated summaries from major search providers indicates the tech sector’s adjustment to meet these new expectations. 

Finding Candid’s various resources to help navigate a complex social sector should be simpler. The answers to your questions should reflect the nuanced insights that Candid’s subject matter experts can offer and contain relevant information across all our knowledge resources. Candid’s AI assistant is backed by a large language model which is trained to recognize nuanced language patterns and can understand a user’s intent better than a simple search function. The AI assistant then synthesizes answers using Candid’s combined knowledge resources, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. 

What problems are we solving by introducing an AI assistant? 

1. The intention behind the AI assistant is to better answer complex questions about the social sector and meet the needs of users of various levels of experience. When you interact with the AI assistant, it can determine which parts to pull from Candid’s knowledge resources to provide an accurate response. 

2. The AI assistant can bring together all of Candid’s knowledge, insights, learning opportunities, and other resources by searching across all our properties. For example, Candid training webinars on YouTube, including non-scripted material such as live Q&As, are a potential source of knowledge as well; webinars are searchable now, not just by title and description but by what is being said in the video. Moreover, the AI assistant can pull information not only from Candid’s own expertise and resources but also from sources across the sector, such as those in Issue Lab’s library of research reports. 

3. Depending on the needs of the user, the AI assistant can automatically provide recommendations for next actions to take, or guide the user directly to the data on Candid’s platform they’re seeking. 

We want your feedback 

Candid’s AI assistant is available for anyone to try out now through Candid labs. At this early stage, we’re actively seeking to fine-tune the AI assistant both for the user experience as well as the quality of answers and recommended actions it provides. A feedback form is available as part of the demo, and we want to hear from you. Any feedback provided may be used to help improve the service and shape Candid’s continuing AI efforts. 

Candid’s subject matter experts will be kept in the loop as we develop the AI assistant; their inputs along with your public feedback will continue to refine and enhance the system. 

As a recipient of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Imagine grant, Candid is grateful for the opportunity to accelerate the development of this assistant using services such as AWS Bedrock for access to foundational language models.