Open Source AI for Social Impact:
A Practical Guide to Getting Started with Hugging Face

Open source AI offers nonprofits and social impact organizations a powerful alternative to expensive proprietary tools. But where do you begin? 

In this hands-on webinar, Ben Burtenshaw from Hugging Face will demystify open source AI and show you how to use it on your own projects.We'll start by clarifying what open source AI actually means (and what it doesn't), then walk through a practical maturity ladder; from simply swapping in open models for closed one to running your own private, secure deployments. Along the way, you'll see real tools and products at each stage of adoption.

The session will feature demos of practical use cases relevant to social impact work. For example, building a locally-run meeting notetaker, speech-to-text transcription, multilingual translation, document summarization, and document search/OCR for navigating large archives.

Whether you're a CTO evaluating AI strategy, a tech lead implementing solutions, or a developer at a company supporting nonprofits, you'll leave with concrete next steps you can take today.

Bring your project ideas. We'll close with an open AMA where you can get direct guidance on your specific challenges.

What you will learn

What open source AI actually means (and what it doesn't), with a clear maturity ladder from swapping in open models to running your own private, secure deployments

How to build solutions like a locally run meeting notetaker, speech to text transcription, multilingual translation, document summarization, and document search/OCR for large archives

Real tools and products you can use at each stage of adoption, with live demos of practical use cases relevant to social impact work

Concrete next steps you can take today, plus direct guidance on your specific challenges during an open AMA

This session is for you if:

• You're a CTO evaluating AI strategy and want to understand how open source fits in

• You're a tech lead looking for practical ways to implement open source solutions

• You're a developer at a company supporting nonprofits and want concrete tools to get started

• You work at a social impact organization exploring alternatives to expensive proprietary AI tools

Featured speakers:

Ben Burtenshaw

Community Education in AI @ Hugging Face

Hosted by:

Ana Camerano

Head of AI Impact Scaling Program @ Tech To The Rescue

This is part of our partnership with Hugging Face, where we co-created an open source FAQ guide to help social impact organizations navigate AI with confidence.

Join the session to see open source AI in action and bring your project ideas for the AMA at the end.