Want to use AI for the public good? Anthropic will pay you a year's salary to apply Claude to a nonprofit's mission -- but you'll need to apply now.
The company's Claude Corps fellowship program, announced last month, will match 1,000 early-career professionals with partner nonprofits to bring "the benefits of AI to communities across America," Anthropic said in the release. The fellowship is full-time for 12 months, during which Anthropic will pay fellows $85,000 and provide benefits. The deadline to apply is July 17.
"Our goals are twofold: that host organizations are equipped with valuable tools and systems, and fellows build AI skills that will serve them in their careers," Anthropic said of the program, for which it's allotted $150 million. "The companies building this technology have a responsibility to make sure the benefits are fully realized and widely shared, and to invest directly in the workers absorbing the change."
The program's first cohort begins in October with 100 fellows and will be followed by two more cohorts opening next year. To apply, you just need to be 18 or older, have no more than two years of full-time work experience, and be authorized to work in the US. Anthropic said it can support fellows who need to relocate to participate.
The program starts with Claude training hosted by Anthropic and CodePath, one of its partners on the project. In addition to the full-time salary and benefits, fellows get "support from a CodePath mentor, office hours from Anthropic for their technical questions, an expansive Claude token budget, and professional guidance from their manager at the host organization," Anthropic added.
Partner organizations are scattered across the US and range from major nonprofits like the YMCA and Goodwill Industries to local organizations like Texas-based SoundOff, a counseling and peer support provider, and the Reef Environmental Education Foundation in Key Largo, Florida. Other organizations focus on veteran support, professional guidance for low-income students, bipartisan economic initiatives, and food insecurity.
The Claude Corps initiative looks like a concrete approach by Anthropic to both offset AI's impact on jobs and advance the goals of its Public Benefit arm. The company has published regular research and policy papers on AI and the economy and has more proactively called for regulation than other AI companies. But beyond that, its initiatives, including its Economic Futures program and Economic Index, have focused on research rather than taking explicit action.
Claude Corps, on the other hand, directly creates jobs tied to using AI, albeit in small numbers.
Alongside the US government, AI labs are in a meaningful position to influence how their tech impacts the economy, which they are leveraging to varying degrees. In May, the OpenAI Foundation -- the nonprofit arm that owns OpenAI -- committed $250 million to shore up future economies, including "resourcing workers" and "sharing economic gains broadly for people around the world," but did not offer more specifics. While the foundation said, "we intend to fund approaches that support people now while helping society prepare for longer-term change," it did not clarify whether that would be through a program that directly employs people today, for example.
Claude Corps could be especially relevant to recent college graduates, who are encountering a mixed bag when it comes to entry-level roles. Some reports indicate early-career jobs are dwindling, especially in areas like coding, where AI continues to excel.
But from other perspectives, AI is simply changing what's expected of entry-level workers. Contrary to several reports steadily tracking job losses caused by AI, a recent study from Ramp found that companies heavily adopting AI actually hire more people, including for entry-level roles.
That said, the study found that smaller businesses and those without VC funding are less likely to be high adopters of AI. The same could be true of nonprofits, which operate under similar conditions. Because Anthropic is footing the bill for these year-long fellows, they aren't guaranteed to stay on as full-time workers with their respective nonprofits once the 12-month program ends.
If the program goes as planned, fellows will have developed replicable skills they can take into longer-term roles -- especially as more jobs expect familiarity with AI. The unpredictable part is what the job market will look like a year from now.
You can apply for Claude Corps by July 17. If that deadline is too soon, Anthropic said applications will be "open on a rolling basis for the next two cohorts, which begin in January 2027 and August 2027."