AI for Good Challenge Grant 2026 – Comic Relief Youth Advisory Council ($10,000–$20,000) -Applications are Now Open

Application Deadline: July 6, 2026 (11:59 PM ET)

About the Grant

Applications for the AI for Good Challenge Grant are proudly accepted by Comic Relief. Led by the Comic Relief Youth Advisory Council, this cross-sector grantmaking opportunity focuses on ensuring that artificial intelligence works for and is shaped by the young people most often left out of its benefits. Drawing on the Generation AI: Youth Perspectives on the Digital Future report, AI is rapidly transforming the systems that determine who can access jobs, education, healthcare, and civic life. For youth in marginalized, under-resourced, and historically excluded communities, that transformation carries both urgent risk and powerful possibility. Youth-led and youth-serving organizations are invited by this request for proposals to apply for a grant to advance one of two critical fronts: expanding meaningful access to AI tools, infrastructure, and skills for underserved young people; or building youth agency over the AI systems and policies that shape their communities. Across both funding areas, solutions that are grounded in local realities, embedded in existing community contexts, and led by the young people closest to the challenges they seek to solve are being sought. Individual grants of $10,000–$20,000 USD for up to a one-year term to 3–5 organizations will be made by Comic Relief. Through the generosity of ServiceNow, the AI for Good Challenge Grant is made possible.

Should I Apply?

A cross-sector grant opportunity for youth-led and youth-serving organizations to ensure that AI’s benefits are accessible to those who need them most, and that the young people most affected by AI systems have a meaningful role in shaping them is the AI For Good Challenge.

This opportunity is the right fit for your project if:

• Target population: Your project directly serves young people ages 15–24 in marginalized, under-resourced, or historically excluded communities
• Youth leadership: Youth are leaders, decision-makers, or active participants in your work not just beneficiaries
• Clear problem focus: Your project addresses a specific, named barrier to accessing AI tools and infrastructure, or to youth participation in the systems that govern them
• Contextual grounding: Rather than developing a standalone tool or technology that can be applied anywhere (i.e., a chatbot that anyone can use), the solution in your proposal clearly responds to and is in conversation with a real community need
• Impact and sustainability: A clear change your project aims to produce, how it will be sustained over time, and its potential for scale or replication can be articulated

Eligibility Requirements

A US-registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit charitable organization or be fiscally sponsored by a US entity with 501(c)(3) status is required for grant recipients.

The organization or fiscal sponsor must have:

• An annual operating budget (showing income and expenses)
• A bank account that can accept funds from the United States
• Governance oversight with an Advisory Council, Board of Directors, or similar leadership group
• A demonstrated commitment to the safeguarding of children, child protection policy, and vulnerable adults
• Young people (between 18 and 25 years old) on the project team making decisions about and implementing programming
• The program must focus on supporting youth from low-income backgrounds (as defined in the context of where the program is operating). For example, in the US, this might be for youth who are on free and reduced-price school lunches; internationally, it might be an established poverty level for that country (e.g., under $2/day)

Per Comic Relief grantmaking guidelines, the following are NOT funded:

• Individuals, capital campaigns or building construction, scholarships
• 501(c)(4) organizations, inclusive of lobbying or political activities
• Retroactive expenses (pre-dating application submission)

For-profit companies and/or limited liability corporations

Funding Area #1: Access

Through this funding area, projects and programs that close the gap between AI’s benefits and the young people most excluded from them are sought to be funded. Proposals that expand meaningful access to AI tools, infrastructure, and skills for youth in marginalized, rural, and underserved communities are invited. Today, exclusion from AI is quickly becoming exclusion from opportunity itself. By limited income, informal work, and under-resourced education systems, the young person we are designing for is navigating a daily reality shaped. With a labor market where AI is displacing the entry-level work that is the early professional’s foothold in global economies, coupled. In this context, by cost, language, disability, poor infrastructure, and geography, barriers compound and reinforce each other. Who can find jobs, access healthcare, or engage with government systems, if access to AI increasingly determines, underserved youth risk being pushed further into systemic poverty and invisibility.

Solutions that are grounded in local realities are wanted to be supported: AI tools built in local languages, designed inclusively, and delivered through accessible, community-based infrastructure such as shared AI hubs or low-cost, distributed systems. That integrate AI into existing local education and livelihood solutions to save time, improve outcomes, and build practical digital skills without reducing creativity or independent thinking initiatives that teach not just how to use AI, but when not to this includes projects.

Key words: affordability, infrastructure, connectivity, AI literacy, practical skills, local-language design, inclusion, education integration, digital equity.

Examples of successful projects might:

• Enhance infrastructure, connectivity, local-language design, and inclusive platforms that remove the barriers preventing young people of underserved populations from accessing AI in the first place
• Innovatively integrate AI tools into employment, entrepreneurship, public service navigation, and digital skills programs that build practical capability for school, work, and daily life
• Embed sustainable solutions in existing community programs and institutions rather than deployed as standalone technology

Funding Area #2: Agency

As the ability of young people to influence, shape, and hold accountable the AI systems and policies that impact their lives, agency is defined. Through this funding area, projects and programs that support initiatives led by historically marginalized youth to shape, challenge, and hold accountable the AI systems and policies that affect their communities are sought to be funded. A world transformed by AI will be inherited by youth, but from the spaces where AI’s future is being shaped, they remain largely excluded. As AI becomes increasingly embedded in systems that shape access to education, employment, public services, and civic participation, critical, the question of who gets to shape these technologies (and hold them accountable) has become. When the young people most affected by AI systems have a meaningful role in governing them, the result is technology that is more accountable, more representative, and more likely to serve communities that have historically been left out.

In communities already navigating poverty and inequality, where weak or exclusionary governance compounds existing harm, this is especially consequential. Can close doors that were already hard to open, a biased hiring algorithm, an opaque welfare system, or a surveillance tool deployed without community consent. That the young people closest to these harms are also the ones best positioned to identify them, challenge them, and organize toward something better is believed by us. That AI itself can be a powerful tool in that work, helping young advocates investigate harm, build evidence, and make their case is also believed.

Key words: participation, power, decision-making, accountability, governance, advocacy, systems change, civic engagement, youth leadership, transparency, data justice.

Examples of successful projects might:

• Support youth-led community organizing and grassroots advocacy that uses AI tools to investigate, map, and communicate AI’s real-world impacts in under-resourced communities, building local accountability and the foundational power needed to influence AI governance over time
• Create structured civic engagement pathways, such as fellowships or policy labs, that equip historically marginalized youth with both the AI literacy and the formal platforms needed to shape local, national, and global AI governance
• Amplify youth-led advocacy campaigns to examine algorithmic harm, push for transparency, and organize communities toward policy change

Application Process

Step 1: For Comic Relief’s grant platform, register

Step 2: After registering, to access the application, use the code AI2026 in the search bar

Step 3: The eligibility questionnaire at the beginning of the application should be completed. Please note that applications that do not meet all the criteria on the questionnaire cannot be considered for a grant

Step 4: On your calendar, mark the deadline: Sunday, July 6 at 11:59 PM Eastern Standard Time

Step 5: The application form should be completed

Application Link: Using the link in the original post, register for Comic Relief’s grant platform

Selection and Award Process

• By Comic Relief Youth Advisory Council members, applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis
• In September, selected grant recipients will be notified
• Within a month of signing the grant agreement or within a month of the start of their program, funding will be provided to grant recipients
• A midpoint Zoom check-in with Comic Relief and fellow grantees to talk about your progress should be attended
• A final report with a final accounting of how the grant funds were used at the end of the project period should be sent (general list of expenses or a budget form). Photos, videos, or other digital content telling the story of your work and what you accomplished during the grant period are also requested

Questions: Please contact: yac@comicrelief.org to ask your questions.

Why This Grant Matters

The systems that determine who can access jobs, education, healthcare, and civic life are being rapidly transformed by AI. For youth in marginalized, under-resourced, and historically excluded communities, that transformation carries both urgent risk and powerful possibility. When the young people most affected by AI systems have a meaningful role in governing them, the result is technology that is more accountable, more representative, and more likely to serve communities that have historically been left out. By funding youth-led and youth-serving organizations that are closest to the challenges they seek to solve, supporting solutions grounded in local realities and embedded in existing community contexts, providing grants of $10,000–$20,000 to 3–5 organizations for up to one year, focusing on two critical fronts: expanding meaningful access to AI tools, infrastructure, and skills, and building youth agency over AI systems and policies, and including mentorship and networking alongside financial support, the AI for Good Challenge Grant addresses this need. For youth-led and youth-serving organizations working to ensure that AI is developed and deployed in ways that are fair, inclusive, and community-driven, catalytic funding to scale their impact is offered by this grant.

How To apply: To apply for AI for Good Challenge Grant 2026 Click Here

For More Information: Visit the official website of AI for Good Challenge Grant 2026