Today, Young Futures (YF) launched Groundwork, a $15 million, three-year initiative that will support work across the United States and United Kingdom to protect and strengthen the human capacities young people need as artificial intelligence reshapes how they learn, make decisions and understand themselves.
Groundwork will invest in nonprofits and charities working with and for young people across the United States and United Kingdom, create stronger feedback loops among young people, educators, families, communities and institutions, and turn what those partners learn into practical tools and guidance for educators and the broader field. Working across the United States and United Kingdom will enable Groundwork to learn from two distinct educational, cultural and policy contexts confronting many of the same rapidly evolving questions. By comparing what works and what must be adapted locally, the initiative can generate stronger, more transferable insights for supporting young people in an AI-shaped world.
The initiative will include three funding challenges designed to bring a wide range of perspectives, lived experiences and community contexts into the work. Two challenges will be based in the United States, beginning with The Unwritten Challenge, which will open its application period on September 23, 2026. A third challenge will be based in the United Kingdom. Details about the remaining U.S. challenge and the U.K. challenge will be announced at a later date.
Insights from the funding challenges will inform Groundwork’s practical tools, frameworks, stories and field guidance, helping ensure those resources reflect the experiences of young people and communities across both countries, particularly those too often left out of decisions about technology, and remain relevant across different cultural, educational, geographic and socioeconomic contexts.
“AI is moving fast, but human development still happens at human speed,” said Katya Hancock, Chief Executive Officer of Young Futures. “That means we have to respond to today’s AI risks while also strengthening the foundations that will help young people thrive through whatever comes next, including their ability to think for themselves, feel the full range of what it means to be a person and relate to others across difference and difficulty. That’s what Groundwork is built to do.”
AI is reshaping childhood and adolescence faster than schools, families and other institutions can adapt. It can expand access, creativity and opportunity. But when used without intention, it can also offer frictionless answers in place of productive struggle, simulated companionship in place of human connection and constant assistance that leaves young people with fewer opportunities to develop independence and judgment.
Groundwork begins from a simple premise: safety policies and technical guardrails are essential, but they should be the floor, not the ceiling, of society’s ambition for young people. The larger task is ensuring that AI strengthens rather than erodes the foundations of healthy development, including critical thinking, persistence, social connection, personal agency and sound decision-making.
Groundwork will pursue that goal through three connected strategies:
- Invest: Support community-rooted and national nonprofits and charities in the United States and United Kingdom developing practical approaches that strengthen young people’s agency, judgment, relationships and wellbeing.
- Learn: Surface and synthesize insights from young people, educators, caregivers and community-rooted organizations across diverse cultural, geographic and educational contexts, particularly those too often excluded from technology design and decision-making.
- Translate: Turn those varied perspectives into practical tools, frameworks, stories and field guidance that reflect real-world experiences and can be adapted by different schools, families and communities.
Together, these efforts will create an ongoing learning and feedback infrastructure capable of identifying promising approaches early, testing assumptions against young people’s lived experiences and helping institutions respond as technology continues to change.
“What makes Young Futures special is that they go beyond funding solutions to also learn from them,” said Kelsey Noonan, Director of Program Strategy at Pivotal. “Their model pairs investment in community-rooted organizations with a real commitment to listening to young people, understanding what is working across communities and sharing those insights with the broader field. That combination is exactly what this moment calls for.”
The Unwritten Challenge: United States
The Unwritten Challenge, Groundwork’s first funding opportunity, will support U.S. nonprofits helping young people preserve and strengthen the capacities that cannot, and should not, be outsourced to technology.
The challenge will consider solutions across three areas:
- Critical Thinking and Judgment: Helping young people question, interpret and evaluate what they encounter; work through uncertainty; and make thoughtful decisions in a world of increasingly persuasive, personalized and synthetic content.
- Support for Educators, Caregivers and Trusted Adults: Equipping the people young people turn to for guidance with practical tools, knowledge and approaches for navigating AI’s effects on learning, relationships, identity and development.
- Changing the Narrative: Advancing more constructive research and public stories about young people and AI, moving beyond narratives centered solely on fear, efficiency or technological inevitability and toward a vision grounded in young people’s agency, humanity and capacity to shape the future.
Young Futures will award at least $1 million to a minimum of 10 organizations, with individual grants ranging from $50,000 to $100,000. Selected leaders will also participate in the Young Futures Academy, a five-month accelerator offering leadership development, fundraising support, communications coaching, subject-matter expertise and peer learning.
“Young people are growing up in a world that is changing faster than many of our institutions can keep up with, and AI is accelerating that change,” said Joshua Elder, Senior Vice President and Head of Grantmaking at Siegel Family Endowment. “We’re supporting Groundwork because it recognizes that this is not only a technology challenge. It is also a civic and relational one. Young people need the ability to find their voice, build meaningful relationships and shape the communities and society they are part of. Groundwork is building those capacities into its work from the start.”
Groundwork builds on Young Futures’ track record of convening 20 funders around youth wellbeing and funding more than 50 nonprofits through its national challenge model, including the Oops!…AI Did It Again Challenge, which supported solutions that help young people understand, question and shape AI. Groundwork builds on that work by shifting the focus toward protecting the developmental foundations that can be weakened by overreliance on AI.
Groundwork is supported by Young Futures’ foundational funders Pivotal, Susan Crown Exchange, The Goodness Web, Enlight Foundation, Resonance Philanthropies and the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, with additional initiative support from Siegel Family Endowment, Omidyar Network and the Bezos Family Foundation. A new U.K. anchor funder will be announced next week.
The application window for The Unwritten Challenge in the United States opens September 23 and closes October 16, 2026. To learn more about Groundwork and get updates ahead of the application window, visit youngfutures.org/initiatives/groundwork.
About Young Futures
Young Futures (YF) is a nonprofit seeking to make the digital world an easier place to grow up. YF provides a social compass for teens and families navigating the tech-driven world by supporting emerging nonprofits and charities working tirelessly to help young people and their families not just survive but flourish as a team when navigating the uncertainties of the digital wilderness. Its foundational funders include Pivotal, Susan Crown Exchange, The Goodness Web, Enlight Foundation, Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation and Resonance Philanthropies.
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