Cloudflare says more than 30 civil society organizations are building automated services with its developer tools, backed by more than $7.5 million in credits. The company selected 30 groups for its first nonprofit startup cohort, offering each up to $250,000 in credits. Cloudflare has opened applications for a second cohort. Its examples span local journalism, mental health, snorkeling, human rights research, and online policy advocacy.

Cloudflare says nonprofit partners have shifted from seeking protection for existing applications to building tools for their work. Project Galileo provides free cybersecurity services and protects more than 3,400 domains in more than 120 countries. The company says its services include security and privacy protections, and its global network protects applications from distributed denial-of-service attacks and unauthorized access attempts. Its serverless architecture scales with demand without requiring organizations to pay for idle infrastructure. Workers AI removes the need to operate dedicated GPU infrastructure, while AI Gateway offers rate limits, usage monitoring, and model routing intended to reduce unnecessary calls and control costs.

The need comes as civil society groups face financial strain after government funding reductions contributed to layoffs and program closures. Cloudflare says some groups use AI to do more with less, but adoption remains uneven. In a CIVICUS survey, more than half of respondents cited privacy concerns as a barrier; 48% cited financial constraints. Their sensitive information can include activists’ locations and anonymous sources’ identities, and Cloudflare says the groups face disproportionate cyberattack risks.

LebTown, a nonprofit newsroom in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, is replacing workflows spread across two Google Docs, Google Calendar, Discord, and Gmail with an editorial system that tracks stories from pitch to publication, audience reach, and community impact. It has also built tools to convert county property transfer records from PDFs into structured data and a real-time copyeditor agent connected to WordPress. Kaya Guides offers a WhatsApp mental health service in India pairing people experiencing depression with trained lay counselors. As of September 2026, it had supported 10,439 people, with 2,325 enrolled, and processed around 500,000 WhatsApp messages a month after moving its care management system to Cloudflare. Its live AI system listens to counseling calls and gives counselors feedback during sessions. The Snorkelling Society is building SnorkelMap, a web and mobile application for finding snorkeling sites and sharing user experiences; Cloudflare secures its storage for contributions and images.

For larger organizations, Cloudflare provided developer service access and volunteer engineers to build tools for sensitive, dispersed information. Freedom House is developing a dashboard that ingests public reporting, structures it, and flags potential transnational repression cases, where governments target dissenters across borders. It is fine-tuned to Freedom House’s methodology, with the organization involved throughout; security and data minimization are priorities. The Global Network Initiative is building a dashboard to identify regulatory proposals, policy developments, and legal trends across dozens of jurisdictions, recommend advocacy opportunities, and track reviews and deadlines. Article One is working with Cloudflare on a tool that structures documents, identifies salient human rights risks, and drafts recommendations for staff review; Article One makes all judgments. Cloudflare says its engineers and partners are examining which tasks suit automation, which models fit each task, security controls, and where people must remain involved.

Cloudflare says more than 30 civil society organizations are building automated services with its developer tools, backed by more than $7.5 million in credits. The company selected 30 groups for its first nonprofit startup cohort, offering each up to $250,000 in credits. Cloudflare has opened applications for a second cohort. Its examples span local journalism, mental health, snorkeling, human rights research, and online policy advocacy.

Cloudflare says nonprofit partners have shifted from seeking protection for existing applications to building tools for their work. Project Galileo provides free cybersecurity services and protects more than 3,400 domains in more than 120 countries. The company says its services include security and privacy protections, and its global network protects applications from distributed denial-of-service attacks and unauthorized access attempts. Its serverless architecture scales with demand without requiring organizations to pay for idle infrastructure. Workers AI removes the need to operate dedicated GPU infrastructure, while AI Gateway offers rate limits, usage monitoring, and model routing intended to reduce unnecessary calls and control costs.

The need comes as civil society groups face financial strain after government funding reductions contributed to layoffs and program closures. Cloudflare says some groups use AI to do more with less, but adoption remains uneven. In a CIVICUS survey, more than half of respondents cited privacy concerns as a barrier; 48% cited financial constraints. Their sensitive information can include activists’ locations and anonymous sources’ identities, and Cloudflare says the groups face disproportionate cyberattack risks.

LebTown, a nonprofit newsroom in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, is replacing workflows spread across two Google Docs, Google Calendar, Discord, and Gmail with an editorial system that tracks stories from pitch to publication, audience reach, and community impact. It has also built tools to convert county property transfer records from PDFs into structured data and a real-time copyeditor agent connected to WordPress. Kaya Guides offers a WhatsApp mental health service in India pairing people experiencing depression with trained lay counselors. As of September 2026, it had supported 10,439 people, with 2,325 enrolled, and processed around 500,000 WhatsApp messages a month after moving its care management system to Cloudflare. Its live AI system listens to counseling calls and gives counselors feedback during sessions. The Snorkelling Society is building SnorkelMap, a web and mobile application for finding snorkeling sites and sharing user experiences; Cloudflare secures its storage for contributions and images.

For larger organizations, Cloudflare provided developer service access and volunteer engineers to build tools for sensitive, dispersed information. Freedom House is developing a dashboard that ingests public reporting, structures it, and flags potential transnational repression cases, where governments target dissenters across borders. It is fine-tuned to Freedom House’s methodology, with the organization involved throughout; security and data minimization are priorities. The Global Network Initiative is building a dashboard to identify regulatory proposals, policy developments, and legal trends across dozens of jurisdictions, recommend advocacy opportunities, and track reviews and deadlines. Article One is working with Cloudflare on a tool that structures documents, identifies salient human rights risks, and drafts recommendations for staff review; Article One makes all judgments. Cloudflare says its engineers and partners are examining which tasks suit automation, which models fit each task, security controls, and where people must remain involved.