Overview
This is a fully remote, merit-based volunteer opportunity supporting the development of a structured AI failure and risk-intelligence capability—aimed at improving how real-world AI incidents, near misses, safeguard breakdowns, and emerging signals are captured, analyzed, and translated into institutional learning.
Volunteers will help build the financial architecture needed to support a multi-year AI safety, failure-intelligence, and accountability initiative. This work sits at the intersection of AI accountability, strategic finance, financial modeling, and technology economics.
Responsibilities
Contributors may support multiple workstreams depending on background and demonstrated strengths, including:
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Multi-Year Budget Development
- Review, validate, and strengthen financial assumptions for AI safety and risk-intelligence programs
- Validate major cost assumptions and identify missing cost categories
- Separate fixed vs. variable costs
- Distinguish core operating expenses from expansion costs
- Model technology and infrastructure expenses
- Evaluate personnel and contractor assumptions
- Examine administrative and overhead requirements
- Identify legal, cybersecurity, compliance, privacy, or operational cost considerations
- Test earned-revenue assumptions (when relevant)
- Improve budget clarity for external funders
- Create a credible financial representation of how the program actually operates (not just a spreadsheet)
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Scenario & Sensitivity Analysis
- Build scenario models reflecting uncertainty in adoption, reporting demand, participation, analytical workload, regulatory conditions, and operational complexity
- Example scenarios may include:
- Below-Expected Adoption
- Planned Operating Case
- Higher-Than-Expected Demand
- Readiness-Triggered Expansion
- Unexpected Safety or Operational Events
- Support activities such as sensitivity analysis, cost-driver modeling, break-even analysis, contingency planning, reserve modeling, runway analysis, resource-capacity modeling, and financial risk assessment
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Capital Architecture
- Help distinguish forms of financial need, such as:
- Core Operating Capital
- Demand Capacity
- Operational Resilience
- Stage-Gated Expansion Capital
- Earned-Revenue Capacity
- Contribute to designing a disciplined capitalization model beyond budgeting for expenses
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AI Economics & Failure-Cost Analysis
- Explore how AI failure can create or amplify costs beyond the technology itself, including remediation, human review, workflow redesign, implementation failure, rework, operational interruption, unnecessary labor, human overrides, monitoring requirements, compliance response, litigation exposure, security incidents, failed adoption, abandoned implementation, reputational damage, procurement errors, and scaling systems that later prove unsuitable
- Help develop frameworks for cost of AI failure, cost of weak safeguards, cost of poor deployment decisions, risk-adjusted AI ROI, capital efficiency, value leakage, and financial exposure across the AI lifecycle
- Work in an emerging area where established financial methods may need to be adapted to new technological problems
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Funding & Investment Readiness
- Support the preparation of financial materials for external audiences such as foundations, philanthropic organizations, institutional funders, healthcare organizations, technology companies, corporate partners, government programs, research funders, major donors, family offices, and other mission-aligned capital sources
- Help with funder-ready budget presentation, uses-of-funds analysis, financial narratives, budget justifications, funding scenarios, capital requirements, milestone-based financing models, financial sustainability analysis, and supporting documentation for proposals and institutional conversations
- Collaborate with other contributors working on grants, capital research, partnerships, and development strategy
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Financial Sustainability & Earned Revenue (Exploration)
- Analyze potential sustainability pathways combining philanthropic capital, grants, institutional funding, corporate support, research partnerships, strategic collaborations, mission-compatible earned revenue, intelligence or analytical services, and other funding mechanisms
- Support understanding of how financial durability can be achieved without compromising analytical independence
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Strategic Finance Research (Benchmarks & Operating Inputs)
- Research relevant financial and operating benchmarks, including nonprofit research institute budgets, safety infrastructure, incident-reporting systems, healthcare quality and patient-safety programs, technology research organizations, AI governance initiatives, data infrastructure, cybersecurity requirements, insurance and risk-management models, grant-funded research operations, foundation-supported programs, and comparable public-interest infrastructure
- Focus on practical questions such as credible infrastructure costs, commonly underestimated expenses, staffing models with the greatest leverage, financing variable demand, reserves/contingencies, and how costs should be funded over time
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Potential Analytical Deliverables (depending on experience)
- Three-year operating models, annual budgets, monthly/quarterly cash-flow models
- Scenario models and sensitivity analyses
- Cost-driver models and staffing models
- Financial dashboards, capital requirement models
- Donor-ready budgets, grant budgets, uses-of-funds schedules
- Financial assumptions registers, sustainability models, funding-gap analysis
- Earned-revenue scenarios, contingency models, financial risk registers
- Budget narratives, executive financial summaries, and strategic recommendations
Requirements
- Highly analytical and financially literate
- Detail-oriented, organized, and reliable
- Comfortable working with incomplete information
- Ability to question assumptions constructively and distinguish estimates from established facts
- Comfortable building models from first principles
- Able to explain financial concepts clearly
- Able to identify inconsistencies in budgets or assumptions
- Interested in technology economics and AI
- Intellectually curious about how emerging technologies create both value and risk
- Comfortable working independently after receiving direction
- Responsive to feedback and able to meet deadlines
- Capable of producing professional-quality work
Additional expectations:
- Comfortable with evolving workstreams
- Prepared for structured review, direct feedback, and collaboration across disciplines
- Able to maintain confidentiality, document assumptions, and distinguish evidence from inference
- Capable of maintaining version control and producing work reviewed by senior leadership or external stakeholders
Preferred Qualifications
Experience or strong interest in one or more of the following:
- Corporate finance, FP&A, financial modeling, strategic finance
- Investment analysis, economics, management consulting
- Corporate strategy, venture capital, private equity
- Banking, accounting, nonprofit finance, grant budgeting, research administration
- Healthcare finance, technology finance, AI economics, AI strategy
- Enterprise risk management and operational risk
- Scenario modeling, cost-benefit analysis, business analytics, data analysis
- Capital allocation, budget development, program finance, financial sustainability
- Social-impact finance, philanthropic capital, public-sector finance, risk-adjusted ROI
- Modeling tools and workflows such as Excel / Google Sheets, Power BI, Tableau, SQL, Python, R, and financial planning systems
Prior AI experience is helpful but not required; strong financial reasoning is prioritized over technical AI expertise.
Compensation & Benefits
- Compensation: Unpaid volunteer opportunity
- Estimated commitment: Approximately 8–15 hours per week initially
- Schedule: Flexible, with agreed deadlines and deliverables
- Benefits: Hands-on experience with an emerging AI failure-intelligence initiative and exposure to the economics of real-world AI deployment, including multi-year program modeling, scenario/sensitivity analysis, and capital planning
Location
Application & Selection
- This is a merit-based and experience-based volunteer opportunity.
- Applicants may be asked to provide examples such as financial models, budgets, FP&A work, business cases, investment analysis, Excel/Google Sheets models, strategy work, financial presentations, cost-benefit analysis, grant budgets, consulting deliverables, analytical projects, or financial research.
- Selected candidates may be invited to complete a short skills-based assessment to evaluate reasoning, financial judgment, modeling ability, and alignment with the project’s analytical standards.