The Workplace Innovation Now (WIN) AI Challenge is seeking bold solutions that address the impact and potential of AI in quickly evolving workplaces, from AI-powered solutions that help support women at work, to AI skill-building and solutions that mitigate bias in AI.
Donor Name: Workplace Innovation Now Challenge
State: All States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Awards and Prizes
Deadline: 12/11/2025
Size of the Grant: More than $1 million
Grant Duration: Grant Duration Not Mentioned
Details:
This initiative will source innovations that open opportunities for women’s careers, while improving workplaces for everyone and expanding prosperity for communities across the country. The workplace is where life barriers thread together, and it’s quickly transforming. Lifting these barriers and better equipping everyone to thrive in the workplace of the future can have a multiplier effect on women’s lives, their families, their communities, and the overall economy.
The WIN AI Challenge is seeking a wide range of scalable approaches to leverage AI to help everyone—especially women—thrive as workplaces are rapidly transforming. This includes AI-powered solutions that help support women at work, to AI skill-building, to solutions that mitigate bias in AI.
- Limited AI tools supporting workers with caregiving responsibilities. There is a gap in AI tools ready to be scaled and adopted that help caregivers thrive at work and alleviate the time required to manage work and family priorities.
- Low AI adoption rates. Women are using generative AI at significantly lower rates than men. This trend can exacerbate disparities in the workplace, including in fields with a large percentage of women such as nursing, education, and customer service.
- Limited access to AI training. The future of work will require employees to learn and deploy new AI skills, yet access to training and skills-building can be intimidating or difficult to access.
- Biases inside AI systems. Challenge need a workforce that can identify and remove harmful AI biases as it interprets data, tests solutions, and makes decisions.
- Caregiving Responsibilities. The systems and workplaces in this country are not set up to support households responsible for caregiving such as childcare or elder care.
- The Broken Rung. Workplace practices force women into tradeoffs and competing priorities that impact their promotion and retention rates, which widen the gender pay gap.
- Inflexible Workplaces. The most powerful positions or increases in responsibility often come with the most inflexible hours and expectations. The structure of these roles can make them less attractive because they make it more difficult to balance career and other priorities.
- Violence and Sexual Harassment. Harmful acts of sexual harassment and mistreatment continue to impact women across the course of their careers and can prevent them from succeeding at work.
- Bias and Toxic Workplace Culture. Issues from burnout to unfair practices and negative assumptions can create unhealthy or hostile workplaces that hinder everyone’s success.
- Salary Discrepancy. From the initial salary offer to subsequent promotions and raises, women often see less pay for their work. Industry context and intersectional barriers compound this issue and require creative solutions to break through the issue of this shortfall and deliver lasting impact.
Funding Information
Awarding up to eight solutions at $2.5M or $5M each to help women thrive and build a better workplace for all.
Eligibility Criteria
The Workplace Innovation Now Challenge (WIN Challenge) welcomes applications from the following eligible entities:
- Nonprofit organizations based in the United States and/or U.S. territories that have received a tax determination letter from the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) confirming that they are described under section 501(c)(3) and 509(a)(1) or (2) of the Internal Revenue Code (“IRC”), provided such tax determination letter remains in effect
- Private foundations based in the United States and/or U.S. territories that have received a tax determination letter from the IRS confirming that they are described under section 501(c)(3) of the IRC, provided such tax determination letter remains in effect
- Fiscally-sponsored projects of nonprofit organizations based in the United States and/or U.S. territories that have received a tax determination letter from the IRS confirming that they are described under section 501(c)(3) and 509(a)(1) or (2) of the IRC, provided such tax determination letter remains in effect
- A U.S. tribal government treated as a State pursuant to IRC Section 7871.
For more information, visit WIN.
