Where would your community point AI?

You bring the what. We bring the how.

Crowdfunding for community projects that use AI to do the heavy lifting. We set up the AI, an expert checks the work, and your community runs the project.

Bring us your idea See how it works

Here's what a project looks like.

SAMPLE PROJECT. NOT LIVE. NO MONEY IS COLLECTED.

Years of water temperature data, for the coral off an island home.

A community has years of water temperature readings and a reef they want to protect. We help point AI at the data and turn it into something people can act on.

$6,000 raised of $10,000 $6,000 raised of $10,000

Sample figures.

Owner:: a member of the reef community
Checked by:: a paid marine data expert

Volunteers needed Each ask has a set number of hours.

Marine scientist · 10 hoursCheck what the reef data is really telling us.Open
Data analyst · 15 hoursClean and chart five years of readings.Filled
Graphic designer · 6 hoursTurn the findings into one clear poster.Open

WHY WE EXIST

AI is here. It's a tool, and we decide where to point it.

Many Hands exists to put this powerful technology in the hands of the people who can use it. Using AI well takes more than a chat box: the setup, the checks, someone who knows how. Big companies can pay for that. Communities mostly can't. We're here to change that.

Why we exist →

How it works

Bring a specific problem with a clear solution.
Not "help our reef." Try: "turn five years of water temperature readings into a chart of which reef sites are warming fastest." We tell you if it's a fit and set a fixed price. Nothing starts until it's funded.
Your community backs it.
People chip in toward the goal, and others sign up for exact volunteer asks, like ten hours from a marine scientist. If a project doesn't reach its goal, everyone is refunded.
We run the AI, you run the project.
We set up the AI, make sure it works, and hand you the results. Your project owner leads the people. An expert checks the work along the way, and the finished result is published for your community.

Where the money goes: our time to set up and run the AI, the expert's review, and any tools. The budget is on the project page, line by line.

Why us

We know the feeling. You have the idea, the data, the people who care, and no clear way to start.

Iso Rabins

A community organizer who built ForageSF, the Underground Market, and Forage Kitchen with his community.

Everything Iso has done →

Dima

A software developer for [N] years, most of them at Agoda. He builds things that have to keep working.

More about Dima →

A named owner from your community.

A real person from the community the project serves, with their name on it. They run the project: they manage the volunteers, decide what gets made, say when it's done, and answer to the people who backed it.

A paid expert checks the work.

A professional in the field, such as a marine data expert for a reef project, reviews everything the AI produces. They're paid from the project budget, so the check is a job and not a favor. Their review note is published with the finished project.

Everything is public.

Each project page shows the goal, the budget line by line, who volunteered which hours, and who signed off. Nothing sits behind a login.

What it looks like when it works

Your idea, out of your head and into the world.

The best fits start with a pile of data or documents nobody has time to dig into. Two more examples, beyond the reef project above:

Examples

A fishing village's elder tapes.

300 hours of cassette recordings of elders speaking a language few young people still speak, sitting in a box. We transcribe and translate them into a searchable archive.

Checked by a native speaker.

The ten most dangerous intersections.

Years of crash reports that nobody has put in one place. We map them and produce a ready-to-file packet, with the data and a plain-language case, for the city council.

Checked by a traffic engineer.

Then it exists. There's a finished thing, a community that made it together, and a record of who did what, so the next project starts further along than this one did.

Volunteer

What are you great at? Do you want to share it?

Beyond money, ideas take people. They take experts from every field, real human beings who want to spend real human hours to see something they believe in burst into reality. Many Hands is more than money. It's people.

It's not some other person who should step up to help. It's you. You are the one who knows the answer to the question everyone is asking. You're the one who's spent years learning all that you know so you can be the right person at the right time to help someone solve the problem that needs solving.

Every project on Many Hands raises money, but also raises a community. Every project has specific asks for specific volunteers in specific fields, and we would love love love if you were one of those people.

Join us in creating something we can be proud of. Join us in bringing together many hands to solve a problem that touches us all.

Offer what you're great at

Bring us your idea.

Your submission is emailed directly to Iso.

Where would your community point AI? Where would yourcommunity point AI?