AI Skills Training Grants (IBM Impact Accelerator) is sponsored by IBM Corporate Social Responsibility. This opportunity supports mission-aligned projects and measurable outcomes.

The IBM Impact Accelerator is a social innovation program that supports communities facing environmental and economic stress around the world, through technologies like AI and an ecosystem of experts. To date, the IBM Impact Accelerator has supported 25 global projects across five active cohorts focused on sustainable agriculture, clean energy, water management, resilient cities and supply chains.

Global scale, local impact Two-year program duration First cohort: Sustainable agriculture Delivering tools and insights to smallholder farmers across the world.

Solution: Deltares Aquality App Project location: The Netherlands Deltares, a nonprofit research organization based in the Netherlands, teamed up with IBM to enhance and expand the reach of its Deltares Aquality App to find a tech solution that helps farmers monitor nitrate levels and give insights into nutrient losses and local water quality.

IBM and global nonprofit Heifer International collaborated to develop OpenHarvest—a mobile application that expands access to visual agricultural data, delivers specialized recommendations (via SMS text message) to farmers in Malawi through AI and climate modeling, and enables better farm and field management.

Project location: Latin America Plan21 and IBM, together with developers from the Costa Rica Institute of Technology (TEC), supported the development of a mobile application, YvY, that provides farmers with technical training to make use of insights from weather data, agronomic data and carbon footprint calculations that facilitate production management and allow better adaptation to environmental stress.

The Nature Conservancy Centre India IBM and the Nature Conservancy Centre India developed a public information platform called CRM Connect, a dashboard and web portal, to promote regenerative farming practices in India, with the aim of fostering agricultural sustainability and reducing the impact of environmental stress on communities.

Solutions: Liquid Prep, Soil & Water Assessment Tool (“SWAT”) VEXA Project location: United States IBM and Texas A&M AgriLife collaborated to advance sustainable farming with solutions including Liquid Prep, which helps farmers optimize water use, and SWAT VEXA, an interactive Gen AI virtual assistant providing soil and water insights.

These solutions aim to support farmers, water and land managers, and communities in both agricultural and urban regions in the U.S. Learn more about Liquid Prep Second cohort: Clean energy Helping address electricity access, renewable energy usage and the energy transition.

Environment Without Borders Foundation IBM and Environment Without Borders Foundation (EWBF) created Green Taqa, an innovative platform ecosystem designed to expand access to clean energy resources and providers for communities across Egypt.

Download Green Taqa: Apple App Store Download Green Taqa: Google Play Store Sustainable Energy for All Solutions: Open Building Insights and Modeling Urban Growth Project location: Kenya and India IBM and Sustainable Energy for All (SEforAll) worked together on two projects, Open Building Insights and Modeling Urban Growth, to enable policymakers to identify energy and infrastructure needs for communities in developing regions.

Go to Open Building Insights Modeling Urban Growth on GitHub United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Solutions: Electricity Access Forecasting (AI model) and Clean Energy Equity Index (statistical geospatial model) Project location: Global south—Africa, Asia Pacific, Latin America and the Middle East To support data-driven decision-making toward a just energy transition, IBM and UNDP launched new interactive models to analyze complex energy issues.

Access Electricity Access Forecasting Access the Clean Energy Equity Index Net Zero Atlantic collaborated with IBM to create an interactive digital tool that will geospatially display environmental and socioeconomic impacts of possible energy system futures for Nova Scotia.

Ultimately, the goal is for Indigenous communities in Nova Scotia to leverage advanced modeling capabilities to inform their input into energy and development planning.

Miyakojima City Government The Miyakojima City Government worked with IBM to support the development of a renewable energy strategy, including a microgrid on Miyakojima Island, a distant community facing severe environmental stress due to typhoons in Japan, with the goal of helping their residents, who rely on a clean local environment for the tourist industry and agriculture.

Third cohort: Water management Serving communities facing water scarcity and clean water stress. The University of Sharjah Project location: Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region IBM and the University of Sharjah have built My FarmWell, a mobile application designed to address water scarcity challenges and promote sustainable agriculture in the UAE and the broader MENA region.

The app integrates IBM watsonx, IBM Cloud, and region-specific water and climate data to provide farmers with timely, farm-level insights. Download My FarmWell for Android Download My FarmWell for iPhone IBM and the INREM Foundation are collaborating to unlock water data and strengthen safe water initiatives across India.

Using IBM AI technologies, the collaboration extracts and integrates information from laboratory reports, community-generated water tests, and public groundwater documents. Delivered through the JalXChange platform, these insights empower water quality champions to improve water resource management and address contamination challenges.

The University of Illinois IBM and the University of Illinois are collaborating to build an AI-powered flood model. Leveraging IBM technologies such as watsonx.

ai and IBM Cloud, the goal is to improve rainfall prediction and flood forecasting in the Appalachian Mountains in the U.S. IBM and Instituto Yarandu collaborated to build InfoSaneamento, a web-based platform that supports more effective planning and investment in sanitation infrastructure across Brazil.

Built on IBM Cloud and powered by watsonx, the platform enables organizations to perform and manage community surveys, gather and standardize data from various sources, and deliver insights to help improve water and sanitation delivery and long-term infrastructure strategies.

IBM and the Water Corporation will work on data and AI enhancements, delivered through dashboarding and reporting, with a focus on Aboriginal Communities Water Services water quality initiatives. Fourth cohort: Resilient cities Bringing technology-driven solutions to advance city resiliency.

IBM and C40 Cities, a global network of nearly 100 mayors of the world’s leading cities, are working together to create a data-driven, AI powered solution to help cities analyze potential risks that may arise as a result of extreme heat and the urban heat island effect.

The new solution aims to enable cities to create adaptation strategies to help alleviate population health risks and economic burdens, while strengthening national resilience efforts. Through an agreement with World Food Program USA, IBM is collaborating with the UN World Food Programme (WFP) to enhance WFP’s “GeoTar” geospatial tool with advanced AI and data capabilities.

GeoTar creates vulnerability maps, helping improve operational decisions like targeting and prioritization. The new features will support WFP Country Offices that are engaged in combatting global hunger and improving food security, which can be disrupted by environmental disasters, such as droughts, floods or landslides.

IBM and Mass General Brigham, a nonprofit integrated academic healthcare system, are working together to develop an AI tool for healthcare systems and community health centers confronting extreme heat. The tool will be built to help predict hyperlocal extreme heat events, identify at-risk patients, and deliver reliable, automated warnings when a heat wave is imminent.

The new solution will inform patients of resources available to them, while helping clinicians to take preventative action by screening for, and intervening upon, patient risk factors. Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy IBM and the Janaagraha Centre for Citizenship and Democracy are collaborating to build a city data and analytics platform.

By consolidating city-level data, the platform will be designed to enable data-based decision making for informed interventions by governments in India that aim to improve quality of life for urban populations, such as by improving service delivery and fostering sustainable urban development.

IBM and Kota Kita, a nonprofit organization that promotes sustainable, socially just, equitable, and democratic cities, are working together to develop new AI models to identify and respond to the needs of Samarinda (Indonesia) citizens who are exposed to environmental stress.

The models will be designed to consider physical vulnerabilities, such as natural disasters, and economic and social variables, such as demographic growth and access to clean water. Fifth cohort: Supply chains Powering AI-driven solutions to strengthen and modernize supply chains.

Project Location: Saudi Arabia IBM and Al-Baha University, a public nonprofit university in Saudi Arabia, will work together to develop and pilot an AI framework that helps coordinate fleet management operations in near real time. The pilot deployment will help cut idle times and fuel use while simultaneously helping to reduce emissions and improve air quality across major logistics hubs.

Foundation for the National Laboratory of the Rockies (Foundation for the NLR) Project Location: Pilots start in Indonesia, with plans to scale across Southeast Asia and the Marshall Islands IBM and the Foundation for the NLR, a U.S. nonprofit, will launch an AI-enabled “data room” to strengthen resilience across food, energy, and water systems.

It will serve as a prototype for AI-driven data-sharing environments that help policymakers, NGOs, and businesses act on real-time insights. IBM and Polytechnique Montréal, a leading Canadian engineering institution, will co-develop an AI- and quantum-enabled decision-support tool for Canada’s forest value chain.

The project integrates operational data and machine learning to improve harvest planning, yield forecasting, and supply-chain decisions while balancing cost, energy use and emissions.

United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) Project Location: Pilots start in Brazil and Mexico, with plans to scale across Latin America and beyond IBM and UNIDO, a UN agency, will co-develop a digital solution that assesses countries’ readiness for the digital and AI economy.

It will evaluate digital public goods and infrastructure, SME digital and AI maturity, workforce digital skills, and capacity for AI-driven innovation.

World Resources Institute (WRI) Project Location: Starting in India with plans to scale to Kenya and beyond IBM and WRI, a global research organization working to improve lives, protect nature, and stabilize the climate, will develop an AI-enabled mapping capability using very-high-resolution satellite imagery to detect and classify solar photovoltaic systems.

Outputs will be integrated into WRI’s Energy Access Explorer, an open-source platform, to support more inclusive, data-informed energy planning. Frequently asked questions Why did IBM launch the IBM Impact Accelerator? IBM believes that science, technology and innovation can help tackle environmental stress while helping communities to address societal needs.

By uniting experts and technology, IBM wanted to find a way to scale and speed up solutions that support communities. What topics is the IBM Impact Accelerator focused on? The IBM Impact Accelerator has had 25 engagements, each with a different nonprofit or government organization, divided into five cohorts: sustainable agriculture , clean energy , water management , resilient cities , and supply chains .

How does IBM select participating organizations? IBM selects five organizations each year—forming a cohort—to focus on addressing a specific social innovation issue area. The selection process includes a public RFP open to any nonprofit, academic, or government organization.

Proposals are reviewed and evaluated for feasibility and impact, and vetted through standard IBM compliance processes. The selection process includes input from IBM experts across disciplines such as IBM Consulting, IBM Research, IBM Software, the Chief Sustainability Office, and IBM Corporate Social Responsibility.

The selection criteria consider applicants’ level of support to communities, the feasibility and sustainability of proposed technology solutions, and applicants’ transparency in measurement and reporting, among other considerations. How does IBM support selected organizations? IBM collaborates with organizations to design, develop, and deploy a technical solution directly benefiting communities.

Throughout the experience, IBM provides access to platforms such as IBM watsonx and Granite AI models, IBM Cloud, IBM Environmental Intelligence and Red Hat open source technologies as well as technical mentorship to build long-term capacity. Organizations selected to participate must enter into an IBM grant agreement governing access to IBM technology, services and resources.

What organizations are eligible for the IBM Impact Accelerator? The IBM Impact Accelerator is open to nonprofit and government organizations globally. Is IBM selecting more partners next year?

IBM plans to select five organizations for this program each year.