The
Rockefeller Foundation: Cities Deliver: AI Solutions for Public Services Cities Deliver is an initiative of The Rockefeller Foundation and OpenAI Foundation that supports organizations working with city governments to use artificial intelligence to improve public services, particularly for underserved communities. Projects must address a significant, city-prioritized problem and include a meaningful frontier AI component—such as generative AI capabilities for language, image or document interpretation, reasoning, or multi-step tasks.
Proposals must address at least one of these focus areas:
Public health: Healthcare, disability services, food access, nutrition, and public health systems.
Economic mobility: Connecting residents to jobs, income, skills, and benefits.
Environmental resilience: Preparing for and responding to environmental shocks, including public safety, emergency services, energy infrastructure, and land management.
Civic engagement: Helping governments reach residents and improve services such as digital access, court services, permitting, and regulatory processes. Projects related to voting or elections are excluded.
Projects must be designed to deliver measurable public benefit, address AI-related risks responsibly, and have a credible plan for learning and long-term sustainability. This is a project implementation opportunity, not a research-study grant.
FUNDING INFORMATION: Grants range from $500,000 to $2M. All grants run 24 months, with 50% disbursed at the start and 50% upon a documented mid-term milestone. Grants don’t guarantee follow-on funding.
The call supports projects at two stages:
- Seed ($500,000 to less than $1M): Develop, test, and pilot an early-stage solution with a city and real users.
- Scale ($1M to $2M): Expand a solution that has already been piloted in a city and shown early results.
Indirect costs may not exceed 15% of the total grant
Grant-funded software, models, and documentation must generally be published under an open-source license acceptable to the funders. The requirement does not extend to specified materials such as pre-existing intellectual property, personal or sensitive data, or materials whose release would create a security risk.
ELIGIBILITY
Eligible applicants are organizations—not individuals or government entities—including nonprofit organizations, including university departments or labs and fiscally sponsored organizations
Every project must:
Have a committed city-level government partner and submit a letter of intent, or equivalent, from the partner at the Round 1 stage. State, regional, and national partners may participate but cannot replace the city partner.
Serve a charitable purpose, benefiting underserved, poor, or distressed communities or promoting social welfare.
Take place in a qualifying city: a permanently settled, self-governing urban community of at least 50,000 people, with its own municipal government and core public services.
Be legally eligible to receive grant funds and participate in the call. Organizations headquartered, registered, or operating in countries under comprehensive U.S. OFAC sanctions are ineligible.
Cities and other government entities may be partners but may not apply as the lead applicant.
INTERNAL SELECTION PROCESS
The internal selection process depends on whether your grants are managed by BU or Boston Medical Center (BMC). Use the steps below to determine this information:
- Step 1: Open the BUMC Home Institution Finder
- Step 2: Log in to search the database – search using your last name
- Step 3: Follow one process:
- If you see BU or BU-CAMED, follow BU Process below
- If you see BMC, follow the BMC Process below
BU Process
BU may submit up to two (2) proposals. Interested medical campus faculty should submit the following materials via InfoReady Review by October 30, 2026.
- Proposal Summary (two (2) pages max) briefly describing the project’s goals and vision, the public-service problem and its significance, the proposed AI solution and intended services, the city partner and target community, the project’s stage (Seed or Scale), and preliminary objectives and plans for evaluation and sustainability. Citations may be included on one additional page.
- List of project collaborators, including the city government partner.
- Up-to-date CV for the PI or project lead.
As necessary, a review committee drawn from the BU Cancer Research Center will review internal applications and select the institutional nominee(s).
If your primary appointment is BU-CAMED and you have questions about this process or your application, please reach out to Julia Huntsman at jhunts@bu.edu or Gahyun Yoo at gyoo0818@bu.edu in the Proposal Development Office.
BMC Process
BMC may submit up to two (2) proposals.
If you are a BUMC faculty member who works in BMC space or you are a fellow whose faculty advisor is a BMC investigator, please contact the Program Manager of Strategic Research Growth, Carolina Giudice at carolina.giudice@bmc.org by Friday, October 30 to express interest in this opportunity.
DEADLINES
- BMC expression of interest due: Friday, October 30, 2026
- BU Internal Materials Due: Friday, October 30, 2026
- Anticipated Notification Date: Thursday, November 5, 2026
- External Materials Due: Sunday, November 29, 2026 at 11:59 pm U.S. Eastern Time
In requesting to be considered for this limited submission funding opportunity, you are making a commitment, if selected, to submit your proposal to the sponsor in a timely manner and to Sponsored Programs in accordance with the Proposal Submission Policy
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