At the 2026 Practitioners Gathering in Asheville, North Carolina, Confluence launched an industry-wide call to action:
We're asking every values-driven institution to outline your approach to technology and AI holdings in your investment policy statement.
Tech and AI companies are remaking reality as we know it, with promises for advances in medicine, business, communication, and almost anything you can think of. At the same time, these companies are building data centers to power AI, which require massive amounts of energy and water. The World Resources Institute highlights that a single modern AI data center can use as much power as 100,000 homes and large facilities can consume as much as 5 million gallons of water daily — comparable to what a small town uses. These developments are sidetracking the U.S. economy’s transition to clean energy, increasing air pollution, undercutting progress on greenhouse gas emissions reduction, and devastating communities due to significant impacts on water resource and energy affordability.
Moreover, online and AI products are already proving harmful to mental health, personal privacy, workers’ rights, and democratic practices. 'Surveillance capitalism' collects and commodifies personal data for profit, often without explicit user consent. It involves analyzing large datasets to predict and influence behavior, primarily for targeted advertising and other commercial purposes. In the most terrifying scenarios, the weaponization of autonomous AI and drone warfare raises dystopian concern that we can happily live without. This is not what the internet and computing originally promised.
Fiduciary Duty is at the heart of these issues. How will mission driven and values aligned investors reconcile investment in dual purpose companies that incentivize portfolios with incredible returns and unimaginable social advances, while breaking standard codes of consumer protections and corporate conduct, coalescing immense power in the hands of the few? We imagine that these issues are set to explode in foundation and family board rooms as the true realities of an AI surveillance economy take root.
While all the many related investor risks are yet to be effectively categorized, the public is already learning and organizing. The Wall Street Journal reports in May 2026 that nearly 60% of Americans report negative feelings about AI and nearly another 30% have neutral feelings. Pew reports that more than half of Americans feel more concern than excitement about AI. Of the 2,000 Americans polled by Politico, less than 40% of them want to live anywhere near a data center. They rank in popularity with power plants and airports (justice funders, are your alarm bells ringing?)
These tensions will sit squarely on the agendas of many, many philanthropies as we turn the new year.
And, in an exciting way, these debates will widen real discussions about the purpose of capitalism, the inherent value of multiple types of capital (ecological, human, social, and financial), and how owners of the economy are responsible for making the best decisions that we can for future generations.
What Can We Do?
Clearly determining your institution’s approach to tech and AI investing is the way that values aligned investors can make a significant difference. Confluence is collaborating with a consortium of partners as we develop learning tools and example policy statements for you as a member. We've already heard from many of you wanting to know next steps – and we thank you!
To get the conversation going internally, here are some key deliberations to begin with:
Increase your understanding of the risks and opportunities of tech and AI. Understand their impact on our planetary health, social equity, and democracy. Which sorts of impacts matter most to you and your institution? How do they impact your grantees and investees?
Ensure that your tech and AI investments are aligned with your values and mission. Identify both positive and negative screening criteria and update your investment policy statement to reflect your position.
What excites you about tech and AI? With whom can you collaborate with to influence, advocate, and co-create the sorts of technologies that will truly enrich humanity and protect organic life? How can your institution use your investable opportunities as a resource and advocacy for the kinds of tech and AI that you want to be part of our collective future?
Lastly, what’s your institution’s internal position on worker replacement in your own workplace? Will your institution set guardrails for employee retainment protections? If not, who will have a stake in the decisions and processes to dismiss human workers for machine intelligence? Are you able to have board discussion about these questions?
At the end of this process, Confluence’s vision is for member institutions to have revised investment policy statements that clearly and emphatically reflect your approach to tech and AI investing, with the understanding that these will need to be updated to keep pace with the rapidly accelerating technology fields.
Over the coming years, we'll continue our learning journey with values-driven institutions by working together to identify and share investor criteria and frameworks so that your institution can develop a clear approach to investing in technology, AI, and the companies involved as this rapidly evolving sector grows.
I’ll end with a timely quote from Pope Leo XIV, taken from his first encyclical on AI: "Care for our common home and our responsibility toward the poor and future generations require that the use of the goods of creation and the new possibilities offered by technology be regulated in such a way as to respect the environment, avoid waste and prevent new forms of exploitation."
Thank you for your essential collaboration, dedication, and engagement with this critically important effort.