At Inaugural Moms First Summit, Capital One and Craig Newmark Philanthropies Announce Major Gifts to Expand PaidLeave.ai, Revolutionizing Access to Paid Family Leave Benefits
Transformative grants are first of their kind for AI as a public sector solution
NEW YORK, NY – May 14, 2024 – Today, at the inaugural Moms First Summit in New York City, Capital One and Craig Newmark Philanthropies announced a transformative seven-figure contribution to support the expansion of PaidLeave.ai, an innovative generative AI tool developed by Moms First. The grant is believed to be the first of its kind to fund an AI tool for social benefits. With the expansion, PaidLeave.ai aims to revolutionize access to paid family leave benefits for millions of families across the United States.
Despite the proven benefits of paid family leave in alleviating poverty and improving economic, social, and health outcomes for women and families, utilization rates of state paid leave programs remain alarmingly low. Data shows that in states with long-standing paid leave programs, only 3-5 percent of eligible workers take advantage of these benefits. This gap is attributed to a number of barriers including low awareness among eligible employees and employers, complex and confusing applications, and social stigmas.
PaidLeave.ai addresses these challenges head-on by utilizing cutting-edge generative AI technology to streamline the application process and enhance understanding of paid leave policies. Through an intuitive chatbot interface, the platform assists users in determining eligibility, estimating benefits, and navigating the application process.
Since its launch in New York in December 2023, PaidLeave.ai has garnered significant traction, with over 100,000,000 press impressions and 25,000 unique visitors in its first month alone. Moreover, the pilot generated a 25% increase in Google search traffic for paid leave, indicating high demand for new approaches to benefit accessibility and information.
Building on this success with support from Capital One and Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Moms First is expanding PaidLeave.ai in 2024 with a focus on product optimization, awareness campaigns, community partnerships, employer engagement, lobbying efforts, and impact measurement. By leveraging these strategies, Moms First aims to increase the uptake of paid leave benefits, particularly among low-income workers, and improve economic outcomes for moms, families, and communities.
“We are thrilled to support Moms First and their use of innovative technology to expand PaidLeave.ai to make paid family leave benefits more accessible to all and provide opportunities for working parents to stay in the workforce,” said Kerone Vatel, Head of Community Impact and Investing, Capital One. “This initiative builds on our longstanding commitment to advance socioeconomic mobility and close gaps in access and opportunity for low- and moderate-income individuals and communities.”
“As AI transforms everything about the way we live and work, we must ensure that we’re using AI for good and applying this technology to our toughest social challenges,” said Craig Newmark, founder of craigslist and Craig Newmark Philanthropies. “We are proud to partner with Moms First in their efforts to prove that transformative new technology can benefit all of us, not just a privileged few.”
“Moms First is a mission to win paid leave and affordable child care for as many moms in as many places as possible. And if we are going to win these fights, we need to do things differently — we need to innovate,” said Moms First Founder and CEO, Reshma Saujani. “PaidLeave.ai is a test case of how we can use innovation like generative AI to make government work better for all of us and ensure that our most vulnerable communities are benefiting from new technology.”
PaidLeave.ai was developed in collaboration with AI development firm Novy.ai and with early support and technical advice from OpenAI.
For more information, contact:
Aly Ferguson
Moms First
About Moms First
Moms First is a national, nonprofit organization transforming our workplaces, communities, and culture to enable moms to thrive. Our grassroots movement of more than one million moms and supporters is dedicated to advancing women’s economic freedom, uplifting the vital work of moms in our society, and building the power to win the public and private sector investments moms need and deserve, including child care, paid leave, and equal pay. Learn more at momsfirst.us.
About Craig Newmark Philanthropies
Craig Newmark is a Web pioneer and philanthropist, best known for creating the online classified ads service craigslist. Craig’s full-time philanthropic work focuses on organizations on the frontlines of protecting America’s security and democracy. He has given more than $300 million in support of veterans and military families, trustworthy journalism and civic engagement campaigns, cyber security education programs, hunger relief, and pigeon rescue. Craig was influenced by his Sunday School teachers who escaped the Holocaust, set his moral compass, and taught him to treat people like you want to be treated – and how to know when enough is enough. He stepped away from the day-to-running of craigslist almost two decades ago, but he still occasionally volunteers as a customer service representative.
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