Overview
3percentclub at a glance
We're a New York nonprofit that runs free AI education for underrepresented builders, so the people most affected by AI can help build and govern it. Learners go from AI-curious to shipping real projects through hands-on classes, peer mentorship, and hackathons built around real community problems.
- Founded
- 2024
- Based in
- New York City + online
- Status
- 501(c)(3) public charity
- Cost to learners
- Free, always
Where we are today
- Global community
- 1,200
- In New York City
- 400
- Fall fellows (70 Builders, 30 Citizens)
- 100
- Newsletter readers in 20+ countries
- 2,700
- Come back for another event
- 1 in 3
What we run
Programs
The fellowship
A cohort-based program with two tracks. AI Builders is hands-on and technical. AI Citizens is applied and non-technical, focused on how AI gets used and governed. Every class is hybrid, in person in NYC and on Zoom.
Fall Civic AI Fellowship 2026: 100 fellows (70 Builders, 30 Citizens).
See the fellowshipHackathons
Weekend builds where teams work on real problems brought by nonprofit partners and sponsors, then demo to judges and the public.
3 hackathons so far, 100+ projects submitted.
See the hackathonOpen classes + community
Free workshops, guest talks, a Discord community, and a newsletter. Anyone can jump in at any time, and every class opens with a recap.
2,700 newsletter readers in 20+ countries.
See upcoming classes
What builders learn
The fall 2026 Builders track, taught over six weeks and capped with a hackathon.
- Agent harnesses, IDE tooling + custom workflows
- Open models, model selection + API fundamentals
- Tool calling, custom skills + MCP
- RAG, vector search + context memory
- Security, privacy + AI governance
- Evals, guardrails + system architecture
Recent results
Our October hackathon
About 50 builders, two build days, one public Demo Day
The Spooky Civic AI Hackathon (Oct 23–25, 2026) ran at Civic Hall and Jay Conference, with Demo Day open to the public at Luma Studios. About 15 more builders joined online.
A robot built for a community garden
With our nonprofit partner Uptown & Boogie Healthy Project, builders made a seed-tray robot for the St. Nicholas Miracle Garden in Harlem, using Viam robot arms.
Projects that answer real needs
The Best Overall winner, CommonWell, helps people fill out unemployment and Medicaid forms. The Physical AI winner, Doseday, is a robot arm that fills pill organizers.
What's next
The early 2027 cohort
Our next cohort grows to about 120 fellows across three tracks, so every learner can start where they are and keep going.
AI Literacy & Advocacy
For community members, organizers, and policy-minded learners who want to understand AI and shape how it gets used.
Applied AI
For builders shipping real tools with today’s models: agents, retrieval, integrations, and evals.
Frontier AI
For advanced builders working on harder questions, including research-style sprints on AI safety and reliability.
Who we work with
Partners
- Affiliation
- Linux Foundation · Agentic AI Foundation (associate member)
- Sponsors + tool partners
- Viam · Vonage · Tavily
- Community partners
- Civic Hall · New York Machine Learning Research Guild · Audacious AI Friends · Henry Street Settlement · Uptown & Boogie Healthy Project
- Workplace giving
- Benevity · Microsoft GIVE
Work with us
Ways to partner
Sponsor a cohort or hackathon
Fund seats, prizes, and venues, and put your tools in front of builders who use them for real work.
Bring a challenge or research sprint
Give our builders a real problem or open question to work on, with your team as mentors and judges.
Teach a lab or mentor
Lead a hands-on session in your area of expertise, or mentor teams during a build.
Get in touch
Talk to our founder
Maria Ashby founded 3percentclub after years in tech, including time at NVIDIA. She leads programs and partnerships and answers partner email herself.
maria@3percentclub.org