Selflessly rebuilds its giving platform around AI assistant Phil

Selflessly has rebuilt its corporate giving platform around Phil, an AI assistant designed to help employees give and volunteer while also helping program administrators run workplace philanthropy. The Indianapolis company says the new system aims to make corporate giving more personal and more useful as employee engagement becomes harder to drive.

Why it matters: - Selflessly is trying to shift corporate giving software from a back-office tool into something employees actually use. - The change targets two pain points at once: low employee participation and the administrative burden of running workplace giving programs. - The platform is aimed at growing companies that want to combine giving, volunteering, matching, campaigns, grants, and reporting in one place.

What happened: - Indianapolis-based Selflessly introduced an expanded vision for Phil, its AI assistant, on June 23, 2026. - The company rebuilt its platform around Phil in Selflessly V2, a ground-up product rebuild. - Phil is designed for both program administrators and employees. - For administrators, Phil functions as a Chief Impact Officer. - For employees, Phil functions as a Giving Assistant that helps them find causes, give, and volunteer in one place.

The details: - Phil uses a nonprofit recommendation engine built with Indianapolis-based Data317. - The recommendation engine uses graph-based machine learning to match employees with causes tied to their interests. - Phil also incorporates Social Impact Culture, a proprietary philanthropy algorithm Selflessly acquired through Employee Vitals. - Selflessly says Phil is more than a static directory because it helps employees identify where their giving and volunteering may have the most impact. - Selflessly V2 combines employee giving, volunteering, matching, campaigns, grants, and reporting into a single system. - More information is available in Selflessly's announcement.

Between the lines: - Selflessly is positioning AI as a participation tool, not just an automation layer. - That approach reflects a broader bet that workplace philanthropy needs more personalization to engage employees. - Founder and CEO Joshua Driver said the company did not set out to add AI to corporate giving, but to rethink what giving software could be. - Driver also said philanthropy is facing real headwinds and that passive software is not enough.

What's next: - Selflessly is likely to use Phil as the core of its pitch to companies building or expanding employee giving programs. - The company’s next test is whether a conversational assistant can increase participation enough to justify a platform rebuild. - Selflessly is also signaling that future product development will center on the combined administrator-and-employee experience rather than separate tools.

The bottom line: - Selflessly is betting that AI can make corporate giving feel less like administration and more like a guided employee experience.