LIACC @ U. Fernando Pessoa

ESG4NPO: AI-Assisted Sustainability Management for Non-Profit Organizations

Past project · 2025–2026

Banner of the ESG4NPO research project

ESG4NPO — Strategic sustainability integration in non-profit organizations: development of a management tool assisted by artificial intelligence was an exploratory research project hosted by Universidade Fernando Pessoa (UFP). It produced a sustainability management tool, assisted by AI, built for non-profit organisations (NPOs). From our group, Prof. Christophe Soares was a member of the research team.

Why it matters

Non-profit organisations are central to sustainable development, but their contribution rarely goes beyond their core mission. The models that companies use to manage environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues do not fit the non-profit sector, and defining an ESG strategy takes skills and time that these organisations often lack.

ESG4NPO set out to change this in two steps: adapt organisational sustainability models to the needs of NPOs, and use those models to build a prototype of an AI-assisted management tool for the ESG factors that matter to them.

The tool

The ESG4NPO tool is available online at esg4npo.ufp.pt, in five languages. It takes an organisation from ESG diagnosis to an action plan in three steps:

  • Diagnosis — automated scoring of ESG maturity across the governance, environmental and social dimensions.
  • NPO analysis — a tailored organisational profile that maps determinants and sustainability readiness.
  • AI interaction — a conversational assistant that generates personalised ESG strategies and action plans, by email.

The tool is built for the non-profit sector and grounded in scientifically validated processes of sustainable value creation. Its assistant is “closed”: it runs on software developed by the project’s research team.

Team

The project was coordinated by Prof. Ana Fonseca (Faculty of Science and Technology, UFP). The research team:

  • Prof. Ana Fonseca, UFP — project coordinator
  • Prof. Isabel Abreu, UFP
  • Prof. João Casqueira, UFP
  • Prof. Christophe Soares, UFP — LIACC @ UFP
  • Prof. Sandra Morioka, Federal University of Paraíba, Brazil

Collaborators and the full team are listed on the project website.

Outputs

  • Fonseca, A.; Morioka, S.; Casqueira Cardoso, J.; Barbosa, A.d.S.; Rocha, J.; Silvestre, W.J. Sustainable Value Creation in Nonprofit Organizations: Processes, Determinants, and Strategic Dimensions. Sustainability 2026, 18, 3056. doi.org/10.3390/su18063056
  • Miranda, P.; Fonseca, A.; Soares, C.; Pereira, I. AI-assisted management tool for sustainable value creation in the non-profit sector. In AI and the Green Transition: European Perspectives on Sustainable Innovation, World Sustainability Series, Springer Nature (accepted for publication, February 2026).
  • Pedro Miranda (2026). ESG4NPO: A Retrieval-Augmented LLM System for ESG Management Support in Non-Profit Organizations. Master’s dissertation in Computer Engineering, Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto.
  • Joana Macedo Rocha (2026). Sustainable Value Creation through ESG Integration in Non-Profit Organizations. Master’s dissertation in Humanitarian Action, Cooperation and Development, UFP.
  • Presentations at the European Seminar on AI for Sustainability and Climate Change (January 2026) and at the 22nd International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability (April 2026).

Funding

Exploratory research project 2023.14406.PEX, funded by national funds through FCT — Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., with Fundação Ensino e Cultura Fernando Pessoa as the proposing institution and UFP as the host institution. DOI: 10.54499/2023.14406.PEX.

Project website: esg4npo.ufp.edu.pt.