Although leading a comfortable life within the Culture, many of its citizens feel a need to be useful, and to belong to a society that does not merely exist for their own sake, but that also helps improve the lot of sentient beings throughout the galaxy. For that reason, the Culture carries out "good works", covertly or overtly interfering in the development of lesser civilizations, with the main aim to gradually guide them towards less damaging paths. As Culture citizens see it, these good works provide the Culture with a "moral right to exist".

A group within the Culture, Contact, is responsible for its interactions (diplomatic or otherwise) with other civilizations (though non-Contact citizens are apparently not prevented from travelling or interacting with other civilizations). Further within Contact, an intelligence organisation named Special Circumstances exists to deal with interventions which require more covert behaviour; the interventionist approach that the Culture takes to advancing other societies may often create resentment in the affected civilizations, and thus requires a rather delicate touch.

In Matter, it is described that there are a number of other galactic civilizations that come close to or potentially even surpass the Culture in power and sophistication. The Culture is very careful and considerate of these groupings, and while still trying to convince them of the Culture ideal, will be much less likely to openly interfere in their activities.

In Surface Detail, three more branches of Contact are described: Quietus, the Quietudinal Service, whose purview is dealing with those entities who have retired from biological existence into digital form and/or those who have died and been resurrected; Numina, which is described as having the charge of contact with races that have sublimed; and Restoria, a subset of Contact which focuses on containing and negating the threat of swarms of self-replicating creatures ('hegswarms').