Capacity Overload: AI for Social Work

Episode description:GiGi's Playhouse Indianapolis serves families touched by Down syndrome from prenatal diagnosis through career readiness, and every program is free. Executive Director David Johnson sits down with Jason Padgett and Oliver Belanger to explain how a chapter with two full-time staff and roughly fifty volunteers actually pulls that off, and what it took to dig the chapter out of bankruptcy in his first six months.David shares the founding story behind Nancy Gianni and her daughter Gigi, why the chapter is building a STEM lab as part of a long-term Alzheimer's prevention strategy, and what makes the GiGi's community feel different from any other nonprofit space he's worked in.Jason and Oliver get into where AI can take pressure off small nonprofit teams: matching families to the right Indianapolis service, pulling foundation prospects out of deep research, partnering with Purdue's VR labs, and turning a constant flow of in-person joy into the kind of social media content the internet is starving for.In this episode:The 99 percent volunteer model and how the math worksThe bankruptcy David walked into and how the chapter raised $150K in six monthsGeneration G and the philosophy of being a little better every dayWhy STEM activities matter for adults with Down syndromePractical AI use cases for nonprofit leaders without a marketing degreeConnect with David and GiGi's Playhouse Indianapolis:Website: https://gigisplayhouse.org/indianapolis/LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gigi%27splayhouseindianapolisDavid Johnson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidjohnson2999/Sponsor: CitizenAI helps families and case managers navigate the maze of community services and benefits in their area. Learn more at https://www.mycitizen.ai/AI tools mentioned in this episodeA companion blog post breaking each of these down for nonprofit teams is in the works. For now, here's the list referenced during the conversation:Claude and Claude Code, for divergent brainstorming and spinning up multiple landing page variationsSuno, for generating original musicElevenLabs, also called 11 Labs, for AI voice generationDeep Research, available across major AI assistants, for foundation prospect researchImage and video generators as a broad category, referenced for creative campaignsAB testing landing pages with AI assistanceVR and AR programming through Purdue's labs Foundation models from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, referenced as sources of community grant fundingCapacity Overload: AI for Social WorkReal stories from the front lines of social work.

Federal rental assistance for housing nonprofits disappeared overnight, with no warning and no runway. In this first episode of Capacity Overload, Executive Director Marie Morse of Homestead Resources joins Jason Padgett and Oliver Belanger to talk about what that reality looks like for 1,500 families in Lafayette, Indiana, and what AI can actually do to help.Key topics covered:How federal funding cuts are hitting Indiana housing nonprofits right now, with no notice and no planFive AI tools nonprofit leaders should know: Google NotebookLM, Claude, ChatGPT, GrantExec, and Wispr FlowHow to use AI for grant and funder research without getting burned by hallucinationsUsing a chain of AI tools to automate the federal claims review process and expand who can do that workHow nonprofits can capture 40 years of institutional knowledge before it walks out the door with the executive director who holds itAI doesn't fix the funding problem, but for a team of five trying to serve 1,500 families, it can make a real difference in what gets done before 5 PM.About Marie Morse:Executive Director, Homestead Resources (Lafayette, IN). Marie has led Homestead for over 40 years. The organization provides HUD housing counseling, CDFI small-dollar loans, and 124 units of affordable senior housing across Tippecanoe County.https://homestead-resources.org/https://www.linkedin.com/in/marie-morse-26271318/Tools and Resources Mentioned:Google NotebookLM → https://notebooklm.google.com/Claude → https://claude.ai/GrantExec → https://grantexec.com/Wispr Flow → https://ref.wisprflow.ai/jason-padgettBrought to you by CitizenAI → https://www.mycitizen.ai/ Oliver Belanger, Chief Operating Officer → [email protected] https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliverbelanger/Jason Padgett, Director of Partnerships and Growth → [email protected] https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-grant-padgett/If you found this information useful, please follow and share the show with others who are serving their communities.