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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 works
The bankruptcy David walked into and how the chapter raised $150K in six months
Generation G and the philosophy of being a little better every day
Why STEM activities matter for adults with Down syndrome
Practical AI use cases for nonprofit leaders without a marketing degree
Connect with David and GiGi's Playhouse Indianapolis:
Website: https://gigisplayhouse.org/indianapolis/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gigi%27splayhouseindianapolis
David 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 episode
A 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 variations
Suno, for generating original music
ElevenLabs, also called 11 Labs, for AI voice generation
Deep Research, available across major AI assistants, for foundation prospect research
Image and video generators as a broad category, referenced for creative campaigns
AB testing landing pages with AI assistance
VR and AR programming through Purdue's labs
Foundation models from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic, referenced as sources of community grant funding
Capacity Overload: AI for Social Work
Real stories from the front lines of social work.
