From left: Matt Dirks, co-founder and managing partner of Neralake, an AI platform for non-profits; Rashmi Boragolla, ML and AI lead; Michelle Kuly, co-founder; and James Froese, lead developer.Mike Sudoma
Growth for any organization relies, in part, on sound strategic planning. The process often depends on expertise from outside consultants, which can strain the budgets of many non-profits.
Matt Dirks and Michelle Kuly of Winnipeg recognized that gap when they founded Neralake in 2024. The AI platform is designed for non-profits, to support strategic plans followed by implementation plans with day-by-day priorities. More than 400 non-profits – from industry associations to arts groups – have tried the tool.
Users start by entering basic information about their organization and sector. Then, Neralake’s AI generates and sends out a survey of qualitative questions to stakeholders, from staff to funders. The feedback is automatically collected through a mix of written and voice-recorded surveys, which the AI consolidates, pulling out key themes, tensions and priorities ahead of the official planning process.
“It’s very powerful for small teams, because normally that [data] would not be accessible to them,” Mr. Dirks says.
After that, a non-profit’s team typically meets in person or virtually through Neralake. The platform guides them through open-ended and AI-generated questions about the organization’s goals, barriers and potential solutions. “We believe in always using the perspective and experience of the group collectively in the tool,” Mr. Dirks says.
He adds most teams can complete a plan in under four hours, compared with more traditional strategic-planning processes that can take months.
Neralake then generates an implementation plan that teams can use for regular check-ins, turning strategic priorities into concrete commitments “to keep the momentum going,” Mr. Dirks says. That can prevent the fall-off that’s common in the year after strategic planning wraps up.
While AI helps speed up the planning, Mr. Dirks says users are not expected to accept its output without question. “There’s always the opportunity for humans to work through it.”
Such safeguards are critical, says Ahmed Doha, an associate professor of supply chain and business analytics for the Sprott School of Business at Carleton University. “The risk isn’t that AI makes mistakes, because humans also make mistakes. The risk is that AI makes mistakes at scale, (which) quickly grows into scale with confidence, and we stop looking.”
He adds that organizations must be transparent about when and how AI is used, they should have clear protocols around what data goes into the system, and they need to ensure there’s a human review of AI outputs before they become real-world decisions. Without that, “you don’t have an ethical AI practice, you just have a hope.”
According to Imagine Canada, 80 per cent of non-profits use AI, but those cases are mostly limited to communications and fundraising as opposed to strategy. “They want to be able to use the tools, but they want to do so in line with [their] values,” Mr. Dirks says.
Many non-profits are anxious about the environmental impact of AI, he adds - concerns his organization shares. Neralake strives to be as energy-efficient as possible, partnering with Telus to run its AI processing on fully renewable hydro-powered servers in Quebec.
Mr. Dirks says the most successful early-stage companies stick strongly to their values, and build trust with their clients. “We don’t think we have the perfect solution, but we’ve got a really great technique for listening and moving forward.”
On the budgeting front, Neralake costs $139 a month for an annual subscription (with group pricing for foundations bringing in a cohort of organizations), or $189 a month without a subscription.
The organization is now looking to expand beyond Canada, with interest coming from Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and South America. “There’s a growing realization that there’s an opportunity here,” Mr. Dirks says.