Because frontline work is already hard enough.

AI-powered resource discovery. Free. For everyone who serves.

“You’ve helped me feel validated as a human being with respect and support.”

— From a participant at a Homeless Connect Toronto event

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The Problem

The work that matters most is the work bad systems leave the least time for.

Ontario alone has 60,000 community programs and services in databases like 211 — systems that don’t understand your context and don’t remember your last search.

We know that broken search isn’t the hardest part of frontline work. But it’s a part we can do something about.

60,000+
community programs and services in Ontario alone — buried in systems that don’t understand context.
What We’re Building
Frontline worker using Lemy

Lemy

An AI-powered resource discovery widget that embeds inside the tools frontline workers already use. One search bar. Natural language. Results in seconds. No new system to learn.

It does two things nothing else in this space does:

1

It finds what workers need.

Lemy understands natural language, context, and the relationships between services, people, and needs. “Mandarin-speaking walk-in support for a senior veteran” returns relevant matches even if no database has that combination of filters.

2

It captures what workers know.

Experienced frontline workers carry knowledge no database holds. When those workers leave, everything they know leaves with them. Lemy captures that knowledge as a byproduct of daily work — one-tap signals, AI-generated annotations and anonymized referral signals from case management systems. Individual expertise becomes organizational memory.

The point is not efficiency, but affinity. Thirty seconds instead of fifteen minutes gives those minutes back to the person in front of them — hearing their story, making a referral someone will take seriously because a trusted worker made it.

Every search, every referral, every annotation generates data the sector has not had — what communities need, where the gaps are, which services actually deliver — with no extra data entry. The intelligence is a byproduct of the work.

nuAmple believes the people doing the hardest work in our communities deserve more than what the sector has been able to give them.

Free to organizations. Funded by donors as public infrastructure.

Ample Labs team
Our Roots

How we got here.

2018–2022
Ample Labs. CG Chen founded Ample Labs after friends experienced housing instability. Built Canada’s first conversational AI for homeless services in Toronto. Raised $1M. National media. The need was validated. But ‘stateless’ chat didn’t fit frontline workflow. By 2022, wound down. The need was validated. The approach needed rethinking.
2023
A new steward. Ample Labs was handed to John Rademaker — four startups, one IPO, and a street-level view of life. A path through addiction and recovery — including jail, rehabs, and volunteer work in prison, locked psychiatric wards, recovery facilities, and youth programs — gave him connection to marginalized communities that most tech CEOs never have.
2024
Homeless Connect Toronto. Thirteen years in service to GTA’s homeless community led to launching Everyday Connect. EC is an online portal accessing a curated list of trusted partner resources.
2025
nuAmple. From Ample Labs: relationships, credibility, knowledge of what doesn’t work. From HCT: a trusted platform, network of partners, and 13 years of community. What Ample Labs got wrong is what Lemy is built to fix.
Teammates

Leadership

John Rademaker
John Rademaker — Founder & CEO
Four startups. One IPO (NASDAQ:SYNX). Recovery background. Connection to the communities this project serves.
Georgia Mackenzie-MacPherson
Georgia Mackenzie-MacPherson — EC Product Manager
Deep nonprofit sector experience. Principal at MacMac. Designer of the initial Everyday Connect.

Core Team

Jimmy Yim
Jimmy Yim (Miydesign) — Design Studio
Leading Lemy’s visual design and brand identity.

Board & Advisors

CG Chen
CG Chen — Founding Advisor
3x Founder, YC alum. Founded Ample Labs in 2018. Created the foundation nuAmple is built on.
Geordie Graham
Geordie Graham — Board
2x founder, YC alum. Co-founded Ample Labs. Product and user experience, thought leader in UXR.
Kay Taylor
Kay Taylor — Board
Organizational leader and consultant, MBA, specializing in personal development and transformational practice.
Who Is Committed

Our Coalition

HCT logo
Homeless Connect Toronto
13 years of community trust, Everyday Connect, and frontline access across the GTA.
211 Ontario logo
Toronto 211
17,000+ verified programs and services.
Cohere logo
Cohere
AI NLP infrastructure (Catalyst program).
Sahaj logo
Sahaj
AI development (Sahaj Impact).
Osler logo
Osler
$50,000 in pro bono legal support.
MacMac logo
MacMac
Design studio for Everyday Connect.

Lemy in Everyday Connect

For the PoC, Lemy deploys inside Everyday Connect, Homeless Connect Toronto’s resource portal — 13 years of community credibility, an established user base across the GTA.

For HCT and its partners, the immediate result is a more capable Everyday Connect — 60,000+ more listings, with knowledge capture and activity tracking that EC has never had.

Lemy is portable. What we prove inside EC can go anywhere.

The proof of concept validates the foundation — semantic search and lore capture with real frontline workers. What comes next builds on that foundation.

Future Roadmap

Lemy’s Evolution: What Comes Next

Phase 2: Adaptive Intelligence & Referral Signals

Introduces GenUI, adapting to each worker’s context, role, and search history. Evolves from static search into a dynamic learning tool.

An anonymized referral signal from internal case management notes will reveal patterns of service usage and gaps — valuable data previously unseen.

Phase 3: Community Intelligence & Impact

Building on Phase 2, Lemy will aggregate referral data across organizations to create a living map of community needs and service ecosystems.

This gives funders, planners, and policymakers actionable data, moving beyond guesswork to inform strategic decisions that address societal challenges.

Frontline worker in conversation with a community member at an HCT event
Our Vision

Frontline workers hold communities together, sitting with people during some of the hardest moments in their lives. They listen, search for help, make referrals they hope will land. Nobody captures what they know. When they leave, it leaves with them.

The systems they depend on weren’t built for them. Every minute lost to a broken system is a minute not connected with the person in front of them.

Theory of Change

LEMY CAPABILITY
Better search
DIRECT RESULT
Faster, more accurate referrals
COMMUNITY OUTCOME
More people connected to services
Knowledge capture
Institutional memory survives turnover
New workers effective sooner
Referral data
Visible patterns and gaps
Smarter funding and planning

Time enough to listen — which is what the person across the table will remember.

For workers

Reduced administrative friction. Less time navigating broken systems means more capacity for the human work they came to do. Not a cure for burnout — but one less thing adding to it.

For the people they serve

A worker who has time to listen, who knows where to send you, and whose referral carries weight because a real person made it. That’s what dignity in a moment of crisis looks like.

We can’t create housing or meals. We can make sure the systems aren’t standing between a worker and the person who needs them.

We don’t claim to solve homelessness. We claim to make the people trying to solve it more effective at their work. Every city has frontline workers navigating fragmented systems. Most have 211. If this works in Toronto, the model is portable.

How We Work

Relationships first.

We work with communities, not for them. Every partnership starts with listening.

People, not products.

Technology is the tool. The person across the table is the point. We build to deepen connection, not to add complexity.

Close the gap.

The workers doing the hardest work have the least access to good technology. We’re here to change that.

Built with, not for.

Frontline workers shape what we make. If it doesn’t work in their hands, it doesn’t work.

What It Takes
THE PROOF — $50K

Research Investment

Deploy with real workers. Measure what happens. Publish findings.

THE PRODUCT — $50K

Build Investment

Contingent on Proof results. Adaptive interfaces, case management integration, org adoption beyond the pilot.

THE PLATFORM — ~$15K/mo

Infrastructure

Community intelligence. Referral patterns available to funders and planners. Earned revenue sustains the free frontline tool.

$75K+
In-Kind Committed
$50K
Raising
$40K+
Invested by Founders
$0
Cost to Orgs

We publish regardless of outcome.

Frontline work carries a cost that doesn’t appear in job descriptions. We can’t change that. We can make sure the systems aren’t adding to the weight.

Better technology won’t solve homelessness. But it can make sure that when someone asks for help, the person they’ve reached has the time to listen.

Support This Work

$1,000 funds a week of frontline research. $50,000 funds the proof of concept. Every contribution moves this forward.

Support This Work Start a Conversation

Start a Conversation

If any of this is relevant to your work, we’d welcome hearing from you.

Or email directly: john@nuample.org

US 501(c)(3) | Ontario Not-for-Profit