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

Because frontline work is already hard enough.

“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 — the community services network operating across every US state and Canadian province — systems that don’t understand your context and don’t remember your last search. Navigating this friction can disconnect workers from the human being across the table.

We know that broken search isn’t the hardest part of nonprofit 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’s Live
Frontline community worker using Lemy

Lemy

An AI-powered resource discovery widget — live and in use in a frontline community testbed. It embeds inside the tools frontline community workers already use: one search bar, natural language, results in seconds across four tiers, including a live 211 API connection to 60,000+ Ontario services.

Four things it does that nothing else in this space does:

1

Your organization’s knowledge, first.

Lemy surfaces an org’s own resource list ahead of everything else. The worker’s institutional knowledge becomes searchable — the highest-trust tier, instantly.

2

Verified sources. No hallucinations.

Results come from 211’s 60,000+ verified services and curated directories — not invented. Four tiers, ranked by trust, with web results clearly marked “verify before referring.”

3

It preserves what workers know.

One-tap annotations and referral signals capture lore as a byproduct of daily work. When experienced workers leave, their knowledge stays. Individual expertise becomes organizational memory.

4

It reveals what communities need.

Every search, referral, and annotation generates data the sector has never had — what communities need, where the gaps are, which services actually deliver — with no extra data entry.

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.

Toronto is the pilot. The model scales to any city with 211 — which is every major city in the United States and Canada.

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

Lemy in the Field

The first deployment is funded and underway. Lemy is running a community testbed with a major Toronto community-services organization, deployed inside Everyday Connect — Homeless Connect Toronto’s resource portal, with 13 years of community credibility behind it.

The organization’s program manager is sharing its internal resource list for ingestion, and four frontline community workers are co-designing the tool through July — shaping search, results, and capture around how they actually work.

What we prove here can go anywhere there’s a 211.

The testbed validates the foundation — four-tier verified search and lore capture with real frontline community workers. Findings are published regardless of outcome. What comes next builds on that foundation.

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

Frontline community 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. 211 is comprehensive but slow to search. General-purpose AI is fast but hallucinates — it will confidently invent a service that doesn’t exist. Neither is safe to hand a worker mid-conversation with someone in crisis.

Lemy sits in between: the speed of AI, grounded in verified data, ranked by trust. Fast enough to use in the moment, honest enough to refer from.

This is more than a technology project. It is about amplifying what happens when a person in crisis sits down across from someone who can help — by finding what they need, instantly, and leaving time for the compassionate conversations that matter most.

Every city in the US and Canada has a 211. What we prove in Toronto can go anywhere.

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.

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

Frontline community workers and community members at an HCT event

Theory of Change

LEMY CAPABILITY
Better search
DIRECT RESULT
Faster, more accurate referrals
COMMUNITY OUTCOME
Stronger worker-client bond
Knowledge retained
Collective expertise built
Amplified impact of worker and organization
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 throughout North America has frontline community workers navigating fragmented systems. Most have 211. If this works in Toronto, the model is portable — to any city, any 211, any frontline organization.

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 amplify the moment that matters — making sure that when someone asks for help, the person across the table has already found what they need, and has time to listen.

Support the Proof of Concept

$1,000 funds a week of frontline research. $25,000 funds the proof of concept — the community testbed is already funded. Every contribution moves this forward.

Support the Proof of Concept

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