Demo for Don

Support: Financial and Otherwise

Is South Side CAN going to back Sarah, the AI Bot?

Time will tell.

Let's clear the tech question hurdel

Background:

A community group, South Side CAN, now a 501 (c)(3), holds monthly neighbor night meetings at the Citiparks' Market House. See https://southsidecan.org/. Don Berman, president and co-founder of the organization, a "big believer in AI" was seeking a demo.

Three Demonstration Examples:

1)

Call this number and interact with phone,

Voice AI: 408-816-2270.

This number was in the introductory letter.

2)

Example: Molly's Home PageAI-ify.me

3)

Click the blue widget in the bottom right corner of this web page for a snarky helper.

Explaining the AI & GHL connection.

GHL is the delivery system.
AI is the intelligence.
The neighborhood bot needs both.

Most people hear “CRM” and assume it’s just a contact database. GHL is much more than that. For an AI neighborhood assistant, you need:

A place to store and update the knowledge base
(business listings, events, FAQs, contacts, alerts, workflows)

A way to manage the incoming requests from real people
(calls, texts, questions, tickets, reports)

A way to automate responses and actions
(AI voice calls, SMS replies, routing to humans, tagging, follow-up)

GHL does all of that under one roof. That’s the real connection.

Think of GHL as the operating system while AI as the application running on it.

An AI bot alone is a floating brain. It needs something to connect it to the community.

GHL supplies:

the phone numbers
the SMS system
the web page and if needed, additional websites
the forms
the automations
the workflows
the routing
the analytics
the permissions
the integrations
the logs
the piplines
the data structure

The system of South Side Sarah offers a solution with a foundation that can serve the neighborhood. Sarah's knowledge base and administrative deeds need a place to live and GHL gives the back-end for, among other things, billing.

IA chatbot demo can not show the real value. The chatbot is a small part of the system. Our bot provides.

A neighborhood bot needs:

voice calling
the business listings
the sponsorship payments and flows
the community alerts
the daily updates
the forms submissions
the event outreach
the routing rules
the content delivery
the follow-up logic
the local automations
the opt-in and permissions

A chatbot demonstration misses what occurs above.

Recap:
Data in (GHL stores it) + Logic and automation (GHL runs it) + AI brain (supply in the AI model)

Channels for Input & Output

phone
text
web
QR code
email
live agent escalation
in-person interactions

Real demo requires wiring AI into voice, SMS, workflows, and data. That’s not a 10-minute mock-up. Before we build the system, we need prudent commitments and investments for a six-month period. We can configure it specifically for our neighborhood with trusted citizens, SOPs, signage, alliances, events and code snips so that Sarah's AI widget can fit among hundreds of sites.

GHL provides the infrastructure that makes the AI bot actually function at a neighborhood level. If you want to go into the bits of GHL, sign-up with your own two week trial. It is powering 2-million businesses and employs more that 100 developers. All-in-all, GHL rivals what Hub Spot and Salesforce does but geared to the agency clients and small and medium sized businesses.

4) Bonus

Click the chat widget in the bottom right corner of the web page at the GHL site.

Email Exchange (Timeline)

Annette's Introduction

Don,

As the chair of the Activating Ambassadors Action Pack (which still may change its name), I am officially submitting to you the work Mark Rauterkus has done as a member of the action pack in the name "Sarah our AI Bot, serving as the South Side Community Hotline".

If you've not yet clicked the link I encourage you to do so and to share with the Board of South Side CAN to let Mark and the Action Pack know what connection South Side CAN would like to have to Sarah.
Inside the link, you will find 9 additional links in which Mark describes the cost and benefit of the technology.
For your convenience, I have pasted the Return on Investment below.
Apparently, Mark is optimistic that he will have funding to launch in November

As full disclosure,

I copied Susan Anderson as I think it is important that all work of the Activating Ambassadors Action Pack, of which she is a member, be well coordinated with her branding and marketing efforts.
Sarah goes far beyond the scope I envisioned for the Action Pack but would provide fresh, fun talking points to residents who chose to use it.

I really have to credit Mark with this effort and rely on him to answer questions but I think it's important for him to know what association the Board of South Side CAN would like before he goes much further.

Thanks and I look forward to your feedback,

Annette

Attached the ROI Summary.

Don Wrote:

Hi All,

I’m a big believer in AI. SouthSideCAN provides the Asset Based Community Development platform you’re familiar with. Our grant funding is focused on providing that and we don’t have anywhere near the resources to support something of this size, although we support you in your desire to do so.

It appears this is based on a CRM (Go.Lap.Red), but I’m unclear where the rest of the tech comes from as this seems to be a CRM based set of sales tools and how this would apply to an entire neighborhood.

The challenging part is getting the data to train a model. As far as event data most of that lives on social media sites which are notoriously difficult to scrape data from. We currently have about quite a few event calendars on the south side but none of them have much data in them.

If you want to organize a demo, I’d be interested in seeing how it all fits together and understand the pieces I’m missing.

Thank you!

Mark Replied

Yes, CRM. Go High Level as the backbone.

The AI within that platform is speeding ahead in many directions.

So refreshing to hear that you are keen to AI.

I have a plan for training the knowledge base. And, it is going to take a group effort. Trusted users will help. This is why is is going to be of big value to get core orgs as the glue / sponsors / supporters.

I come from an open-source background. Teamwork makes the dream work. To go fast go alone. To go far, go with others.

I'm happy to do a lot of the heavy lifting and leadership. But we need some others to put skin in the game with some economic investments.

We could demo and look under the hood with our bits at the engagement party, and/or at the birthing of Sarah. Or, at the next SS CAN Meeting too. South Side CAN as a founding sponsor would be epic for the group and the neighborhood, IMNSHO. I am close to getting a couple of others, too, but getting the org's leadership and opening investment would help greatly.

Mark replied with the this demo page and links.

The conversation continues....

Thanks, again, for the food and community gathering last night.

You asked for a demo of South Side Sarah.

Well, I put together this web page for you.

https://cloh.org/demo-for-don

If you want to visit in person with me -- let's do that too. I can host you in my home office at 108 S. 12th Street -- or we can meet online. My calendar is at https://Rauterkus.com/ Thanks, again, for the food and community gathering last night.

Rejection email from SS CAN

Hi Mark,

So, I looked at the information that you sent, and I had an extensive conversation with the chat bot at the number provided. It's clearly very advanced and impressive. But the concerns I mentioned to you last night are valid. It will not go out and get data from multiple websites or social media without some form of integration. Out-of-the-box it will only answer questions about what you upload into it. Manual upload and maintenance would be a task that would be herculean given the number of businesses and services on the South side and city services and other such things that people might ask about. Creating automated integration with other systems and scraping websites and social media can be done but would be expensive.

What data might be needed—Detailed information about:

All SS business
All service providers servicing the south Side
All City, County, and state services that people in SS might be interested in.
All relevant online services like ride sharing, food delivery, short term rental platforms etc.

This would represent thousands of integration points. Although the tool seems quite slick and highly functional (It spoke quite eloquently to me about its capabilities) It only can answer questions for data that is loaded into it.

Our funding at SouthSideCAN is for putting on neighbor night and providing limited funding for action packs. This is dictated by our Birmingham Foundation Grant. We are not in a position to fund anything remotely like the automated integration needed. We are a small organization of five volunteers, and we have no one with the time to do the manual entry and maintain it in an ongoing manner if automated integration is not on the table. I appreciate what you're trying to do but because you're dealing with many businesses and services getting all the supporting data loaded and maintained is just way too big a lift for us and perhaps for anyone. A smaller scope like a single business or a single service would be much more achievable.

I realize that this is not the answer you were hoping for, but as far as SouthSideCAN we have no choice but to pass.

Don Berman

President & Co-Founder

SouthSideCAN

[email protected]

Reply from Mark

Hi Don,

Thanks for taking the time to look into the system and for the thoughtful response. I’m glad you tested it and saw its potential. Thanks for the kind words.

I want to clear up the key point behind your objection, because the barrier you’re describing isn’t actually what this project requires.

The ask here is financial support: $108 per month for six months.

There is no request for technical labor, data-entry labor, scraping labor, or integration work from South Side CAN. None.

The idea that this would require thousands of integrations, a permanent technical staff, or a massive data-loading effort is not accurate. The model comes from an open-source spirit. Think wikipedia, Unix, Netscape to Chrome.

The tools can ingest material easily. Loading information is not a Herculean task. A URL to a website or a publicly shared document can be ingested in moments. I’ve been publishing, managing, and organizing large bodies of content for decades — books, courses, and now 61 podcast episodes in 2026 alone — and spinning up a project like this is absolutely in my comfort zone.

From funding to launch would take me about one week, working alone. The community meeting we held last night, with more than 100 neighbors, offering input in a declaration period could provide depth and direction to insure that Sarah soars.

South Side CAN is not being asked to maintain data, manage integrations, or carry operational load. The only role for CAN would be the same role you already serve — your monthly meetings and your connection to neighbors.

Our request is financial support only. No additional burdens.

I respect your decision, and I appreciate the response. But I also don’t want the committee to pass based on a misunderstanding of what this actually requires. If the concern is purely the money — which is modest — that’s a fair discussion. If the concern was the imagined workload, that part doesn’t apply.

If circumstances change or if you want to revisit the actual scope, I’m available anytime.

Don Replied on Nov 20

Hi Mark/Annette,

I guess we just see this differently. Businesses post on social media because it brings clients and enhances brand image, so to me scraping social media sites is critical. Crowdsourcing only works if people see the benefit of doing the work, so you would certainly be in a chicken/egg situation to begin with.

That said. We are rolling out a modest funding stream for action packs ($750/year). Get together with Annette and discuss if you want to use these funds for this project. As action pack leader Annette would need to fill out a form requesting the funds.

Please let me know what you decide. I’ll send along a link to the form and our action pack guidelines which include guidelines for using the funds, conflict of interest requirements etc. if you decide you’d like to go this route.