OpenAI gives Durango nonprofit $500k to use AI to help caseworkers
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Tara Kiene has known for a long time that the loads her Medicaid case managers shoulder at Community Connections in Durango are too much.
There are only 22 managers, after all, and 1,200 people in the region they cover need their help.
But their workloads have become impossible to handle due to the mountains of paperwork it takes to manage each case. And that crunches the time they can spend with the people they help, which is the chief reason they do this work, Kiene said.
Coincidentally, an artificial intelligence agent was snooping around for rural grants. Not for itself, but on behalf of the Center for Rural AI, a nonprofit also located in Durango that’s helping rural communities, tribal nations, local governments and higher-education institutions build practical artificial intelligence capacity and leadership. The Center for Rural AI created its own AI agent to look for grants.
Within a month, Community Connections became the recipient of one of those grants. And its exploration into how AI could help case managers navigate paperwork mountains could transform social services delivery across Colorado.
The Center for Rural AI
The Center for Rural AI was established in 2025, following the launch of the AI Institute at Fort Lewis College.
The institute calls itself a regional hub for AI exploration, education and training, with a goal of “helping La Plata County responsibly and proactively shape its future in an AI-driven world.”
The Center for Rural AI’s founders believe rural America’s geographic diversity and community values make it a great place for ethical AI development and deployment.
It also happened to have its focus in the right place at the right time, when the OpenAI Foundation, the nonprofit that controls the public benefit corporation that develops and runs ChatGPT, put out a solicitation for applicants for grants through its People-First AI Fund, a $50 million initiative to get money to U.S.-based nonprofits using AI to strengthen their communities.
The OpenAI Foundation partners with philanthropic groups like The Rockefeller Foundation. The two in early October committed $50 million to a program called Cities Deliver, which gives grants from $500,000 to $2 million to organizations working with city governments to use AI to improve public services for underserved communities.
These unrestricted grants give trusted institutions the resources and flexibility to explore how AI can strengthen their work — and how the people and communities they serve can engage with and shape its use, the foundation says.
The People-First AI Fund supports nonprofits at every stage of AI learning and experimentation, from those just beginning to ask what the technology could make possible to others piloting tools they cocreated with communities. Open AI’s goal is to support nonprofit leadership as they work to understand the technology, its impacts and the best uses for their missions, it says.
It also invests in projects far from the city, including pouring $60 million in a program projected to deliver weather and crop disease forecasts to 100 million smallholder farmers across South and Southeast Asia and East Africa over the next three years.
The Center for Rural AI wasn’t eligible for the People-First AI grant but its founder and executive director, Andrew Aitken, knew just the organization that could be. He contacted Community Connections on June 19, and the two organizations worked together to get Community Connections’ application in a month later.
A mountain of administrative work
As a state-designated case management agency, Community Connections provides Medicaid case management, early intervention, family support services and long-term care coordination for children and adults with intellectual, developmental and other disabilities across southwestern Colorado.
But recent federal rule changes under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act have created the unprecedented levels of administrative work, Elizabeth Fabrey, Community Connections’ vice president of case management, said.
“Tasks that used to take 15 minutes now take two hours, and then you have to wait overnight for systems to connect in order for you to be able to do the next step,” Kiene has said.
The organization’s 22 case managers work with children and adult Medicaid waivers and state general fund programs, and Fabrey said each case manager has a case load cap of 65.
Community Connections’ children’s case manager has a case load of 80. “The administrative burden has increased every year, and we are constantly trying to endure changes to these very complicated systems that don’t talk to each other,” Fabrey said. “We’re consistently running at our capacity,” she added.
As a result, case managers “who do the work for the heart, because they want to make a difference in their communities” aren’t able to give the time they want to the people who need it, she added. And when administrative burnout pushes case managers out, “the trickle down (impact) is on the people they’re trying to help, because members may no longer get the quality and quantity of case management they’re entitled to,” she said.
But the $495,000 People-First AI grant gives Community Connections the resources to explore how AI can reduce these administrative burdens. The hope is case managers across the state will also benefit from future programming that will untangle “the multiple disconnected government systems with time-consuming reporting requirements and connect those systems, automate routine tasks and reduce repetitive documentation,” the Center for Rural AI says.
Details of how and when the grant will be implemented are still being sorted out. “We’re in the discovery phase to figure out what quick wins might be, but anything that reduces having to enter things in multiple places, makes information easier to find automatically or tracks processes to alert you when something is left unfinished,” Kiene said.
“For instance, case managers have to send service plans out for signatures by mail, so something to alert them that the signed plan hasn’t been received would be a help. Or for the assessments they have to complete — is there a way to take the conversation they have with the client and automatically enter the responses into the form when they get back to their computer?”
There are lots of options, Kiene said, “but we’ll be working with our internal team to determine what solutions would have the biggest impact and with the Center for Rural AI to identify which ones are fairly quick to design.”
“It’s exciting to have the opportunity for a rural community to start figuring out solutions we could develop and hopefully share with other rural communities,” she said.
Sun economy stories you may have missed
➔ Colorado’s labor force shrinks to lowest since 1979. Loss is blamed on working-age adults retiring, decline in net migration. September unemployment rate up to 4.1%, employers added 2,400 jobs. >> Read story
➔ Millions in untraceable conservative money is flooding into Colorado to oppose tax-related ballot measures. Most of the money is targeted at Amendment 87, which would impose a graduated income tax rate on businesses and individuals >> Read story
➔ Housing is slightly more affordable in Colorado, a report shows. You may not have noticed. >> Read story
➔ Colorado is handing out free salmon. Here’s how to get it. State’s annual kokanee giveaway immediately follows the annual miraculous spawning ritual >> Read story
➔ The Denver area didn’t conserve enough water this summer. Now it’s taking more from the Western Slope. Some western Coloradans pointed at Front Range residents’ tepid approach to water conservation this summer as the underlying problem >> Read story
Take the reader poll
Inflation ticked up higher and unemployment increased last month. How is the economy treating you? Take the latest What’s Working poll to help us better understand what’s going on in Colorado.
Here you go >> cosun.co/WWinflation26
Other working bits
➔ CoorsTek moved headquarters back to its old plant. It looks different. That’s because the company’s former ceramics manufacturing plant in Golden has been renovated as office space as part of a massive 14-acre, mixed-used project from AC Development. The update is the first phase of Clayworks, which is being developed into a neighborhood amenity with shops, restaurants, public-gathering spaces and offices.
CoorsTek’s new building still has some old industrial charm, including the historic bricks from the old Ford Street facade, as well as original kiln elements. The company once manufactured everything from “glassware and pottery, dinnerware and labware to aluminum cans” but now focuses on making ceramic components for the semiconductor industry. There’s also a geothermal heating and cooling system that uses 42 geothermal wells extending 500 feet underground. The system is expected to reduce energy use by 25%.
The company moved 165 employees into the building earlier this week and occupies 60% of the completed 188,600-square-foot building, named The Pottery. AC Development also moved into 5,000 square feet so there’s still a lot of vacancy. They’ll be there for a while as the rest of the property gets developed, which could be “at least eight to 10 years,” according to the developers. No plans for a ceramics workshop, at least not yet. >> See what’s coming
➔ Colorado got more expensive, sees unemployment increasing. The latest economic data continues to look bleak for the state. In September, unemployment increased one-tenth of a point to 4.1%. Denver metro area inflation also rose 4% last month, compared with a year ago September, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Nationwide, the unemployment rate increased by the same rate to 4.2% in September. Inflation, while lower at 3.7%, had risen faster, by three-tenths of a point. In both cases, higher gas prices were to blame. >> Jobs report, Sun story
➔ Loveland firm that turns wasted industrial heat into electricity adds $9M investment. ATS Energy stumbled onto a crazy way to create electricity: Someone at the solar-energy firm turned off the lights one night. The next morning, they realized electricity was produced without the presence of light. It came from industrial waste heat. ATS, which won an Earthshort Prize Fix our Climate award in 2024, has been working on commercializing the technology and this week announced it had raised a $9 million round from investors.
Its first solid-state generators are expected to be deployed in mid-2027 and the new financing will help scale production. The generators target customers with cement kilns, refineries and data centers that currently vent heat and convert the wasted heat into “usable electricity without turbines or moving parts,” the company said. >> How it works
➔ Colorado’s SecureSavings retirement program has 120,000 participants. Colorado State Treasurer Dave Young mentioned the data point this week as part of National Retirement Security Month. That’s 24% more than in January, and, because it’s a retirement option for workers who don’t have access to one, that’s 120,000 more Coloradans saving for retirement than before the program launched in 2023.
Participants are enrolled in a Roth individual retirement account, so contributions are made after taxes and invested by fund managers. At retirement, workers won’t have the tax burden on any financial gains. To date, participants have saved $250 million. And 45,000 local employers now offer a private plan for their employees. “Our state program acts as a rising tide, raising private plan adoption rates rather than replacing it,” Young said during a news conference. >> Details
➔ Social Security to increase 3.6% in 2027. That should help Colorado’s more than 980,000 beneficiaries get a little more per month, according to Social Security data. Of those, 791,895 are retired workers. Nationwide, recipients will get an average cost-of-living adjustment of $75 a month. >> COLA details
➔ Free college application day is Oct. 20-22. But it’s only free if you live in Colorado and apply as an undergraduate to one or all 18 public or private four-year colleges in the state. Another 18 local community colleges have no application fee year-round. The three-day free-application period saved applicants $2.4 million in fees last year.
Then again, a few local colleges have been waiving application fees for some or all Colorado residents anyway, including Colorado State University, Colorado College and new this year, University of Colorado Colorado Springs. The University of Northern Colorado offers free application days four times a year, on the first day of October, December, February and April.
At least two more schools are now offering guaranteed admissions for academically eligible students, including the Colorado School of Mines (see requirements) and Colorado State University (must have 3.0 GPA or higher). >> Free application details
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Thanks for sticking with us! ~ tracy & tamara
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