In Fall 2025, a Georgia Tech Pro Bono Consulting team partnered with Pro Bono Partnership of Atlanta (PBPA) to explore a growing challenge for nonprofits: how to use AI to make sense of scattered data and turn it into meaningful insight. PBPA, which connects volunteer attorneys with nonprofits serving low-income and disadvantaged communities, produces a large library of educational resources across YouTube, SoundCloud, and its website. Like many organizations with limited time and staff capacity, PBPA needed a better way to understand how audiences were engaging with this content.
Georgia Tech students Katherine ‘Shea’ Feagin (MBA ’27), Anthony Cervalli (MBA ’26), and Sabrina Wald (MBA ’26) began by reviewing engagement data, but soon realized the organization needed a sustainable, low-effort system for ongoing analysis. With guidance from PBPA staff, Creighton Frommer (Staff Attorney & Operations Director), Sireesha Ghanta (Education Director), and Randi Zelcer (Client Manager), the team pivoted to designing an AI-enabled framework that PBPA could use long after the project ended.
The team consolidated PBPA’s content into clearly defined categories, enabling more meaningful analysis. They examined metrics including active vs. passive views, engagement over time, and engagement across platforms and content formats.
Recognizing the complexity of pulling data from multiple external platforms, they developed a standard operating procedure (SOP) for using AI tools to streamline and automate much of the analysis.
The SOP includes:
- Best practices for data entry and extraction
- Methods for cleaning and standardizing datasets
- Tips for using AI prompts to derive insights and metrics
- Guidance on interpreting results and troubleshooting irregularities
The students also provided PBPA with strategic recommendations, highlighting what’s working well and where technology could amplify existing strengths. They also provided recommendations to enhance PBPA’s long-term content strategy. These included refreshing high-performing foundational materials to boost engagement, correcting and unifying naming conventions to support cleaner data analysis, and improving website search so users can easily find resources across the entire site.
Ultimately, the project demonstrated how AI can help nonprofits make smarter, data-informed decisions—without adding labor-intensive processes. For PBPA, this collaboration opened the door to data-driven decision making without adding staff or burdensome workflows.
For the Georgia Tech students, it was an opportunity to build real-world solutions while demonstrating how emerging technologies can support mission-driven organizations.
The Institute for Leadership and Social Impact (ILSI) is an interdisciplinary institute at Georgia Tech dedicated to promoting servant leadership and advancing organizational practices that contribute to a more just, caring, and sustainable world. Through experiential learning, research, and community partnerships, we nurture leaders who drive meaningful social change—locally in Atlanta and globally. To learn more about our initiatives and programs, visit our website.