Across Latin America, thousands of families face housing insecurity every day. In this context, TECHO has become one of the most influential social organizations in the region. Its mission is clear: to work alongside communities in informal settlements to build housing solutions, strengthen community organization, and create opportunities that break cycles of poverty.

With operations in more than a dozen countries, TECHO’s work is sustained through partnerships, volunteer networks, and programs that require constant investment. And this is where a familiar challenge for nonprofit organizations emerges: efficiently managing the search for and writing of grants in an environment where every opportunity matters.

The complexity of the process—multiple countries, different requirements, tight deadlines—meant that identifying and applying for funding opportunities was largely manual, decentralized, and slow. Not because of a lack of capability, but because of a lack of the right tools.

When we first met, the question was simple: how can technology amplify the mission without making it more complex? The answer was just as clear—by building an AI and automation system smart enough to move at the pace of social impact.

AI for Impact: The Value of Automating Fund Management

The project with TECHO was grounded in a core belief: artificial intelligence can multiply social impact when it’s designed with purpose. Before designing any workflows, we took a deep look at how their funding process actually worked. What was manual, what was duplicated, where time was lost, and where visibility broke down.

That’s where we uncovered a key insight. Grant management isn’t just about writing proposals. It’s about identifying opportunities, prioritizing them, documenting them, and always delivering on time.

Based on this, we designed a complete ecosystem that brings together generative AI, automation, institutional knowledge, and opportunity analysis.

AI-Assisted Writing: Faster Proposals Without Losing Institutional Voice

One of TECHO’s biggest challenges was proposal development. Each call for funding requires clarity, consistency, metrics, and stories that accurately reflect real impact. Creating all of that from scratch—again and again—consumed hours of team time that could be better spent on strategic work.

To address this, we developed an AI assistant trained exclusively on TECHO’s institutional documentation. The system integrates their narrative, projects, and impact framework, while enabling teams to query internal knowledge using natural language.

The result: greater precision, cohesion, and contextual understanding—leading to more consistent proposals and a faster, more collaborative workflow.

Automated Opportunity Mapping

The second major component of the project is an automated system that continuously monitors and categorizes funding opportunities relevant to TECHO. Manual reviews of scattered portals and databases are no longer necessary.

The system filters open calls, analyzes alignment with TECHO’s priorities, and automatically updates a centralized repository of opportunities. Funding opportunities are anticipated, prioritized, and managed within a single, structured framework.

A New Operating Model

Together, AI-assisted writing and intelligent opportunity mapping created something bigger than a tool: a new operating system for fund management.

This enabled TECHO to:

• respond faster to critical funding calls,

• Identify opportunities that would otherwise remain unknown

• increase the number of proposals submitted,

• reduce errors and duplicated work,

• better understand alignment between opportunities and institutional strategy, and

• strengthen internal knowledge across teams.

  
  

When AI Is Designed with Purpose, Impact Scales

The project with TECHO reinforced an idea we repeat often at Lumen: artificial intelligence only creates value when it solves real problems and enables better decision-making.

Technology became a set of tools that adapts to the team’s pace, mission, and way of working. And when that happens, innovation becomes a true enabler of social impact.

For TECHO, this means more funding opportunities. More programs in motion. Greater capacity to act. More families supported. More communities building their future.

For us, it means taking another step toward a shared purpose: using AI to create real, measurable, and human value.