This Nonprofit Creates AI Podcasts to Empower Small Businesses
I recently sat down with Steve Brady, the Executive Director of the Covation Center in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. The Covation Center is a nonprofit co-working hub helping mom-and-pop shops and microbusinesses with five or fewer employees.
After eight years of building curriculum and YouTube resources, Steve and Deputy Director Stephanie hit a ceiling. Their four-person team couldn't keep scaling traditional production without burning out.
“We’re a small team of four people. We needed a way to package our curriculum in new and creative ways.”
They realized that audio was the missing piece, creating short, actionable episodes in the voices their community already trusts. For them, other tools were either generic or rigid. NotebookLM could structure a great-sounding conversation, but it couldn’t sound like them (check out our comparison here). ElevenLabs could generate voices (our review), but nothing stitched authentic, back-and-forth episodes together with full script control.
Jellypod changed that for Steve and the entire Covation Center.
Watch the full conversation here:
Their Production Process
The Covation Center brought their Creatives Masterclass into Jellypod, created their voice clones, and started co-hosting episodes as “AI Steve” and “AI Stephanie”.
One thing I respected about Steve's team was how they stayed transparent about AI during the process. They weren't trying to fool anyone that the conversation was actually audio they recorded, even if it was still their thoughts and ideas but delivered in AI form.
They'd paste in curriculum, generate a draft, and then make it their own by rearranging sections, adding real-world examples, and tuning the pacing. Like other critical use-cases, line-level audio regenerations allowed for precisely editing a sentence or a name without redoing the whole episode.
“When Stephanie first heard her AI voice, she said, ‘That’s me… but it’s not me… but that’s me!’”
The voice clicked perfectly. It was familiar, warm, and efficient.
What surprised Steve the most wasn’t just speed but how much creative intent they could preserve while shedding technical overhead. Instead of wrestling with audio editors and stitching together tools, they could let Jellypod do the heavy lifting while they focused on the big picture, ensuring it was created just the way it was intended.
“We’re building trust. Jellypod gave us the creative control we needed—and the authenticity they deserved.”
For a small nonprofit, resources are slim and time is one thing donations just don't help with.
Jellypod gives Steve and the entire team more time to invest in coaching, relationships, and expanding their vision without sacrificing quality or authenticity in podcast production.
The end result is high-quality curriculum that now travels farther than a classroom, in voices the community already knows and trusts.