Layers, so the camera can move.
The grass and flowers were made separately and cut out, so they could sit in front of the bench and move at a different speed than the sea.
Self-building software for nonprofits.
Made at the Gloo AI Hackathon in Boulder.- When
- October 6 to 8, 2026
- Where
- Limelight Conference Center, Boulder
- Theme
- Building Together: Humans, Agents and the Future of Flourishing
- Track
- Agents, built on Gloo AI Studio
- Project
- Unify, created by Braden Peays
- Result
- Best of Agents Track · $20,000 · 2nd overall
Gloo got more than 1,000 builders together for 48 hours, across three tracks. We went into Agents, the biggest one, with Unify. The idea was Braden's. Software should fit the organization, not the other way around.
Things are not as they seem.
0:01It opens like every software ad. It hangs a second too long, on purpose.
0:05Then we zoom out. That ad was never the real video.
0:08Every tool a nonprofit pays for, all at once. Voiceovers on top of each other, music getting louder.
0:13Then it goes quiet. Another SaaS tool? No thanks. Then the calm comes in.
0:19All the tools piled up over the sea. The coast behind them is the calm.
0:34The whole idea in five words. The software adapts so people don't have to.
0:51Step one is just a conversation. You describe the work like you'd tell a new hire.
0:57From that one conversation, the workspace builds itself.
1:11The only red on the screen. Nothing ships until someone hits approve.
1:16Money has to get through every tool to reach the mission. Unify cuts that down.
00:05
Grass, cut out for depth.
Listen. Understand. Improve. Approve.
Unify uses AI agents to build software for nonprofits. It talks with the team, finds where work gets stuck, and builds what they need, with connectors to the tools they already use and a person approving every change.
Sample workspace · Illustrative agent steps
0:00 / 0:30
01 · LISTEN
It starts with a conversation.
Unify interviews the people who do the work, one at a time. In the sample org, HopeBridge, that's nine people describing the same referral.
Nine interviews. No forms.02 · UNDERSTAND
Then it reads every answer.
Agents read the interviews side by side and pull out what keeps coming up. One referral, typed in three times. Six of nine people said so.
Six of nine said it.03 · CHECK
A person checks the plan.
Before anything gets built, someone checks the plan. Does it match what people said? Does the data stay in their workspace?
Checked before it's built.04 · IMPROVE
Agents build it in front of you.
The intake queue builds itself: the counts, the referral table, the wait times. Then staff ask for more in plain words.
You ask. It builds.05 · APPROVE
Nothing goes live until you say so.
Every change waits for someone to approve it. Nothing ships by itself.
Approved. Live now.CRM, accounting, finance. One system.
Three tools, three logins.
If a nonprofit already uses other tools, the agents build connectors so nobody has to switch.
Three agents, one workspace at a time.
Finance first.
Five workspaces. Each one built from an interview.
Same look, different work.
Calm, plain, short.
We built Unify a brand for people who are already stretched thin. A cube, a word, a coastline, and one red saved for one moment. All of it aiming for the same thing: calm in the middle of all the tools.
Separate pieces, coming together.
The gaps are part of the logo.
The word is based on Geist.
Never recolor, stretch, outline or rotate it.
Unify
Unify
And the logo we ended the film on.
The film's end card uses a stacked version: three bars, the same three-part idea as the cube, made for motion.
The product today.
The walk along the coast.
The calm of one.
Sky#81B7BE
Haze#B1C6B8
Tide#649594
Meadow#506B16
Golden hour#FFCF92
Dusk#81756E
The dark canvas.
Ember.
Approval is the gate.Only the Approve moment. One per screen.
Approve#FE2C02
AaLight. Never bold.
The italic is for the turn.
Listen. Understand. Improve.
For everything else.
Every referral is typed in twice. Unify maps how the work moves today, and shows where it breaks.
Labels only.
01 · The interview02 · The analysis
Unify gives every nonprofit software that fits how it works, and keeps it fitting as the work changes.
- Tagline
- Self-building software for nonprofits.
- The loop
- Listen. Understand. Improve. Approve.
- Line
- Living software that grows with the organization.
- Line
- Software should fit the organization. The organization should not have to fit the software.
- Promise
- A person approves every change. Nothing merges or ships by itself.
Calm, plain, short.
Full stops, no exclamation marks.Referrals, shifts, the grant report.
Name things the way staff do. Not "workflows".Quote people, not numbers.
No dollar-savings claims.- The white logo goes on dark grounds and photos; the black logo goes on light grounds. Leave clear space the height of the cube on every side.
- Never recolor, stretch, outline or rotate the logo.
- Ember red marks one thing only: the moment a person approves a change.
- Headlines are Newsreader Light, never bold. Buttons and tags are full pills.
Take the interview.
The call to action. About ten minutes.
The software adapts. The people don't have to.
It's the idea we kept coming back to. Most nonprofits bend their work around tools that never learn. Unify learns how the work actually moves and keeps making the software better as it changes.
Fight like Jack.
The jackets we wore are Jack Douglas, the clothing line our friend Jack Malouff started. Jack was badly hurt in an accident this year, so we wore his name the whole time. The $20,000 went to Jack and his recovery.
Support Jack This one was for him.$0
Best of Agents Track. The prize went to Jack.
Unify was Braden Peays's idea, and he led the team. It was a team effort from start to finish.
- Idea and team lead
- Braden Peays
- Product and code
- Braden Peays, Lars Ostervold
- Website and brand
- Connor Dore, Braden Peays
- Film
- Connor Dore, Morgan Elder, Noah Nugent, Lars Ostervold, Rylan Colburn, Braxton Hill, Brynn Elzerman
- Advisor
- Jake Oswald