Patrick
Barfoot.

I help mission-driven organizations adopt new tools — AI among them — without losing the people those tools are meant to serve. I have a genuine love of processes: finding where work snags, where information gets lost, where a small change in how something flows frees up hours, and where a repetitive step can be automated away entirely. Much of my institutional work has been exactly this — mapping processes and automating the parts that don't need a human. I'm usually more interested in what's actually causing a problem than in reaching for the nearest piece of software.

MissionCAP exists because that kind of help shouldn't be a luxury. Nonprofits and volunteer organizations carry enormous operational load on tiny teams. They know they're drowning in drudgery; they don't always know how to start fixing it.

I developed Humber College's first documentary post-production course for its Bachelor of Film and Media program, taught a lecture series on post-production at Wilfrid Laurier University, and have guest lectured at Western University. Years in the classroom taught me that the barrier to new technology is almost never the technology — it's confidence, clarity, and being shown how. That's most of what helping an organization adopt AI actually involves.

Much of my career has been inside post-secondary institutions and large administrative organizations — including information services at Western University — working on the systems and process infrastructure that hold them together. Handling sensitive institutional information day to day is where my instinct for security and careful data handling comes from: I've seen firsthand how complex organizations track, route, and lose information, and what it costs when those systems don't hold. It's the lens I bring to every engagement: understand the system and the process before changing the tools.

I'm also an award-winning documentary filmmaker, drawn to the stories of unique, compelling people and to Canadian regional history and the visual arts. My films — including the human-rights documentary The Constant Refugee and Jaan Poldaas: New Work — have screened across Canada and internationally and broadcast on CBC, TVO, and Bell Fibe TV; I'm a member of the Documentary Organization of Canada. The habit of paying close attention to people, and telling their stories with care, is the same instinct behind MissionCAP's worker-first approach.

Closer to home, I live in London, Ontario with my wife Kathryn Anne, and spend my time away from screens gardening, cycling, and cooking.

The organizations that could benefit most from this work are the least positioned to pay for it. A church running a food bank on Tuesday and Thursday. A mutual aid group coordinating 200 volunteers on a spreadsheet. A registered charity whose grant coordinator just burned out.

MissionCAP is free because it has to be. I take on a small number of engagements at a time, so each one stays as careful and thorough as it needs to be.

I take the concerns about AI seriously — worker displacement, data security, environmental cost, dependence on a handful of large platforms. So every recommendation has to pass one test: does this make the worker more capable, or more replaceable? MissionCAP's six guiding principles aren't window dressing — they're the actual filter.