Dev/Mission: Originally conceived as a pilot program with myself and then captain, Emily Wasserman. We wanted to find away to have the C4SF mentor underserved young adults in civic tech. We felt that although the Brigade community was fairly vibrant and engaged, it did not represent San Francisco’s underserved communities. Dev/Mission has multiple programs to help train the next generation of tech talent. So, it turned out to be a great fit. A bit more about the program here: https://www.codeforsanfrancisco.org/post/the-dev-mission-uber-c4sf-fellowship
Partnerships with City Agencies:
Department of Public Health:
First thing that is most important is a project sponsor on the government side that is committed to seeing a project through. In this case, DPH approached the Brigade to help fix an app they had a contractor create that was part of public health outreach campaign for their clients. The tricky part for the Brigade is to find a small dedicated team that will partner with the City agency. This is helped by working directly on a highly visible project - this tends to attract talented folks. This project is now on V2.
SF Fire Department:
Just before the pandemic shut down our in person events, a Captain from the fire department approached the Brigade to create something he felt there was a real need for: some kind of app that would help paramedics understand if there were beds available in the emergency room of a hospital they might bring a patient to. More about the project here:
An important type of celestial body is missing from the constellation key - the **quasi-governmental organization. In our community, more often than not, government operates through these shell organizations. They are technically non-government non-profits, so they’re not subject to the same rules and transparency requirements as government departments. The quasis can do things on behalf of government actors that they’re either not allowed to do in their official capacities, or do not want to be seen doing publicly. This distinction is subtle but consequential, and I believe needs to be part of the evaluation process when considering a nonprofit partnership. We were naive about this, and here’s our experience of how that played out:
The Montgomery County Land Bank, a QGO, relies on the Code for Dayton built and maintained gogetproperties.org site as the public face to its foreclosure acquisition program. Last year, they “paused” the program for individual/amateur investors, thus shutting off an important avenue for cash poor buyers to obtain a fixer-upper foreclosure property. Now we find ourselves enabling a nonprofit that is no longer serving the segment of the public we specifically set out to empower!
This type of entity was invented in the 70’s, and I’m not sure they exist in all states, but they are a pretty ubiquitous barrier to transparency in Ohio.
It recently occurred to me that we have a question from an event and forms that help answer the question, “What brigade partnerships are you interested in learning more about?”
Here are the nonprofits, agencies, and community-based groups that our Brigade would like to learn more about or collaborate with in the future:
Economic Development
TEKsystems – Orlando
Sustainable Cities & Communities
Orange County Government – Orlando
Central Florida Regional Transportation Authority (Lynx) – Orlando