Hello everyone,
This is the first Grove update from Tech4Good Community, before we jump into updates, we’d like to take a moment to introduce our work.
In 2018, Tech4Good Community (T4GC) was conceived as an initiative to help Nonprofit Organisations (NPOs) access technology-based solutions to scale their operations.
We further our vision by:
- Creating awareness around NPO friendly tools on its features & benefits.
- Improving access to technology & connections with software companies/toolmakers to enable mentorship, product discounts, & overall tech solutions
- Building capacity within the NPOs to ease adoption, form a secondary cadre of trainers & sustainable use of the tools.
- Improving the quality of services & reporting to beneficiaries, donors & any other stakeholders.
For this, we first identify the needs & tech maturity of NPOs through our Technology Maturity Assessment, a tech diagnostic tool that we have built in-house. We then partner with tech companies & tool makers to organise capacity building programmes to address these specific needs & mentor the organisations on tech tools based on the gaps & levels identified.
Overall Updates
After 4 years of functioning, our core team stands at 5 members- a Chief Executive Office, Chief Innovations Officer, Chief Insights Officer & 2 Senior Executives. We currently have 2 volunteers helping out with our platform maintenance & corporate partnerships piece. We will be welcoming another team member who will be working with the Chief Innovations Officer to strengthen our corporate partnerships.
We have run two Capacity Building Workshops this year, one in partnership with Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies and the other as part of the GROW Fund Initiative, touching 150 nonprofits.
Progress on the goals listed while on-boarding
Our goal as part of the 3 year partnership with Rainmatter Foundation is to be a one stop avenue for all Rainmatter Foundation’s portfolio organisations for their various tech needs, which includes but is not limited to individualised tech consultations & potential solutions. In addition to this T4GC will continue to play its larger role as a tech enabler within the nonprofit ecosystem, through capacity building programmes & its platform OTTER.
The goals for the 1st quarter of this partnership i.e. August to December, were:
- Outreach to build a cohort of 50 NPOs for T4GC’s Spotlight Series capacity building program
- Send out mailers/call for applications through internal & partner networks.
- Cohort introduction - understanding the NPO, build camaraderie with the cohort
- Expectation setting - demo of OTTER, overview to the tech assessment, mapping of 2-3 resources from within the NPO, potential agenda discussion.
Status: The outreach for the 2023 cohort began in September 2022 through various funder portfolio channels, social media and Tech4Good Community’s current nonprofit network. Over 80 organisations applied for the program. After putting them through a thorough tech diagnostic, 60 organisations that work across sectors & global goals were finalised.
- Custom product development
- Version 2.0 of tech assessment on OTTER
- Custom develop of data points to be captured
- Automated recommendations and end-to-end toolkit
- Learning resources and end-to-end software guide
Status: We have hired a volunteer who is helping us reimagine our platform to serve the community better. Knowledge transfer of source codes & back-end architecture has been initiated, but the process is taking longer than anticipated.
- Baseline assessment for cohort NPOs (including Rainmatter Foundation portfolio organisations)
- Analysing tech maturity assessment data received from the NPO.
- Levelling exercise & forming cohort training structure.
- NPO progress chart initiation process.
- OTTER backend coordination with the developers on the assessment data.
- Communication of the tech maturity with the funder.
- Communication of the tech maturity assessment with the NPO.
Status: This process has been completed and we are now going to start building individualised progress cards to track each nonprofit’s tech enablement journey as they are put through the 6 month training programme.
- 1-1 conversations with Rainmatter portfolio - 2 rounds
- Understand vision, mission and potential scale
- In-Depth understanding of nonprofits workflows
- Review of internal tech processes
- Support with evaluating current technology systems
- Identify technology gaps in operational processes
Status: Explained below.
- Design the program for the cohort
- Explore tool features & availability based on legal obligations to avail products for a free or discounted price.
- Programme agenda building.
- Calendarizing - in sync with the cohort & the tool makers.
Status: We have put together a tentative list of tools we will be leveraging and shared it with the cohort. This list will be finalised based on the availability of trainers.
Rainmatter Foundation’s Help
We have not been able to connect with all Rainmatter portfolio organisations. If RM could help us think through how we could benefit these organisations better, that would be ideal.