NOEL: Hello and welcome to Episode 61 of the Tech Done Right Podcast, Table XI's podcast about building better software, careers, companies, and communities. I'm Noel Rappin.

Our guests this week are Andrew Means of Data Analysts For Social Good, and Sean Marcia of Ruby For Good. Both of them run organizations that are involved with using technology to help non-profits that could use even some simple software or data assistance. We'll talk about what kinds of work their organizations do, how non-profits differ from for-profit work, how they try to keep their projects running over time, and how you can get involved working with technology for good.

Before we start the show, one quick message. Table XI offers training for developer and product teams. If you want me to come to your place of business and run an interactive hands-on workshop, I would like to do that. We can help your developer team learn topics like testing or Rails and JavaScript or managing Legacy code. Or we can help your entire product team improve their Agile process. Also if you're in the Chicago area, be on the lookout for our new public workshops, including our How To Buy Custom Software workshop which is currently scheduled for the first week of June and hopefully more to come. For more information, email us at workshops@TableXI.com or find us on the web: TableXI.com/workshops. And now, here's the show.

Would you like to introduce yourself to everybody starting with Andrew?

ANDREW: Absolutely. Thanks so much for having me. My name is Andrew Means. I am the founder of The Good Tech Fest that I'll be talking about which is a tech for good conference happening in Chicago this May. 

NOEL: And Sean.

SEAN: Hey, thanks for having me. I'm super excited to be here. I'm Sean. I created Ruby For Good and Code For Good. I hope everyone comes, we're doing our Ruby For Good in July and we're actually gonna be doing another one in Chicago in the autumn. So hopefully, we'll see you all there.

NOEL: The reason I have both of you on is that both of you are involved in for-good projects. How would you describe it? "Tech in public service" is "tech for good" a generic enough description? How would you describe the shared mission of your events?

ANDREW: I think tech for good works as a nice wrapper, an all encompassing kind of term. In my mind, it really is just about how can we utilize technology and actually I have done a lot in the data science world... how can we utilize these tools in service of some sort of social mission. Something that's typically thought of within the non-profit sphere of philanthropy or government, like how do we solve the problems that those institutions care about using data technology.

NOEL: I guess a place to start is what made each of you see this as an important need that people who are not necessarily involved in non-profit work in technology should have the opportunity to come across and do these kinds of projects?

SEAN: For me, it was -- I don't even know, like maybe it was even guilt. I feel as developers, we have it pretty good. Like I'm not even on LinkedIn and I'm getting contacted like multiple times a week by recruiters, people trying to give me jobs. The rest of the country doesn't really live necessarily in our world. And so, I don't know. I guess I just wanted a way to help and give back.

ANDREW: For me, it's been a little bit of a different path. I've actually spent my entire career working in the kind of "for good" world both within non-profit groups like the YMCA, but then also running like corporate foundations, like uptake.org. I've always been really interested in social change and how we can make a difference in the world. And for me, I came to data and technology as a really interesting and effective way for solving the problems that I cared about. And so for me, I'm like fully baked in the kind of tech for good world.

NOEL: How long have you each been running these events and the generic term is escaping me, I suppose. But how long have you each been running these groups?

ANDREW: I started a group called Data Analyst for Social Good probably about eight or nine years ago now, where I was working at the YMCA as their first Data Analyst and then was the Director of Research and Analytics and was, there's gotta be other people like me. And so I just started a happy hour here in Chicago with other analysts working kind of in the for-good space and it kind of grew from there. It actually ended up starting a conference called Do Good Data and ran that for a number of years. And then just last year, I started Good Tech Fest really with the idea that data alone isn't enough. Let's talk about what are the products or the experiences and the tools that we can create that can actually help us solve the problems that we care about. So this is really actually just our second year doing Good Tech Fest.

SEAN: For me, it was pretty much as soon as I started learning Rails. I was helping organizations. So I guess this goes back to about 2011. And then Ruby for Good, started about seven years ago. I was meeting with this non-profit I was going to help and it's a story I like to tell. I was in there and I was going to help them build something that tracked volunteers. While I was in their office, they had this telephone that was ringing and ringing and I couldn't figure out why no one was answering this phone. It turned out that this phone was their ticket tracking system. People were calling in to leave messages or retrieve messages. Often, they had to fast forward through like 70 or 80 messages to find the one they wanted. And this was their business practice and I built them a simple kind of CRUD app and it's saving them like 80, 90 hours a month.

ANDREW: I think that's actually a really interesting story. And I've seen so many non-profits, Sean, like the one you were talking about that it's like these little, sometimes kind of boring problems that are actually hugely impactful. And then to be able to save an organization like that, 80 to 90 hours a month, it's huge. That's 80 or 90 hours, that can now go towards something more mission-oriented.

SEAN: Oh, I agree. The whole fact when I was speaking to them, they hadn't even thought that this was a problem. They just internalized this issue even though they've had all these business practices built up around it and how you couldn't delete a message until the job was done, all these kind of crazy things. Such a small lift to make such a big difference.

NOEL: Yeah. I worked a little bit with non-profits but I have seen the case where they don't even realize sometimes what even a small amount of technology can do for them. What do you do to sort of gather possible projects for your groups to even take on? Sean, Ruby for Good is like a hackathon. Do people come in with projects to pick or do you reach out to non-profits to find out what would be valuable?

SEAN: I don't really like the word hackathon. I kind of like Code Retreat for Good. I kind of think hackathon and all those words connect the toxic elements that our community have co-opted.

NOEL: That's fair. We can reclaim it though.

SEAN: I'd love to reclaim it. But with our events, we know the projects we're gonna be working on come the event. We've started discovery and whatnot. We pick team leads for each project and we put them in touch with the non-profits we're gonna be helping about two months before the event. And we have a whole kind of like script for them, like checklists and things they're doing and questions that they should be asking, creating GitHub repo kind of the first kind of issues, just so when we do get to the event, they can really hit the ground running. And as well too, we invite the non-profit stakeholders to the events. They're there and we're building the best possible thing and solving their actual problem.

NOEL: How do you get in touch with the non-profits?

SEAN: In the early years, it was kind of just like us, maybe even like cold-calling some non-profits or reaching out on Twitter and Facebook, kind of social media to our extended networks like who volunteers, who knows somewhere that could help us or who could use our help. But now that we're more established and we've helped quite a few non-profits and we have some larger projects, too. We have one helping diaper banks and it's being used by over 50 diaper banks across the country and they talk about us to other non-profits. And so, it's a lot of referral now. It's not really us looking for projects to help. We actually have more than we can even help now, which is both a good and a bad problem. 

NOEL: Andrew, how do you work with the people whose problems you're trying to solve? 

ANDREW: At the conference, Good Tech Fest, really it's a chance for organizations to showcase the work that they're doing. We have great organizations like 412 Food Rescue who's using really interesting mobile technologies to try and get food to food banks more efficiently and effectively. And so, we really view the conference as a chance to highlight organizations that are doing great work. But outside that, the work that I'm involved in in the broader tech for good space, a lot of it is finding the right people, the right leaders who have a vision for how technology can really help move their mission forward and finding out quite frankly in the non-profit space oftentimes, the right funders who have a vision and a passion for supporting the use of data and technology.

A lot of what I spend my time doing is trying to find the right interesting problems where data and technology can actually help move the needle on the issue. Finding funders who are interested in that space or interested in these data and technology and then finding the right technologists and data scientists and others who have the capabilities necessary to solve that problem. So, it's a lot of matchmaking that goes on. Like Sean said, once you've done it for a little while in this space, word travels fast. There's a lot of organizations that are looking for help. And so, I don't think there's always much of a challenge finding problems. It's much more about how quickly can you scale to address the number of opportunities that you have.

NOEL: So what's a problem that you've worked on recently where you've been able to be more specific about the general process that you laid out? What's a recent project that you've worked on?

ANDREW: Right now, one of the projects that I'm working on is trying to create a stitched-together experience of a few different technologies for what are called like collective impact groups. These are groups of non-profits that all are working towards the same problem or working in the same area and want to work more closely together. In a city like Chicago, you have dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens of after-school programs all trying to address oftentimes the same issues. But having challenges to share data with one another, having challenges to truly collaborate with one another, to do collaborative sense-making of data of their community. And so, I'm working with some funders and some foundations and some of these co-optive networks on what are the tools that they need to better collaborate. And so, this includes bringing in the data sharing component and organizations like BrightHive that provide legal governance and technical infrastructure to do data integration work and that kind of important piece. And then, it's bringing in tools, sometimes working with Salesforce, some of its projects are technologies around communities and social networks and how they can actually share information and collaborate with one another on projects. So, that's like a really kind of infrastructure-oriented project which is a lot of what I'm involved in right now. But it's stitching together a number of different existing technologies so that these kind of networks can more effectively share information and collaborate.

NOEL: Sean, what's a good example of the kind of project that Ruby for Good tackles?

SEAN: I don't think there's a specific one. Obviously, our strength as Ruby Rails developers, its web applications, anything kind of a database backend, JavaScript frontend. But the diaper bank application I was mentioning, that's a good one. It's an inventory management system for diaper banks and pretty much handles their problem from beginning to end like barcode scanning, inventory distributions, all this kind of goodness that they need.

NOEL: In that case, they have, I assume, like a specific reason why off-the-shelf solutions don't quite work?

SEAN: Right. There isn't one specific software for them when we started talking. Initially, we built this for a single diaper bank, the Portland Diaper Bank and she came to us and she showed it off to some other diaper banks and and they all kind of wanted it. And they were all using very disparate solutions like some Excel spreadsheets, some using just inventory off-the-shelf software that they make it work but it's not what they need. So we built them customizable, custom software for them that fits their need. And this project's actually kind of exciting because the big National Diaper Network in the US is actually getting behind our software and recommending that all diaper banks use it. Potentially by end of the year, there's gonna be 200+ using this. So, it's kind of an exciting project.

NOEL: I wonder with the sheer amount of overloaded Excel spreadsheets in use throughout the non-profit world is. Do you find that there are then issues with ongoing -- first of all, like initial management. And second of all, like ongoing maintenance and repair. I know that there are some organizations in Chicago that try to connect, like bootcamp graduates to non-profits. And from having talked to some of the developers involved, those often seem to sort of founder on project management kind of issues. And I've also seen cases where software goes into government or non-profit areas and nobody's there to keep it going. Do you see that problem? And are you able to address it or is that outside the purview of the kinds of interactions that you're doing?

SEAN: For us, that's definitely a challenge. Because when we build something, we commit to maintaining it and upgrading it. But finding contributors isn't actually a problem really for us anymore because Ruby for Good name, as we've grown, people are aware of us. And so when we post issues in our various GitHub projects, people jump on them pretty quick. And for whatever reason, we have a lot of people in this community that are just super awesome and they want to be involved these projects, like being team leads and project leads, like that diaper project. We've tried to cycle the person off of it who's the project lead but he refuses because he believes in it so much. So I guess, just like any open source project, finding maintainers is a challenge but I think just the social good aspect makes it a little less hard for us than other open source projects, maybe.

ANDREW: I think that's great, Sean. And I think I've seen places that don't have that kind of ongoing commitment to a project. That's where I often see the challenges because Noel, I think you're right on. Previously, early in my career, I was working with the Data Science for Social Good Fellowship at the University of Chicago and we did great interesting work over the summer. We developed these software products and algorithms and things of that nature and then handed over to a non-profit or government agency, and there was no one there to receive it. There was no one there to maintain it. And I think having a commitment to maintenance and upkeep is really important especially as more and more organizations are relying on technology for critical service delivery. Like Sean, your project with the diaper banks is awesome. And I think it's so important that with these organizations using this and spreading it nationally, it's that commitment to ongoing maintenance and support is huge and necessary. That's why I think too, we need to see this ecosystem grow. We need to see more funders contributing capital and putting money behind organizations that are really maintaining critical systems for the non-profit sector. Part of what we're trying to do with Good Tech Fest is raise the prominence of organizations that are doing great work in building the tools that the sector's increasingly relying on.

NOEL: Do you ever get pushback from non-profits who feel like you are just sort of coming in and you don't really understand their problem? Or if you don't get pushback, how do you sort of mitigate that? How do you learn about their real needs in sort of a bigger picture client sense?

SEAN: We've never had pushback because generally people have a problem or they think they have a problem. But oftentimes, how we understand their problems is we try and find volunteers, like our people to lead the teams when it's a new project to go in and actually meet with the non-profits, talk to them and kind of see their day-to-day, because like the story I told earlier about telephone ringing and whatnot. I wouldn't have seen that had I not been in their office and we would have just ended up building them like a volunteer hour tracking application or something like that. But by being in there, you see it. And in the other projects like I mentioned earlier, is that we do have stakeholder involvement each step of the way. We have the stakeholders at our events sitting with teams. So we're building them hopefully what they need.

ANDREW: What Sean is saying around like you have to be present is so important really. I spent my entire career working in this kind of for-purpose, for-good space and it's still super important for me to see the work that's actually being done, to see the processes. Like Sean was saying, hear the phone ringing, or ask that question. Because so many organizations, they come to you with one need. But what they actually need is like five other things that they don't even realize that they need. There's five other opportunities that they don't even see. So, I think being able to come in with the eyes of being able to identify where work can be done is really important.

I also think going in with a real humility is crucial. I've known a lot of non-profit organizations that have had really challenging partnerships with corporations or volunteers coming out of the corporate sector that think like, "Oh, if you just did XYZ or if you just did it more like us, this problem wouldn't exist." And non-profits are doing things for a reason. They are operating to the best of their ability under constraints that they have. And so going in and really listening and understanding their work, understanding why they work the way they do is very vitally important to building trust and then to really understanding where data and technology can actually create the most impact.

NOEL: Is there a general way in which the constraints of a non-profit affect the project that's materially different from working with a for-profit organization?

ANDREW: I would say, in my experience, one of the -- I've gotten to work both in the for-profit world and the non-profit world and and seen different sides of all of this. I think there's actually a couple primary differences. So one is just capital, money that's given to a non-profit. There's a lot of incentive for putting that directly towards the mission. Organizations are evaluated to some extent based upon a thing called the overhead ratio which is essentially how much goes, like central office functions, versus how much it goes to like the problem you're trying to solve. And oftentimes, technology falls into the central office kind of overhead function. The more that an organization spends there, the less attractive they might actually be to donors. So there's a huge incentive to actually under invest in any central office function. Some of that's changing and there's some really good cultural transformation going on there, but I think that's one. The second area that I often run into that's a little bit squishier, a little bit fuzzier is the kind of people that work in a non-profit. A lot of people that run non-profits today run philanthropies or in leadership, and this is changing, but I think traditionally, it comes from human service backgrounds or they were caseworkers, they were social workers, they set up the food bank, or they set up the diaper bank. And so, they're coming very often with a very human services mindset, a very kind of social worker mindset. They're social workers for a reason. They're not technologists. And so, I think there's a little bit of a tech literacy that's sometimes missing in the non-profit world and that kind of tech vision is sometimes missing.

That said, there is a ton of really great amazing emerging leaders that are transforming in both older organizations and launching new ones that really do put tech and data at the center, and I think there's less of a cultural jump to those kinds of organizations.

SEAN: The thing that we find is often like the second thing Andrew is mentioning, the tech literacy. We're seeing that, just like you said, that is something that's changing. But oftentimes, non-profits are using technology that isn't necessarily the most modern or the most efficient.

NOEL: One thing I've found, and I work in a consultancy that occasionally takes on non-profit clients within a wide range, I would say. One thing that I've found is that if the client isn't paying directly, in other words, if it's kind of a barter arrangement, there's a different relationship to their understanding of the value of the time in a way that's a little hard to sort of quantify. But I kind of know it when I see it, I don't know. Does this make sense? Have you seen anything like this?

ANDREW: Absolutely. Organizations need to have skin in the game. When I was first working on the Data Science for Social Good Fellowship program, we initially did all of our projects completely for free. And then we moved to a model where we had some skin that the organization needed to put into the game, whether that was sending somebody to our site for some meetings or various kinds of things, it doesn't always need to be strictly financial. But organizations, if they're not putting any of their own investment in, there is a tendency for other things to take priority and for the organization, like if they're not valuing it at all, they're not valuing it. These are organizations that often can't pay market rates and that's fine but we need to figure out a right way for them to say, "This is important to us." We can demonstrate that importance and make an investment that shows that this is vital to us, and that can look like a lot of different things.

NOEL: What I find is that it sort of flattens the difference between a small amount of work and a large amount of work from the organization's point of view because from the organization's point of view, they're not putting in any more resources to get more work than they are to get less work. There's just sort of a different relationship with asking for large amounts of work if they have the same sort of cost to the organization as asking for small amounts of work. It's not a big problem but it is sort of a different -- it's sort of something that I've had to sort of adjust to, adjust the way that I present things to non-profit clients versus for-profit clients. And I was just curious whether you had seen anything similar. Sean, do you have any comment on that?

SEAN: Yeah, definitely. In the earlier years, I think that was definitely a problem. Like them not really understanding expectations. And so, this has kind of evolved for us over the years. Now, we have explicit expectations. Now, we sign MOUs with our non-profits we're working with. And we're also working right now to write up like an in-kind grant that they can apply for. We're working with a lawyer to have in-kind grants that values the work we're doing at $65,000. They're going to apply for this grant, receive this grant. So, they have a concept in their head of the value that they're receiving, as well as it helps them because we found out that a lot of non-profits when they are writing grants themselves for the work they do, it looks really good for them to have received other grants. And so, having received our Code for Good in-kind, software development grants, this will help them going forward and conceptualize things.

NOEL: That's really interesting. Andrew, are there any sort of processes that you fund to put in place to make the interaction between the non-profits and the technologists work better?

ANDREW: Yeah. Really, what I did was was move to a model where I've been able to build, outside Good Tech Fest, like a business and consulting to these organizations and helping to do this matchmaking between funders and technologists and organizations. What Sean is talking about with the grant model, I think, is a wonderful example of creating agreement and a shared understanding between organizations. But the model that I fall in is actually trying to create sustainable companies that serve the non-profit sector. And we actually say, "We're going to build the technology that you need and it's going to cost you something." And then we're trying to build a sustainable business off of that.

NOEL: If somebody's listening to this wants to start getting involved in tech for non-profits, tech for good, where would you recommend they start? What would you recommend that they do?

ANDREW: I would recommend they go through an existing organization like Sean or DataKind or any of these kind of established volunteering organizations because so much of what makes a project successful is all of the project management and relationship management that they're doing.

SEAN: Definitely. Find someone doing it and maybe learn from them. And then if you want to start your own, that would be great or come work with one of the ones out there.

NOEL: What do you do or do you find that you need to recruit technologists for the work that you're doing? Or do you find that people just come to you? Or do you do a little bit of outreach yourself?

SEAN: We run these events and then we just kind of maintain our projects over the year. But like now, that there is a Ruby for Good name in the community, it's really, I feel like, taken off. Like our DC event, we tweeted on a Thursday that registration was open. And by Saturday, we're sold out, which is also why we're spreading. Two weeks ago, we did a San Francisco based Ruby for Good. And then in the autumn, we're going to do a Chicago-based one just because there is so much demand and there's lot of people who want to do good and we want to give them the opportunity and take some of the pressure off of our DC-based events. So, finding people at this point isn't very difficult. But maybe if it was a new event or a new thing, it might be a little bit more challenging.

NOEL: Are all of your Ruby for Good projects open source?

SEAN: Yes. It's generally a requirement that everything is open source. We built one project that was for a women's shelter and it wasn't open source. But they didn't want to advertise that this software or project existed. So, it's all been in private repos.

NOEL: I guess the second question there is, is that way for people to participate if they can't make it to one of the events? Can they participate in the projects as open source projects? 

SEAN: Oh, definitely. If you go to the Ruby for Good organization on GitHub, take a look at all the projects in there. Most of them are really well curated. Issues are all tagged. Help wanted, beginner friendly, things like that.

NOEL: What is something that you would like to see happen in this space over the next couple of years that would be beneficial to the kind of work that you're doing?

ANDREW: For me, I would love to see this space really mature in terms of the kinds of capital that's available to supporting tech for good projects. I've been a part of capital raises for a couple of tech for good companies that I've helped start. Among a lot of investors, among a lot of philanthropists, there's not tons of dedicated capital to supporting an ecosystem of technologies that can really transform the way that the non-profit sector operates and really scale those technologies. So, I'd love to see that whole ecosystem mature where there's a little bit more capital that's helping entice entrepreneurs to start new kinds of companies, new kinds of organizations, whether they be non-profit or for-profit that are building the software that's really integral to the future of the non-profit sector.

SEAN: Yeah, definitely. If we can figure out a way to make this more sustainable like the Ruby for Good, that would be awesome. The other thing I'd really like to see is just open source and kind of like the projects that are done just for non-profits to be made aware of them because I feel that there's a lot of great open source software, a lot of great things that have been built that could just be so helpful to so many organizations doing good. If they just knew about them, then they could probably spend a lot less money on things that they're currently using and money that could be better spent helping people.

ANDREW: Absolutely. The adoption of open source software, having the ability to really utilize it would be a huge transformation for the sector.

NOEL: Both of you have spent a really large amount of your professional careers in this space. I guess a question I have is like, do you still get out of it what you wanted to get out of it? Is it still satisfying and fulfilling to work on these kinds of problems as it was when you started?

ANDREW: Absolutely. I am so excited about the kinds of projects I'm working on, the kinds of institutions that I've been able to to work with over the last almost decade doing this work. And I'm seeing real change and seeing big philanthropies that weren't even considering this as a space for investment, really change and pivot and make big investments in to kind of data and technology for good. I think we're seeing more non-profits realize that they can actually have a product vision that's actually really super aligned to their mission and actually helps accomplish their mission. I think we're seeing a whole new generation of leaders that are moving into this space and really transforming it. And I'm excited to see how we'll solve problems going forward. I don't think technology is the answer but I think it's a tool that more and more organizations are using and the sector as a whole is figuring out. So, I love getting to do the work that I do with the people that I get to do it with. And I really feel that we're helping transform the way that the sector will operate in the future. That's super satisfying.

SEAN: I completely agree. It's just such an exciting time. And I'm always excited and blown away just seeing the people who use the things we've built, like the diaper app. It started with one. Now, there's so many using it. It's just so exciting when things like that happen. These people that you meet, you see how their lives are continuing to be affected. I don't know, it's even more motivating because there's more and more people that we're helping each year.

NOEL: That's great. Where can people reach you if they want to learn more about your organizations or just get started in technology for good?

ANDREW: If you're interested in the Good Tech Fest which is coming up May 21 through 23 here in Chicago, you can just go to GoodTechFest.com. If you're interested in some of the other projects that I work on, you can check out BigElephant.io which is the studio that I run.

SEAN: If you want come up to Ruby for Good or join our Slack or link to our GitHub, it's just RubyForGood.org. I'm @seanmarcia on Twitter. I usually tweet about these things or these events that we're having. Once all the details are hammered out for our Chicago-based one, I'll obviously be mentioning that.

ANDREW: Oh, I'm on Twitter @meansandrew, as well. I spend a lot of time tweeting about nerdy tech and data for good stuff.

NOEL: Great. Thank you both for being on the show and giving us a chance to talk about tech for good. I appreciate your time.

ANDREW: Thank you.

SEAN: Thank you so much for having me.

NOEL: Tech Done Right is on the web at TechDoneRight.io and on Twitter @tech_done_right and is also available wherever you listen to podcasts. The show is a production of Table XI which is on the web at TableXI.com and on Twitter @TableXI. 

Tech Done Right is hosted by me, Noel Rappin. I'm @NoelRap on Twitter and edited by Mandy Moore who is @TheRubyRep on Twitter. If you like the show, tell a friend, a colleague, a neighbor, a pet, a boss, my boss, tell me, tell your social media network, tell the world. All that would be very, very helpful and a review on Apple podcast helps people find the show.

Table XI is a UX design and software development company in Chicago with a 15-year history of building websites, mobile applications, and custom digital experiences for everyone from startups to storied brands. Find us at TableXI.com where you can learn more about working with us or working for us. And we'll be back in a couple of weeks with the next episode of Tech Done Right.