 Welcome to this weekly series TechSoup Talks. I'm Nicole Jones. I'm going to hand things off to our host Sarah Washburn of Caravan Studios, a division of TechSoup who's going to introduce today's topic, addressing food insecurity with a community-designed mobile app, along with our guest Kate Howe of IndieHunger. Welcome, Sarah. Hi, thanks, Nicole. And again, my name is Sarah Washburn, and I'm the director of Community Experience for Caravan Studios. And we are a division of TechSoup. And my team collaborates with communities to design technology that solves local problems. And I'm here today, and I'm so excited to talk to you about this. I'm here today to talk with Kate Howe, and she is the managing director of the IndieHunger Network, which is based in Indianapolis, Indiana. Hey, Kate, how are you doing? I'm doing great. How are you? I am wonderful. Thank you. It's so nice to see you again. So can you just take a moment, Kate, to tell us a little bit about the IndieHunger Network? Sure. IndieHunger Network is a nonprofit organization in Indianapolis, and we are a collective impact organization. So we were created to bring together all the hunger relief organizations in Indianapolis and help them collaborate and communicate better and try to knit together the different things that we do to feed people in our community to make sure that we're meeting all the needs by providing as many services and connecting our services together. Great, thank you. And we'll have a chance to talk a little bit about more about what that means and the work that you've done to create this really exciting app. And so we're here to talk about this community resource, which is a mobile app. And we are also here to talk about how it was a community-generated resource, that it wasn't just one person or one organization that set out to do this. But so before we begin, I wanna talk just a little bit about how I know about Kate and how I met Kate and her organization. My team, Caravan Studios, facilitated a design thinking event. Which we use to bring together community organizations and experts around a particular topic. In this case, we've met at the Indianapolis Public Library in Indiana to talk about how technology might be used to solve problems around finding resources, finding food resources locally in Marion County, which is the county that Indianapolis is in. And that is how I really got to know the IndieHunger Networking Kate and her colleagues because her organization was one of the many experts who came together to do this two-day event where they were thinking about the problems that they were facing, meeting the needs of their community and then where they designed prototypes, paper prototypes of potential technology solutions that solve those problems. And it was at this event where the first sort of ideas around this particular app came together. And so it's really exciting to me to have seen the people and the ideas and the really smart thinking that happened early on that now created this mobile app that is real and in people's hands and doing impressive work. And so the other reason that I know Kate and our work at Caravan Studios came to be with IndieHunger and with these other organizations in Indianapolis was also through our work developing an app. Our one app that my team at Caravan Studios developed is called Range, and it finds where free food is served to youth during the summertime. And now also because of the pandemic and because of school closures, Range also shows where grab-and-go meals can be found because of schools being closed and because those meals are no longer served in cafeterias if your school is closed. And so it was because of this work with Range and also because of our work with our generate and design events, these community-generated events that we came to be in Indianapolis with Kate's organization and others. And so that's really what brought us all together. All right, so now that I laid that framework, let's start our conversation. So Kate, we often hear from organizations, nonprofits like yours, that what they want to do is create an app. And I'm curious about what you and your team were thinking at the very beginning about why were you thinking maybe an app and also kind of what your hopes were and what you had hoped to achieve early on? So before we started this project, when people were looking for information on where to find help with food, they were calling 211, which is an information line for human services. So they might call just to find out, can you tell me a food pantry that's open right now? And they might end up waiting on the phone for 20 or 30 minutes because some people call 211 and have many different needs like housing and food and childcare and addiction treatment. They might have multiple things that they're asking for a referral to. And so it can be a really long wait on 211. And so what we were hearing from our community was that they were making their own resources. So social workers and school staff and things were making hard copy guides about to hand out to people with information, which as soon as you print that it's out of date. And we wanted to create a way for people to get that information without having to, go to the school counselor's office and get the print out sheet of food pantries. We wanted them to be able to access that information at their fingertips anytime with information that's updated regularly. And so that led us to the idea of an app. And we learned that actually most people have some sort of cell phone. It might not be a smartphone, but for people living in poverty, I believe the number is 90% that have some sort of phone because that is their only connection to the internet. That's maybe the only phone they have. If they move around a lot, they take their cell phone with them. So we thought that was probably a good way to be reaching people in poverty or people in emergency food need in our city. So that's what led us to trying to think about how to create an app. And we expanded the concept of it during our two-day workshop. That we didn't just wanna direct people to food pantries, we wanted them to be able to look at federal nutrition programs and whether they're eligible, things like SNAP also known as food stamps or WIC, school free and reduced price school lunch. We wanted to include all of that. And so as we got in there and started being creative, we realized that the app could potentially provide more solutions than just your printed out list of places to go visit. Yeah, I really appreciate everything that you just said because it's so common that resource providers provide printed resources because that's kind of the way that you pull everything together and hand it or read it and give it. And so that is a really common scenario I think where things begin as printed and how do you make it more mobile, more accessible. And I appreciate that you alluded to the fact that in this highly collaborative two-day event that you were a part of that there were ideas that came from other people that led to this kind of kernel than idea that you guys had and which made it so much richer and kind of helped you guys think it through more. And so thank you for sharing that part about it. And so that was just one piece that the Generating Design event was just one piece of this really community-centered journey that you and your team were on. Can you talk a little bit more about other activities that the IndieHunger Network was participated in that brought more community ideas to the fore with this app? Yeah, so actually after our workshop, we at Caravan Studios created posters of the three different app concepts that our teams came up with. We placed them in IndieParks facilities, public libraries, community centers, food pantries and asked the public to comment and provide input on what they liked and what they didn't like. And the app concept that turned into community compass was the clear favorite, but they were able to write comments on comment cards about things they liked or things they'd like to see added. So that was the first broad public input into the app. And then we later in the process, which I don't wanna skip ahead too much, but once we had a prototype app, we also took that out into the community and asked folks in the community and particularly people who were using food assistance to test the app for us and to give us feedback on what worked, what didn't work. Did we have information that they knew was incorrect? Was anything confusing? Was it hard to understand? We got comments from things like, I don't like the color scheme to this pantry is never open on Tuesdays or all kinds of different feedback about what worked and didn't and things they'd like to see in the future. And actually some of their ideas for new features we're working on right now. Oh, that's terrific. Yeah. And I also know that you guys earlier than what you just described, that you also had a hackathon that kind of brought the tech chops to the community ideas. Can you talk a little bit about that? Sure. So the Indie Chamber, it's our local business chamber for the city, they do an annual hackathon. So they pick some sort of topic of civic interest and then they invite tech people, hackers from all over the city to come for a 24 hour challenge. So they have a location that people move in with their computers and their pillows and their snacks and work on whatever problem is before them for 24 hours. And then at the end there's judging. So just through coincidence, I had a meeting with somebody from Indie Chamber who mentioned the hackathon said they wanted to do something with food insecurity and did we have any sort of tech problem that they could make as their challenge for the year. And I said, yes, actually, we have a great challenge for you. So it was really a lucky timing. And so they made this the premier challenge, there were a couple of other challenges but we had 10 teams. Some of them were grad students or college students. I think there were even some high school students. Some were from local businesses, tech companies that wanted to participate. And at the end of the hackathon, at the end of the 24 hours, there was a team of us from Indie Hunger Network who got to go around and visit with all the teams and they did a little presentation for us to demonstrate the prototype app they had come up with in 24 hours and we got to pick a winner. That's so great. I didn't realize that it was kind of kismet that the hackathon happened. That's a great story. And it's a great learning to think about the different ways that you can bring different people in to create something, not just the hiring a company to do it. So that's really cool. And so, I guess one piece about the hackathon then the winner then went on to develop the app. Is that right? They did. So the Indie Chamber provides some prize money to the winner and we also had a grant from our local newspaper the Indianapolis Star to work on this project. So we ended up giving, we had some of that money set aside to provide additional prize money that would go with the contract which would allow us to purchase the intellectual property from the winning team. If they signed the contract they would get an additional $10,000. So we ended up really liking the winning team's proposal. They were part of a small local tech company and we ended up contracting with them. So it wasn't required that we pick them but we felt really confident about them and we've been working with them ever since. It's been two years. That's great. So now I wanna get to the exciting part which is where you actually talk about the app because now we sort of led you through the journey that got you there but can you tell us about what it does? Sure. Yeah. Community Compass has three main features. So one is that you can look for certain locations on a map. You can look for a food pantry. You can look for a hot meal site sometimes known as a soup kitchen. You can look for places to use SNAP benefits. So grocery stores or other businesses that will accept SNAP benefits and you can look for WIC clinics and WIC retailers as well. So that's one function. The second function is a chat bot and that was actually what made us pick the winning team because they had this chat bot worked out where users can communicate with the bot and find out if they're eligible for SNAP, for WIC, for free and reduced school lunch, some senior programs and a few other things as well. So that is a second feature. And actually for people who don't want to look at the map if they would prefer to just talk with the bot about everything or if they don't have a smartphone, they can just use the chat function on their phone to access our chat bot who we named Shelley after. Shelley settles with the city of Indianapolis who helped lead this project. And so you can just ask, you can through text find locations as well and find step-by-step directions to a food pantry for instance. And then the third feature is a calendar that has local free events related to food. So it might be local farmers market that accepts SNAP benefits or it might be like you were mentioning before some of the food distributions for the school systems that are not operating in person right now. We have all of that stuff, summer meals on that calendar. So things that are more one time or short-term we put on the calendar rather than a static pin on the map. That's great. And now I would like to show a video of community content so people can get a sense of what it looks like. And Kate, if you wanna provide any additional information as we watch it, that would be great. Sure. So this is the smartphone version of the app and you can get it for free on the App Store, Google Play. You can see the home screen there. We've selected free groceries and you can scroll through to find the different things in your area. If you select one of those particular sites, you get more details with directions and hours they're open, things like that. So you can see an example here of what each record would look like. This is Shelly the chatbot who can help you find all the same information but also information about federal nutrition programs. And then... So great. Yeah. Thank you. I am such a fan of this app. I just, I love Shelly and I love the fact that you can access Shelly without having the smartphone app. I just think that's brilliant. So now that you've gone through all of this, if you could talk to your past self, you could say, hey Kate, this is one thing that I now know that I wish I'd known then. What would you tell your past self? What did you learn that would have been really useful to have known the beginning? I had no idea how expensive it is to create an app. I remember we met with Level Up Development. They're the company that won the hackathon. And they said they would put together a proposal for us of what it would cost to create the app. And I think all of our jaws hit the floor when we saw the different options of, there were different options they put forward for us with different levels of support and hosting or just creating the app and handing it off to us. And so there were multiple different options they gave us, but all of them were far more than we were expecting, coming from a nonprofit where we are full budget for the year is usually less than half a million dollars. Seeing something cost in the 100,000s was a little jarring. So that was probably the biggest lesson for me, but we were able to work with the city to get that funded. So it all worked out in the end. Good, that's good. So we're gonna go to some questions now. And one thing I actually have a quick question about before we go to the questions from the audience is, so now because of the pandemic, have you seen a shift in the way the app is used or maybe in the way you're providing resources? What's going on in the here and now? Yeah, so we have seen lots of changes in open hours, in distribution method, in location even for some things. So we've done a couple of things. We've revamped the way that we update the app so that we have a system we can quickly go in and enter every day if we have changes. And in March and April, we were doing that every day. But we also have a button that we've put sort of a tile at the top of the app that people see right when they log or open it up. And it says, for changes related to COVID-19, click here and then it takes them to a page where they can see all of the changes in one place. So we've done it both ways to try to make sure that we're getting people accurate up-to-date information right away because we're finding a lot of people in need of food assistance that didn't need it six months ago and may have no idea where to go to get help. Yeah, that's a really, you make a really good point there because you kind of had this audience already that you've been working with and now there's so many people who have never had to navigate the systems, don't even know what exists, don't know where to start, don't know what's around them. And so that we have seen both in our work with range and also in our work more broadly at TechSoup that that's been a real challenge. So let's see if there's another question. So how, oh, this is a great question. So how did you structure the questions and answers for the chatbot? Let me get the end. Were you able to take your existing resources or was a radical rewrite needed? How did you go about that? Yeah, we really simplified it because we wanted it to be not a set of 10 questions but maybe two or three questions that people had to go through. And so we ask, for instance, if somebody's applying for SNAP, we ask about the size of their family, we ask about their income, and then maybe one or two other questions depending if they have a senior in the household, that kind of thing. And then we say it looks like you may be eligible for and then direct them to the state website to apply if they meet the first couple of major criteria. So it's not an exhaustive list of all the criteria for qualifying. But in developing the chat, we did a couple of things. We worked with experts who have done this sort of enrollment for the different programs to find out what are the most critical things to include. And then we worked with actually with a plain language expert to make sure that every bit of text that's included is understandable at a sixth grade reading level. So that you're not required to have a college degree to understand what the app is telling you. And so we then went through that text with our community partners, our friends that are using food assistance or have used food assistance and asked them to try it and see if it made sense. And then anything that didn't work for them, we would tweak a little bit. And actually, we haven't mentioned this yet, but we're just in the process of translating the app to Spanish, which should be released. I'm hoping next week. And so we're doing that all over again, trying to figure out how to make it the most commonly used form of Spanish to make sure that everybody can understand. We're not using any unusual words or strange sentence structure that doesn't make sense. Yeah. Yeah, that translation, that's really exciting. And it's a lot of work. And it's a lot of important work. That's really great. So here's another question. What staff training was needed as you brought in the way of supporting your community? What was the most surprising pain point? Do you understand that question? So what staff training did you need to do as you started doing this kind of new work for you guys, developing an app? So in terms of the development process, we really worked very, very closely with the team at Level Up Development, the tech company. So we met monthly and actually we're still meeting monthly as we add new features and fine tune things. But we work closely with them and they have been really good about saying, here are the things we need from you. We need the data. We need the text for this. We need you to proofread this or that. But then they have the tech tasks and then we test things out meet again. Once the app was completed, we've done all kinds of training in as many ways as we can. We've gone to, for instance, we've gone to our local WIC, several of their clinics to train their staff and how to use the app. We have offered training for food pantries. We've pulled together community partners before it was launched to make sure that the food banks and meals on wheels and the school counselors and their local public school system people that we thought might have people from the community asking them about the app. We brought them in to train them first so that they would be able to and then actually the mayor's action center as well so that they would know what the app was and how to use it in case people in the community needed assistance. And then we have training videos on our website and we've distributed training flyers and posters to put up at locations around the city. We did launch this app in February and then the pandemic hit us in March. And so some of the things we thought would work really well like posters at food pantries to explain how to use the app. No one's going into a food pantry anymore. They're getting their food outside. So we had to adjust a bit and create yard signs and flyers that can go into bags of food at food pantries, things like that. But we've been really working hard to train people in the community about how to use the app so that they can share it with others. That's great. Yeah, I think, you know, there's so much hard work that goes into designing and then developing an app that you sometimes maybe forget or at least don't realize how much work it takes to get it into the hands of the people who need it the most. And that in itself is a very large community effort as you just described, all the different community partners and the ways in which you're sharing it from flyers to yard signs. So that, thank you for describing all of that. I, let's see. Oh, there's a comment in here about very wise to bring in plain language experts and then review with grassroots partners. So that's a kudos to your team. So we're getting close to time but just a couple more questions. Here's another one. Do you have a sense of which referral source is sending the most users? That's a really good question. So we have radio ads on some local radio stations, both in English and Spanish. And so through a local radio station, then I Heart Radio gave us free airtime during the pandemic as an in-kind donation. So I can kind of see when the radio ads run that we're getting spikes in downloads. And so I think that's been really effective for us. I think more people are home listening to the radio too. When people have been working and schooling from home. And yeah, we have billboards, we have bus ads, we have, we're trying to blanket the whole city with community compass. Yeah, and yeah, I think when we see a spike in those sorts of things, sometimes it's related to an article in the local newspaper. You can kind of track the spikes. So the more public we do, the more uptake we have. That's great. So my last question for you is what, I know that you have new features happening and you talked about translating into Spanish. Is there anything else that you're excited that's gonna be, that's in the pipeline for the future for community compass? Yeah, well actually just a couple of weeks ago we released two new features. One is filtering so that you can look for only food pantries or meal sites or whatever that are open today. So if you don't wanna see, okay great, there are 12 in my neighborhood, but only one's open today. You can filter by distance from your location, from open time, from the zip code that they're in, that kind of thing. And then we also introduced a feedback feature so that if someone finds information that's incorrect, they can tell us right away through the app. Or if they have a suggestion of a new feature or some other event to add, they can tell us that as well. And then in the future, there are a couple things we're hoping to do. One is to expand statewide. So right now the app is only available for Marion County where Indianapolis is located. And we're talking with some partners about possible funding to expand across the state. And then the last thing is a desktop application. So for some folks, for the people who are actually needing help themselves, we think the cell phone version is probably the most convenient and helpful. But if you're an employee at a community center that's trying to help somebody get information, you may want to be able to see all the locations on a desktop version. And so we're looking into creating that as well. Terrific. Well, we're at time and I just wanted to thank you again, Kate, for taking the time to share about Community Compass and all that you've learned and done. It's such an impressive community resource. We're just so pleased and proud and excited for you. And I wanted to just quickly tell people where you can learn more about the organization that we talked about today. So please check out the IndieHunger Network that's IndieHunger.org And you can also find them on Twitter at IndieHunger. Also caravanstudios.org, caravanstudios is my team at TechSoup. And you can find us on Twitter at at caravanstudios. So thank you very much. This was really fun. Thanks, Sarah. This has been great. I appreciate the opportunity to talk with everyone about this project, which is really, it's been a labor of love and we're really glad to be able to share it with the community. And thank you for your help in making it happen. Yes, our absolute pleasure. We are the biggest fans. It's been a great experience for us. Thank you so much, Sarah. Thank you, Kate, for your time today. We really appreciate you sharing all that wisdom with us and that's a wrap.