 Thanks for coming today, everyone, non-profit Tech Co Boston. We've been around for almost 10 years, really, and we welcome new members and anywhere in the world, COVID-19 has had a surprising effect. We have followers from all over the world these days. So we welcome them, and anyone can join our programs, they're all free. Our Tech Club, that's our hashtag, we're part of a network of Tech Clubs across the nation and the world. We are allied with N10, non-profit technology network, and with NetSquared, which is changing its name, to TechSoupConnect. So be watching for that change, but again, programs are free to all, but look, we have a new logo. I'll put that in the margin. We do have some great programs this year, and here is a list of some of them. We have new June and July programs, we're even going to have an update from N10 online on Zoom, so please plan to join us, and those events are all posted there. We are also going to tag team with TechSoupConnect on their Bevy Labs platform, and it's going to take us a few weeks, what will be both there, and we will be on Facebook, so we will be able to find us in both places. This is our mission, and what we're about, we are entirely volunteer run, and our guest speakers speak for free, so it's really a nice community activity, and we try to help individuals and non-profits seeking cost effective tools and techniques to make their work easier and more effective. And anytime you should reach out to any volunteer on Facebook, and they're all on there, and if you have questions of any kind, we're happy to answer that. We deeply appreciate Capital Factory, our entrepreneurship hub in downtown Austin, and they've been a sponsor the past few years, and we love being a part of that community, it's really inspiring. We also have wonderful volunteers, if I mentioned earlier, you can contact any of these folks any time they're all on Facebook, that's been our primary way to message, and again, they're sharing on social, they all have different expertise, so really reach out and ask them. And here are some links, I posted these on the Facebook group page also as a downloadable PDF, and also a PDF magazine style on ISSU, ISSUU, and so you can find us on all of these places where our allies are, our future event hub will be there, and also on Facebook, Inten, we love, and we got started by Inten, our Facebook group, which you are probably on now, and also if you want to volunteer, mostly our volunteer with COVID, we went online on Zoom, so mostly it's sharing, sharing, sharing, getting the word out and recruiting people to sign up and join us on our calls. So that's that now, I'm going to stop sharing, I think, there we are. And I was so excited, I don't know how, John Hernandez, I think you actually, we connected on the Facebook group page, and you were like, oh, look at this page, I'm working on this project, and I was like, yes, this is so cool. And then we hit the polar vortex, and it sounds like you just like went through the roof, because that was an easier way for people to volunteer, whatever, or more modern. But I'll let you provide an intro about yourself and help action, and it sounds like it's poised to explode in growth, which is good. Explode, not exploit. Yeah, right, explode is better. All right, so help action is a program launched by the non-profit exchange, and I am John Hernandez, the executive director of the non-profit exchange. We're a 501C non-profit, and we've been around for, oh, about six years currently. We started in El Paso, Texas, but we work with non-profits all across the country. We help with capacity building tech solutions, but primarily we do a lot of fundraising tech solutions. So help action started as a concept we had about a year ago in El Paso. We had a situation where El Paso was deemed a sanctuary city, and we had a lot of refugee families being dropped off in the middle of the night in our downtown. So a lot of our orgs were constantly posting to Facebook, you know, we need 100 meals. You know, who can do 100 meals? We need 100 blankets, and watching kind of the chaos ensue of trying to coordinate people on Facebook to bring meals to specific spots and bring what meals they could and making sure you don't get too few meals, but really you also don't want to get too many. You don't want to have 200 meals, and then you have burned out volunteers. So the original idea for the system was a way to manage resources amongst volunteers during a collective emergency. Well, COVID hit, and it shook up a lot of groups. And so we decided to change and scrap that project and turn it into something that was more immediate that could help our community and other communities pretty fast. We knew that there were a lot of the pantries were having issues getting food to people who, A, had some type of immune deficiency where going out to an overpacked grocery store during the early times of COVID was not ideal, respiratory illnesses, people who are prone to getting pneumonia, diabetics, heart disease, the elderly. There was a real fear for their lives in the beginning. And of course, the other group that a lot of we kind of forget about is people who are new to a city who don't necessarily have a network of family and friends. How do they get food without exposing others? How do healthcare workers who spend night and day in COVID response units, how do they go out and get groceries? So we created a system that was 100% community-based, where an individual could put in a request for up to five items, they could mark if they could reimburse or not, and it would match them up with a volunteer who was willing to go pick up those five items and drop it off as a contactless delivery at their door. We ended up expanding that portion to nonprofits as well. And so I'm going to go in a little bit more in depth about how that works. So our system allows either nonprofits, a pantry, to put out a request to get food from the pantry to a person in need. Individuals can also put in a request, as we mentioned, for up to five items that can be purchased or picked up from, you know, Walmart or a local grocery store. And information is provided between the volunteer and the requester on how they can reimburse if they are able to reimburse. So with nonprofits, they actually get their own dispatcher account. They can create different request forms for different types of items. We know some pantries do, might have perishables in one box. There might not. They might just, it might be a box of diapers and needed essentials. So we gave them the option to be able to customize the urgency and the type of request they're putting out there. And it all starts with a text message. Everything we do is 100% web and text-based. There's no app to download. You don't have to create a complex login and password that you might forget or might not know on the fly. And so we want to make sure it was simple. We live in a time where, you know, we are very reactionary to things. Planning, you know, even a week ahead can be hard for some folks. You know, wanting to volunteer is something that's on everybody's mind, but actually setting aside, you know, three to four hours at a specific location on a specific date of volunteer is tough. We live in very fluid times. And so we wanted to make sure that the system was just as fluid, a way for people to volunteer when they had the time and when they saw that there was a great need for it. So once that request is put out, just like you saw in the text, it goes out to the volunteer pool. And the way we do it is very different than most urgent requests. It's a little bit slower, but it's a lot more we've seen effective. So the key thing is text messages are very valuable. They have almost a 99% read open rating. We don't want to abuse that. Just because we know someone's going to read the text doesn't mean that they're going to keep reading them if they're getting them every minute of every day on a weekly basis, especially if a request has already been met. So what we do is the request goes out to the volunteers based on an algorithm where we rank volunteers on their consistency. The last time they received a request, if they've had the chance to take on a request, how new they are to the volunteer pool, and of course their location and proximity to the final destination for the items. And so it goes out one at a time. They have 10 minutes to respond yes or no. If they go over the time, if they say no, it immediately goes to the next volunteer. And this way, we don't tire out our volunteers. They're not getting constantly bombarded with text messages. And we can still meet the demands of the pantries and the community. Once they reply yes, once we have a volunteer who's willing to take on that request, they get the phone number to that requester either from the pantry or the individual. And this way, the person who's requesting the need, even if they're doing it through the pantry, can decide exactly where they want the volunteer to drop off those goods. Sometimes someone might not feel comfortable with someone dropping off right to their doorstep. They might have it taken to a neighbor or a family member, or they want to meet at the post office around the corner. We want to leave it up to the requester to, if they don't, to be as comfortable as possible when getting that delivery. And so throughout the process, we make sure that the volunteer is living up to their side. The requester will get a number of text messages asking, has the volunteer reached out to them? At any point that they reply, no, it's been an hour since they accepted my request and they haven't reached out to me. The request immediately gets put back into the volunteer pool. And this way, we can make sure that nobody falls through the cracks. If they're having a tough time getting in touch with their volunteer, that request will always automatically go back out and they'll be matched with a new volunteer. We get alerts. If a requester hasn't marked the delivery as complete, it'll then start sending the text to the delivery, the volunteer delivery, asking them if they were able to complete it. That way we can make sure that everything was completed on time. So I know one of the things, we've launched this program in El Paso, Texas. We work with about three different nonprofits out there helping coordinate their pickups and deliveries to those who can't make it out. We also do it out in southern Illinois. We work with one of the largest pantries in Illinois, helping them expand their range to people who, again, are homebound, who can't make it all the way out to the pantry. In some cases, we've had people who have COVID who are stuck at home and the pantry has no way of getting to them and this system has allowed them to expand their services. We started recruiting volunteers in December in Austin, slowly building up that community volunteer base and when the storm hits, we kind of pushed it through the door even harder. We were able to work with a number of social media influencers in Austin and overnight during the storm, Austin rallied together and we were able to recruit over 600 volunteers. We completed over close to 200 emergency requests during the storm and the number one item that was requested was water. These were individuals who were relying on their neighbors and their neighbors picked up the slack and went out and made sure that everybody had what they need when they needed it. So I'm going to play a quick video that one of the families that we were able to make a drop off to was kind enough to share with us and just gives you an idea of even though Austin is so diverse, it came together during a very tough time. I am so blessed. This lady from Boston was able to provide a five gallon water bottle, more water bottles and milk for me and my husband. I know I haven't told a lot of people, but our water for some reason, there's this weird film even after I boil it. So it just, I'm not comfortable drinking it and we have no heat. So it's just a really big blessing to have someone go out of their way to give with no cost and that's just so beautiful. So I'm so grateful. I'm going to go ahead and send the link or include the link somewhere. So if you're in the Austin area, you can be taking advantage of their help and and just what they have to offer if you're really suffering. I am so and so that is the story of how we've brought help action to Austin. We're currently working with as part of a food coalition with, you know, the local United Way and the city and seeing how many other pantries we can get the service out to. Are you working with Meals on Wheels, John? No, not currently. Since this is more of an on demand system, it's going to be for those emergency calls that come into a pantry where, you know, it might be someone new to the pantry, someone new to the city who needs that assistance quickly. Okay. Well, yeah, I encourage you to make Meals on Wheels. You kind of have to schedule. You're scheduled to receive the meal packets and then those packets are for like a couple weeks or something. So so you're expanding your from El Paso and kind of got going El Paso, but you live in Austin right now. And what do you see is the future? How are you expanding this? Because I have no doubt it's going to keep going. Right now, our goal is the spread throughout the rest of Texas. We're currently working on getting a large volunteer beliefs built in Las Cruces, New Mexico to serve Southern New Mexico. We're in talks with a few groups in Midland to start kicking it out over there. But it's an easy to use system and all you need is a community who's willing to help. Yeah. Have you talked to the folks at Give Pulse per chance? The volunteer management platform? I know I haven't. You know, I think they've talked to our tech club before and I'm on there from other volunteer projects, including the tech club, but they're and I believe that they're based at Capital Factory, which is one of our partners. But it seems to me they would really they may be on watching on Facebook right now. But it seems to me you should get to know them. They're kind of homegrown, but they have expanded across the United States. And you might be able to get them to offer, you know, this special way of volunteering. Like there's our very planned out, you know, you sign up. It does provide a lot of really great information about your volunteers and helps you validate the number of hours they provide if you want to and that type of thing. But basically, they need to know what you're up to. So, yeah, Give Pulse. James McGurr has been my contact there in the past. Really nice guy. But really they're plugged in now, especially like it seems to me with texting, it maybe is a bit of a younger audience, not necessarily, but. Platform that we use with, you know, over a hundred different nonprofits. We use it with, you know, fundraising for like Texas Tech and Texas A&M. Yeah. And text works across all generations. I mean, that's the thing that we were able to say. Everybody knows how to at least text. You don't need a smartphone to be able to text. You know, or if we can write a letter, we can we can send a text message. Yeah. How did you come to this? I still carry a mention of using Next Door. And so actually when we were first getting launched in El Paso, we used Next Door and we encouraged others who are part of that group in El Paso to to share the link. If they saw anyone that was in need on Next Door to share the link, they could put in a request. And that's how we were able to gain a lot of volunteers in the beginning stages of El Paso. Yeah, it looks like somebody says they have used it during the recent ice storms in Houston and hurricanes. Yeah, that was Gary recommending that. Yeah. I was going to say, do you, I don't know, how can we as the Tech Club help? How can we get people enrolled or what would you, how would we contact you, you know, or your colleagues to get kind of signed on or, you know what I mean? Everything is done through the website. You can request, there's forms for requesting if you want to launch it in your city. If we're not operating out there, you can sign up as a volunteer already and kind of wait for your city to come along. You know, there's, there's a, if you're a non-profit, you can go ahead and sign up and make an account. And you can actually start integrating your own volunteers into it. If you're, if there's not already a volunteer base in your city. That's where I like to get with Give Pulse and see about integrating with them. I think they would like it. They're real entrepreneurial. They are also in a lot of universities and serving campus communities all over the United States now. So have you tied up with John with Aunt Bertha, Aunt Bertha, that local Austin? No, I'm, I'm, I'm slightly familiar with it, but. Well, they've received lots of funding rounds. This is a, you know, database where you can find where there is food and shelter and that, you know, it's gotten to where it's really going to expand across the United States. And it, it's, it may be that, and because they're, I've been to their offices and talked to them. I've watched them grow for the past five, six years and they're amazing. And they have great contacts too. And it's, what's nice is like you can download the app, Aunt Bertha. It's kind of nice because it's like, you can say, I want, this is what's happened to me on my blog. I have a contact form. And I occasionally will get somebody who needs food. Okay. They need something. They need shelter and they just see that I'm a fundraiser, you know. And so I tell them to, and they're on, they're still online, even though that maybe they're not eating, but they have a phone, you know. So I tell them to ask Aunt Bertha. It's really nice. I like the fact that it's not like, yes, I'm going to go to that homeless shelter. I'm so excited. You know, it's like, no, you know, you say Aunt Bertha. And it'll pull up. This is what your Aunt Bertha told you to do. And so it gives you all these listings. They've got it really wired all over the place. So it's going to keep growing, keep watching it. And it may be that there's a way to integrate in a small way, but I'm a big fan of Aunt Bertha. Because basically I've, in the past, when I've gotten those messages, even when they, Aunt Bertha wasn't started, I was on there. I'd be like, hold on. I'm going to do the research because I'm a super researcher. I love Google. And man, I would find one. So where's your zip code? Where are you? And that happened during the last economic downturn, you know, around 2011 or so. But I was actually in San Antonio and I was getting a lot of requests. And I will say this, you know, people think, you know, I'm a major good fundraiser and all that, but there is nothing that brings you down to earth like somebody asking you that saying they're hungry. Do you have any idea where I can get shelter or food? Either is nothing like that. It like, boom. I don't care what anybody says, you know. I'm helping this person right this minute. So when Aunt Bertha got started, really, right after that, boy, I just became a fan because I could route people there, you know. So anyway, sorry, long story short and a plug for Aunt Bertha, but you know, they're getting really sophisticated. So you might check them out. But do you have any more, have people done more video testimonials? Is there a place that can even put that stuff? Yes. So actually when their delivery is complete, it shares a link with them that they can upload a video or write a testimonial. That is so nice. That is really, really great. Very nice because I'm sure they're so thrilled right that second, you know, to be getting that. Yeah, it integrates the call for a testimonial into the flow, always really helpful. So hi, Ela here in Vancouver with TechSoup. And actually, this is really interesting because a project TechSoup is working on right now is to basically rebuild our traditional catalog of software donations to nonprofits to make it much more of like a two-sided marketplace where any organization can come in and say, I have an offering, a solution that would be helpful to nonprofits. And so we'll be opening up that catalog hopefully in the first version around September. And the first theme, the first focus area is around food insecurity. So we've actually been doing these monthly series of apps addressing food insecurity events. The next one actually is this coming Wednesday. And I've just added you to the list of people I should feature to as the whole program gets closer and closer to launch because I think what you put together is really interesting. And of course, the first thing everyone's going to ask is like, and outside of Texas. And it sounds like there's a bit of some thought already around that. But can you give me a sense of your capacity and interest right now to move outside of your original territories? Oh, well, this system is ready to go, I mean, national very easily. I mean, like I said, all it needs is a handful of community members who want to do good. And then you open it up to the other pantries who need help making deliveries. Like I said, we work in Illinois as well. So not just Texas. We work with the Aurora pantry. And they're actually the largest pantry in Illinois right now. So as we're going through all this and making our changes to the system, it's very easy to add. It's all automated to add other organizations and other cities. Cool. And I have a follow up more technical question. Like what's the back end powering all those SMS messages? We use one of our favorite partners and they've been during COVID, they helped out a number of different organizations. They gave out grants. They gave out small grants to help with the resources at Twilio. Thank you. I'm sort of going there because they've been another partner of ours. I'm like, huh, now we're starting to put together a bit more of a story because, you know, I'm going to just make that note because that's interesting because they have been someone we've collaborated with in a number of different ways. Yeah, no, their conference is amazing. It's eye-opening. It really literally gives you ideas on how to create new tech to help nonprofits. Thank you. Well, I'll tell you what, if you have anything to share, John, that I can post on the Facebook group page and on my work page and NetSquared, anything to follow up NetSquared's page, which will soon be TechSoup Connect's page, but, you know, they're getting everybody globally and they're a public page. Our Facebook group, you know, is private, but we have over 400 people on there, so it's really a good crowd. And there are, I let people in today welcome Poland, London, and several people inquiring from that wanted to see your program, you know. So I know a lot of countries, other countries are watching also, so. Yeah, no, we just encourage everyone. I mean, those who live currently in Austin, especially, you know, if you're, if you're looking for that bat signal, as we call it, to say, hey, someone needs your help. And it's, just know when you get that text message that says, you know, John needs milk and eggs, that it's, you're the only one seeing it at that moment. Now, do you? It makes all the difference when you reply, yes, that you can take it on that delivery and request. Do you vet your people requesting help in some fashion? Do you, you know what I mean? Yeah, so, somebody like nobody from Beverly Hills gets, you know. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. The only vetting we kind of do is on the items, you know, but we haven't had anyone really go outside the, you know, basic essentials, you know, no one's asking for all I need a new laptop or anything. And only because I mean, not that they shouldn't get a laptop, it's just because it is, it's a community program. We're not trying to stress any of our volunteers out by feeling that they need to go above and beyond. We want to keep it essential items only. Yeah. But no, thank you guys again for having me on and I'm glad to share. This is just one of the programs that we're working on at the nonprofit exchange. Again, we do custom technology solutions for other nonprofits. We're working on a fully interactive patient portal. For one group in El Paso, they deal with child oncology. And it's a way for them to better interact with their families and the kids about the different programs that they offer. You know, for another few groups, we're working on an integrated, almost like Walmart pickup, but for pantries where they can actually select the items that they want. And then they can actually put in a request for pickup from help action. But we're adding incentives to them if they want to participate in the Healthy Living Program that some of the pantries who are going to be using this new system do, they can complete a recipe and post a picture of off. They can go on a hike, post a picture, and it'll actually give them more points that they can spend to buy things at their local pantry. Yeah. So we do a number of different projects in collaboration with other groups. And then we do our own community-based ones like help action. How did you get into this project exactly? How did you run an app development agency for about six years? We were in El Paso. We were in Washington, D.C. And, you know, before we kind of closed up shop, I was, we were doing a lot of environmentally-based apps. We even had one that was featured on National Geographic, CNN, and of course, South by Southwest about palm oil. And so ever since then, that really opened up my eyes to the love of bringing tech into the nonprofit realm. That is great. I didn't know that about your background. That is great. Well, I think we need to post your, I mean, I posted help action on the group page, but, you know, people are looking for help developing apps and things. If you have a, is it a separate link to help action? Or is it? It's a separate link to there. Right now, we're actually in the middle of the rebrand. So we'll have to share a link later for that. Okay. Well, just remember to share it. Yeah. No, not a problem. And we'll post it all over the place because that's a big one. Well, that's all, I guess. I don't see any more questions. And I will report back because we usually have a lot of people online. So I'll let you know tomorrow how many you're watching, but we find it just ratchets up over time. This is one nice thing about Zoom is people can tune in later on and watch the recording. So Eli will edit out any bad comments and we'll post our good version of the art recording today. So, but thanks very much for taking the time. Really interesting. Thank you for having me. And I'll be looking forward to your message, Eli. Perfect. Sounds great. Well, thank you so much for sharing. And yeah, keep showing off. Well, the other cool apps as they emerge into the world. We'll do, we'll do. Have a good evening, everybody. Perfect. All the best. Thanks. Thanks for again.