logo
Donate
    • Magazine
    • Membership
    • Donate
  • Racial Justice
  • Economic Justice
    • Collections
    • Glossary
  • Climate Justice
  • Health Justice
  • Leadership
  • CONTENT TYPES
  • Magazine
  • Webinars
  • Membership
  • Submissions

Benetech and Bay Area Nonprofits Seek to Address the “Pain Points” of 211

Steve Dubb
May 18, 2018
By Ashwin Kumar from Bangalore, India (My Poor Shattered S2) [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Benetech, explains CEO Jim Fruchterman, is a nonprofit organization that aims to “take technology and knowledge that Silicon Valley has figured out and take it into the nonprofit sector.” Founded in 2000, Benetech is known for its online library system, called Bookshare, which makes over 600,000 print titles electronically available for people with vision disabilities and dyslexia, but the firm has worked in a number of areas. Last year, Bookshare’s service contract with the US Department of Education was renewed for a third five-year term; the contract, for which the US Department of Education pays $42.5 million, enables the nonprofit to provide digital materials to 500,000 students with reading disabilities.” All told, reported Ned Desmond last year in TechCrunch, “Eighty percent of the $13.4 million annual revenue the 70-employee outfit enjoyed [in 2016] came from operating projects like Bookshare.”

Benetech’s latest project is being called Benetech Service Net. The goal is to help poverty-alleviation nonprofits better coordinate their efforts, starting with developing a pilot in its home region of the San Francisco Bay Area.

“We have a unique role to play,” Fruchterman says. “That’s Benetech’s job. Part of that is talking to nonprofit sector leaders, policymakers, people who run community-based organizations. How can we be of assistance?”

The opportunity, Fruchterman adds, is obvious. “The business net,” Fruchterman notes, “is visible.” But with social services agencies, asking Alexa or Siri to find a social service for you won’t do, Fruchterman explains. The goal, he adds is to “make the social safety net as visible as the business net is.” It should be, Fruchterman adds, as easy to find a food bank as a restaurant review on Yelp.

Anh Bui, a vice president at Benetech who directs Benetech Labs, notes that the way Benetech works is to “build and harness community.”

“We don’t try to solve a single problem,” Bui says. “We try to engage the ecosystem holistically and together. With Service Net, it is a great example of a collaborative technology solution. We are not simply building a new service directory database. What we are saying that a lot of organizations are building this, but they do it in silos. In California alone, there are dozens that are registered at information and referral services. Each of these organizations is often maintaining their data in a silo. What if we could create infrastructure to share that data?”

Benetech is working with partners such as United Way of the Bay Area and Kaiser Permanente to create a more common infrastructure. Making Fruchterman’s vision a reality is complicated. But, slowly, progress is being made.

The first stage, conducted last year, Bui explained, involved collecting directory data sets including regional 211 information services, and do an analysis of gaps, opportunities, and applications to identify where the flow of the information and the accuracy can be improved.

The second stage, which took place in February centered on a convening of nonprofits—as well some for-profit firms. All told, 21 organizations—including St. Anthony’s, health leagues, Alameda County 211, Kaiser, and United Way Bay Area—participated. “We had 21 groups and 11 data sets that we’ve analyzed from the San Francisco and Sacramento area to look for duplicated resources,” explains Bui.

In a blog post after the gathering, Bui wrote that a unique feature of the convening was its focus on “the analysis of aggregate data from eleven social service referral agencies and service providers from across the Bay Area.”

“Currently,” Bui says, “each organization has valuable yet limited information about the social services they refer people to, such as the location, hours, and qualifications. No one organization has all the information. That’s why the aggregate analysis and convening were so valuable. Together, the 11 organizations may have nearly comprehensive social services data for the Bay Area. Never before has a detailed view of the Bay Area’s social safety net been available to guide the individual and collective work of the organizations involved.”

Out of the gathering, participants agreed to follow up with four conversations, each of which has a working group assigned to it. As Bui explains:

One is governance. A second is around the role of funders and government around incentivizing the improvement of information infrastructure. For example, Google maps work for business because businesses have an incentive to make it easy for you to figure out how to get to their services. Social service establishments do not have the same incentives. One of the things we talked about is, because so many of these organizations are funded by government and foundations, how can these groups think about how they incentivize those services to provide timely updates and how does government incentivize this kind of collaboration and the measurement of the overall impact of it?

A third group is around the “north star concept,” which is, “What is the shared vision/outcome?” The opportunity for these organizations to come together is rare, and we should take advantage of it to think about other ways we can collaborate for impact.

The fourth is around accounting systems and value contributions, and how you value the contributions that come into a data exchange. That’s about triggering acknowledgement and compensation, if necessary, for the contributors to the system. That’s about understanding what the cost of maintaining all this data is now.

Sign up for our free newsletters

Subscribe to NPQ's newsletters to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from NPQ and our partners.

Kelly Batson, Senior Vice President of Community Impact, United Way Bay Area, attended the gathering. Batson has been at United Way since 2006, but she only began to work directly on the United Way’s 211 program in 2015. She was introduced to Benetech by Greg Bloom, who had begun working with Benetech near the end of 2016. Bloom said to her that, “If there was a way we could share better data, people could get the services they need in a more effective way.”

Batson notes that Anh Bui began by asking her, “What are the pain points for 211?” Batson recalls that, “One of the ones I brought up is one where we are updating and maintaining resource data. I have a small staff compared to my service area; we’re a six-county 211…The field of information referral is growing and there are many players—we are all duplicating it and finding it very hard. I didn’t understand why we aren’t cooperating.”

“It feels like a solvable problem,” Batson says. “Who is looking at the future? What does the future look like for a 211?… Benetech is helping us do that for the field, not just me.”

For Batson, a common data system would give more capacity. “I see it amplifying or improving the work; I see it building a better system for all of us. It will help those who are seeking safety-net services. Also, if you can’t take care of your parent, you might call 211. There are so many reasons to call 211.” Batson adds, “If we could get the right information to the right people, it seems like that would result in a better system overall.”

Batson hopes that a common system would provide “core data,” such as the name of the organizations, their programs, the services available, and eligibility rules. Batson acknowledges that while each organization would surely retain its own nuances, “If the core stuff were there and we had that, that would be helpful.”

Still, getting there will not be easy. “For me, the main takeaway from the convening was that everyone is on the same page of what is hard to do, which is around the data. There is also a general understanding that comes from having all of the people in the same room. People know 211 is around, but other data sets are less well known—just knowing the landscape is good.”

Batson adds, “We walked away to work on specific projects. I was happy that it was going to lead some action.” Batson says she has committed to participating in two working groups—the one on shared vision and the one on accounting.

Batson is optimistic that progress will be made, but she is also aware that “many times in collaborations like this, people will lose steam. That’s probably working against all of us. Hopefully that doesn’t keep us down.”

“I think it is a conversation that had to happen…this won’t solve everything. But this is a step,” says Batson.

“Also, there are so many people in need,” notes Batson. Indeed, in the Bay Area, Benetech itself estimates that in the San Francisco Bay Area there are 1.3 million people who are too poor to meet their basic needs.

“We ought to spend our time reaching people better,” Batson adds. “I don’t know if we will get to a pilot changing how we do business. I hope this is true. But we have to start something. We have to collaborate. It makes sense. We should come to the table to have the conversation.”

In terms of the overall project, Batson express her vision as follows:

In three to five years, the data will be better. We’re going to have a really strong feedback loop, where the data is more accurate and better. It is richer. It has more uses. It helps different kinds of people. To me, the data is significantly improved, which means the end user is getting what they need in a better way. Looking for food or shelter, how are they finding information? Making that easier for people in need is what I envision. Some things are easily accessible, and the data is really good and helpful. In the really long-term, we track the end results.

Right now, Batson adds, “We make the information and referral, but we don’t know if they access the service. We survey, but we don’t really track that data. In a perfect world, the data is so good that we are figuring out our impact. And we are able to tell that story.”

About the author
Steve Dubb

Steve Dubb is senior editor of economic justice at NPQ, where he writes articles (including NPQ’s Economy Remix column), moderates Remaking the Economy webinars, and works to cultivate voices from the field and help them reach a broader audience. Prior to coming to NPQ in 2017, Steve worked with cooperatives and nonprofits for over two decades, including twelve years at The Democracy Collaborative and three years as executive director of NASCO (North American Students of Cooperation). In his work, Steve has authored, co-authored, and edited numerous reports; participated in and facilitated learning cohorts; designed community building strategies; and helped build the field of community wealth building. Steve is the lead author of Building Wealth: The Asset-Based Approach to Solving Social and Economic Problems (Aspen 2005) and coauthor (with Rita Hodges) of The Road Half Traveled: University Engagement at a Crossroads, published by MSU Press in 2012. In 2016, Steve curated and authored Conversations on Community Wealth Building, a collection of interviews of community builders that Steve had conducted over the previous decade.

More about: PolicyTechnology

Our Voices Are Our Power.

Journalism, nonprofits, and multiracial democracy are under attack. At NPQ, we fight back by sharing stories and essential insights from nonprofit leaders and workers—and we pay every contributor.

Can you help us protect nonprofit voices?

Your support keeps truth alive when it matters most.
Every single dollar makes a difference.

Donate now
logo logo logo logo logo
See comments

You might also like
Cancer Research in the US Is World Class Because of Its Broad Base of Funding—with the Government Pulling Out, Its Future Is Uncertain
Jeffrey MacKeigan
Endowments Aren’t Blank Checks—but Universities Can Rely on Them More Heavily in Turbulent Times
Ellen P. Aprill
US Colleges and Universities Have Billions Stashed Away in Endowments—a Higher Ed Finance Expert Explains What They Are
Todd L. Ely
Nonprofits Under Fire: How the IRS Can—and Cannot—Revoke Federal Tax-Exempt Status
Jeffrey S. Tenenbaum, Esq.
Providence Nonprofits Reeling from Funding Cuts and Threats (And, Organizations—What You Can Do!)
Cynthia M. Gibson
Supreme Court Considers Whether States May Prevent People Covered by Medicaid from Choosing Planned Parenthood as Their Healthcare Provider
Naomi Cahn and Sonia Suter

Upcoming Webinars

Group Created with Sketch.
May 27th, 2:00 pm ET

Ask the Nonprofit Lawyer

Register
Group Created with Sketch.
June 26th, 2:00 pm ET

From Performance Management to Mutual Commitment

Fostering a Culture of Joyful Accountability

Register

    
You might also like
A female scientist wearing a turquoise protective hair cap, yellow safety goggles, blue gloves, and a blue protective gown peers intently into a black microscope while carefully holding a pipette.
Cancer Research in the US Is World Class Because of Its...
Jeffrey MacKeigan
A piggy bank wearing a graduation hat and standing on a pile of cash, symbolizing how endowments for academic institutions can be accessed in difficult times.
Endowments Aren’t Blank Checks—but Universities Can Rely...
Ellen P. Aprill
A building on Harvard University’s campus in Cambridge, MA, the wealthiest university in the world.
US Colleges and Universities Have Billions Stashed Away in...
Todd L. Ely

Like what you see?

Subscribe to the NPQ newsletter to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

See our newsletters

By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from NPQ and our partners.

  • About
  • Advertise
  • Careers
  • Contact
  • Copyright
  • Donate
  • Editorial Policy
  • Funders

We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website.

 

Non Profit News | Nonprofit Quarterly
Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.