ReAllocate

Evan Howard needed to make giving money easy.
He was in charge of fundraising for one of San Francisco’s oldest and best-known community outreach organizations for hunger and homelessness— Glide Memorial Church. For the past decade, receipts from the offering plate and mail drives had been declining.

Read more at http://national.deseretnews.com/article/1588/How-Silicon-Valley-is-changing-the-way-we-help-the-homeless.html#6IZfSBpypa6J2zBj.99

In December, Greg Gopman, former CEO of AngelHack, infuriated the public and reinforced tech stereotypes of disconnection and entitlement when he posted a rant on his Facebook page:

“Why the heart of our city has to be overrun by crazy, homeless, drug dealers, dropouts, and trash I have no clue… In downtown SF the degenerates gather like hyenas, spit, urinate, taunt you, sell drugs, get rowdy, they act like they own the center of the city… It’s a burden and a liability having them so close to us.”

While the tech community continues to be demonized across San Francisco, nearly 100 mostly tech workers acted as angels this weekend by donating their expertise to a dozen homeless nonprofit organizations.

In a format similar to a hackathon, where small teams form to develop software programs overnight, ReAllocate’s HACKtivation for the Homeless paired nonprofit organizations with volunteers to address technical challenges that would otherwise be out of reach for the cash-strapped organizations. “Not everybody is being included in how fast things are changing and the benefits of those changes,” said ReAllocate’s Executive Director Kyle Stewart, who cofounded the event with community organizer Ilana Lipsett. “There are opportunities for technology to help inside these established organizations.”

Filmmaker Ken Fisher was preparing about a hundred tech workers to find, talk to and videotape homeless people in the vicinity of the Twitter building in midtown San Francisco.

“For safety’s sake, we should go out in pairs. … Have a discussion guide with you, and rehearse so you don’t need to read off it,” Fisher said to the group about to leave the social giant’s refurbished mid-Market Street office building (they were, specifically, in Yammer’s office space). “Ask before videotaping. That said, I tend to ask forgiveness rather than permission. You usually get good results either way.”

Tonight, community organizations on the frontlines of assisting the homeless came to ask a diverse crowd, with mixed technological talents, to help them make an even bigger impact. These change-makers’ calls weren’t asking for money, but for technical support to help utilize volunteer resources and manage cumbersome data that are slowing them down.

Technology whizzes, nonprofit workers and others will converge this weekend in San Francisco to try to cook up new tech-savvy ways to help the homeless in a series of get-togethers organizers are calling Hacktivation for the Homeless.

The projects will be fleshed out during sessions planned for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, but for now they include creating an online store for homeless artists to sell their work and handing video cameras out to homeless people and their neighbors to document their everyday lives.

On March 28th, 29th, and 30th ReAllocate is hosting the next Hacktivation – a purpose-driven hackathon that connects nonprofits and social impact projects with skilled tech volunteers. Hacktivations begin with a series of pitches for projects, followed by a weekend-long push to make them a reality. This time the event will focus on homelessness in San Francisco.

To ensure that the projects can make a real impact ReAllocate is partnering with local nonprofit organizations devoted to serving the homeless. By having these organizations identify the challenges to be addressed, the Hacktivation will focus on real world problems with achievable solutions. This event marks the beginning of a bimonthly series of events facilitating collaboration on social impact projects and ongoing civic participation.

The nonprofits partners have identified a variety of problems and challenges as well as some possible solutions. Projects include capacity building opportunities to help organizations with their internal technology needs, long term technology projects that work between organizations to help address gaps in the current system, and community engagement opportunities to get directly involved with the local community. A full list of projects is available here.

On March 28th local nonprofits will be presenting the projects they need help with and over the course of the next two days participants will be working closely with them to build the solutions they need.  If you have skills that you want to reallocate, sign up and join the Hacktivation!

ReAllocate’s Hacktivation for the Homeless Partners

Caravan Studios, Code for America, Coit Group, Community Housing Partnership, Dev Bootcamp, Episcopal Community Services, GLIDE, Goodwill, HandUp, Highground Hackers, Hospitality House, Innovation Alley, Larkin Street Youth Services, Lava Mae, Lyft, Project Homeless Connect, SF Mayor’s Office of Civic Innovation, Shareable, Social Enterprise Alliance – San Francisco Bay Area Chapter, Spotify, St. Anthony Foundation, St. Francis Living Room, Tenderloin Housing Clinic, Tenderloin Technology Lab, Yammer, Zenput

Supporting the needs of San Francisco’s homeless population has been a constant challenge for decades. There are thousands of volunteers and scores of nonprofit organizations dedicated to addressing the problem, but a disparate ad-hoc network of support means that large gaps in service continue to exist.