Innovating to Meet the Challenges of 2020
When the founders of Civic Exchange Chicago—and the leaders of each member organization—moved operations to work-from-home in mid-March, they never imagined that nearly six months would pass without being together again in the Civic Exchange workspace. At the same time, they also never imagined how the barrage of challenges facing them throughout 2020 would push them to new solutions and to deeper connection to their mission—as individual organizations and as a collective.
Watching how each member organization has responded to multiple events at once—a global pandemic, police brutality, nationwide protests and upcoming presidential election—has not only inspired Civic Exchange’s founders, but also expanded their vision for what Civic Exchange is and could be.
“Civic Exchange companies support institutions that support society and democracy’s functioning—from food security, education, governance, data infrastructure, and media,” says Jennifer Brandel, Civic Exchange co-founder and CEO of Hearken. “In this time where all of these institutions are being tested at once, it’s been incredibly inspiring to see each organization’s responses and new services to meet emergent needs.”
Derek Eder, Civic Exchange co-founder and Partner at DataMade, says he feels similarly. “Civic Exchange members continue to play a leadership role in their sectors, not just nationally, but locally too. Chalkbeat and Block Club are both pioneering new non-profit business models and are showing legacy organizations what’s possible. The Center for Tech and Civic Life are leading partnerships on how to conduct safe voting during a pandemic. And my company, DataMade, is leading conversations about the ethics and policy around the role of tech in supporting systems of oppression.”
Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL)
With the general presidential election just over three months away, the team at Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL) are working across the U.S. to help local election officials contend with the extraordinary challenges facing 2020 voters. Just this week, CTCL announced that Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg had committed $250M to CTCL for the nonprofit to regrant to local election jurisdiction throughout the U.S. to provide staff, training and equipment for use in the November elections. Previously this spring, CTCL created 12 free webinars to equip election officials to ensure safe and secure elections, even in the face of the many impacts created by COVID-19. The webinars provide training on a range of election topics, including vote-by-mail processes, election worker shortages and the complications to in-person voting created by changing polling places.
BrightHive
Continuing their efforts to assist national, state and local leaders, as well as private organizations and networks, meet the needs of individuals and communities impacted by COVID-19, BrightHive recently released their first two Responsible Data Use Playbooks. Both playbooks—one devoted to digital contact tracing and the other to the creation of job seekers tools—are designed to help public and private sector leaders rapidly and responsibly use and share data to increase the impact of their COVID-19 response and plan for the future. Both playbooks are free and available as interactive web pages and as PDF downloads.
Hearken
In the midst of helping newsrooms across the country listen more closely to the needs of their audiences, Brandel’s company, Hearken, had news of its own to report. In June, Brandel announced that the 5 year old company would be merging with Switchboard, a Portland-based startup using technology to provide an engagement platform for communities within higher education, government and news to connect with one another. Complementing Hearken’s Engagement Management System (EMS), which allows individuals to connect with institutions such as their local newsrooms, the merged company (named Hearken) will now support organizations across multiple sectors throughout the U.S.
Block Club Chicago
While every news outlet in Chicago has provided coverage of how Chicagoans have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing police violence and civil rights efforts in the city, likely no outlets have done it with the neighborhood-level focus that nonprofit news organization Block Club Chicago has provided their readers. With financial support from paid subscribers, Block Club employs writers embedded in the neighborhoods they cover, allowing them to gain perspective from those communities hardest hit by the virus, or where police violence has been most prevalent. Block Club Chicago’s unique business and journalistic model has garnered much attention locally and nationally, providing a new standard for how local news organizations can provide fairer, more representative coverage, providing public good by keeping many of its stories unlocked and free.
Chalkbeat Chicago
Also innovating how news is captured and delivered, Chalkbeat Chicago has spent much of the last six months helping Chicago families and communities better understand the impact of COVID-19 on Chicago schools. Chalkbeat’s coverage has also extended to keeping Chicago residents informed about the decisions schools have recently made about whether to keep or remove police officers from their campuses. When Chicago Public Schools recently asked more than 70 local school councils to vote on the matter, Chalkbeat not only reported on the votes, but also created a comprehensive list and interactive map that readers can use to see how each council voted.
Change IL
As a nonpartisan, nonprofit leading systemic government and election reforms, CHANGE Illinois is helping Illinois residents not only prepare for the upcoming presidential election, but also helping residents be more fairly represented in elections for years to come. In August, CHANGE Illinois launched the “We Draw the Lines” community-mapping drive, a partnership with civic tech platform Representable, designed to connect with individuals and communities to raise awareness of Illinois’ 2021 remap, helping residents better understand the redistricting process, and providing tools and resources that communities can use to advocate for themselves, demanding better representation than they’ve previously received. CHANGE also just launched a survey to seek Chicagoans input on how their wards should be remapped using a racial equity lens. CHANGE Illinois also has been helping drive a complete census count in Illinois and is helping educate Illinoisans about their expanded safe voting options for the November election.
DataMade
After four Minneapolis police officers were captured on video and subsequently charged with murder and murder-related charges for killing George Floyd, DataMade’s founders, Eder and Forest Gregg, paused to consider how their company might respond. That led to a blog post written by the two in which they announced they would ”never again build tools or technology that supports policing or incarceration.” Eder and Gregg called on their colleagues throughout the civic tech world to also “divest themselves of technologies and contracts that support policing and incarceration. divest themselves.” Beyond that, DataMade has joined Injustice Watch and a number of other organizations in the Chicago Data Collaborative’s Criminal Justice Pilot Project, which works to get, organize and link data from throughout Chicago and Cook County “to paint a comprehensive portrait of the system as a whole.”
mRelief
In July, The Washington Post wrote about Civic Exchange Chicago member organization mRelief’s efforts to make food benefits more accessible to the millions of people struggling with food insecurity across the U.S., especially in the wake of COVID-19. mRelief’s platform allows individuals and families to text the word “food” to the number 74544 on their phones, then answer a simple ten question survey to determine their eligibility for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The platform, which also walks users through the steps of enrolling in SNAP, has allowed more than 700,000 people across the country to access benefit over the past six years. Recently, mRelief also organized a group of local charities and food bank to provide SNAP applicants with a $25 restaurant gift card.
Civic Exchange Chicago: New paths forward
When Brandel and Eder pause to reflect on the past six months, one thing becomes clear: Civic Exchange is already charting a path forward.
“It’s been heartening and amazing to see the resiliency of our Civic Exchange members,” says Eder. “Each organization was able to pivot quickly to working fully remote in March and adapt to the rising needs of our city. From Block Club’s timely and informative reporting on the COVID-19 response, to mRelief’s quick action on supporting the greater need for SNAP enrollment, I feel privileged to say I know the people who are really making a difference in this challenging time.”
“Because of COVID-19, the idea of being together in person to grow Civic Exchange has of course been put on indefinite pause, but we have a mission to fulfill that includes making Chicago's civic organizations and its leaders stronger,” Brandel says. “We know when systems start to show stress and collapse, there’s a huge need to have better ideas and tested methods at the ready. We know that the Civic Exchange companies already have tested alternative and better ways to achieve some of the missions of core institutions, and through our networks and the ingenuity of other people looking for new paths forward, we will turn out attention to reimagining what could be, and then building the networks to realize new futures.”
