Microsoft Solutions for Good Proposal from Caravan Studios

Caravan Studios, a division of TSG 1 | P a g e

4Bells: Deploy Known Volunteers Submitted by Caravan Studios, a division of TechSoup Global

Caravan Studios, a division of TechSoup Global, respectfully requests [redacted] in support of the redesign and launch of the 4Bells mobile app, which helps nonprofits and local groups to deploy known volunteers in response to urgent, time-‐sensitive community needs.

1. Provide a brief overview of what your solution is, what issue area it’s focused on, and what you hope to achieve with it. The 4Bells mobile app allows nonprofits and local groups to deploy known volunteers to meet urgent, time-‐sensitive requests. For example, a Neighborhood Emergency Response Team (NERT) can pre-‐register local volunteers with specific skills (e.g., medical, construction, electrical) and then deploy those volunteers to meet urgent requests when the need arises.

In this project, we will redesign the existing 4Bells prototype to meet the specific needs of local first responder groups, such as NERTs, so that 4Bells can be adopted and deployed in the case of a disaster.

2. Describe in detail the problem you are trying to solve, how your proposed solutions solves/addresses the problem, and how this support would help you achieve your goals.

In a disaster, communities need to be prepared to provide basic support services for up to three days. But this level of support can be difficult to consistently establish, particularly when formal emergency medical and rescue teams are required in more hard hit areas or are unable to physically access a specific location. Volunteer-‐based emergency groups, such as Neighborhood Emergency Response Teams (NERTs), can help fill such critical support gaps.

These on-‐call emergency groups recruit, vet, and organize volunteers in advance of a disaster. When an emergency situation does hit, they need to ensure that volunteers with specific skills—such as medical or construction skills—are deployed quickly and appropriately. And no matter how robust the planning, exact response needs are unknown until there is an actual disaster, requiring these groups to maintain a large and varied roster of skilled volunteers through which they need to rapidly and effectively sort and then deploy, track, and coordinate during an emergency in an affected location.

4Bells allows emergency response groups and organizations to quickly geolocate volunteers and to then deploy them against very specific requests that require their skills in affected communities.

Here’s how 4Bells works:

1. For the volunteer: • Once the volunteer has been accepted by the organization, they receive a connection code

for the organization. At that point, the volunteer can download the app and use the code to connect to the organization.

• The volunteer signs up to receive appropriate alerts based on their skill and engagement level.

• When a disaster strikes, the volunteer receives a text message that an incident requires their skills.

• They can respond to the request to receive additional details.

4Bells: Deploying Known Volunteers


• They can respond to the request by declining the opportunity, accepting the opportunity, or serving as an alternate.

• When they complete the opportunity, they can add details as well as check the opportunity as completed.

• If they are unable to complete the opportunity, they can return it and notify the organization or group that another volunteer is needed.

2. For the requesting group or organization: • The organization or group signs up for an account, including establishing a series of criteria

for their volunteers and categories for their requests • Using TechSoup Global’s NGOk, the organization or group can be immediately validated as a

nonprofit, or go through a vetting procedure. o Vetted organizations receive a badge indicating they are nonprofit organization. o Groups that do not go through the vetting process have designated limits in using the

system. • They instruct volunteers to connect using the process described above • When a disaster strikes, they use the system to send out designated requests • They can review typical administrative information:

o Number of volunteers. o Active responses. o Pending responses. o Response times.

• In addition, they can use the system to contact volunteers, in predetermined time periods, to ensure they are still active and their skills are still current.

The requested support for this project would allow us to pivot and use the design established in the prototype to be developed in HTML5; conduct a pilot period; refine the technology based on pilot feedback; and formally launch the app by including it in relevant mobile app marketplaces and conducting outreach to emergency groups regarding its use and benefits.

3. Specify the target audience of your solution – who will use it? Who will benefit from it?

While a wide variety of nonprofits and community groups could use and benefit from 4Bells, this project will direct the app toward the specific emergency deployment needs of emergency response and recovery groups.

To connect with these groups, we will reach out to Neighborhood Emergency Response Teams (NERTs), firefighters, police officers, and other first responders to validate the specific needs.

Additionally, as the app is developed, we will work with these groups—as we do in other projects—to develop an advisory committee that provides appropriate overall governance for 4Bells as well as ongoing input to the app’s development.

While these emergency response teams will be the immediate users of 4Bells, the community broadly is the beneficiary. By providing a reliable way to deploy skilled volunteers after a disaster, 4Bells allows communities to sustain themselves immediately after an emergency. It also allows volunteers to be confidently deployed in a wide variety of situations.

4. Identify the key stakeholders for the solution, their contact information, the role they’re playing, and how their skillset is applicable to the solution development.

• Caravan Studios, a division of TechSoup Global: lead team in charge of strategy, community engagement, outreach

o [redacted]



• JayStack, technology development lead o [redacted]

• TechSoup.org, one of the primary potential distributors of the app o [redacted]

5. Describe how your solution will leverage Microsoft technologies and why you selected Microsoft technologies. We will leverage a number of different Microsoft technologies, as discussed below.

Microsoft Windows Azure platform Virtual Machines Azure VMs are ideal candidates to host the server-‐side components of the 4Bells app. Azure helps set up a service endpoint (without investing into hardware) and scale the services on-‐demand in cases of increasing load on the server. The cloud-‐based hosting of the business services is the right strategic approach in case of 4Bells app, Furthermore Azure is a very mature, flexible and feature-‐rich platform. According to our experience, Azure provides a great availability that is very expensive to reach with self-‐hosted servers.

Microsoft IIS Microsoft IIS is a robust web server that will serve the 4Bells client app.

Microsoft SQL Server 2012 – Microsoft Azure SQL Database MSSQL is our default storage technology. Microsoft released a wide range of editions that fit both to small business apps and large enterprise projects. MSSQL databases are easy to deploy and maintain, the development and management tools are very advanced and well-‐understood among the developers.

Microsoft .NET, Visual Studio 2013 The .NET platform is an advanced development platform with a robust IDE. Therefore, our preferred server-‐side language will be C#.

Microsoft Entity Framework Microsoft .NET developers experienced an enormous improvement in the productivity of database management since the first RTM version of Entity Framework. In the last couple of years, Entity Framework became a de-‐facto standard of .NET data operations. The server-‐side data manager layer of the 4Bells app will be built to EF, so source code can be easily understood and extended by all the .NET developers in the future.

OData protocol produced by ASP.NET Web API OData makes third party application integrations easy with REST-‐ful API. OData dissolves the boundaries of web services and will help other organizations to discover and explore our back-‐end services without digging into the documentation or unnecessarily exposing the data that needs to remain secure.

We have two options for administrative dashboards: • Generated excel files. • MS Reporting Services, if desired

MS Office Excel There are many cases of data reporting that cannot be foreseen and custom chart/report must be built on-‐demand. Our goal is to provide a set of data to our colleagues in an Excel document that is generated on the server-‐side from the current records stored in the SQL tables. Alternatively, this can be achieved by producing a live OData/XML feed that can be opened with Office Excel and can be processed and transformed by staff.



Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services The continuous monitoring of volunteers is one of the most important jobs for participating organizations. We may provide daily reports, stats and KPIs on Microsoft SQL Server Reporting Services to maximize our potentials and dedicate our resources to the proper fields of charity.

6. Provide a detailed communications plan for how you will raise awareness of the solution and Microsoft’s support.

Project phase Target audience Channel/Communications Intended result 1. Technical Development

• NERTs, first responders, appropriate government agencies

• Direct outreach. • Product demos and

overviews. • Reviews of technical

standards. • Exposure to other

partners. • Exposure to selected

technologies.

• Robust advisory committee to inform development but also support outreach.

2. Pilot • Selected NERTs and first responders.

• Disaster relief and recovery organizations.

• Other volunteer heavy organizations.

• Direct Outreach. • Regular product

demos. • Early access to all

portions of the product.

• Access to marketing and communications materials, include technical specs.

• Product feedback. • Feedback on

outbound marketing materials.

• Training and support materials feedback.

• Create a core of evangelists and early adopters.

3. Launch • NERTs • First responders. • Disaster and

recovered organizations

• Other volunteer heavy NGOs

• Emails, TechSoup catalog, ad purchases, social media support.

• In-‐person outreach from pilot participants and advisory committee members.

• Public Relations outreach to appropriate nonprofit, social benefit and technical press.

• Launch parties and Microsoft Stores and other community locations.

• Adoption from disaster groups

• Adoption from other volunteer heavy NGOs

• Volunteer adoption and coordination

7. Provide detailed outcome targets and a plan on how you will track, measure, and communicate results against your targets.



Target Track Measure Communicate Get 4-‐10 nonprofits to pilot the solution and/or we will have a minimum of 4 pilot sites.

In the backend CRM, we can see which organizations are registered.

How many organizations are registered in the system?

Each pilot organization should have 5-‐20 volunteers or should have a minimum of 5 volunteers across a minimum of two categories.

In the backend CRM, we can see how many volunteers each organizations has per category.

Minimum and Average number of volunteers per pilot organization and how many of their categories have registered volunteers.

Each pilot organization should send a minimum of 5 opportunities per month across at least 2 categories.

In the backend CRM, we can track how many opportunities are sent by each organization and how many volunteers received each opportunity.

Minimum and Average number of opportunities per pilot organization and how many of their categories were used to send those opportunities.

Each pilot organization should have a response rate of at least 50% of opportunities posted. Response = claimed and either returned or completed.

In the backend CRM, we can track how many opportunities are claimed, returned and completed by each volunteer.

Minimum and Average percent of claimed, returned and completed opportunities per pilot organization and numbers by volunteer.

Dashboard. Access to only org specific data for administrators. System wide anonymized reports, perhaps split by vertical.

User satisfaction. Users = organizations and volunteers

Send periodic surveys to active (and inactive) organizations and volunteers.

Measure their qualitative satisfaction with the effectiveness of the system

Report shared with product manager, developers and necessary partners.

8. Provide a detailed budget, specifying the amount of funding or in-‐kind support you are requesting, what those funds would be used for, and what portion of the budget those funds represent.

[redacted]

To ensure the sustainability of 4Bells, we will work with stakeholders and our advisory committee to develop business models such as a mix of donations and service fees, one-‐time start up fees from participating organizations, and/or subscription fees from participating organizations.

9. Be sure to identify any existing or potential partners and what role they would play (support, inform, connect, create, enable, govern, fund, leverage, measure, research).

In the design, development, and launch of a new technology solution, such as a mobile app, it is Caravan Studio’s standard practice to engage an Advisory Committee comprised of a range of stakeholders who bring unique and vital perspective to the solution. These Advisory Committees generally meet monthly and provide feedback on issues ranging from community engagement,



outreach messaging, use case scenarios, testing/piloting, and business planning. Listed below is an outline of the types of Advisory Committee expertise that we intend to engage in support of 4Bells.

Connect • Governmental disaster response agencies • Library staff and support groups • Disaster groups such as NetHope

Inform, Enable, Govern, and Leverage • NERTs • First responders, such as firefighters and police officers • Disaster response and recovery organizations such as NetHope members • Government groups such as Corporation for National Community Service FEMACorps

programs

Support, Create, Measure, and Research • Caravan Studios, a division of TechSoup Global • TechSoup Global • JayStack

Fund • Microsoft

10. Be sure to identify any other sources of additional funding or in-‐kind support.

The 4Bells prototype was created, pro bono, by JayStack.

11. Please include any additional information in the appendix, including links to websites, diagrams, images, multimedia, etc. Beta version: http://www.windowsphone.com/s?appid=ec8e6bee-‐530b-‐4892-‐8787-‐b39aaba4b220

Please refer to the “4Bells Early Designs” pdf file included with this application for additional design concepts/

Technology

Microsoft Solutions for Good Proposal from Caravan Studios