United Way Worldwide

I am applying for the Elevate Prize because I truly believe our work is aligned with your call to "inspire others to act as engines for social good". The Center for Social Innovation will use data and artificial intelligence to match users with the best social innovation case studies and resources for action based on their passions and the issues emerging in their community. We're in the business of equipping every willing person to be a leader in creating social change. This alignment, and our shared view that addressing complex challenges takes diverse innovators with unique perspectives creates synergy between this competition and the vision for The Center at United Way.

I would use the Elevate Prize funding to build the digital experience of The Center and accelerate our case study development. We will use non-cash support and your ability to amplify our message to reach grass roots organizations and communities of color to claim their free membership. Member acquisition can be costly without earned media and a powerful platform.

Together, we can set an audacious goal: equip 10,000 innovators of color in the United States with the tools they need to solve social issues in their communities.

My parents, fearing for their lives, emigrated from Haiti before I was born. Unable to speak the language, they got jobs cleaning hotel rooms for minimum wage. 

Our family benefit from supportive community members and nonprofit organizations to meet basic needs and integrate into society. At the same time, my parents had a drive to serve others and give back even when they were barely making it themselves. 

That duality inspires me as I lead United Way's Innovation Department and will soon be the Executive Director of our Center for Social Innovation. Every day I live my passion: helping everyday people (people like my parents) solve community issues with innovation and technology. 

I am an inaugural Okta Nonprofit Technology Fellow and helped United Way win Fast Company Most Innovative Companies recognition and a BIG Innovation Award in the last two years. 

Personally, I'm a husband and father of two children under two. Being black and having children who are half-Haitian/half-Taiwanese connects me to the experiences of many communities. Our family feels the relevance of #BlackLivesMatter as much as #StopAsianHate. Having young children keeps me focused on a vision for an equitable future where those hashtags are no longer needed.

Too many non-profits maintain power imbalances that perpetuate inequity. When non-profits and funders define success, they often prioritize learned experience. Credentials, advanced degrees, and traditional business acumen are valued over the lived experience of people at the center of the work who have invaluable knowledge and insights. A recent study analyzing the 315 largest nonprofits found 87% of executives were white, further minimizing black and brown voices in changing their own communities.

This must change.

I am leading the Center for Social Innovation at United Way that will put the data, tools, and knowledge from our worldwide network into the hands of marginalized community members. The heart of the project is the Social Innovation Library: a digital collection of case studies based on the incredible social change projects happening in our network. The library uses a recommendation engine to serve up case studies that are most relevant to users and their local community. If a community shows signs of a rising opioid epidemic, users in that community will be served case studies, project plans, and budget templates from successful interventions that they can remix and adapt to their local context. 

In short, we're developing America's Netflix for social innovation.

I have conducted in-depth landscape analysis and a number of user interviews to confirm we are developing a needed offering that does not exist in the US.

There are two things that set the Center for Social Innovation apart as an innovative concept:

1. Data/AI supported membership model: platforms that support innovators take a passive approach to delivering content. Users must search for case studies. With our in-depth taxonomy, proprietary datasets from the United Way and 211 networks that show real-time emerging need, and widely available data (eg: census data), we can match a case study to a user before they even realize they need it for their community. Through our growing partnership with IBM, we can also tap into IBM Watson to mine news articles and social media to strengthen our understanding of emerging local issues at scale.
2. Free membership: innovation membership sites range in price. These rates price low-income to moderate-income users out of being able to access this content when we know these are groups with the deepest understanding of the issues in their communities. Our business model doesn't rely on individual membership fees from community members or grassroots nonprofits, leading to more equitable access and diverse membership.

United Way Worldwide is the leadership organization for United Ways in 40 countries. In the U.S. alone, our network invests $2B into local nonprofits. These nonprofits deliver critical health and human services that address education, financial stability, and health issues.

The Center for Social Innovation is a new initiative from United Way Worldwide. We are documenting innovation across our network and sharing what we're learning with people interested in making an impact. We have already developed a number of innovation case studies representing the best, most cutting edge projects in our network that are helping nonprofit leaders rethink how our sector delivers social services, and hosted a SouthBySouthwest session on the topic. That content will soon live in the digital Social Innovation library.

Beyond cataloging projects, our team leads development of new innovations. We just completed a year-long project called "Invisible Problems", a community crowdsourcing concept launched to surface unseen issues of the pandemic from Americans. After receiving 200 problem submissions, we engaged a top consulting firm to drive their employees to develop solutions. My team provided employees with case studies, training, data, and research to support their ideation. In the end, we received incredible new solutions.