DemocracyLab: Upskilling volunteers

Society isn’t equitable, and many capable people have been obstructed from participating in the tech economy. 

DemocracyLab empowers everyone with the privileges of time and talent to become change agents. Our platform and programs connect tech-for-good projects with skilled volunteers and socially responsible companies. We help projects launch without funding, companies build cultures of purpose, and volunteers to upskill and advance their careers.

With volunteers and/or projects from every inhabited continent, DemocracyLab has already branched out from its Seattle roots. If scaled globally, DemocracyLab’s open-source platform would drive civic tech innovation and broaden participation in the digital workforce, creating opportunities to overcome systemic barriers that prevent many people from entering the tech economy.

Capitalism is good at solving problems that can be addressed profitably. Many of the world’s most challenging (wicked) problems have no obvious profitable solutions. Humanity will have to invent its way out of its current crises, and technology will be critical to our success.

Capable people are shut out of the tech economy. Hispanic and Black people are underrepresented in tech by 59 percent and 33 percent, respectively. Women, a growing sector in the U.S. workforce, are underrepresented in tech by 50 percent. Many individuals from underrepresented communities who are interested in pursuing a career in tech have acquired the skills to work in their desired profession, but struggle to find a job due to a lack of real-world experience.

Skilled volunteering creates opportunities for individuals to gain experience, build their portfolios, grow their networks and make an impact, but despite the immense need to co-create solutions to our wicked problems, too few of these opportunities are easy to discover and contribute to efficiently.

DemocracyLab is a community and open source online platform connecting key stakeholders in the tech-for-good ecosystem.

Our platform and programs:

1. Launch tech-for-good projects. DemocracyLab creates a consistent pipeline of skilled volunteer labor that helps inspiring projects launch. This disrupts the chicken-and-egg problem of needing funding to build a product, a product to create impact, and impact to get funding.

2. Accelerate career advancement. Participating in DemocracyLab helps volunteers gain new skills and experience, expand their networks, and build their portfolios. These opportunities give people from underrepresented backgrounds a chance to overcome obstacles, while positioning themselves as high-talent, high-character potential employees.

3. Deliver culture-shaping engagement experiences. DemocracyLab creates value for companies and universities through unique engagement experiences and sponsorship opportunities. Our events help organizations build a culture of purpose and spark innovation. Companies that sponsor our public hackathons differentiate their brand and position themselves as an employer of choice for our diverse community of skilled volunteers.

Taken together, our three core audiences—tech-for-good projects, skilled volunteers, and tech companies—create a virtuous ecosystem that is showing great promise as a low-cost, high impact, scalable solution to launch tech-for-good products, democratize tech-sector employment opportunities, and shape purpose-driven corporate cultures.

Our solution serves individuals who are underrepresented in the tech economy, primarily those who are unemployed and/or economically disadvantaged, including Black and Hispanic peoples, as well as women. Individuals from these communities may be financially insecure due to a lack of employment or a network to support their budding careers. Moreover, they may lack institutional connections available to students graduating from prestigious universities, which help their graduates to find work and keep employers coming back to the same pool of applicants educated by elite universities.

DemocracyLab honors its commitment to inclusivity, community building, and transparency by directly involving volunteers in the solution process as a tech-for-good nonprofit run by volunteers, for volunteers. To understand contributors’ needs, we have collected information through surveys to curate meaningful opportunities that empower volunteers to practice and build their existing skill sets, as well as quantify our impact. In one survey, 84 percent of respondents indicated that they were motivated to volunteer with us to upskill and work collaboratively with like-minded peers.

Our data-driven approach to volunteer inclusion and commitment to diversifying the tech industry will address the needs of underrepresented individuals by providing them with meaningful career-building opportunities and a platform to showcase their work to employers through their DemocracyLab profiles.

DemocracyLab’s open-source platform reduces barriers to entering the digital workforce by helping individuals aspiring to careers in tech to upskill by contributing to tech-for-good projects. This solution is well-suited for individuals who have the skills, but not the real-world experience employers seek. Our target population is underemployed, unemployed and/or economically disadvantaged individuals, who are well-aligned to this challenge. Our solution is free and open to anyone. We have observed that our volunteers are significantly more diverse than the tech industry and that 84% of participants in our programs state that career advancement is motivation for participating.

DemocracyLab’s solution is in the growth stage. Though we launched in Seattle in 2018, we now have projects and/or volunteers from every inhabited continent thanks to our adoption of asynchronous and remote work prior to the pandemic. One growth example is our “A Better Tech-a-thon” event, which we are convening in October in collaboration with NYU, the Public Interest Technology University Network, and Code for America. The event will engage students and faculty from many of the country's most outstanding universities, professionals from tech companies, and members of Code for America's Brigade Network to contribute to impactful tech-for-good projects. This event will give grassroots volunteers the opportunity to work side by side with students, faculty, and professionals to improve their skills, grow their networks, and advance their careers.

DemocracyLab has adapted to the future of work and is well-poised to expand the reach of our tech-for-good projects.

DemocracyLab’s two most significant innovations are our business model and culture. We focus on creating value for tech-for-good projects, skilled volunteers, and socially responsible companies. This sustainable ecosystem helps projects launch, volunteers upskill and leverage their experiences to land tech jobs, and companies build cultures of purpose.

Our MVP helped projects to launch by connecting them with skilled volunteers. Along the way, we discovered our volunteers are motivated by career advancement opportunities and that our volunteer community is more diverse than the tech industry. Realizing that we lack a paying customer, we adapted our public bi-monthly hackathon events to meet the culture-building needs of corporate and institutional clients. We are working on features to make it easier for our corporate clients to recruit employees from our volunteer pool. We are excited to have identified a paying customer and multiple methods of value creation, adding to our financial sustainability.

DemocracyLab is a volunteer-driven organization. Though we now have 2 full-time employees, the lion’s share of our production is attributable to the 50-75 skilled volunteers who attend their teams’ weekly meetings and contribute to our platform and programs. Several key cultural principles have helped nurture the intrinsic motivation of our volunteer base, including transparency, collaboration, civility, inclusivity, and democracy.

DemocracyLab’s business model is centered around understanding the intentions and motivations of our three stakeholders—volunteers, tech-for-good projects, and corporations—and creating value between them.

Our open-source platform uses the MIT license. The specific technologies we use include Python (using the Django framework), Javascript (using the React framework), using PostgreSQL in the database layer.

Tech-for-good projects partnering with DemocracyLab are using skilled volunteer labor to achieve outcomes that would have otherwise been impossible. Over 140 projects use our platform and/or participate in our bi-monthly hackathons. These projects have cumulatively benefited from over 20,000 hours of skilled volunteer labor, creating over $2M of public value. The projects impact the lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Examples include:

ShelterApp used DemocracyLab volunteers to build an AI chatbot to help connect unhoused individuals with available resources. The app has been downloaded from the Android Play store more than 150,000 times.

Council Data Project transcribes published videos of City Council proceedings, makes them searchable, and overlays relevant information about votes. The tool is used by citizens and journalists to encourage civic engagement. DemocracyLab volunteers helped transform the project from a tool only a developer could use to one anyone could love.

Volunteers contributing to DemocracyLab gain valuable experience and connections that advance their careers. The most common reason given by volunteers ending their volunteer commitment is that they have obtained a full-time job and no longer have the capacity to contribute. We are working on techniques to better measure volunteers’ career advancement outcomes, but the anecdotal evidence of our intended impact is compelling.

Tech companies see great value in our customized employee engagement programs. 73% of participants in our corporate tech-for-good employee engagement programs reported an increased enthusiasm for their job. This will shape corporate culture, reduce employee turnover, and add to the bottom line.

Due to its open nature, projects listed on our platform undergo only a light vetting process before they are publicly visible. Projects must be either open source or benenfit nonprofits or governments (or ideally both). It is therefore possible that projects on our platform could have unintended negative consequences if the projects conception of "good" doesn't turn out to be grounded in reality. 

This problem is addressed by DemocracyLab's collaborative community, where project leaders and volunteers can provide feedback on the means and ends projects are pursuing. This often helps projects identify blind spots and course correct if necessary.

Our solution currently serves 3,600 registered users. In one year, we expect to serve 10,000 users. By 2026, we expect to have 50,000 users in addition to having 25 of the Fortune 500 companies engage with us as clients. We have projects and/or volunteers from every inhabited continent, but the base of our operations continues to be in the US (context for the previous question). Google Analytics says that our user breakdown by country for 2021 is (top 10):

United States 57%

India 6%

United Kingdom 3%

Canada 3%

Philippines 2%

Australia 2%

Germany 2%

China 1%

Pakistan 1%

DemocracyLab has succeeded in building an impactful tech product and community driven by volunteer effort. We have also succeeded in monetizing our employee engagement events and attracting paying customers. 

Using revenue generated from these events, our next steps are to hire professional staff to better lead our growing teams of volunteers, more effectively engage our volunteers, and increase the scale of our operations.

We currently employ our Executive Director and Engineering Lead. In 2022, we will hire a Lead Designer and Lead Product Manager. In 2023, we will hire a Lead User Researcher, Lead Development Officer, Sales Team Lead, and an Events Team Lead. Additional hires will follow in subsequent years.

With respect to volunteer engagement, we aim to advance contributors’ career development goals by improving how their progress in this area is measured and allowing recruiters to browse projects they have contributed to.

We will create revenue to achieve these goals by marketing tech-for-good corporate employee engagement opportunities to tech companies, and by whitelabeling our skills-based volunteering platform for their use.

To measure DemocracyLab’s impact on its volunteers, we are partnering with Dr. James Herbsleb of Carnegie Mellon University and Alexander Nolte of the University of Tartu, both of whom have published extensively on software development communities and practices. We are seeking to measure differences in project success rates and impact based on participation in DemocracyLab.

We are also working to collect longitudinal data from volunteers to determine our impact on their desired professions. These include background, demographic and career progression information in addition to qualitative portraits on significant individual volunteer experiences to analyze and learn from typical and outlying cases.

Moreover, we have formulated Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) which we track and report on a weekly basis. 

DemocracyLab has two full-time staff, ten members on its board of directors, and many contributing volunteers (169 of whom have been active on Slack in the past week).

Our platform to help skilled volunteers find tech-for-good projects is being built by skilled volunteers who found us because they're looking for tech-for-good projects to contribute to. We are eating our own cooking, and it's delicious!

DemocracyLab’s Board of Directors have worked at organizations like the State of Washington, Amazon, and Microsoft:

As Director of Economic Development & Governor’s Sector Lead in the State of Washington’s Information & Communication Technology sector, Steven Maheshwary is committed to growing Washington’s startup ecosystem and tech workforce. He brings his network of public-private partnerships, along with other tech connections gained through board commitments, to the team.

As Senior Director Head of Innovation at Avast, Daria Loi brings a wealth of experience in design strategy and user experience research and innovation. She is also committed to diversity and inclusion, having been recognized as one of Italy’s 50 most inspiring women in tech and a recipient of Intel’s Global Diversity & Inclusion Award.

Elizabeth Scallon, Go To Market & Operations at Amazon’s Alexa Startup & Fund and an award-winning leader in the Pacific Northwest startup ecosystem, brings her proven ability to connect startup founders and investors. As a LGBTQ+ individual, she also brings her unique perspective and ability to spotlight and develop outsider voices to DemocracyLab’s Board of Directors.

60% of DemocracyLab’s board are female and 50% identify as people of color, uniquely positioning them to serve the interests of our volunteers, many of whom belong to one or both of these underrepresented groups in tech.

To authentically embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion, diverse individuals must be meaningfully made part of the decision-making process. DemocracyLab recognizes this and aims to integrate these diverse perspectives in our leadership teams. We have already achieved our DEI goal of 50% women/BIPOC. Currently, 60% of our Board of Directors and 50% of our volunteer team leads are female. Additionally, 50% of our board and over 40% of team leads identify as people of color.

One way DemocracyLab strives to be an equity engine is through the democratic election of team leads every quarter. After stating their candidacy, prospective team leaders are voted in by volunteers who have participated in the past quarter using an approval voting system. The candidate with the highest approval percentage is then elected to serve as the team lead for the upcoming calendar quarter. The diversity of our team leadership is reflective of the diversity or our team and our organization's culture, both of which we are proud of.

We are applying to the 2021 Digital Workforce Challenge to gain funding and advance diversity in tech through project-volunteer connections facilitated on our open source platform. DemocracyLab's two major barriers to success are attracting funding to grow and engaging more organizations with its platform.

Solve can help to address both of these barriers through the grant funding provided to selected Fellows, along with Solve’s network of mentors and product/service distribution experts. Working with Solve’s team of distribution experts will help us to expand our impact by expanding our corporate and institutional client base, as well as attract more projects to our platform. This, in turn, will contribute to the sustainability of our organization.

Our platform and events are online and accessible to anyone with an internet connection. Most of our team is based in the United States, with the greatest concentration of volunteers in the Seattle metro area.

Most of the projects on our platform have been initiated in the United States and serve the US population.

With that said, we have seen significant increases in the number of international projects and volunteers since the beginning of the pandemic, and are excited for this growth to continue.

DemocracyLab would benefit from a partnership with Solve in three ways:

1. Financial. Solve’s financial support and mentorship network can help us to attract more funding to grow our organization, as well as improve our accounting practices and financial projections.

2. Monitoring & Evaluation. Improving our monitoring and evaluation practices will allow us to better service volunteers by improving the career development opportunities offered to contributors. This will help to diversify the tech industry and prepare people for the future work. Our user research team is currently collecting volunteer data and DemocracyLab has partnered with experts on software development communities and practices to measure differences in impact based on participation in DemocracyLab.

Product / Service Distributions. Solve’s web of distribution experts can help us to engage more organizations—those requiring technical assistance, as well as corporate and institutional partners—with our platform. This will not only add to the variety of tech-for-good projects already listed on our platform and enhance career development opportunities for volunteers, but will also pull more paying customers into our employee engagement events.

DemocracyLab is seeking to deepen our partnerships with like-minded organizations, including the Public Interest Technology Network, of which MIT is a member. We are also seeking to open up our tech-for-good hackathons to online universities and community colleges.

DemocracyLab was founded with the intention to help volunteers upskill and gain practical experience. Having partnered with elite universities across the U.S. to organize tech-for-good hackathons, we want to return to our roots by bringing this experience to students at online universities and community colleges aspiring to careers in tech, where these barriers to entering the tech industry are more prevalent. In May, we organized such an event for the Western Governors University and engaged students from five community colleges. In the future, we hope to organize more events like this to address barriers to entering the digital workforce, as well as promote equity and inclusion in tech by providing more opportunities for contributors to upskill and gain real-world experience.