Team4Tech

The mission of Team4Tech is to advance the quality of education for under-resourced learners around the world through local capacity-building and relevant education technology solutions. Founded in 2013, Team4Tech is a Silicon Valley-based nonprofit working to increase the number of youth and adults who are empowered with relevant skills for employment, decent jobs, and entrepreneurship (UN SDG 4.4). Through pro bono consulting projects, technology professionals are guided by Team4Tech’s expert Program Directors to bring solutions and training to education nonprofits, to help them amplify teaching and learning outcomes for under-resourced learners in grades preK-12. Our geographical focus includes Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and the Americas regions.  Our latest numbers demonstrate that Team4Tech has engaged over 1,500 corporate volunteers to help 50+ strategic nonprofit partners integrate technology to advance teaching and learning for 110,000 learners in 20+ countries. Since the initial launch of our Community of Practice, we have engaged more than 150 global nonprofits. 

Our program objectives are 100% focused on building the capacity of impactful nonprofit organizations to leverage educational technologies to advance quality learning opportunities for under-resourced learners. We achieve this objective by selecting qualified nonprofit organizations for three to five year partnership, providing them with annual grant funds to support their local initiatives that leverage educational technologies, and helping them amplify their impact through dedicated partnership managers who ensure they reach their goals and ultimately impact the educational attainment of learners.

Since its inception Team4Tech has used a human-centered design approach to continually engage stakeholders in developing, designing, and implementing solutions that are relevant at the local level, and deliver results that impact local communities. 

Team4Tech empowers local stakeholders (non-profit organizations) to set goals that are culturally relevant and grounded in the advancement of quality learning experiences. Specifically, we ask our nonprofit partners to choose metrics that make sense for their own programs in each of four categories:  learner outcomes, learner engagement, teacher and staff effectiveness, and organizational sustainability and scale.  

With these metrics in mind, we co-design a partnership roadmap with each strategic nonprofit partner, building from their assets and laying out the needs in terms of capacity building projects and technology solutions to be implemented over the three to five year partnership in order to reach the indicated goals.  Scopes of work are jointly defined to ensure that teachers and staff build digital confidence, to accelerate core learning outcomes with relevant educational software, and to build 21st skills for quality employment through project-based learning. Team4Tech grants up to $15,000 per year to the nonprofit partner, which matches the funds and makes all purchasing decisions locally.

Team4Tech’s theory of change builds from our partnership roadmap and expects that by vetting nonprofit organizations and supporting them with grants and pro bono consulting projects using skilled volunteers from corporate partners, we can (through a human-centered design process) facilitate capacity building of global nonprofit organizations to address progress towards quality learning.  Through our online community of practice, we look to share learning, tools and resources across these nonprofit organizations to cut down on unnecessary replication and help scale what works. Ultimately our work, actions, partnerships, programs, resources, and tools will demonstrate progress in addressing global sustainable development goals (specifically SDG 4.4). The major components of our theory of change are summarized below. 

Activities: We engage high-impact nonprofits in long-term collaborations where a Team4Tech program director works in partnership with the organization to set long term goals and measure impact on teachers and learners. Once specific growth areas are identified by the organization, Team4Tech’s matching grant is used to purchase the hardware and software in support of program goals. With support from teams of pro bono volunteers, technology is implemented and teachers/staff engage in trainings to scale use of the tools.

Immediate outputs: Our immediate outputs are focused on direct support, virtual support, a networked community of practice, and the engagement of both corporate and nonprofit partners. Immediate outcomes include: Team4Tech stakeholders are engaged in our Community of Practice, nonprofit organizations are connected to regional hub coordinators from Team4Tech to receive ongoing support, and Team4Tech program team members are facilitating direct programs where nonprofit organizations are able to build their own capacity to deliver quality learning experiences equitably within their local communities. 

Longer term outcomes: Our longer term outcomes are driven by our program team activities, and the work of both corporate and nonprofit partners. Ultimately those outcomes include: Nonprofit organizations are advancing their unique missions through Team4Tech supported technologies, Nonprofit organizations are improving their own delivery of quality learning experiences, and Team4Tech community of  practice members are increasing their individual knowledge and changing personal and organizational behaviors to reach sustainability and scale. 

Since its inception, Team4Tech has collected information, data, and stories of impact from our partners (both corporate and nonprofit). We have aligned measurement and evaluation reporting around four outcomes (Learner Engagement, Learner Growth, Teacher Productivity, and Sustainability and Scale for Global Nonprofit Organizations). As described below each of these four outcomes has aligned data (note that we do not have expected growth rates, improvement rates, etc. at this time). 

Learner Engagement as measured by: 

• Attendance of Learners 
• Promotion Rate of Learners 
• Learner Motivation
• Frequency of Technology Use for Academic Purposes

Learner Growth as measured by:

• Pass Rate of Learners 
• Graduation Rate of Learners 
• Assessment Scores of Learners 
• Internship/job opportunities of Learners 
• STEM achievements of Learners 

Teacher Productivity as measured by:

• Knowledge and skills attainment and use of teachers 
• Efficiency of teachers in using technology 
• Motivation of teachers to use technology 
• Confidence Of teachers to use technology 
• Creativity of teachers to use technology 
• Collaboration among teachers 
• Total Number of  Learners Reached

Sustainability And Scale of Nonprofit Organizations as measured by:

• Adding Centers/Programs
• Additional PD/Workshops
• Outreach/Events
• Community Partnerships
• Government Uptake

Currently, Team4Tech is operationalizing our evidence practices between levels one and two on the Nesta scale. Meaning that we can describe what we do and how it matters in a logical and coherent way. While we are consistently capturing some data, we have not yet achieved causality (i.e., we cannot confirm that we were the cause of the changes that are noted in data collected from partnering organizations). We have a measurement and evaluation team that is providing monthly updates to the entire Team4Tech organization. 

Team4Tech has not yet participated in any comparison, matched set comparison, experimental, or quasi-experimental evaluation of our work. We have spent the last eight years achieving organizational sustainability, piloting methods of engagement, and addressing the unexpected flux that came with the COVID-19 pandemic. It is important to note that a strength of Team4Tech is in the processes and mapping of our partnerships and programs. However, we must achieve more clarity around the mapping of our Team4Tech inputs, our organizational outputs, and ultimately our impact directly on learners. Team4Tech is primed to move forward in solidifying our outcomes and impact, grounded in the actual implementation of the work (rather than the initial theoretical models that we created). 

Currently, Team4Tech works with each NPO partner to select one metric from each outcome category that best aligns with their own mission and goals. The NPO partner is then required to provide semi-annual updates (note metrics under each outcome category as stated below). 

Additionally, each NPO partner and their projects are unique. Team4Tech encourages our local NPO partners to select additional indicators that are most relevant to project implementation. These short-term outputs are specific to the scope and goals of each project.

The majority of the monthly reported program data is qualitative in nature, telling the story of the work being completed. There is also some initial data on the newly piloted online community of practice, however this data is limited at this time to tracking the number of members and some ancillary data around participation. Beginning in July 2022, Team4Tech is moving to a new Community of Practice platform that will provide more easily accessible data (including engagement metrics, retention, and more). These data have not yet been articulated into the current theory of change and/or logic model that aligns resources, activities, outputs, outcomes, or impact.  

Learner Engagement as measured by: 

• Attendance of Learners 
• Promotion Rate of Learners 
• Learner Motivation
• Frequency of Technology Use for Academic Purposes

Learner Growth as measured by:

• Pass Rate of Learners 
• Graduation Rate of Learners 
• Assessment Scores of Learners 
• Internship/job opportunities of Learners 
• STEM achievements of Learners 

Teacher Productivity as measured by:

• Knowledge and skills attainment and use of teachers 
• Efficiency of teachers in using technology 
• Motivation of teachers to use technology 
• Confidence Of teachers to use technology 
• Creativity of teachers to use technology 
• Collaboration among teachers 
• Total Number of  Learners Reached

Sustainability And Scale of Nonprofit Organizations as measured by:

• Adding Centers/Programs
• Additional PD/Workshops
• Outreach/Events
• Community Partnerships
• Government Uptake

Investigating program activities, theory of change, and measures to re-articulate impact and identify causal relationships of the partnerships Team4Tech ignites. 

Team4Tech stands to significantly benefit from hosting a LEAP project. Currently, our organization has a formidable story to tell, that is evident by the global-outreach stories of impact. However, we continue to be challenged to scale our impact even more broadly and the pandemic has brought new urgency for our work. The past few years, Team4Tech has seen the pool of applicants for strategic partnerships grow exponentially. To keep up with the demand, we developed new programming models to include virtual support through Design for Impact workshops and Skills for Impact consulting projects. Given the impact of COVID-19 on our organizational strategy we are in a prime position to work with LEAP Fellows to achieve a new level of clarity around our model, our reach, and ultimately our impact. 

As we reflect on our logic model and theory of change, we have our resources and activities as static elements. Our currently identified outputs and outcomes are complex, hard to articulate, and convoluted by our dynamic partnership roadmap. As an agile organization that is continually learning, we would welcome the opportunity to have LEAP Fellows clarify our outputs, outcomes, and impacts. In addition, we would welcome their support in identifying measures that can be used to demonstrate impact in both qualitative and quantitative means across projects. 

As we move to scale our programs we need to be able to clarify the relevance of our measures to our nonprofit partners (i.e., find common measures that allow for localized contexts, yet address cumulatively our organization impact). Further, we must strengthen our causal impact (i.e., continue to define what quality learning is in service to our efforts in human-centered design and localized impact across a diverse range of under-resourced communities.)  

The research question that we would like to pose to LEAP Fellows is: Given its current practice, what causal impact does Team4Tech achieve?

We would anticipate that relevant deliverables for our project would include an updated theory of change, a logic model, suggested measures, and if possible (understanding the time constraints) an evaluation plan that the team could implement internally that could support a further experimental or quasi-experimental study. 

As we consider the benefits for our organization, we are excited about the potential for this project to allow us to re-center our work, streamline activities that are directly aligned to impact, and provide a framework for growth based on clearly identified impacts and measures that can move our organization forward. It is expected that the result of our project will be two-fold, (1) creating organizational alignment to empower better service to our stakeholders and (2) creating stronger organizational systems that will support sustainability and scale. 

To support the direction of our strategic plan, over the next five years, we will broaden and deepen Team4Tech’s impact in education through our work as a nonprofit impact accelerator. To do this, we are further localizing our support at a regional level through our Sub-Saharan Africa Hub in Nairobi, Kenya, and our South Asia Hub in Delhi, India. These hubs help us build a new layer of programming that adds multi-dimensional, ongoing support to Team4Tech’s quality resources and contextually skilled staff. Additionally, our community of practice will enable us to reach vastly more nonprofits and leverage the strengths of all our partners in service of nonprofit capacity-building. 

Hosting a LEAP project will have a significant impact over these next five years, in that the results of that project will develop a strong foundation to our work that will help us say yes to the right things, and no to those things that may distract us from our ultimate goals. In addition, as we onboard four new board members in the next year, the LEAP project will enhance our capacity to communicate our goals, board expectations, and more. Ultimately, the LEAP project will provide us with an answer to our biggest question: How can we capture the dynamic nature of our work that makes an unquestionable difference to under-resourced areas, in a way that ensures relevance and shows how this great work could not happen without Team4Tech? 

Team4Tech engages a global community of non-profit organizations, it is expected that our learning from the proposed LEAP project will be shared through our Community of Practice through direct training and resources to further the reach of what our internal lessons are during the time in which we collaborate with LEAP Fellows.