BSS System Automation

Scaling to meet community needs

Objectives

Goal: Direct the enormous goodwill and resources in our Slack network into as much mutual aid as possible. The frictionless, the better.

Delivery Volunteers

Comm.

Funds

Intake Volunteers

Neighbors in Need

Objectives

Goal: Direct the enormous goodwill and resourcefulness in our Slack network into as much mutual aid as possible. The frictionless, the better.

Delivery Volunteers

Comm.

Funds

Intake Volunteers

Neighbors in Need

v0: 1 Slack Channel + 1 Google Sheet

v0: 1 Slack Channel + 1 Google Sheet

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Used for 1 week: March 14 - March 20

300 flyers

0 → 1600 people on Slack

65 deliveries

$4000 from 70 donors

Learnings from week 0

• Using quadrants helped us make a large neighborhood more manageable; most delivery volunteers don’t have cars

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• Created category of “intake volunteers” to take calls and route requests to delivery volunteers; created intake shifts, trainings, and call scripts

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• Delivery volunteers get reimbursed through Bed-Stuy Strong Community Fund (more on that later!)

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• Early learnings -- setting expectations about our service (restricted to Bed-Stuy, spending cap based on household size, buy enough food for a week) early -- because word spreads fast and what you communicate ends up defining your operations!

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• We also needed better technical databases and tools to store request information (grocery requests, name, address, phone number) and also to automate these systems as much as possible…. On to our technical tools and systems next!

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Our Tools

What is it

Spreadsheet-database hybrid

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Good for

(Relatively) intuitive / lightweight relational databases and forms!

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How we’re using it

• Volunteer management
• Inbound message management
• Intake ticket record keeping
• Reimbursement accounting
• Data analysis & reporting (including inventory!)

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Expenses

Free trial to start. Free subscription for COVID-19 response

What is it

Web application integration tool

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Good for

No-code automation

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How we used it

• Writing Google Voice messages to Airtable
• Dispatching intake tickets from Airtable to Slack

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Expenses

Free trial to start. Free (low-level) subscription for COVID-19 response (note - we quickly hit granted plan’s task limit)

Our Tools

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What is it

Online phone service for calls, voicemail, and SMS.

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Good for

Easy out of the box set up with a gmail account.

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How we’re using it

Voicemail and text messages

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Cons

• Forces intake volunteers to use personal phone
• Running out of Zapier tasks
• Crowds Gmail inbox
• No NYC area code

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Expenses

Free at first but we had to upgrade to a corporate google account ($5/user/month)

What is it

Cloud-based communications platform to programatically make/receive calls and texts using APIs.

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Good for

More robust automation with phone and text messages.

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How we’re using it

Voicemail and text messages

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Why we’re switching to this

• Unlimited automation
• Call back numbers
• NYC area code

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Expenses

Very cheap (+ $500 in free credits for COVID-19 response)

v1: Airtable + Zapier + 10 Intake Volunteers

v1: Airtable + Zapier + 10 Intake Volunteers

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Built in 2 days

Used for 1 week: March 21 - 28

450 inbound calls/texts

130 deliveries

$12,000 from 400 donors

322 volunteer sign ups

v2: Custom Infra and 45+ Intake Volunteers

v2: Custom Infra and 45+ Intake Volunteers

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Built in 1 week

In use since March 29

160+ inbound calls/texts per day

42+ intake tickets per day

200+ deliveries per week

$4,000 spent on groceries a day, 18% donated

475+ total signed up volunteers

*Grey fields - generated from scripts or formulas

*White fields - manually entered

*Color fields - relational field

A bit on our cloud infrastructure

Requirements:

• The system must be flexible, and composable
• The code and infrastructure should be accessible
• The data needs to be accessible to all intake volunteers
• Minimize the interaction between delivery and intake volunteers

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Principles:

• No overengineering--always keep our org’s goals in mind!
• All information needs to be easily accessible by all volunteers (i.e. via Airtable)
• Low technical barrier to entry
• Avoid services that require deployment/maintenance (e.g. servers)
• Avoid solutions that lock us into one framework/vendor

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*Authored by George - One of our brilliant tech leads

Tools:

• Airtable: the central place for all of our data (volunteer info, intake tickets, inventory, etc.)
• Slack API: for interacting with volunteers, especially delivery volunteers
• Twilio: for automated inbound requests
• Google Cloud Functions (“function”): for triggered actions between services (e.g. new volunteer in Airtable -> add volunteer to Slack group)
• These functions will be triggered by APIs of products we use (or via polling) and manually via Airtable scripts

Recent Updates: Improving ticket awareness

We scaled quickly! But Slack got noisy quickly and mounting requests have piled on.

Challenge: Daily delivery backlog is ~100+ requests, some more than 10 days old.

• Daily BSS welcome calls / delivery trainings and active delivery volunteer recruitment
• Live open ticket list and map
• Restricting Slack posts to most urgent requests and delivery clusters
• Daily digest of 20 oldest tickets via Slack
• Piloting bulk purchases and grocery shuttles
• Integration with other groups (MutualAid.nyc)

Our Process: Intake

Intake Volunteers are trained on speaking with neighbors who reach us by voicemail or text.

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They learn what the neighbor needs, explain how we can help, and translate the request into a “ticket” for our delivery volunteers through Airtable + Slack.

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We do not do needs-testing. We limit our services to Bed-Stuy and refer folks from other neighborhoods to other organizations.

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Intake volunteers have an emotionally-taxing and fulfilling role - they are ambassadors of our operation and spend time getting to know our neighbors, offering solace, and ensuring that we’re meeting the needs of our community.

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Their feedback is critical for evolving our system. Regular small focus groups and surveys have tightened this feedback loop.

Our Intake Volunteer Guide is here

Current Challenges:

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• Slack is ephemeral, coordination between intake to delivery is tough when we’re volunteer-run without clear “owners” for each request
• We have a strong small core group of Intake & Delivery Coordinators that are not on calls
• They make sure loose ends are tied up, follow up on open requests, answer volunteer questions
• Our backlog of inbound messages is growing disproportionately to our delivery capacity. As we go we have to be continuously decisive + clear about our service prioritization and keep our neighbors / volunteer expectations in balance with our capacity and the community’s needs.

Our Process: Delivery

Delivery Volunteers are trained to do safe, sanitary deliveries to our neighbors in need.

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They use Slack (and soon an open live map) to find out what open requests are and let our intake team know they want to volunteer for a delivery. A slack bot relays the delivery details (with recipient’s personal address/phone number) to the delivery volunteer via private DM.

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Delivery volunteers use Slack to get in touch with our intake team for any questions. Delivery volunteers fill out a completion / reimbursement form to update our ticket in Airtable and log their reimbursement request.

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The delivery drop off is a critical time to practice safe and sanitary measures, while also being gracious and friendly with our neighbors. No contact deliveries require social distance but we also encourage delivery volunteers to speak with neighbors, assess how else we might help them, and share helpful information if needed.

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Our Delivery Volunteer Guide is here

Current Challenges:

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• Bulk delivery - making our operations more efficient by having delivery volunteers to grocery runs for multiple households
• Payment - right now, delivery volunteers are fronting the cost for groceries and getting reimbursed from our fund. This limits the ability for delivery volunteers to sign up, and limits our ability to service bulk delivery runs.
• PPE - getting and distributing PPE to all delivery volunteers who need it
• Using delivery handoffs to support other needs for our neighbors - e.g. handing off census cards + resources for other services in Bed-Stuy
• Tracking safe grocery stores to shop at

Teamwork makes the dream work

Our ingredients:

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• Large working group call to action 1 week into BSS spurred the start of #automation
• Core team
• 1 product manager
• 2 software engineers
• 1 data scientist
• A lot of love
• Phone a friend + new projects spinning up in #automation (40+ members)
• Strong collaboration with intake & delivery leads
• Heavy documentation for our delivery volunteers and intake volunteers
• Currently building out internal comms to help support our systems

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Thank you for your attention and efforts! Let us know how we can help. 💙💚💜

alyssa@alyssadizon.com | @alyssa on BSS Slack