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Brigade 2.0

Taking agency of your brigade

Aaron Deacon

Managing Director

KC Digital Drive

Bonnie Wolfe

Executive Director�Hack for LA

Gregory Johnson

Executive Director

Code for South Florida

Kate Nicholson

Director of Partnerships & Events

BetaNYC

Civic Tech 2.0: Taking agency of your brigade is licensed under CC BY 4.0

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Agenda

Brief Introduction - 5 mins
Topical Questions & Discussions - 40 mins

Team and Leadership - 10 mins
Funding and Partnership - 10 mins
Workforce Development - 10 mins
Non-Profit Structure - 10 mins

Q/A ( 10 mins)

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Hack for LA

Code for South Florida

Code for KC / Kansas City Digital Drive

BetaNYC

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Today’s Panel

BetaNYC

Director of Partnerships

Kate Nicholson

KC Digital Drive

(Code for KC)

Managing Director

Aaron Deacon

Code for South Florida

Executive Director

Gregory Johnson

Hack for LA�Executive Director

Bonnie Wolfe

2.0

Last winter, Brigades from Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, and New York City started talking to one another about our experiences building operational capacity within our organizations. At the CFA Summit in March, we delivered short lightning talks speaking to how each of our organizations transitioned—or were in process of transitioning— from being entirely volunteer-driven to building business models and running as staffed and funded operational entities. Ever since, we have been meeting twice a month to share project updates and discuss our successes, learnings, challenges, and opportunities for fundraising, government partnerships, and building a civic tech workforce in our localities. These meetings have been fruitful and as we look ahead we want to share some of the dialogue and put out a call to other Brigades who find themselves in similar growth positions, to join us.

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“Brigade 2.0” = Impactful Local Civic Tech Orgs

Sharing strategies & methodologies

Deepening relationships

Build local leadership & infrastructure

Learning & doing!

Code for America Summit, March 2020

Last winter, Brigades from Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, and New York City started talking to one another about our experiences building operational capacity within our organizations. At the CFA Summit in March, we delivered short lightning talks speaking to how each of our organizations transitioned—or were in process of transitioning— from being entirely volunteer-driven to building business models and running as staffed and funded operational entities. Ever since, we have been meeting twice a month to share project updates and discuss our successes, learnings, challenges, and opportunities for fundraising, government partnerships, and building a civic tech workforce in our localities. These meetings have been fruitful and as we look ahead we want to share some of the dialogue and put out a call to other Brigades who find themselves in similar growth positions, to join us.

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Code for America is national.

Local civic tech ecosystems need their own organizational structure and identity.

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Our Purpose

Peer to peer support
Sharing & learning of effective practices
Collaborating on program initiatives
Comparing differences

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10-month Outcomes & Results

Hack for LA - creating a local fellowship model
KC Digital Drive - learning from a similar project in another city
Code for South - build an independent funding model
BetaNYC - thought leadership and business model validation

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Topical Questions & Discussions�

Team and Leadership
Funding and Partnership
Workforce Development
Non-Profit Structure

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Non-Profit Structure

Moderated by Kate Nicholson

Intro:

As brigades we operate under a 501c3 non-profit— either CFA or our own fiscal sponsor fundraise. Under a local fsical sponsor or your own 501c3 you can secure local contracts and raise public funds. Under CfA fiscal sponsorship, you cannot.
BetaNYC became a partner project of the FCNY in 2015. We tried operating under fiscal sponsorship from CfA but we were unable to secure contracts and act on opportunities coming our way, nor were we able to fundraise from the City’s discretionary funds.
Code for Kansas City operates under Kansas City Digital Drive
Code for Miami Operates under Code for South Florida
Hack for LA… operates under CfA

What is your non profit status and business model and fiscal structure?

What’s your non-profit status?

What are your funding sources?

What are your costs / types costs?

Who manages your finances / admin?

What challenges have you faced to growth? How did you overcome it?

How has the last year changed? What were major turning points? Where do you see yourself in a year?

Why a non-profit? What type of fiscal relationship do you want with your city government?

Do you want to be a contractor that engages in the contracting process?

Do you want to an advocate that also does contracting

Who pays? What are hidden costs of a non profit?

What are the challenges to running a non-profit?

What legal and compliance issues arise? Who are you accountable to?

What is the role of CfA in supporting brigades fiscally? Is it enough support?

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Team and Leadership

Moderated by Bonnie Wolfe

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Funding and Partnership

Moderated by Gregory Johnson

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Workforce Development

Moderator by Aaron Deacon

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Continue the discussion

2.0

Find us on the Code For America Slack

#Brigade2point0