Develop for Good Newsletter - Dec 2020
December Update and 2020 Wrap-Up
Hello friends! ❄️
What a year it’s been! As Christmas draws near and 2020 winds down to a close, the Develop for Good team is excited to present to you the first of our monthly newsletter updates.
We’re incredibly grateful for the outpouring of support we’ve received from everyone - industry mentors, our esteemed advisory board, and our stars - volunteer designers, developers, and student leaders who have donated their technical skills to create impactful products for our nonprofit partners!
In addition to what we’ve been up to this December, we’re excited to share with you everything that’s happened over our Fall 2020 Project Cycle.
Fall 2020 Wrapped 🎁
Our Fall 2020 Project Cycle was a smashing success. Here’s a run down of our stats:
Over 550 interest forms submitted from students hailing from 100+ universities
We selected and onboarded over 220 new developers, designers, and PMs representing ~80 universities
Our entire organization of over 300 volunteers worked on 49 projects with our diverse group of nonprofit clients
Nonprofit Testimonials 🤩
Interested in what our clients had to say about our completed and ongoing work? Here are some of the highlights from our Nonprofit Testimonials:
"Develop for Good provided us with smart, creative and mature students who were able to effectively take the WHO/UNICEF tool for improving water, sanitation and hygiene in health care facilities and create a simple and robust application to better track and make local improvements. We look forward to working with them in 2021 to complete and pilot the tool in several low income countries-this type of tool is more important than ever with COVID-19 and fundamentals such as hand hygiene and water incredibly important to keep patients and health workers safe."
- Maggie Montgomery, Technical Officer, World Health Organization
"The team at Develop for Good was professional, curious, and talented well beyond their years. They demonstrated leadership and guided me on key decisions in developing my organization's web site quickly and thoughtfully. I felt comfortable introducing them to our group's stakeholders (cancer patients and survivors), who loved their work and had a productive brainstorm with them. By building a professional-caliber web site, Develop for Good has positioned us to have meaningful introductory conversations with new patients, partners and donors. I'm proud to share our web site with others, and grateful for Develop for Good's help! I'd work with any of these wonderful students in this or other contexts again and look forward to following their promising careers!"
- Iris Braunstein, Product Manager, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
"Working with Develop for Good was a fantastic: the team was professional, timely, and adaptable, and prolific. In just a couple of months, they helped 1Day Sooner redesign our website, visualize data from two research projects, and develop an interactive volunteer map for our front page. All of the content that Develop for Good produced was specifically tailored to our needs and of incredibly high-quality. I’m grateful that we can now feature Develop for Good’s work on our website, and I’m excited for 1Day Sooner’s nearly 40,000 volunteers to interact with our new website!"
- Abie Rohrig, Communications Manager, 1Day Sooner
Volunteer Experiences 🤗
Curious about what some of our volunteers thought about their experience? Take a look at a few of our Volunteer Testimonials:
“Most of my technical skills have been applied to capital and industry in internships and research. Develop for Good enables me to volunteer my technical skills for a cause I believe strongly in -- the preservation and education of the natural world. In addition to this, I hope to gain new perspectives on the field of data engineering in its application to the environment.“
- Kimmy Chang, Stanford University ‘22
“I am really grateful that I was assigned to 1Day Sooner. In terms of professional work experience, I talked about this project a lot, which was not only very relevant but also a great point of conversation when it came to interviews. For example, this project helped me land an internship for a boutique consulting firm that specializes in clean energy advisory in developing countries. They were looking for someone with R/Tableau/project management skills/an interest in creating social impact, and my experience with D4G caught their attention and clearly demonstrated my desire to help others. My time here has also helped me map out my career path (definitely did not know where I was going before this). Furthermore, I guess some ways working virtually might be strange, but at the same time, it allots so much more space to creating social capital in areas where you'd never expect to go (I was really happy to meet new people from different schools I otherwise would not have had the chance to speak to). In the future I hope to be doing more projects with D4G.”
- Emily Xu, UC Berkeley ‘21
"Through Develop For Good, I've been able to land several UI and UX designer interviews and enhance my portfolio. It has given me the real world experience I lacked as a student and paved the way to other opportunities. Develop For Good is amazing and I would definitely help out again!"
- Ashley Villagonzalo, Cal State Northridge ‘20
Shout Out to Our Industry Mentors for Hosting Workshops 💪
We’d like to thank our following industry mentors for holding Product Management and UI/UX Engineering workshops for our PMs, developers, and designers!
Winter 2021: Call for Developers, Designers, and Product Managers! 👩💻 🧑💻
Interested in making an impact for good with your engineering or design skills? Apply for our Winter 2021 Project Cycle now!
Are you looking to:
⭐️ Gain real-world experience in web and mobile application design or development while making real-world impact?
⭐️ Volunteer your technical skills towards humanitarian work in ways that will save nonprofits over $20,000 a year in fees, or impact millions of people across over 60 different countries?
⭐️ Commit to a meaningful engagement and meet new people as student activities become increasingly limited (both on campus and virtually) at universities across the country?
Join a project team at Develop for Good and work on creating real solutions for a variety of incredible nonprofit organizations serving local and international communities. We’re currently working with globally recognized institutions including UNICEF, the World Health Organization, the Smithsonian Institution, World Bank, Ronald McDonald House Charities, the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, and the Environmental Defense Fund, among several others.
Applications are due on December 30, 2020.
Donate to our Holiday Fundraising Campaign 🎄
Had our first 50 projects been outsourced, they would have amounted to ~$2 million in design and development costs. In order for us to continue our volunteer program and help impactful nonprofits meet their technical needs, we need your support. 🙏
This holiday season, we’re aiming to raise $10,000 by the end of 2020. This will help us cover our operational expenses for our future projects. These expenses include training, student/nonprofit/sponsorship outreach, subscriptions for development tools, and fellowships for first-generation/low-income (FLI) members of our volunteer community.
To donate, please visit our Holiday Giving Campaign here:
If relevant, we’d appreciate you taking advantage of your corporation’s Matching Gifts program to amplify your donation! 🎁
Welcome the Newest Additions to our Advisory Board 🎉
Develop for Good is extremely fortunate to have a phenomenal board of advisors to guide our Executive Team in strategies for internal management, external relations, and directions for growth.
Paid Summer Opportunities for Social Good 💼
The Summer STEM Institute (SSI) is a virtual education program that teaches programming, data science, and research. SSI is currently hiring for both part-time and full-time roles for summer 2021. Both roles offer competitive compensation.
Role 1: Part-Time Research Mentor (10-15 hours/week):
Responsibilities: Lead a virtual lab of 2-3 students; mentor students through the ideation and completion of their own computational or theoretical research projects; support students through the creation of weekly research deliverables, including a background research report, a research proposal, and a final paper and presentation
Qualifications: Passion for teaching and mentorship; graduate student, postdoctoral fellow, or (in exceptional circumstances) undergraduate with extensive programming or research experience in a computational or theoretical field; past research experiences and deliverables, including published papers and presentations
Note: Research mentors are able to work for the program alongside full-time job, internship, or research commitments.
Role 2: Full-Time Teaching Fellow (40 hours/week):
Responsibilities: Teach and work closely to support students through the data science and research bootcamp, answer student questions and discussion board posts; host office hours; leave feedback on student homework assignments
Qualifications: Passion for teaching and mentorship; experience with Python programming and data science libraries (numpy, pandas, matplotlib, sklearn); experience with data science and the research process
If you are interested, please fill out this 2-minute interest form. If SSI decides to move forward with your application, they will send more information about the roles and also times to schedule an interview. If you have any questions, please reach out to hiring@summersteminstitute.org.
Special Thanks to Our Philanthropic and InKind Sponsors 🙏
Like what we do? Share our newsletter updates to anyone and all to read!