Develop for Good - September 2024
Summer update
Hello friends 🛩️
With back-to-school season upon us already, we’re excited to give you the low down on all Develop for Good has been up to this summer. Fasten your seatbelts, put your tray tables and seat backs up, and strap in for a ride!
But first…Win25 applications are due this month 🚨
Develop for Good’s upcoming Winter 2025 project batch runs from October 27, 2024 - February 22, 2025 with the tentative timeline:
Sun, Sep 15, 2024: Nonprofit Project Proposal due
Sun, Sep 27: Student Application & Mentor Application due
Sun, Oct 13 - Fri, Oct 25: Offer letter period for Students & Mentors - new offer letters sent out every 2 days with a 48-hour response deadline.
Sun, Oct 27: Project batch kicks off with Orientation & Onboarding Week
Sun, Nov 3: Project Scoping Phase begins
Sun, Dec 1: Project Development Phase begins
Sun, Feb 9, 2025: Project Documentation & Handover Phase begins
Thu, Feb 20: Demo Day
Sat, Feb 22: Last day of project batch
📣 Please share widely with prospective college students, industry professionals, or nonprofits!
Sum24 project batch recap 🧢
Students
We engaged 379 college students and recent grads between May 6 - Aug 24 this summer. Check out some stats about our admitted university pool, including the top 12 most highly represented universities and our overall student demographics:
Mentors
This summer, we engaged 131 industry mentors as Team Mentors, 1:1 Mentors, and Demo Day Mentors. The corporations below are just some of the companies represented by the professional volunteers who contributed:
Special thank you to Bloomberg’s Malia Simonds, Vanessa Luna, and Darlene Escobar, Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s Melissa Abbett, Fred Tan, and Jennifer Gortárez, and EY’s Avion Bell and Jennifer Williams for recruiting such energetic and passionate corporate mentors!
Nonprofits
We kicked off this summer by launching our largest portfolio ever of 37 nonprofit tech projects.
From education nonprofits like Ashoka, which aims to create an association of the world's leading social entrepreneurs, to environmental nonprofits like Climate Donor, which empowers broad-based citizen engagement to address climate change and species extinction, the organizations above pave the way for the nonprofit sector in leveraging technology to better serve vulnerable communities.
Nonprofit tech project highlight 🌟
3D Girls: Engineering a tiered administrative system to expand S.T.E.A.M. learning
3D Girls empowers young women and girls to be advocates for themselves and their families by providing cross-curricular S.T.E.A.M. and social and emotional wellness (SEL) education. Develop for Good’s student team designed and implemented a new database architecture for their Girls Link Up Digital Platform to better manage more organizational customers, such as schools. Read the full case study here.
What their nonprofit partner had to say:
“Working with DFG helped me to open my eyes to all the things that needed to happen with our project. Although we had a great framework for what we were doing, we lacked internal structures to help build efficiency for managing our platform. Our DFG Summer '24 recognized that gap and created solutions to help us in the long run. I feel really confident and proud of the work that my team did.”
- Raioni Madison, Executive Director of 3D Girls, Inc
The brilliant team:
Product & Engineering Managers: Hongyu Pan (Barnard College ‘22), Minakshi Thappa (University of Pittsburgh ‘26)
Engineers & Designers: Mike Odnis (SUNY Farmingdale ‘25), Sophia Yang (USC ‘25), Anvii Mishra (Johns Hopkins ‘26), Amen Divine Ikamba (Pitzer College ‘27), Grace Kim (Cornell University ‘26), Martha Njuguna (Connecticut College ‘25), Alaaeldean Omar (College of Staten Island ‘24), Shriya Upadhyay (USC ‘25), Helen Song (UW-Madison ‘26)
Team Mentor: Natalie Isak (Machine Learning Engineer at Microsoft)
1:1 Mentor: Aleena Thomas (Software Engineer at American Express)
Develop for Good at The White House 🇺🇸
Develop for Good was selected as an Alliance Partner to the first U.S. National Strategy to achieve STEMM parity by 2050! 🇺🇸
The White House Summit on STEMM Equity & Excellence unveiled the Biden-Harris Administration’s multi-sector actions to help 20M people from historically excluded and marginalized communities enter, contribute to, and thrive in STEMM fields. We’re honored to be one of ~200 organizations invited by the STEMM Opportunity Alliance to contribute to this national goal by providing real-world tech project experience to diverse college students at scale. Our sincere thanks to Natalie Sutton from the American Association for the Advancement of Science for nominating us!
New funding partner: the a16z CLF ❤️
Develop for Good is excited to partner with the a16z Cultural Leadership Fund (CLF) to actively engage and advance more Black college talent into tech roles through impactful, real-world project experience.
Tremendous thank you to a16z CLF Partners Judene Small Jean-Louis and Megan Holston-Alexander for welcoming us to a16z’s Strategic Community-Building Program. Together, we’ll be working to ensure that the diversity of the tech industry reflects the diversity of our world 🌎
Thank you, Okta for Good! ⭐️
This summer, we have MUCH to thank Okta for Good for!
First off, we were one of 8 nonprofits selected for Okta for Good’s Nonprofit Technology Fellowship. Representing Develop for Good was our Executive Director Mary Zhu; past Fellows include the CEO of NTEN, CIO of Save the Children, and CIO of Mercy Corps.
A heartfelt thank you to Okta leaders Keenan Harrell, Victor Cordon, Erin Baudo Felter, Ally Kozel, Neta Retter, Agustina Ruiz, Brad Goettemoeller, Thomas Li, Monica Bajaj, Lynn Rosendin, and Matias Woloski for supporting Develop for Good throughout this robust 6-month program. We presented a piece on our unified management web app Pantheon - an internal product leveraging Okta’s Auth0 spearheaded by Develop for Good’s Software Engineers Anish Sinha and Jenny Cho and Technology Director Eric Lai.
Next, Develop for Good was featured in Board.Dev’s 6,000 Tech Leaders: Board Members for the Bay campaign, sponsored by Okta, Linkedin, and Tides. Our ED Mary was among speakers including Board.Dev founder Alethea Hannemann and Okta’s Erin Baudo Felter and Victor Cordon as they kicked off the largest mobilization of tech leadership for social impact ever in the San Francisco Bay Area at Linkedin SF.
To round it all off, Develop for Good’s leaders were invited to speak at Okta’s Company All-Hands, broadcast to ~6K employees from its HQ in San Francisco. Okta’s Victor Cordon moderated a live panel with Develop for Good’s Board Director & Okta’s Head of Design Kristen Swanson and ED Mary as they articulated the pivotal role Okta has played in furthering our mission. Big shoutout to Kristen for galvanizing fellow Oktanauts to donate $3K to Develop for Good that day!
The Color of Tech—You’re Hired 💼
In July, Develop for Good's People Director Stephanie D. McKenzie sat down with Technical Recruiters Justin Hamlet at Bloomberg and Keli Crane at Kunai to explore recruitment strategies and practices for a diverse tech future. They thoughtfully shared their experiences, tips and advice for new grads, and ideas for a way forward. In case you missed it, check out the full recorded event here 💭
This event was the latest installment in Develop for Good’s The Color of Tech series, which features virtual conversations about diversity in tech spaces—particularly the lack of representation when it comes to African American and LatinX communities.
Join us in unlocking digital potential 💌
Our program wouldn’t exist without the philanthropic support of our community. Every dollar you contribute is dedicated to continuously improving and expanding Develop for Good’s program for nonprofits and college tech students.
📲 Be sure to follow us on Linkedin & Instagram for live updates on our work!