Impact Report

We’ve had a big two years and want to celebrate. 🎉

Technologists for the Public Good (TPG) formed in 2021 to serve as a first-of-its-kind professional association for the growing field of public interest technology. 

While the field has been around for over 10 years, it’s a constantly changing and evolving ecosystem. With TPG, we set out to create a space where those of us who identify as public interest technologists—a term we view broadly—can come together to connect with others who are as passionate as we are about ensuring government can really work for the public.

As we continue to grow and operationalize as an organization, we aim to center everything we do around five values: community, collaboration, knowledge sharing, capacity building, and groundbreaking. We’re delighted to highlight some of the ways we’ve done this so far, and we look forward to accomplishing even more in years to come.
 

WHAT WE'VE ACCOMPLISHED

1. We turned two in June 2023 as a stand-alone non-profit.

2. We hired our first-ever executive director, Reilly Martin, who we announced at our annual members meeting on May 24, 2023.

3. Speaking of members, our membership has grown to more than 1,000, almost doubling in the past year alone, and is very active in our Slack community. We’re located all across the United States and have experience working in all levels of government, as well as academia, non-profit organizations, and the private sector. 

4. We held 20 events, including book clubs, happy hours, hiring webinars, coaching sessions, demo days, and more. We also helped represent the field alongside other organizations, such as AnitaB, Beeck Center for Social Impact +Innovation, Code for America, Coding it Forward, Govern for America, Humans of Public Service, Partnership for Public Service, Tech Talent Project, Tech to Gov, U.S. Digital Response, and U.S. of Tech. The events we’ve offered and been a part of have been based on needs of the community and field and focused on creating opportunities for our members and others in the public interest technology field to connect with one another. 

5. And finally, we iterated on ways for members to volunteer and now have one streamlined volunteer committee that tactically stewards the work of the organization. Thank you to Melinda Burgess, Kriti Garg, Shira Honig, Rhett King, and Jennifer Strickland, for your work as Community Leads as well as to Mike Gifford and Shaun Mosley for being active members of the TPG Slack community and getting other members to engage.

Much of this work was made possible thanks to funding by the New Venture Fund, volunteers who serve on the board of directors and committee, and our active and engaged community members. We are truly grateful for your support.

After securing this new funding and hiring staff for the first time, we received feedback from the community and trusted advisors recommending that our board stay as constant as possible. As a result, we renewed terms for two board members (Stephanie Cain and Cori Zarek) and extended board officer positions (Jenn Noinaj as board president, Stephanie Cain as vice president, and Cyd Harrell as secretary). Although we will not have open director positions for 2023, we intend to hold elections for new board members in 2024.
 

WHERE WE'RE HEADED

The investment from the New Venture Fund will help us test out, grow, and further professionalize the organization and provide support to our community in an even bigger way. Over the coming months, we’ll work to:

1. Hire a community manager (applications are open as of August 2023).

2. Expand representation and expertise amongst our members (currently design and research, product management, and engineering represent the top 3 disciplines).

3. Meet more of TPG’s members by attending, supporting, and organizing additional gatherings.
    

HOW YOU CAN HELP

We’re grateful that so many members want to contribute to making TPG a success and ensuring there is a safe, welcoming, and engaging environment for folks working in and around public interest technology. We encourage you to keep engaging in events and in our online communities, as well as consider supporting the organization in a few specific ways:

• Help get more folks plugged and encourage them to become a member. 

• Contribute your ideas for content we can offer, events we can support, partnerships we can build, and just generally how we can support our members and the public interest tech community by joining an upcoming listening sessions or connecting with our Executive Director Reilly Martin via email or Slack.

• Volunteer your time on an ad hoc [project, event, etc] or on an ongoing basis through the volunteer committee. Get in touch to learn more or get involved. 
   

Thank you for being a part of the Technologists for Public Good community. We’re glad to have you.

Reilly Martin, Executive Director

Jenn Noinaj, President

Stephanie Cain, Vice President

Cyd Harrell, Secretary

Molly Porter, Treasurer

Abbey Kos, Director

Angelica Quicksey, Director 

Anicia Santos, Director 

Ayushi Roy, Director

Cori Zarek, Director