At Microsoft, Jeff Raikes and his team of engineers developed software that helped companies use technology to improve the efficiency of their operations. Now as he and his wife, Tricia, concentrate on their philanthropy, they are helping technology experts approach social problems with the same gusto.
The couple are supporters of Giving Tech Labs, which Jeff describes as a “delivery channel for public-interest technology.”
In the labs’ loft space in downtown Seattle, technologists who cut their teeth at Microsoft, Amazon, and Yahoo devise ways technologies like cloud computing and artificial intelligence can help human-service agencies and charities.
“There are a lot of people with our background who wanted a mission-related job, and nonprofits and government are a decade behind in using technology effectively,” Jeff says.
The Raikeses made an investment — they won’t say how much — to help start the labs, and they serve as advisers. The co-founders are Luis Salazar, a former Microsoft engineer, and Shelly Cano Kurtz, a media strategy veteran who led NBCUniversal’s international sales division for more than a decade.
Saving Time and Money
Kurtz and Salazar held dozens of meetings across the country to help decide which problems to tackle. At one of the sessions, held by the Omaha Community Foundation in 2017, Project Harmony approached Giving Tech Labs seeking a better way to record and save videos of forensic interviews of children who are victims of sexual assault and abuse. Project Harmony’s databases needed to find a better way to keep sensitive material on lockdown after a defense lawyer for a suspected abuser obtained a forensic video and showed it to the suspect’s family.
The labs responded with a cloud-based video service called VidaNyx, which not only kept videos secure but also helped law-enforcement and child-welfare agency officials do their job better while spending less.
Within a year, child-advocacy centers in seven states were provided access to the service through grants from Raikes, the Fred and Margaret Grimm Foundation, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and others.
The video technology was designed to make it easier for court systems to keep track of evidence, allow case workers to easily search video archives, and keep children’s stories safe.
After six months, 10 child-advocacy centers saved a total of more than $200,000 in case-processing expenses, and law-enforcement agencies shaved hundreds of hours off the time spent procuring evidence, according to VidaNyx.
Extra Oomph
Giving Tech Labs has a lot of other projects cooking, including e-immigrate, a portal developed for people seeking lawful permanent residency or citizenship. The site provides ways to find legal clinics and immigration lawyers, a calendar of events, and other resources.
Other efforts it is supporting are in earlier stages, including Nurture US, a speech-technology software for early-childhood educators and program managers to improve real-time data collection and measurement, and AI for Good, a project that supports scholars developing artificial intelligence for social good.
In each case, the lab will develop technology and a plan for each idea to become a free-standing organization. For now, the only project to make it that far is Giving Compass, a website designed to increase the impact of wealthy philanthropists’ gifts. Salazar is confident more will follow.
“Our vision is to have hundreds of these labs all over the U.S. and all over the world,” he says, explaining that he’d like Giving Tech Labs to inspire a movement of other technology experts working on social issues.
The Raikeses’ support of the technology incubator comes with a lot of extra oomph because of the couple’s deep roots in technology and ability to attract high-caliber talent, says Paul Shoemaker, a Microsoft veteran and former executive director of Social Venture Partners who is an adviser to Giving Compass.
It also helps, he says, that the Raikeses bring their Microsoft- inspired entrepreneurial mind-set to the work. “Microsoft wasn’t perfect by any means, but it definitely was a place that grew like crazy and succeeded wildly, says Shoemaker, who serves as a consultant for Giving Compass. “That gives you a sense of possibility. The nonprofit sector needs more of that.”
Alex Daniels covers foundations, donor-advised funds, fundraising research, and tax issues for the Chronicle. He recently conducted an interview with the MacArthur Foundation’s Julia Stasch, who is stepping down after five years as president. Email Alex or follow him on Twitter.
Correction: This article has been corrected to provide more details about the security issues that Project Harmony needed help fixing.
