Hack the Beach 2017 Contest Sign-up
Aug 04, 2017
submission
#30
Submit your idea
Your idea/ technology/ company
| Name of your idea or project | GozAround |
| Which challenge area does your idea respond to? | Building Community |
| Describe your idea and how it can help Santa Monica | GozAround is a social network, backed by a suite of SaaS apps, designed to find, measure and share social impact activities. A sort of "LinkedIn" for social good. We offer each segment of the social good space – non-profits, business, individuals, and governments – tailored functionality to fully engage them in our network and maximize its value in return. From the perspective of a "smart city" like Santa Monica, we envision adapting our corporate and data aggregation tools to better encourage, facilitate and measure city-wide community engagement. To begin, we would provide the GozAround premium non-profit platform to all local charities (including volunteer recruitment, management and data tools) to seed the network and support those organizations. From there, with the City's help, we would work to drive individuals and businesses to join GozAround and create their own impact profile. With both sides of the equation growing, our intelligent matching would connect Santa Monica residents and businesses with personalized opportunities to get involved that are suited to their interests, skills, resources and schedule. In short, matching people with needs in a way that works for them. Finally, as this activity happens and is logged, the City would receive aggregated data including volunteer participation rates, hours logged, causes supported, organizations supported and more. We see GozAround a triple benefit to Santa Monica. First, a medium and connector for social good within the City. Second, a corporate tool allowing the City, as a large and progressive employer, to mobilize its staff in the community. And third, a data source for typically elusive engagement data. |
| What stage is your idea or project in? | Prototype / MVP built |
| What needs to happen to launch your product? Please list all resources (hardware, software, licensing, legal/regulatory, funding, partnership or support from the City, data, etc.) required to launch your program. | The first step toward launch will include meetings with the City to determine what functionality and data is desired from the GozAround platform. Will the corporate/employer tools be used? What reports would be useful? Who will administer the platform? We might also consider convening a group of progressive charities and business that would like to have input on the platform and become "founding users". This will both engage a group of seed users, but also provide additional user feedback to better ensure the success of the program. These conversations should not be overly difficult provided we have willing participants, but will crystalize the development work needed to adapt our current capabilities to the municipal application. From there, we would ask for a mix of funding and in-kind support from the City. Costs would be limited to those associated with using the system (not core feature development which we see as our job and will invest in). As for in-kind support, the biggest need is awareness. We would ask the City to partner with us in reaching out to the local community, including citizens, charities and businesses to help build momentum in the network. When the functional tools are in complete, the Santa Monica specific portal/branding is in place, and an awareness campaign is planned, we will be ready to go! |
| How realistic is it for your idea to be implemented by early 2018? Please describe what resources (if any) you will need in order to ensure a working product by early next year. | There should be no issue whatsoever being live in early 2018. The "smart city" application is an extension of our existing platform and the required functional expansion is well within our capabilities for that time line. From an external resource perspective, we would like the input of City staff on desired functionality and metrics. Then come launch, we would like the support of the City in building awareness and gaining adoption. If this input and support is present, the timing will not be an issue. |
You and your team
| Team Name | GozAround Inc. |
| List team members and their roles | --- |
| Contact email | --- |
| Phone number | --- |
| Primary Contact Name | --- |
Initial application scoring
Scoring
| Viability (40%) | --- |
| Value (40%) | --- |
| Growth (20%) | --- |
| Notes | --- |
| Advance to semi-finalist status? | Yes |