Fundraising

What do Johego, Star Trek, and King Abdullah II of Jordan have in common?

We’ve all benefited from the creative genius of Gene Roddenberry, a World War II pilot and LAPD officer who created the original Star Trek television series. An avid Trekkie, King Abdullah II (then a prince) appeared as an uncredited extra in a 1996 episode. For our part, I am thrilled to report that Johego has received a grant from the Roddenberry Foundation, a philanthropic foundation that was established by Gene’s son Rod “to build on his father’s legacy and philosophy of inclusion, diversity, and respect for life to drive social change and meaningfully improve the lives of people around the world.”

Our proposal was motivated by two key observations:

• In the US, it is easier to reserve a ticket for a movie than secure overnight shelter, mental health treatment, or other critical services — largely because of a lack of reliable information about such services.
• Meanwhile, research has shown that over 90% of Americans want to volunteer yet only 25% do so, often because volunteer schedules are inflexible, volunteer tasks are uninteresting, or potential volunteers are never asked in the first place.

Thanks to funding from the Roddenberry Foundation, Johego will begin to help tackle these challenges simultaneously by creating a online platform through which volunteers can help collect and verify information about social and medical services that, in turn, will help people in need connect with those services more easily. Through this initiative, Johego will empower anyone with a phone and an Internet connection to make a meaningful difference in their community, no matter their location, schedule, or skill level.

Our work is being funded through the Catalyst Fund, a grant program “focused on early-stage, unconventional ideas that have the potential for disruptive change.” We are honored to have earned the support of the Roddenberry family, and we are thrilled to contribute our efforts to “disrupt existing dynamics, challenge old patterns of thought, and discover new ways to help us move towards a better future.” We look forward to keeping you posted as well roll out this new program in the coming months.

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I am pleased to announce that Johego has secured a contract to improve transportation systems in Northeast Missouri, in partnership with Missouri Foundation for Health, Health Literacy Media, The Mission Center, Families and Communities Together, and OATS Transportation. As part of this contract, Johego will:

• Expand and refine our app to include additional transportation providers located in Northeast Missouri.
• Integrate Uber and Lyft functionality with our app to enable users to request rides to service providers listed in our directory.
• Complete a public information campaign through various social and community media for the aforementioned transportation features to be made available through our app.
• Conduct a frequency analysis of one year of OATS ridership and service denial data to inform future federal and foundation grant applications for sustainable expansion of transportation service and ridership in Northeast Missouri.

During a series of community-based asset-mapping activities during late 2017 and early 2018, public service professionals from throughout Northeast Missouri identified transportation as a critical social determinant of health, affecting not only access to healthcare resources but also employment, social opportunities, and more, particularly for the poor and the elderly. We will keep you posted as this project progresses.

– Michael

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I am thrilled to inform you that Missouri Foundation for Health has awarded Johego $270,000 to expand our services throughout Northeastern, Central, and Southwestern Missouri.

This award represents a huge milestone in Johego’s development, and it occurs only nine months after securing our first customer in Hannibal, MO and only two months after winning the prestigious Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Competition at Washington University in St. Louis. This contract will enable Johego to, among other things:

• Add 18 additional counties to our coverage area, allowing nearly 1.1 million Missourians to access our services.
• Create a browser-based equivalent of our smartphone application so that anyone can search our directory using their laptop and desktop computers, including police officers in their squad cars.
• Provide information about the hours of operation, financial requirements, and documentation requirements of services listed in our directory, enabling our users to more efficiently obtain the help they need.

This also means that we are hiring.

We are currently seeking to add two full-time staff members to our team: (1) a data engineer / backend developer and (2) a frontend developer / product designer. If you are interested in applying, please click on the image below. If you know someone who may be interested in using data science and software development to connect people in need with the services they need, please share this link with them via email or on social media.

We would not be where we are today without the support of our friends, family, and colleagues in Decatur, Hannibal, St. Louis, and beyond. Thank you to everyone for your support!

– Michael

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I’m delighted to announce that Johego is partnering with Families and Communities Together (FACT), a coalition of social service agencies in and around Hannibal, MO. FACT’s collaborative programs are focused on increasing the number of:

• adults working,
• children and youth succeeding in school,
• healthy children and families,
• young children ready to enter school,
• children safe in their families and families safe in their communities, and
• youth prepared for productive adulthood.

In order to support their programs, FACT is paying Johego to, among other things, expand our directory to include social services in and around Hannibal and to train local social service professionals to access the directory through Johego’s smartphone application on iOS and Android, by the end of April 2017.

We are tremendously excited about this opportunity. Thank you to The Mission Center and Health Literacy Media for helping make this possible!

– Michael Kehoe

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An Exciting Opportunity for Johego:

An anonymous supporter has generously offered to sponsor a 1:1 donation-matching campaign on behalf of Johego. This means that, for the next week only, any and all donations to Johego, up to $5,000 total, will be matched dollar-for-dollar.

Why This Matters:

Back in April, Johego had its first-ever in-person fundraiser, and the response from the community was inspiring. Here are some of things your generosity made possible:

• We built a smartphone application on iOS and Android, supporting more than 100 categories of social services and over 1,250 service providers.
• We began formally field-testing our application with social workers, police officers, and other public servants.
• We significantly expanded our team, adding one paid employee, three new board members, and two outside advisors, all of whom make Johego stronger.
• We secured a grant from Missouri Foundation for Health, one of the largest philanthropic organizations of its kind in the United States.
• We successfully applied to, and completed, Square One, a competitively selected entrepreneurship development program.
• We developed partnerships with local nonprofits and for-profit companies that will help us deliver better services and position us to become more competitive for additional institutional support.

You Can Help Us Do More:

With your help, we can keep this momentum going: expanding the geographic coverage of our application, completing formal field-testing, and leveraging that momentum to apply for substantial funding from philanthropic foundations and other target partners. This donation matching campaign means that, for the next week only, any and all donations to Johego, up to $5,000 total, will be matched dollar-for-dollar, thereby doubling your impact.

If you are able, please send us a tax-deductible donation of $50 or more today, so that we can continue to build on our successes:

Donate

If you prefer, checks can be mailed to P.O. Box 23261, St. Louis, MO 63156. In any case, on behalf of the Johego team, thank you in advance for your generosity and support.

– Michael Kehoe

Want to support Johego or learn more? Follow us on social media & let us know what you think: