Impact Report 2019
A look back.
January 9, 2020
Every year at BNB I like to take a look back at our impact in the world. The tools we build for other teams end up having large effects - directly supporting dozens of projects, hundreds of our clients employees, and thousands of users - and while we can't always share specific details, it's cool to see the big picture.
Here's an overview:
Category: Good governance!
Our SAM project for the County of Los Angeles has now surveyed a bajillion square feet of county-owned (that's us, tax-paying citizens!) real estate. Incredibly smart professionals are assessing repair and overdue maintenance, bundling that work into projects, and planning out the capital required to keep these buildings in good repair - all using our custom-built software. This work is detailed and demanding, but it's taking good care of our tax dollars.
Our Engage web platform runs a dozen small project websites, used by government agencies to keep the public informed and involved. These project sites cover activities ranging from major highway reconstruction to citywide zoning.
We also support KansasMoney.gov, a financial literacy effort brought to you as a collaborative effort by six state agencies - no mean feat!
Category: Clean Energy!
We tackled a HUGE project this year that we haven't discussed yet (codename: PLYMOUTH). This is a new platform that helps building energy experts plan out efficiency upgrades for large portfolios of buildings. It uses parametric and real utility data to model future scenarios, like the impact of rolling out solar generation, efficiency upgrades to existing buildings, or even resiliency to natural disasters.
Category: Education!
Our support of the Kansas Department of Education Technical Assistance System Network (aka TASN) serves over 15,000 users today. These users are Kansas educators that get training and assistance from the TASN network, which includes more than 25 different distinct organizations, and over 200 professional training providers. The primary website has answered almost 2000 individual support requests (where an educator or parent gets one-on-one guidance), and almost 50,000 individual event registrations for training.
Digitalbadg.es is a tool that facilitates... digital badges, a 'validated indicator' of accomplishment. It's being piloted with a few programs now, and has 500+ people earning badges today.
We're also currently working on a new tool to issue digital badges directly to educators and administrators that take training around equity in education. This is actually our third project that creates and supports digital badges. More on that soon.
Category: Children and Families!
We've built a small portfolio of online tools that are geared around serving at-risk children and families. These are really rewarding.
IRIS connects people to community services, through 'warm referrals' made by professionals. It's used in 21 communities (more than doubled in 2019!) and has made thousands of referrals. Each one of those referrals is a real family getting access to real support in their community.
The Institute for Family Support Professionals helps train home visitors, and has over 4000 users today. We're building out new features that will expand this reach and provide new kinds of training next year!
We also worked on a suite of tools for the FRIENDS National Center, a group that provides education and funding for Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention projects.
We haven't launched this yet, but we're also working with a new team on a tool to calculate the economic impact of child abuse. This will be used to help advocates and policymakers push for strong protections for children!
Category: The Arts!
Our hippest client Merchtable consults, makes, and sells merch for hundreds of artists, podcasters, and youtube weirdos. BNB's software runs their entire platform, from hundreds of customized ecommerce stores to reporting to inventory management.
We also support Odradek Records a classical/jazz/world music label made of geniuses that exists to make the music world a more just place. We build and run a suite of tools that help run their day-to-day business now, and as they move towards even more digital transformation.
