Why we built 4Bells
It all began when we gathered folks together who work in animal rescue for a Generator, a convening we hold with experts to surface problems, challenges, and potential technological solutions. Soon after, we held a Generator with folks working in food recovery. Both of these entirely different groups shared one recurring need: a way to simplify their processes for deploying volunteers to time-sensitive tasks. They shared arduous scenarios with white boards and notebooks and endless phone calls. Everyone agreed--and some even chanted their excitement--that something had to change.
And we kept talking
The idea captured our attention, so we did what we do: we talked about it with lots of different people. And in our discussions and in our research, we found that disaster response teams also had a need for a lightweight tool to organize and deploy volunteers in an emergency. While we developed 4Bells with emergency response in mind, 4Bells can be used by many types of organizations to accomplish a variety of time-sensitive tasks.
Backers and Collaborators
4Bells received financial support from Twillio.org and Microsoft Corporate Citizenship and inspiration, feedback, and moral support from:
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Food Recovery organizations in the Bay Area
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Animal Rescue organizations in the Bay Area
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First Responders at the local and national level
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Disaster planning and resilience experts
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Hotline operators throughout the U.S.
The prototype was built with pro bono support by JayStack.
Version 1.0+ is built and maintained by JayStack.
In-kind donations from SendGrid and Twillio power our SMS and messaging capabilities.