Support Code for Philly

tl;dr:

This is a long-winded ask that you become a recurring monthly donor to Code for Philly, an all-volunteer non-profit building tech to improve the lives of Philadelphians.

My experience as a volunteer

I have been volunteering with Code for Philly for nearly six years. I started in August 2020 pretty soon after finishing the coding boot camp I had done that summer.

I joined the team building what would become PAX: The PA Expunger, an expungement petition generating web app being developed in partnership with Philadelphia Lawyers for Social Equity. After working on the team for some time, I stepped up to become the project’s lead volunteer. I rebuilt a new team after some turnover and we made some great progress on the app together. I got my first job in tech through the skills I built working with this team, and getting a great letter of recommendation from Rachel, our project manager at the time.

In fall of 2024, I took over as Co-Director of Code for Philly as an organization when Kat wanted to step away to be a project lead. Soon after my joining we were forced to change fiscal sponsors when Open Collective Foundation ended their sponsorship program. We were inconvenienced, but able to move the sizeable fund we had raised over years of work. We were then sponsored by the Federation of Neighborhood Councils for a year before they dissolved last fall.

We are now sponsored by the Center for Philadelphia’s Urban Future, where we feel much more stable, especially since Chris Alfano, one of our senior advisors and one of the people who founded Code for Philly in 2012, is on the CPUF board of directors. Months later, FNC has yet to release our funds to our new fiscal sponsor. So we are effectively starting again from scratch.

Our projects

PAX – The PA Expunger, as mentioned above

PHLASK – An Ecosystem for Finding and Sharing Water, Food, Bathrooms, and Foraging in Philadelphia

Open Data Philly – A catalog of public data from the City of Philadelphia, nonprofits, and universities

Benefit Decision Toolkit – A tool to make it easier for organizations to create eligibility screeners

Philly Ward Leaders – A tool to look up info about the election ward leaders in Philadelphia

Balancer – A tool to help prescribers more effectively find the right bipolar medication for their patients

VoteWise – A non-partisan site that connects voters, organizations, and politicians without advertising dollars getting in the way

Choose Native Plants PA – A catalog of native plants in Pennsylvania. Soon expanding to other regions

Our goals

We are rebuilding our funds to continue having our monthly Hack Nights where our teams come together to build the projects, network, and improve their professional skills. We meet at Indy Hall, a coworking space and Philadelphia Tech Hub, and provide our volunteers with pizza (including vegan options). To run these we typically spend about $600 per month between pizza, renting space, and incidental costs like nametags, plates, and occasionally things like conference speakers.

We also maintain infrastructure like our servers where we host our website, data, and most of our projects. We have gotten a lot of these through in-kind donations, but do still need to spend money on domain names, software tools, and other hosting expenses. We would love to have an additional $500 per month to use as microgrants for our projects when they need any infrastructure and tools.

We are effectively trying to raise $1100 per month and already have $250 per month pledged by Jarv.us. To make up the difference we only need 170 donors at $5 or 43 donors at $20 per month. These donations will power our volunteers to continue building out our projects.

As we continue to fundraise we would love to bring back past successful events like hackathons and paid fellowships for technologists from underserved backgrounds. But for now, we really want to make sure our volunteers are fed.

Please donate to Code for Philly.