Hack Night #316: Center on Halsted
Channel: Chi Hack Night
Date: 2018-09-07

Alternate title: “I Have No Idea What We Need, But I Know We Need Something: Translating Tech Solutions for a Community Based Nonprofit”

Center on Halsted is the Midwest’s largest and most comprehensive LGBTQ community center. Its genealogy goes back to 1974 when it was an all-volunteer hotline. In 2007, the Center opened a 175,000 square foot building and began collecting data on its community-based work. The Center knows, for instance, that it serves 45,000 people annually through its direct services and that an average of 1,400 walk through its doors daily.

What remains to be achieved is a better understanding of that data as well as how the Center’s work can better reach its communities through technology. The Center has ten years of service and demographic data that has not been analyzed; it has eight departments providing services, and it has no idea how technology can help it do this better.

The Center’s hope is that through speaking with Chi Hack Night, it can bridge the nonprofit/tech divide to enhance the work of Center on Halsted for the benefit of the communities it serves.