Crew Collaborative Platform for Educators

Connecting teachers, schools and districts to each other and the best curriculum, certifications and methodologies to transform education.

Educators are among society's primary shapers and caregivers of youth — responsible not only for students' academic education, but increasingly their social and emotional development as well, as teachers strive to nurture empathic 21st century global citizens.

At the same time educators are facing complex and rapidly changing school and classroom environments. Teachers, in addition to being subject matter experts, must also be able to identify and accommodate different learning styles and abilities, and have the sensitivity and skills to work effectively with student populations that are ever more diverse economically, racially, culturally and socially.

In response to this challenging education landscape, many non-profit organizations are stepping up to assist teachers, schools and school districts with badly needed curricula, tools and trainings. But with very little coordination among these nonprofits, programs are often delivered in isolation, limiting their impact as they fail to address other systemic, interconnected challenges.

Recognizing that the most stable, resilient and productive organisms exist not in isolation but within a matrix of rich symbiotic relationships, the Crew Online Engagement Platform facilitates greater coordination and collaboration among these non-profits in order to provide more holistic and impactful offerings. At the same time it invites these organizations to: 1) reimagine scale through the lens of collaboration, 2) sustainability through the lens of deeply shared resources and infrastructure, and 3) resiliency through the lens of a supportive and caring community.

It does this via three primary stages of engagement.

In stage one we identify a cohort of complementary nonprofits working in the k-12 space and invite them to join the Crew community.

In stage two, we serve the selected nonprofits individually. We help them customize the white-label Crew Platform, allowing them to offer their process, curriculum, training and resources to their own communities of teachers and schools in a more efficient and effective way.

In stage three we focus on bringing together the wisdom and resources of the entire cohort by building relationships and offering pathways of connection between each organization’s version of the Crew Platform. Through these connective pathways, members of the cohort are able to curate curriculum, micro-certifications, activities, resources and micro-grants designed to transform the classroom experience and schools for teachers and schools from across the world.

Although we are in the process of launching our first K-12 cohort, we’ve been around for a while! For nearly a decade, the Crew Platform has successfully deepened and sustained the participation of youth movements from a wide range of programs.

We are both an innovative online tool and process. As an online tool developed over the last 10 years, we offer niche features in a white-labeled product that provides organizations with a fully customizable platform to equip, train and connect their communities. We also provide features for organizations to share curriculum and program elements with each other. 

As a process, we're innovating by bringing our platform grantee organizations together as cohorts, gathering in person to build relationships, share best practices and create the conditions for collaborations amongst these ecosystem programs to succeed.

In scoping the needs of the K-12 transformation sector, we found the need for an online platform to host and amplify the work of organizations leading the space, and to connect their teachers and school administrators across regions. We offer a focused feature set that supports: sharing activities and task lists, micro certifications and online learning; earning points and badges that can be turned into funding for teacher ongoing learning and classroom needs; and hosting events and conversations in an online community forum that connects to all elements of the platform.

In the next year we're launching our first K-12 Transformation Cohort, which includes: Transformative Action Institute,  The Institute for the Future, Facing History, Learning to Give, Californians for Justice, Eye to Eye, World Savvy, Center for Supportive Schools, Free Forest School and iThrive Games and African SOUP in Uganda. We launched our work with these organizations in-person in Austin, TX in April, 2018. Throughout the school year we will provide program design, platform launch and customization support as well as continue to build relationships amongst this group via one more in-person retreat as well as ongoing online touch points.

Our vision is to continue to offer extremely affordable technology solutions for organizations working to equip teachers, schools and districts with the most cutting edge solutions. And to facilitate relationship building that leads to transformative collaboration amongst the ecosystem of organizations that we bring together. To do this we need to create a strong financial support base via various funding models. As we secure our funding, we will expand our offerings both within and without the US, including Latin America, Africa and Asia. 

The relationships we're building with the organizations we serve are a priority in our work. We host 1-2 events every year to meet in person with the leaders and program managers of our grantees and members. We have bi-weekly 1-1 meetings to provide ongoing support and continuously harvesting their ideas for how to improve the platform and our process. We also host monthly online conversations to share best practices across organizations. Regarding accessibility, our online tools are available as web apps and also as iPhone and android phone apps.

Our online platform and collaboration methodology currently serve 16 youth movement organizations who are collectively mobilizing over 1,500 communities of changemakers in 45 countries. Together, these organizations are reaching over 30,000 youth each year: empowering and equipping them with the skills, perspective and community necessary to heal our world. 

In fall 2018 we're adding 11 organizations in a new K-12 Transformation cohort. This new cohort will serve teachers, school administrators and district leaders in the USA and Uganda. (In some cases, this will include students who serve as key cultural shifting leaders in their schools and communities.) As a new online tool released into each of their programs, we've learned the first six months are key to promote and onboard members. By the end of year one, 50-80% of the community should be online. Year two has been when most previous grantees have seen 90-100% on-boarding of their constituency.

Our team has been working together in different capacities for over 8 years. All share experiences in youth programs as participants and leaders. All five were members of the nonprofit FeelGood. Our process skills include strategic consulting and program design, community building experiences and design, effective communication, curriculum design, and fundraising. Our online technology skills include platform design, front and back-end development, user experience, graphic design, and platform on-boarding and support.

For the last three years we've been 100% funded by one foundation that supported our idea through the pilot stages. We've grown from supporting 1 organization to supporting 26 programs in the 2018-19 school year. As we enter our growth stage, we're actively working with a consulting group to create a new revenue model to reach a point of financial sustainability while also being able to offer our platform free of charge to organizations who can't afford it, and much below market rates for organizations in a position to contribute.

We want to walk our talk! We believe collaboration, collective investment, joint infrastructure and community building are key to a healthy and thriving social and environmental change sector! We would love the opportunity of joining the leading thinkers and solvers that Solve is convening. We're applying to learn from and connect with programs with whom we may be able to partner and amplify each other's works; and to connect with funders in the space who may be interested in joining forces to equip teachers and transform the K-12 space.

Our platform and process have been welcomed by the organizations we serve. Our primary barrier is to come up with a new revenue model to continue to serve a growing number of interested organizations via our collaborative process and to continue improving the Crew Platform. We also have a lot to learn in growing our tech team from a team of 3 to a robust product team.