Covid Philanthropy Idea—Building Software Solutions for People Impacted

This is a very raw idea, but figured I’d err on the side of posting vs telling myself I’ll post once I’ve refined it and never getting around to it.

If I was a multi billionaire and wanted to fund stuff to help against COVID and the economic impacts of this pandemic, I might do the following:

Fund small “two pizza” teams comprised of an ethnographical researcher, a UX designer, a software developer, a marketing/​growth expert, and just task them with building software for different groups of people working on and impacted by COVID. e.g. front-line medical staff, the newly unemployed, business owners on the brink of bankruptcy, etc.

The challenge would be 1) getting the $ 2) hiring/​vetting the people 3) getting access to the groups they’d be building to help, but all seem surmountable especially if it was a large-ish grant from a person well known enough to attract a decent amount of earned media /​ PR attention.

I think a lot of it would end up being making modern easy to understand and use interfaces to government forms/​information, which would be useful to do regardless, but COVID could be a good impetus to do it now.

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