1. Organizations must be a 501c3 based in the US.

2. Priority will also be given to organizations that focus on one of the following key issues: workforce, financial security, and/or improving the lives of women and girls. (These are areas that our startups are tackling from a for-profit perspective and also areas where we believe nonprofits have an important role to play.) More details on each here:

   1. Lifelong Learning & Career Advancement (Workforce): Organizations driving innovative models for alternative career pathways,  upskilling and reskilling, professional development, and career advancement in high-growth, dignified, self-sustaining jobs

   2. Financial Security: Organizations advancing economic security, including driving awareness of and access to existing government benefits (e.g. Medicaid, Medicare, SNAP, WIC, FAFSA, childcare)

   3. Women & Girls: Organizations improving the lives of women and girls, including removing barriers to safety, healthcare, education, and career advancement

3. Organizations must have an existing tech enabled product or service and an existing technical team (e.g., CTO) that can co-design and maintain build beyond project (robust technical teams a preferred because we take this as an indication that the build will be heavily leveraged and continually supported)

1. There are no specific number of years of existence needed to apply, and we welcome both established nonprofits and start-ups/newcomers

2. The key criteria is that nonprofits should have some sort of existing tech infrastructure or internal technical staff who our team of engineers can work with. In the application process, it will also be important for organizations to explain why and how technology can help scale their impact. 

2 separate winners will each receive $250K in in-kind tech / engineering support. 

1. This amount is fully in-kind and cannot be used to compensate your own staff or other external contractors.

2. This amount covers the pay for our ~4 engineering staff for the 6 month duration of the project. Your staff’s time isn’t factored in as the expectation is that you are not dedicating a large portion of their time to this project aside from as part of their normal responsibilities.

1. There isn’t just one singular type of tech support that our staff of 70+ engineers will be providing. Services will be entirely bespoke to what the nonprofit winners need the most to advance their mission and scale their impact.ENG(INE) pairs nonprofits with a team of engineers over 6 months to deliver major, strategic technological builds.

2. Our core expertise is in the following:

   1. AI/ML and data product development

   2. UX audits and application redesigns

   3. Re-architecture/replatforming of existing core infrastructure

   4. Infrastructure/platform development

   5. New product development 

   6. Developer experience enhancement/creation of API products

1. Here are some common ones we’ve done really well for nonprofits and for private clients:

   1. Testing the feasibility of using machine learning (including but not limited to LLMs) to solve a challenging user problem or automate an existing manual workflow

   2. Migrating from one database or system architecture to a new one to address performance or reliability concerns severely impacting an organization’s ability to serve users

   3. Building a mobile application to serve an entirely new population

   4. Creating infrastructure, data pipelines, and APIs to make an organization’s existing internal data usable as a product

   5. Building cloud environments and MLOps pipelines to bring existing machine learning models into production

1. Generally we want to be focusing on engineering cases with 1) relatively high technological sophistication (i.e., something for which it would be harder to find a vendor), 2) which will differentially increase the organization’s impact by unlocking new users served or increasing the depth at which users can be served, and 3) which can be chunked off into a discrete build which can be completed in ~6 months with 3-4 engineers and then maintained by an internal tech team.

2. Examples of good uses cases, include:

   1. (All of the above previously completed use cases)

3. Examples of less good uses cases include:

   1. Internally-facing volunteer management system

1. Our cohort of incredible partners includes: Code for America, Fast Forward, BlueRidge Labs, Robin Hood Foundation, The David Prize, Siegel Family Endowment, Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, Tech:NYC, and New York City Economic Development Corporation.

2. They will help with promoting the program, referring great nonprofits to us, and also offering insight when we evaluate proposals. Ultimately, AlleyCorp’s core team running Nonprofit ENG(INE) will make the final call on selections.

Not at all! We’re making those available so that you get to know us and have all of your questions answered. 

Only the Selection Committee will review your applications and nothing will be shared publicly without your approval ahead of time. 

Yes

Potentially, but it depends on the precise contours of your structure. Please reach out to us (youssef@alleycorp.com and sellers@alleycorp.com) to confirm.

Nope, we are tech-agnostic and really care about the substance of your application and the incrementality of how your new technology build will support your impact going forward.

1. The intention of this is to ensure that our engineering team has someone to correspond with during the build and that after the project has concluded there are resources to continue to manage, maintain, and fund the build over time. 

2. There are no specific rules for the size or scope of engineering team required to apply, but it could be helpful to show how who on your team will take over the anticipated end state of the build.

1. Not necessarily but it will be important for you to demonstrate your ability to adequately ingest new technology and manage, maintain, and fund it over time (e.g. patching security vulnerabilities, cleaning up bugs, etc.)

   1. You’ll need to demonstrate your Plan B and C if, for example, your part-time or contract technology team isn’t available to keep your new system or platform up and running.

2. One way to show dedication here (especially for those externally contracting engineering teams) is to share the length of relationships had with current and past contract engineering teams, the annual current and future budgeted spend on these projects, and the source of funds for this spend (i.e., specific funders, grants, etc.) to prove the longevity and durability of tech funding

Good question. Your slide-deck video should be 5 minutes or less and your tech stack video should be 3 minutes or less. Use as much or as little time in those ranges that best communicates your message!

Not at all! 

The grant is for in-kind support worth $250K over 6 months. The engineering team and associated resources (project management, design, data, etc.) will be working on this full-time and are part of our engineering team at AlleyCorp Nord, our in-house engineering and design shop (roughly 70 in total). 

1. The ideal situation is one where we have a relatively discrete project that aligns with our expertise, but we are working very closely with your team -- either through weekly checkpoints and ongoing async reviews of RFCs or other documentation (e.g., code, etc.) or by having one or more of your engineers fully embed with us in a mixed squad of sorts.

   1. We find that the latter is particularly useful if your team is hoping to learn some totally new skill that they haven't previously developed but that our team already has.

1. This is a top priority for selection of a nonprofit partner. We want to make sure that whatever is built is usable and maintainable. In short, once we select the four winners, our CIO will work with you all to scope the project.

2. During the actual project, in the most ideal set-up our engineering team will embed with you (connecting weekly, sometimes even daily) especially in the requirements setting and design phases of the project to ensure that small decisions in the build are going to be sustainable.

3. Additionally, this is why we require all applicants to already have a tech team (okay if it’s external but want to understand longevity of vendor relationship and budget to fund this on an ongoing basis).

During the application, feel free to lean ambitious in what you can get done in 6 months because it's easier for the team to scope down than up. That said, please provide an actually feasible scoped project versus just a product roadmap or wishlist. 

During the application, feel free to lean ambitious in what you can get done in 6 months because it's easier for the team to scope down than up. That said, please provide an actually feasible scoped project versus just a product roadmap or wishlist. 

1. The 70+ person engineering team exists to help build our own/our investee early-stage companies. They've also worked on a number of past projects exactly like this with nonprofit partners.

2. They have experience both on short ~6-ish month project sprints (as these will be) and on longer term product updating and maintenance. 

3. The team is also used to working in a number of different contexts in terms of company size, age of company, etc.

4. Typical engagement lengths range from ~2 months to 2 years.

The specific team members will really depend on what the project is. We tend to try to get a balance of seniority on any project, but our team skews somewhat senior relative to the industry at large. To give you an example of the team that worked on a previous Nonprofit ENG(INE) project with Magpie Literacy, one had ~20 years professional experience, another ~8, yet another ~5, and the last one was less than a year out from his master's degree.

That does disqualify you. Unfortunately we need confidence that whatever is built can be maintained and built upon over time by your organization versus not. Software platforms need to be maintained, kept secure, updated, and monitored, especially when external things change (e.g. the software language it's written on issues an update that requires you to update your codebase or install a new safety, privacy, or security patch). 

Great question. We’ll be launching projects in 2 cohorts of 2, one beginning September and the other likely November/December (though we’ll want to move sooner to ensure we can move on the nonprofit’s key priorities as quickly as possible). 

1. This is a huge general project with LLM-related projects. To get around this, usually we start with original theories and make adjustments throughout to get to the end result desired. 

2. Depending on your proposition and project, 

3. We’ll get around this by setting-up what the MVP in your case could look like

1. We expect the reality of this to vary significantly. Depending on the need for designers, user testers, architects, developers, etc, we can mix our team with your team to provide the roles that are currently missing. 

2. We can figure out how to answer this question but seeing the blueprint will help us understand how to glue on. This can range from: providing a wholesale team full of these different functionalities to providing a team that can plug-in to existing plans. 

Initially it meant more bootstrapping start-ups, now means more doing more consulting work around start-ups 

1. To the other points of sustainability and maintainability, we’d want to ensure that there are full time staff in the organization as well (either internally or externally).

2. That said, having volunteers provide additional capacity is if anything view of as a positive, as it indicates real traction and interest from people. Please highlight the capacity in which these volunteers are typically involved.

3. If selected, for the actual build we would need to determine in what capacity volunteer developers are engaged. It would likely be harder to incorporate them in the build, but this would be considered as part of the overall scoping and support plan.