Author: Greg Bloom

  • Collaboration in crisis: responses to the pandemic across our network

    Collaboration in crisis: responses to the pandemic across our network

    With the world in crisis due to the COVID-19 pandemic, health, human, and social service providers face a harrowing dilemma: need is skyrocketing, even as providers’ ability to actually help is severely compromised. Many institutions have struggled to respond or even closed down entirely – while many new efforts to meet communities’ needs have emerged…

  • Our 2019 Year in Review

    Our 2019 Year in Review

    As January 2020 comes to a close, I’m pleased to share our Year in Review report for Open Referral’s 2019. The report is available to download here. You can also read it embedded in this blog post below. This year, our report features voices of stakeholders across our network — including social workers and legal…

  • Miami Open211: developing new  business models for resource data-as-a-service

    Miami Open211: developing new business models for resource data-as-a-service

    Open Referral has been helping the Miami-Dade 2-1-1 Helpline explore new kinds of partnership models that can deepen the impact of their operations while enhancing the sustainability of their program. (In 2017, we reported on the first phase of our … Continue reading →

  • New research finds urgent needs for interoperability across health, human, and social service sectors

    New research finds urgent needs for interoperability across health, human, and social service sectors

    It often doesn’t matter how clever or well-designed a new technology is – if it can’t easily work with other technologies (and other organizations and people) then it may not accomplish much good at all. In the last month, three significant reports have underscored this reality – one each from the US (produced by the Social…

  • Open Referral’s 2018 Year in Review

    Open Referral’s 2018 Year in Review

    We are pleased to share our Year in Review report for 2018! This was the Open Referral Initiative’s fifth year – and in several ways, 2018 stands as a culmination of all the work we’ve done to date. Continue reading →

  • The Florida Legal Aid Resource Federation: Pilot Report

    The Florida Legal Aid Resource Federation: Pilot Report

    After two years of development, we’re pleased to share details of our successful Florida Legal Aid Resource Federation pilot! Initiated in 2016 (see our original post here) and completed in 2018, with support from the Legal Services Corporation and the Florida Bar Foundation, the Florida Legal Aid Resource Federation (FLARF) was a complex project with a…

  • Open Referral receives fiscal sponsorship from Aspiration

    Open Referral receives fiscal sponsorship from Aspiration

    Happy new year! In celebration, I’m excited to share news about a big milestone in the evolution of the Open Referral Initiative: Open Referral is now fiscally sponsored by Aspiration, a 501c3 organization that provides facilitation and capacity-building support to nonprofit technology initiatives. Continue reading →

  • Our 2017 Year in Review

    Our 2017 Year in Review

    Happy new year! (We’re less than three weeks in, so we can still say that – right??) Open Referral’s 2017 Year in Review is available to read here, and embedded below. (See our previous year-in-review reports here in our public document gallery.) Continue reading →

  • Meet The Human Service Data API Protocols

    Meet The Human Service Data API Protocols

    Open Referral’s Human Service Data API protocols (HSDA v1.2) are ready for use! Check out our documentation site here. Use our live developer portal here. Finally (for geeks and non-geeks): read the report on this phase of our development. And read more about this exciting new chapter below: Continue reading →