As an open network, much of Open Referral’s activity is driven by voluntary contributions from participants (individuals and organizations) who share our vision, use our specs and tools, and contribute back to the community. We also recognize that, often, people … Continue reading
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If I maintain a community resource directory — or if I partner with an organization that does — how would I get started?
You can start by testing the viability of our format for your context. That may entail mapping your database’s schema to the Human Services Data Specification. Once you’ve mapped your schema to ours, analyze the gaps. (You can ask questions … Continue reading
What if I need help collecting this data in the first place?
Open Referral is working to build tools that can help people produce and verify accurate resource directory data. For the most part, we don’t host these tools ourselves – but we can help you deploy, customize, and leverage them to achieve … Continue reading
Who do I contact if I need help with this project?
You can contact Greg Bloom (@greggish | [email protected]), the founder and lead organizer of Open Referral. Alternatively, you can reach out to our network via our Community Forum or Slack channel .
How do you balance the interests of a consulting service with the prerogatives of leadership in this community?
We are committed to working on projects that are aligned with the values of Open Referral, and which are strategically relevant to our mission. We prioritize partnerships that yield open source outputs that can be re-used by any members of … Continue reading
Who leads the Open Referral Initiative?
The founder and lead organizer of Open Referral is Greg Bloom. Bloom oversees the management of this website (hi!) and the associated communications channels, and also coordinates core Open Referral activities. You can see Greg’s story here. Greg’s leadership in … Continue reading
My question isn’t answered here. How can I ask it?
We’d love to hear from you! Reach out to us via our Community Forum, Slack team or email [email protected]
How can I help?
This is an open source initiative, by which we mean that anyone can freely participate in it and even adapt any of our content for their own purposes. There are lots of ways that you might be able to get … Continue reading
How can my community become a pilot project?
Pilot projects usually start with a champion. This is likely someone who is motivated to rally other stakeholders in a community around an effort to solve this problem. We expect such a champion might emerge from a local government, a … Continue reading
What is a pilot project?
Open Referral is led by local pilot projects in which stakeholders take action towards establishing accessible, interoperable and reliable community resource directory data. Pilots commit to using Open Referral’s specifications and tools to exchange resource directory data among institutions — … Continue reading