On Christmas Eve, one of $O$’s co-founders went out to a food pantry in Castro Valley CA and served food. He also handed out 30 of our cards, more than we’ve ever handed out at any given time, and all of them to people in need. This was the biggest test of our organization this far. We didn’t have a lot of the automation we planned to have in place, and a lot of our processes were rough. In addition, it turned out that Castro Valley is unincorporated, which means we had zero government support to refer clients to. We were 100% on our own, facing a flood of people in need that expected.
It has been a full month since then. A month and then some technically, but this is a good place to look back from. I don’t have the exact numbers on hand right now, as I’m writing this during my lunch period at the school where I sub, but I can tell you that we helped at least 30 people. The cards proved to be a big success. We knew that already, but having hard numbers to back it up, especially when they were distributed in bulk is good. We also worked out a lot of our processes, which is a solid victory from an organizational standpoint. We also bought a LOT of Taco Bell. As we are planning on approaching them with a marketing campaign, having hard proof that we can move product for them is a huge success. It will make a hard sell a lot easier for us.
The thing that didn’t go as well was the data gathering. We got almost no data from these clients. That was our mistake. We had a problem with our process, and this experience exposed that problem. So while we failed to get data about the clients, the data we gained about our process is even more valuable. There will always be more clients. Learning that we need to integrate the data gathering earlier in the process is priceless. We also gained data about how to better streamline the process for both us and the client mainly by seeing what didn’t work. Learning from less than perfect experiences is the hallmark of a good designer.
Overall, Castro Valley was a success. We helped a lot of people and learned plenty of lessons. It made us a better organization as a whole, trial by fire though it was.
