Findings

Our study uses a mixed-methods approach to understand the U.S. PIT landscape with focus on PIT entrepreneurs who identify as BIPOC. As part of our study, we designed and implemented a graduate-level experiential learning course to support the career pathways and placement of students in public interest technology, as well as provide support to BIPOC PIT entrepreneurs. Graduate students were matched with Detroit-based BIPOC PIT entrepreneurs to work on projects.¹ Key findings from the study include:

• Data that are representative of the BIPOC tech social entrepreneurs in our study were limited.
• There are significant gaps in funding, social capital, and a lack of outside development support along PIT entrepreneurs' career paths.
• Despite their lived proximal experiences, a disconnect exists among the PIT entrepreneurs in our study and policy creation, policy implementation, and public interest technology conversations taking place to address challenges of local and national importance.
• University collaboration with PIT entrepreneurs generated positive results for students and PIT entrepreneurs.

Demographics of Public Interest Technology

The field of social entrepreneurship and public interest technology are similar in that there is no agreement on their definition and there is little data to describe the composition of professionals in the field. For example, there have been few studies that shed light on understanding the ecosystem of the field. These studies however show a lack of representation of BIPOC individuals in the field of public interest technology. In a study by the Tech for Social Justice Project, which included individuals who work at the intersection of technology and social justice, social good, and/or the public interest, 55 percent of the 121 participants identified as white, with 45 percent identifying as persons of color (PoC). Seventeen percent of respondents identified as Black, 9 percent identified as Hispanic/Latino, and 2 percent identified as American Indian or Alaskan Native.² The Public Interest Technology Workforce Survey led by the Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation, included individuals who are studying, applying and/or leveraging data, design, technology, and innovation in service of the public interest.³ Of the 196 survey responses, 68 percent identified as white and 30 percent as PoC. Eleven respondents identified as Black, seven identified as Latinx, and one identified as Indigenous.

These demographic data could be interpreted as the field not being diverse or they could be highlighting a potential sampling bias in the existing studies, in which the data thus far are not representative of those that exist in the field. If the latter, an argument could be made that the PIT organizations are limited by social networks that have a shortage of BIPOC PIT practitioners. There is a potential need to strengthen the pipeline by supporting organizations and research efforts that can fill the gaps caused by bias in their social networks. Utilizing existing organizations that contain a diverse network of tech practitioners, such as the #BlackTechFutures Research Institute, could be useful in mitigating this sampling bias.

Similar to PIT, the field of social entrepreneurship lacks an extensive demographic study of social entrepreneurs. A database of social entrepreneurs is provided by Echoing Green through their database of fellowship program applicants.⁴ Across four application cycles (2016-2020) they contain over 14,000 applications from social entrepreneurs.⁵ Project Dianne conducts a biennial demographic study to provide a snapshot of the current landscape for Black & Latinx women in the U.S. innovation and entrepreneurship space.⁶ As of 2020, Project Dianne’s database contains 680 U.S. start-ups in their database.⁷ These databases serve as a resource to understanding the landscape of social entrepreneurship in the United States, and in addition, provide an opportunity to learn how these founders can help answer questions in the field of PIT.

Landscape of Tech Entrepreneurs

To gain a better understanding of the landscape of tech entrepreneurs in the United States, our study utilized the 2018 U.S. Census PUMS survey data to generate population estimates of tech entrepreneurs.⁸ We define tech entrepreneurs as individuals who are 1) are self-employed with reported income from self-employment activities even though they could also be employed elsewhere and 2) have STEM or related education based on NSF definition.⁹ According to our analysis, there are an estimated 2.52 million tech entrepreneurs across the United States.¹⁰ A higher proportion of these individuals reside in the Southern and Western regions, .33 and .29 respectively, in comparison with the Northeastern (.22) and Midwestern (.15) regions. In addition, the data suggest that the demographics of tech entrepreneurs are proportional to national demographics, suggesting that there is not a supply shortage of BIPOC tech entrepreneurs and therefore could contribute to PIT efforts. Tech entrepreneurs are predominantly (more than 70 percent) white.¹¹Black tech entrepreneurs make up 11.5 percent (590,903) of all tech entrepreneurs.¹² Only 2.7 percent (44,417) of tech entrepreneurs are Native.¹³ According to 2019 U.S. Census data, white individuals compose 76 percent of the population, Black individuals represent 13.4 percent of the population and Native¹⁴ make up 1.5 percent.¹⁵

Men are slightly more represented in the field. Of the estimated 2.52 million tech entrepreneurs, approximately 53 percent are men and 47 percent are women with white male tech entrepreneurs having the highest presence in the field. In addition, there are more White female tech entrepreneurs than both non-white male and non-white female tech entrepreneurs combined. However, there are more Black female tech entrepreneurs than Black male entrepreneurs. When examining the incomes of U.S. tech entrepreneurs, we found that, on average, white male tech entrepreneurs make more than other individuals.¹⁶ They make almost double of what Black female entrepreneurs in the field make.

Despite the data limitations, our analysis found that a supply of BIPOC individuals with characteristics similar to PIT entrepreneurs exist, such as being self-employed and having a background in STEM. Therefore, diversity in the supply of individuals might not be the issue, rather the inclusion of individuals into the field might be more important. While still in the infancy stage, PIT must be intentional about building the field with diverse individuals, ensuring that these practitioners feel comfortable self-selecting into the field.

PIT Entrepreneurs’ Lived Experiences

The PIT entrepreneurs in our study were motivated to create their social enterprise to help better serve their communities and were greatly influenced by their own personal experiences navigating the social problems that their mission seeks to improve. The complex problems that the PIT entrepreneurs sought to tackle included various social issues such as providing equitable healthcare access to Black communities, increasing voter engagement, promoting economic and social mobility through job placement, and creating innovative ways to reduce police violence. All participants in our study had a close personal connection to the problem that their technology hoped to solve—or alleviate. On many levels, their personal experiences are interconnected with the intersections of their identities.

From their own lived experiences stemming from their identities these PIT entrepreneurs identified a gap that was felt closely and sought to close it. Examples of the types of the tech social enterprises and what motivated participants to create their tech social enterprise are below:

• A social enterprise that uses tech to bring people together to make it easier to navigate the healthcare system for Black and Brown folks. The primary motivation related to her family, the majority of which has diabetes. In terms of connecting their community with their healthcare providers, she wanted to “bridge that gap a bit – have an outlet to do so."
• A social tech startup that works with K12, higher education, and employers who help students and entry level talent have the skills, resources, and social capital they need to thrive. The founder noted that, “I was impacted by another Black man being killed at the hands of the police, this was Alton Sterling out of Baton Rouge. I'm from Ferguson, Missouri, and I was crying for days at work. And I thought it was time that the next generation should be able to feel, be seen, be heard, and be valued. And I wanted to dedicate myself to this mission now.”
• A mental health app specifically targeted for Black folks. The founder expressed she created the app because, “I'm a mental health advocate and I have major depressive disorder. First focused on mental health generally, but then started focusing on the cultural competency aspect. That's the point of why I have a mental health app for Black people because racial trauma is a real thing in this country. And just to see all of the emotions that are going on today (Breonna Taylor) and how it's making especially the Black community feel like it was one of the main reasons I thought that an app like this was important.”
• A nonpartisan platform that enables people to select the issues they care about and then receive alerts before Congress is about to vote on any of those issues. The founder attributed her motivation behind the app from her childhood, “My dad's family fled Communist China… so I think even at a young age I just grew up with parents who saw it [voting] as their civic duty.”
• A social enterprise that is the “LinkedIn for the LinkedOut” which connects graduates of alternative education to jobs through talent marketplace. The founder expressed her motivation to create the enterprise as, “I just had this epiphany that it wasn't the people. It was a system and we needed to figure out how to work outside of the system and build new systems for people like my brother who, you know, most people don't go to college, not because they don't like school or because they're not smart. It's because they can't afford it. So then that motivated me to launch my [social venture] to help people like my brother who fall through the cracks.”
• An application that allows officers to communicate with a person at a traffic stop via technology and also allows a person to pay their court charges over the app. As the founder noted, “And in a split second, I was staring down the barrel of an officer's weapon, right? That really led into, especially seeing all the things taking place, right, all over media, other Black men getting killed by police, right? That became the mission, the driving factor of, how do we save a life.”

Included in their lived experiences are the diverse skill sets the PIT entrepreneur participants obtained from previous work at the intersection of government, community organizing, business, and technology. Having previous knowledge in various fields and thinking about the role that technology plays in these spaces informed their work in the field of PIT. About half of the participants had previous work experience in the field of their social enterprise. For example, the founder of an app providing healthcare access to Black communities had worked in the pharmacy tech industry for 22 years. Additionally, the founder of a voter engagement app had prior experience as a campaign manager in Iowa.

Lack of Funding

The most prevalent challenge in the field expressed by participants was their difficulty in navigating funding structures and gaining access to capital. As one entrepreneur noted, “Funding is hard to get, it's hard to get in the right rooms and get access to relationships and sources of capital.” This finding is in alignment with existing literature on founders of color being heavily underrepresented in entrepreneurship and receiving far less start-up capital than their white counterparts.¹⁷ For example, in 2015, Black and Latinx entrepreneurs made up 14 percent and 8 percent of all entrepreneurs in the United States respectively, but their reported combined revenue was less than 2 percent of $33.5 trillion.¹⁸ These demographic disparities are well-documented and can be attributed to structural barriers to entrepreneurship.¹⁹ For instance, evidence from previous research shows that a variety of factors limit women and people of color as they consider starting and growing businesses, including disparities in educational attainment, personal wealth, and access to capital.²⁰

The main pathways to early seed capital—friends and family, angel investors, grants, and venture capitalists—were reported as being inaccessible by participants. The first type of early-stage funding often comes from angel investors and from friends and family networks. More than two-thirds of entrepreneurs use personal savings as a source of funding, and more than one-in-five rely on family for funding.²¹ The entrepreneurs in our study reported that relying on friends and family in their networks for early-seed funding was not a viable source, as many of them did not come from well-resourced backgrounds. On average, Black, Latinx, Native American, and other minority households have much less wealth than white households.²² For example, the typical Black entrepreneur starts a business with $35,000 in capital, a third of the startup capital for the typical white entrepreneur, and other entrepreneurs of color face similar challenges.²³ As one participant explained, “As a working-class Black Latina, most of the people that I know didn’t make it to college. It's a really big endeavor to leave, you're probably like the highest earner in your entire family to leave a good job for basically, you're opting into being poor again by being an entrepreneur.” These tech social entrepreneurs are more likely to be on a path to climbing their way out of generational poverty and therefore lack the social and economic capital in their networks to secure angel investments.

The next funding source reported by our participants was funding from grants—typically provided by foundations and philanthropic sources. Half of our participants reported being involved in diversity-focused incubators and/or accelerator programs. Three big obstacles were highlighted in gaining access to funds through these grants’ opportunities. First, many of the entrepreneurs reported that the costs were too high. Participants highlighted that the long application process usually was not worth their time. The applications were described as taking many hours and requiring a significant amount of data that the entrepreneurs usually do not have this early on. As one tech social entrepreneur noted, “The laborious process typically doesn’t yield the return.” There are a limited number of these funding opportunities, making them highly competitive. As one participant noted, “You run out of these [grant] avenues.” For this reason, our participants reported having to travel to different cities in order to participate in the incubators and accelerator programs that exist. The additional travel and resulting travel fatigue are extra costs incurred by BIPOC entrepreneurs seeking access to funding. As one participant noted, “To be a founder of color you gotta work, they make you go to all these places just to get money for underrepresented founders.” Another concern raised by participants was that BIPOC entrepreneurs still face a credibility challenge in the foundation and philanthropic space—“even on the philanthropic side, you face a credibility challenge as a younger person and/or if you are a founder of color.”

The last funding source our participants spoke about were venture capitalists (VCs). Venture capital firms review, assess, and invest in new and emerging businesses. As a result, VCs look at a very high volume of deals, and on average only invest in 1 out of every 100 deals.²⁴ Historically, VCs have not provided much capital to founders of color, as women and founders of color are viewed as high-risk. About a third of our entrepreneurs mentioned that they wished they had not spent so much time trying to get funding from VC sources as they did not align with the vision of their enterprise. When asked what they would do differently in leading their social enterprise, one participant mentioned, “Spending less time to win the approval of a community that isn’t really right for our kind of business.” Another challenge was that VCs are not inclined to support early seed funding. They primarily target “those enterprises that have already built something with a verifiable customer base. Which leaves those at the bottom out.” Although conversations of VCs funding founders of color have become more prevalent, the participants in our study felt that it wasn’t enough—“venture capitalists don’t care – even [social impact investors] that say they are committed to racial equity work.”²⁵ The entrepreneurs do not feel that there is anything on their behalf that needs to change, rather “investors need to behave differently.” As one participant highlighted, “We need to see more intentionality on behalf of funders; funders who are putting real skin in the game, and just like they fund the entrepreneur without a lot of traction when that entrepreneur is White or male, or both they need to start just doing the same for people who look like me.” Too often, navigating these funding structures bear additional costs on BIPOC entrepreneurs making it difficult to access funding and capital.

Racial and Gender Inequities

The women in our study observed how their intersectional identities made it even more difficult for them to navigate the field and gain access to capital. Women entrepreneurs raise less money in comparison to their male-counterparts. In 2017, women-only teams raised an average of $82 for every $100 of seed-funding all male-founded teams raised. ²⁶ These funding gaps are intensified for women of color, especially for Black and Brown women. Although the national median seed round funding for a startup is $2.5 million, the median seed round raised by Black women founders is $125,000 and the median seed round raised by Latinx women founders is $200,000.²⁷ This represents a nickel and less than a dime, respectively, for every dollar raised in comparison to the median seed round funding for a startup.

The women in our study explained the barriers to access capital and the emotional toll endured throughout the process. A common thread described by our participants was having to constantly prove themselves to investors. As one participant told a story of her participation in a pitch competition in 2020. She explained how she was asked questions that “prove how competent [she is],” such as “why am I the person to do this, what skills do I have to ensure that I would make this a success?” These were all questions that were not asked to her male counterparts in the competition. Unfortunately, this is a common theme for BIPOC women entrepreneurs, in which they are often asked different questions than their male counterparts. According to a recent study of Q&A interactions between venture capitalists and entrepreneurs at the TechCrunch Disrupt annual funding competition, VCs posed different types of questions to male versus female entrepreneurs. They tended to ask men (promotion) questions about the potential for gains, and they tended to ask women (prevention) questions about the potential for losses. The difference in questioning explains much of why female entrepreneurs received five times less funding than their male counterparts.²⁸ One participant in our study spoke about how her achievements were always downplayed while speaking with investors. In her conversations with investors she would always get a response of “oh, that’s a great idea” which bothered her because “it’s not an idea, it’s something that thousands of people are using.” In addition, women in our study shared that their worth was never appreciated. Too often they were expected to participate in speaking engagement and events [hosted by organizations] without any compensation. As one entrepreneur explained, “As a Black woman, they do not know my worth. People know about it [her app] now, yet some people think I should do things for free.” Overall, the bar is set higher for BIPOC women tech social entrepreneurs making it more difficult to gain access to capital.

A majority of the women entrepreneurs reported a significant impact on their emotional and mental health due to the interactions and process of accessing capital. Navigating the field was explained as being “mentally and emotionally draining.” As one participant explained that it is emotionally draining “having to balance your identity and how you show up in these spaces where you don't see yourself a lot of times.” In addition, being held up to such a high standard by investors was noted as contributing to an “inferiority complex.” As one participant mentioned, “When I see some of my peers get $15 million on a vision, and they [her enterprise] actually have a product and are saving lives right now, at some point I question my belief in myself.”

Lack of Skills Coordination

Along their career pathways, the PIT entrepreneurs in our study highlighted how they had to actively fill in gaps in their professional development to support their social enterprise’s mission. These gaps included not having the technical skill set, not knowing the language of the space, having difficulty finding the team members with values that aligned with their mission, and lacking a sense of community.

The majority of the PIT entrepreneurs in our study do not come from a STEM-related background and therefore reported having to learn technical skills such as coding. Of the 15 PIT entrepreneurs in our study (including the PIT entrepreneurs that participated in our experiential learning course), 13 of them had bachelor’s degrees and six of them had graduate and/or professional degrees. Of these, only one holds a degree in a STEM discipline. This is consistent with findings from the Project Dianne report in which 70 percent of founders in their database do not have a STEM degree at the undergraduate or graduate level, suggesting that Black and Latinx women founders find their way to entrepreneurship through a variety of educational backgrounds and pathways. In addition, the PIT entrepreneurs reported having to learn the language of the field, as one participant noted having to know, “How a product is described, how it fits into the landscape, especially as a non-technical founder and then be able to talk fundraising…it’s a very different language.” Another challenge was being able to find teammates who possess values that aligned with their mission. This was expressed in stories of struggling to find the “right developers to translate their vision” and trouble finding a co-founder. Throughout the interviews with the PIT entrepreneurs, the importance of community was often highlighted, especially in regard to combatting the mental and emotional toll that the field creates.

Despite these disparities in support along their career path, the entrepreneurs in our study actively sought out the community, skills, and support they needed to be successful. Social media networks were often reported as a way to build community, share knowledge, and to expand their network. Various social media avenues, such as Slack, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Facebook, were mentioned as creating a space to build and engage with a community of founders like themselves. As one participant discussed, “With underrepresented founders you get to talk about real topics and be vulnerable… so those things have been helpful on the community side, really feeling like I'm not alone.” These groups offered support and offered a hopeful space to support “people that have come before her, people beside her, and then people up and coming behind.” In addition to creating a supportive community, various social media sites were said to be a place to “build knowledge.” As one founder explained how a group on Facebook called Build Brand Launch helped her figure out how to build her app. The founder explained that, “I feel like it has helped me to be a better business owner and to be more efficient like learning things from groups and Facebook.” Participants also noted that through technology, they were able to build their network. As one person mentioned how social media “helped aid in networking and helped accelerate relationship building. It pushed her visibility [to others].”

While participants noted these platforms as being helpful in connecting individuals to like-minded communities, accessing, and sharing knowledge and building their networks, many did not believe it was a way to directly access economic and social capital. As one person noted, “To access capital, you need to access folks that don’t look like you, because unfortunately, that’s where the capital is.” One participant recommended that “having a pilot partner that gives startups the chance to test” would be helpful. The PIT entrepreneurs that participated in our experiential learning course also noted that having access to more research and students with diverse skill sets would have helped them when they were first entering the field of PIT.

Absence of Diversity in PIT

The PIT entrepreneurs highlighted that diversifying the field of tech social entrepreneurship can play a significant role in the impact that technology can have in solving complex problems, especially those that disproportionately impact communities of color. The entrepreneurs generally viewed technology as a tool to create systemic change; however, noted that this impact would be determined by who is behind the technology. For example, a few of the entrepreneurs noted the idea of “technology as a tool,” noting that “it’s not tech, it’s the people behind it.” The ability to participate and create technology was reported as exciting and a potential way for marginalized voices to be heard. As one participant reported, “The innovation of technology has provided a landscape for those often at the margins to take up space,” outlining that “the future landscape of technology can give a voice to people that are voiceless. They [the users] will see themselves in that technology.”

Many of the participants expressed that the lack of racial, class, and gender diversity in the field of tech social entrepreneurship contributed to a dissonance of how social problems are experienced and ways to solve them. As one participant expressed, “Identity and lived experiences are exactly what made me be successful. I can tap into that knowledge – you can’t learn that.” The closer to the social issue that you personally have been, the better position you might be to try and solve it. One person noted that, “It’s about allowing the people with the right intentions and motivations and lived experiences to be behind the crafting of a lot of the new stuff that comes out.” Participants described how their diverse experiences, stemming from their own identities, are not always understood, or accepted. For example, one participant described how she felt that “her experiences seemed to be gaslighted. The people there lacked context of the government failures and corporation’s exploitation.” This participant went on to explain the frustrations and need to “convince others why this is really a problem if they don't have any proximity to it. It's disheartening and it's really exhausting.” A sense of inclusion in the field was also not felt by the PIT entrepreneurs. As one participant explained how she knows “a lot of people that worked for Obama that are White and went to an ivy league school” and that made her feel like “she never fit in when she worked with Obama folks.”

The overall lack of diversity in the field of PIT feeds into limitations of PIT problem definitions and approaches to solving these problems. For this reason, PIT entrepreneurs raised concerns of needing to be critical of the field of PIT. Just as tech can be used as a tool to make a positive impact, it can also knowingly, or unknowingly exacerbate existing social inequities.²⁹ For this reason, several participants noted that folks should be wary of social entrepreneurs who seek to leverage technology to deliver new services and products. As one participant put it, “There are a lot of people trying to use it for good at a surface level but may have nefarious intentions beneath.” Several other examples included the “Silicon Valley approach to democracy” which ended up becoming a way to sell poll data. The increased focus on health equity spurred by the inequitable impact of COVID-19 on Black and Brown communities worried one entrepreneur. The market becoming “saturated with people that don’t have the lived experiences” worried her. When forging a path for PIT entrepreneurs, it will be vital to define what falls within the domain of the public interest.

Experiential Learning Course with PIT Entrepreneurs

Launched in winter 2020, a semester-long experiential learning class for graduate Ford School of Public Policy and the School of Information students at U-M was implemented. The experiential learning class focused on 1) developing an understanding of Public Interest Technology as a career field, 2) building and catalyzing policy and data science/technology solutions, 3) examining the role of racial equity, technology, and data in each entrepreneur's area of social impact, 4) developing solutions or programmatic interventions that address problems within entrepreneurs’ areas of impact, and 5) strengthening the social capital for all participants through meaningful collaboration and working relationships. The curriculum was designed to facilitate project collaboration and group learning through classroom discussions. The class analyzed fundamental texts such as the Freedman Consulting reports that broadly covers the area of PIT and Ruha Benjamin’s Race After Technology which provides a primer on how implicit biases permeate technology and the implications of these biases on society.³⁰

In addition to the course curriculum, seven students worked in teams with five entrepreneurs of color based in Detroit, where they engaged with PIT research and developed consulting and project management skills.³¹ The five Detroit-based PIT entrepreneurs were identified through a local Blacks in Tech Slack channel with the support of TechTown, a start-up incubator located in Detroit, Michigan and the PIT entrepreneurs received a stipend for their participation. The course was structured in three phases: discovery, design, and build. At the end of their project, student teams presented their innovative solutions to participating entrepreneurs and faculty from the Ford School of Public Policy. Below are the projects:

• Selene Ceja (MPP ‘20) with support from Sarah Gruen (MPP ‘21) worked with Dwayne Barnes of Social Tech. Social Tech is a think tank that studies the creation, consumption and impact of technology in urban communities. Selene’s project assessed the ecosystem of coding bootcamps in the Detroit City area.
• Jaklyn Nunga (MSI ‘20) with support from Paul Capp (MPP ‘21) worked with Deirdre Roberson of Motor City S.T.E.A.M. Motor City S.T.E.A.M. is an organization dedicated to providing STEAM (Science. Technology. Engineering. Art, Mathematics) related educational programs and opportunities for minority and underprivileged students. Jaklyn created a reference guide for the EdTech development of their Lab Drawer product, specifically outlining approaches to user-design (UX).
• Julie Singh (MPP ‘20) worked with David Merritt of Merit Goodness. Merit Goodness designs and sells products that help kids get to college, with 20 percent of their profits funding college scholarships for students in Detroit. Julie analyzed data across several years to measure the impact of the program and created a promotional brochure to share the results.
• Kaushal Solanki (MSI ‘20) worked with Kwaku Osei of Farmacy. Farmacy Food is an application that creates tasty meals around peoples’ dietary needs. Kaushal designed the UX for user onboarding onto their main application.
• Darrell Williams (MSI ‘21) worked with Jonathan Quarles of SolAir Water Inc. SolAir uses a first-of-its-kind renewable drinking water technology to harvest water from sunlight and air. They strive to provide all communities with clean drinking water, while preserving the environment. Darrell performed data analysis on market sizing, data strategy, and market projection, furthering Sol Air’s data foundation.

A summative evaluation was used to assess the class’s effectiveness and focused on ascertaining the extent to which the class has been able to identify and address what factors constrain the interest and business growth of minorities in social entrepreneurship. A total of four surveys—one pre-, one post-, and two during the class—were completed by participating students and entrepreneurs to document changes that came about as a result of the program.

The experiential learning course generated positive results for the participating students and the BIPOC PIT entrepreneurs. According to our survey results, students reported an increase in their understanding of PIT and were able to apply the course curriculum to the project they were working on. On a rating scale of 1-10, 1 being the lowest understanding and 10 the highest understanding, the class average understanding of PIT in the beginning of the course was a 5 and by the end of the course, students average understanding of PIT was a 7.8. Students were also able to showcase their understanding of the connections between their project and PIT generally. As one student reported:

“The readings were helpful. At first, I thought why would anyone use biased datasets to design products and services that are focused for a particular community but now that I am in a similar situation, I understand that there are business goals to fulfil and a lot of time constraints. Due to these constraints, we must use all that is available. Although this will create a 'faulty' product, if we know the concept of biases as indicated by 'Ruha Benjamin,' we as product owners know the improvements that we need to make.”

Most importantly, students reported that the course allowed them to build project management skills, research skills, and tech and non-tech problem solving skills. Students also expressed the value in working with another student from a different department, as one policy student shared, “I learned a lot about product development and UX design cycle from [team partner].” Students expressed that there should be more interdisciplinary opportunities that not only connect students across the university to one another, but also connect students to entrepreneurs that are addressing social issues. When asked about how they thought their work on this project might be helpful in their future development, all of the students noted how the skills would be applicable in their future work. One student stated, “This class and project has definitely strengthened my desire to be intentional about who I work for and how I choose to work. Another student reported that, “I now have a name for the discipline, and it's what I plan to pursue.” Additionally, two students were offered the opportunity to extend their work on their project and one student added a dual-degree in the School of Information due to interest garnered from the class.

According to our survey results, participating PIT entrepreneurs also reported an increase in their understanding of PIT. On a rating scale of 1-10, 1 being the lowest understanding and 10 the highest understanding, the entrepreneurs’ average understanding of PIT in the beginning of the course was a 7.25 and increased slightly to a 7.5 by the end of the course. The PIT entrepreneurs found value in participating in the program. As one participant noted the importance of the PIT field:

“PIT is a growing field and has the potential to grow exponentially in the next 1-3 years from businesses to research and everything in between. I think students of color and entrepreneurs can benefit through practice and research.”

According to our survey results, the PIT entrepreneurs reported an average of $3,000 in generated value for each team, and across all teams, students saved the social entrepreneurs of color an estimated $15,000. The students were able to provide foundational research to support the development of the entrepreneurs’ projects’ future efforts. After the course ended, one student was able to help an entrepreneur apply for a COVID-19 relief grant. In addition to capacity building support, PIT entrepreneurs also received a stipend for their participation, which provided some business relief during very uncertain times on the heels of the pandemic. All of the entrepreneurs expressed interest in future opportunities to collaborate with students, as one entrepreneur shared, “This is phenomenal and very much needed! I think it's a huge win-win for students getting practical experience and community-based orgs getting smart talent and support.”

As with most programs, our experiential learning course was altered due to COVID-19. Although both the students and entrepreneurs reported COVID as impacting the course, such as having to miss class sessions and re-scope the work; the participants did appreciate the ability to discuss the ongoing pandemic through the PIT framework during our class discussions. As one student noted, “The idea of Public Interest Technology has been especially important to me these past few weeks with the uprisings that are currently happening due to the systemic racism that is constantly unchecked in the U.S.”

Despite the positive feedback received from both students and entrepreneurs, a few limitations came up during the implementation of our program. In designing the course, it would have been helpful to have access to more materials that other programs are utilizing. In addition, more attention should be focused on the scoping of projects and accountability of the partnering entrepreneurs. Based on feedback, we would have assigned at least two students per team, as both students and entrepreneurs reported more benefit from various perspectives. Also, having two students provided more availability and flexibility in scheduling with entrepreneurs. Outside of the stipend and capacity support from students, more additional support might be offered. For instance, one entrepreneur noted that access to research journals through the university would be helpful.