---
title: Giving to tribal nations
teaser: Making investment days open to tribal nations.
tags: community,culture,communication,happiness,leadership,work culture,inclusivity,diversity
author: Johny Ho
published_on: 2024-11-19
---

For over a decade, [investment days] has been a defining benefit of
working at thoughtbot. By having a day out of the week to focus on improving
ourselves, the company, and the community, we’ve built and contributed to
amazing open source projects used by thousands of developers. Now that’s
impactful!

What’s less known about our investment days is that we can donate our time and
expertise to work on social causes. This means lending a helping hand to
nonprofits and NGOs at no cost. Put that into perspective, if every
thoughtbotter contributed a reasonable amount of investment time to social
causes, that’s potentially $400,000 worth of services every year towards social
good.

## Challenges of child welfare at tribal nations

About a decade ago, prior to thoughtbot, I worked for a non-profit helping to
build the case management system for the State of Indiana’s child welfare IV-E
practice. We then tried to service tribal nations in the US, because
caseworkers there faced a daunting challenge: Indigenous children are twice as
likely to have allegations of abuse substantiated and four times more likely to be
removed from their home. Unfortunately, the difference between States and
tribal funding for technology was just staggering.

Despite having access to the same federal policies, match requirements,
economic conditions, and lack of tax revenue means that tribes would never have
equitable access to the same kind of adaptable, tailored-fit, strategic
technology that states have.

But imagine if they did.

Every tribal nation would be empowered to build culturally responsive solutions
unique to their practices. They can apply data best practices and put more
focus on metrics that they decide to be important to measuring outcomes. And
beyond just streamlining processes, they can diverge from common state
functionality and move towards technical innovation for their nation.

Imagine having had the tools to lessen the impact of COVID-19, which
disproportionately affected tribal nations. Electronic signatures, voice
signatures, virtual visits, transcriptions, offline peer-to-peer case
management, or even something as simple as digital forms would’ve been
impactful for the communities that often had no way of handing in physical documents
to caseworkers.

## Helping the helpers

A lack of resources is a hard problem to solve, but perhaps there is a small
step forward — one that offers a measure of equitable access to technology
for the helpers who need it the most.

We’d like to extend an invitation to US-based tribal nations operating,
planning to operate, or will operate a [IV-E], [IV-B], or [IV-D] program to
participate in our investment days. Tribal nations can request consulting hours
from any interested developers, designers, or project managers to contribute to
internal projects at your nation at no cost. You may also document these
contributions as an in-kind match for your respective programs.

We understand that an influx of technical expertise can feel overwhelming, but
we're here to help and guide you like we've done for many of our [success stories].
We’ll work with your nation to learn where the most impact can be
made.  Generally, you can use these contributions towards any maintenance or
feature development for your automated child welfare management system like
[AFCARS] or [CCWIS], child support enforcement system, or any general database
system.

If your nation is interested in participating, please reach out to [Johny],
tribal advocate at thoughtbot.

[IV-E]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/45/part-1356
[IV-B]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/45/part-1357
[IV-D]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/45/part-309
[AFCARS]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/45/1355.43
[CCWIS]: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/45/1355.52
[Johny]: mailto:johny@thoughtbot.com
[investment days]: https://thoughtbot.com/playbook/our-company/time
[success stories]: https://thoughtbot.com/case-studies