Innovating for Impact: Building Technology in Resource-Constrained Environments

Jason A. Long, who heads the tech group known as the Innovation Lab at the human rights organization Human Rights First, speaks with interviewer Alexander Urbelis about building software for a nonprofit with little money. He recounts moving from a coding bootcamp into a fellowship after realizing technologists can work in impact-focused roles. He describes the lab as an enabling partner that embeds with internal and outside teams to find where technology can expand their reach.

Project examples include Glimpse, a computer vision platform that flags violent actions and objects in large video archives so investigators can avoid reviewing footage by hand. An asylum intake assistant keeps a human in the loop, and a legislation tracker summarizes bills and votes across government levels. A university hackathon produced a debate tool that generates likely candidate answers from public records.

For constrained teams, his advice centers on coalitions, creativity and relationships: partner with better-resourced groups that share a mission, get to know cloud account managers, and look for donated compute. He also said the lab avoids shipping tools with known dangers to at-risk users, is working toward open-sourcing projects, and welcomes security feedback, since nonprofits are frequent attack targets. Students and volunteers were invited to contribute.