As planned, we're using the money from our first grant award to cover two full-time salaries! For the first time, we will have a small full-time staff dedicated to bringing the PDAP vision of a transparent police system a reality.
Josh Chamberlain has been volunteering with PDAP for about a year and a half, using their design background to crystallize what PDAP is building and why. They also do Executive Director things, like keeping PDAP legally established and looking for funding.
Jacob Quinn Sanders now has responsibility for our code, working with the PDAP community to create the best possible open-source utilities for accessing police data. He has a fantastic background as a news reporter and editor, often working on the municipal data problems we're trying to solve here. He has since established himself as a programmer, data expert, and all around great fit for the role at PDAP.
Our goal this year is to demonstrate to our funder, The Heinz Endowments—and the rest of the world—that we can punch above our weight, and make a big impact with this money.
This is our first week on the job. We're getting on the same page about all the conversations we've had as a community, decisions we've labored over, experiments we've run, code we've written.
Soon, we'll present a more cohesive plan for the first year of full-time staff on a community call.
We'd like to keep the team small and flexible. Our goal is to empower the existing grassroots community of people working on police transparency, not to do everything ourselves.
That said: we need more help. Making PDAP an equitable workplace with good legal and financial standing is a full time job. Extra development firepower will help us build more effective software and respond quickly to issues. We'd like to run more Data Bounties to pay data transparency activists for their time and expertise.
We're actively looking for more funding, and are preparing to launch a more intentional direct giving campaign. In the meantime, every bit helps and there are always ways to donate. You can also share a link to our homepage with the people in your life who might like to see it.
We'd like to hear from you! Reach out to contact@pdap.io or in Discord if you have thoughts or questions to share. Thank you for being here!