Please Note: This is an unpaid, part-time, volunteer position and we are seeking San Francisco Bay Area-based applicants. This Volunteer Content Analyst is expected to commit at least 3 hours per week. ShelterTech is volunteer-operated.

The Role:

SF Service Guide (sfserviceguide.org) is ShelterTech’s flagship project in collaboration with the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development. It is San Francisco’s premier online and mobile resource information base to help people who are homeless or at risk of homelessness find basic services they need (e.g. healthcare, meals, hygiene stations, storage space, etc.), by themselves or with the assistance of case workers.

To maintain a top-notch and user-friendly information base for SF Service Guide and other city service directories, we are building out our team of Content Analysts. The primary role of the Content Analyst is to vet the information for each organization and service in our directory and co-manage all updates to that information alongside our Head of Content and other volunteers on the Content Team. We’re not just looking for someone to be a reliable information base administrator or 211-style outreach caller. We’re looking for someone who can develop expert knowledge of the SF service provider landscape and can establish relationships with service providers, to help us grow and update SF Service Guide sustainably.

As Content Analyst, your key responsibilities will be to:

• Help us reach our goals of keeping the organization records in our information base fresh, which means:
• Vetting incoming changes to our 500+ organization records along with our current vetting team.
• Reaching out to service providers themselves when necessary to obtain info up-to-date to, at latest, the last 3 months.
• Ensure the information we serve is high-quality and extremely accessible to SF residents:
• Writing and reviewing concise, straight-forward descriptions of organizations and the services they provide so anyone can understand them.
• Managing quality and style standards in SF Service Guide.
• Supporting the technical side that allows the SF Service Guide to feature results from advanced filters and queries.
• Be part of a team effort to respond to incoming requests and suggestions for content updates:
• Responding to requests to update our information database, e.g. from organizations asking to be added to SF Service Guide.
• Updating records of administrative contacts in our information base so we will always be able to reach out to service providers directly.
• Be opinionated about the written word - you can effectively condense and simplify complex information to make it accessible to people with a wide range of reading abilities.
• Develop strategies for consistent analysis and testing to support decision-making.

What might you do in a day or week? In a few hours, you might:

• Respond to an email from a new org that wants to be added to our information base, or from an org already in SFSG for which the information needs to be updated,
• Fill out basic information (website, hours, email, etc.) for that org in our information base and write a few descriptions about the organization’s services,
• Approve a volunteer update to a shelter’s phone number using our admin web interface, after you called the number to verify,
• Answer a question over the phone from a caseworker using SFSG about whether Larkin Street Youth Services’ clinic should also have the “Maternal Care” category tag,
• Once or twice a month in the evening, possibly attend an in-person ShelterTech all hands meeting, or participate in a Datathon with volunteers from one of our corporate partners.

About ShelterTech:

ShelterTech is an award-winning non-profit solving the biggest technology challenges faced by people experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity in the Bay Area. Our unique, volunteer-driven organization is committed to bridging the digital divide for under-resourced populations, inspired by a belief in digital equity and social justice.

Our volunteer-led team built a powerful online directory platform which provides easy navigation for case workers and those experiencing homelessness to over 500 resources delivering over 1,800 services.

ShelterTech is proud to provide the data on the SF Service Guide platform for other organizations to use on their own websites. We have worked closely with UCSF and Link-SF to provide a custom experience catered to their users’ needs, leveraging our data curation pipeline to keep that information accurate and up to date.

Consistent internet access is necessary to help individuals find housing, employment, or medical services, as well as to stay connected to family and friends. To help bridge the digital divide, ShelterTech also has its ShelterConnect program, where we have partnered with the city of San Francisco and corporate IT sponsors to provide installations of free WiFi in over in 21 shelters and Single Room Occupancy (SRO) buildings, serving over 1,800 residents every day, with more to come.