Announcing our 2023 Impact Fund grantees

We’re so proud to share the recipients of our 2023 Impact Fund* grant. Now in its second year, the New Relic Impact Fund supports our commitment to driving equitable access to technology by funding technology projects critical to a nonprofit’s digital transformation journey. 

This spring, we invited nonprofits across the country with strategic or innovative technology needs to apply for our $100,000 Impact Fund grant, and apply they did! More than 200 applications later, we were amazed at the incredible submissions by organizations from a wide variety of cause areas doing truly meaningful work in their communities. These applications showcased the universal need for unrestricted funding that's a pain point for nonprofits. Technology projects too often get categorized as overhead and are not prioritized by grant makers. We hope our fund will inspire others in the industry to direct their philanthropic efforts toward increasing the technology capacity of nonprofits. 

We’ve selected four innovative organizations to receive grants of $25,000 each this year. Their projects stood out for their thoughtful solutions, commitment to driving efficiency and innovation through technology and clear outcomes, and their ability to provide sustainable solutions for their organizations. 

We’re honored to partner with these nonprofits this year. Read on for more information on their digital transformation projects.

*These grants will be issued from our Donor Advised Fund, held with Vanguard Charitable, The New Relic.org Fund.

Allies Against Slavery builds data platforms and partnerships to accelerate solutions that help prevent human trafficking and protect the dignity of survivors. Human trafficking has been an invisible problem—but it doesn't have to be. With their Lighthouse software, they’re building a future where every community has the data they need to make victims visible and prevent exploitation.

The organization aims to enhance and streamline access for their 1,800+ Lighthouse users, taking two separate core functions (screening and data) that are currently operating like two separate applications and consolidating entry points to remove friction for users and partners. The result will be a single access point with an intuitive pathway to all of the functions and resources in Lighthouse, helping users focus on what matters most—identifying victims and combatting exploitation.

Closegap envisions a future where every child, starting at a young age, develops the skills to understand their emotions and internal world, and has the opportunity to develop healthy attachment with at least one trusted adult (especially when there isn't one at home). They believe the public school system can and should provide an effective safety net for students and foster equitable emotional and mental health support, so children who face early adversity have the tools to flourish and become healthy, regulated adults. 

The organization seeks to improve the number one pain point they hear from the schools and districts they work with: the school rostering process. Through their project, they hope to better integrate with schools’ learning management software to streamline the process of onboarding and implementation, ultimately enabling thousands of new schools to utilize Closegap to support their students’ mental health, which will help save lives.

FishWise’s mission is to sustain ocean ecosystems and the people who depend on them by transforming global seafood supply chains. Healthy oceans are vitally important as a source of food and livelihoods, and for the well-being of the planet as a whole. FishWise envisions a world with a plentiful seafood supply that makes a significant contribution to the food needs of a growing population, while supporting biodiverse, productive, and resilient marine and freshwater ecosystems. They work toward a seafood industry that’s fully traceable, supporting sustainable, legal, and ethical trade. 

The organization hopes to advance the capability and scale of their services by modernizing their data collection and analytics infrastructure. Specifically, the project will build infrastructure to connect to electronic traceability platform APIs to efficiently capture, store, and process high volumes of traceability and vessel-tracking data, to enhance data-driven decision-making capabilities, and increase overall traceability, verification, and transparency. This project is addressing a core organizational need, driven by the evolving needs of the seafood industry and their partners. Through this work, FishWise will also be enabled to collaborate more effectively with partners and stakeholders, and provide more timely and accurate information to clients.

Founded on the belief that communication is the most important tool during an emergency, Trek Medics envisions a world where all communities have easy access to a diversity of responders whenever they’re needed. A non-governmental organization with global reach, Trek Medics is committed to providing the technology needed to effectively coordinate emergency services and crisis response organizations. To achieve this, Trek Medics developed Beacon, an easily deployable emergency dispatch platform that helps organizations worldwide ensure the right responder is sent to the right location at the right time during any emergency, ultimately saving lives and strengthening communities. Beacon enables emergency, disaster, and crisis response organizations to seamlessly alert, coordinate, and track their responders using readily available mobile technologies, with or without the internet. 

The organization hopes to increase efforts in two key digital transformation areas: 

• Updated cybersecurity measures that will enhance security, confidentiality, and regulatory compliance.
• Improved documentation features to enable response agencies to more easily demonstrate the impact of their operations which, in turn, will help them get funded and/or reimbursed for their services.