[Joyce Bettencourt]

Passing this along from a collaborator at Caravan Studios (caravanstudios.org), which is a division of TechSoup, a 25 year old San Francisco nonprofit which helps other nonprofits get their tech needs filled. They are hoping to get help testing a new social good app and spreading the word via any relevant blog or social networks you know of that might be relevant.

Safenight is Caravan Studios first app release and was just launched as a Windows app for social benefit. SafeNight, by Caravan Studios and Aidmatrix. SafeNight v 1.1 is now available in the Windows Marketplace: SafeNight | Windows Phone Apps+Games Store (United States)

Built with support from Microsoft, Blue Shield of California Foundation and Vodafone Americas Foundation, SafeNight is a mobile service that allows domestic violence service organizations to crowdsource funding for hotel rooms when there is no appropriate shelter available.* Last year's domestic violence census, reported that, nationwide, 6,818 requests for shelter went unmet [source].* Next year, we look forward to that number being lower because of SafeNight.

Last Wednesday, Alternatives to Violence, a domestic violence organization in Red Bluff, CA, became the first organization to pilot SafeNight in the field. Tonight, they made a request and the request was fulfilled.

They need more people to download and test the app (and to donate money to crowdfund the hotel rooms).

This is what it looks like to donate a room using the app: https://twitter.com/caravanstudios/s...80771846721536

Heres a tweet for you to share: https://twitter.com/caravanstudios/s...45317546016768

If you would like to download the app, test, and share it via your networks, we would be most appreciative.

Thanks!
Joyce Bettencourt
joyce@techsoup.org

[txkimmers]

Thanks, Joyce! I will check it out for sure.

ETA: I just looked at this more closely, this is a cool idea, but I was curious if there any programs out there that source donated room nights from hotels (as well as requesting funds to pay for hotel rooms). I was in the hotel biz for a long time and I know hotels where I worked often donated room nights to disaster victims (fire, flood etc) and families with children fighting cancer, relatives in hospice, etc., so hoteliers are not averse to donating room nights when available and for a good cause.