Fighting Burnout and Doubling Down on Support for Local Leaders

National Advisory Council meets in Baltimore to support the growing volunteer network

A crab mallet is about as symbolic a tool as we could hope for. Except this tool was scented with Old Bay seasoning and a hint of soap from a failed attempt to remove the crab scent. Once used to de-shell crabs from the depths of the Chesapeake Bay, this wooden crab mallet was destined for a much higher purpose. It’s now the official National Advisory Council gavel, and it was used many times throughout our most recent meeting to symbolize when the group made a decision to act.

The purpose of this post is to share some of the highlights from the Code for America Brigade National Advisory Council (NAC) in-person spring meeting held at the Lord Baltimore Hotel on May 20, 2017, in Baltimore, Maryland. Only one mallet would become our official gavel, but the discussions and outcomes we desire should have far reaching, positive implications for the Code for America Brigade Network.

The council gathers in Baltimore

As National Advisory Council members gathered in Hanover Suite B with Code for America staff, folks began to dig into breakfast and prepare for a long day together. It was our first time gathering in-person since the Code for America Summit in November 2016. We’ve had numerous virtual meetings in-between, and seeing everyone in real life was energizing.

We had one member, Neil Planchon (OpenOakland), joining us by video. The other council members present included Chris Alfano (Code for Philly), Jill Bjers (Code for Charlotte), Vyki Englert (Hack for LA), Noel Hidalgo (BetaNYC), Andrew Kozlik (Code for Orlando), Luigi Ray-Montanez (Code for Atlanta), and myself, Jason Hibbets (Code for Raleigh). Code for America staff attending were Erie Meyer, Jen Pahlka, and Christopher Whitaker.

One of the first orders of business was to get a few updates from Code for America and review our agenda for the day. Christopher and Jen kicked things off and we finally got to meet the new Senior Network Director, Erie — who is just as energetic in-person as she is over the phone.

NAC members then spent most of our morning reporting out and sharing what we learned from our interactions with Brigade leadership through listening sessions. Each member had hosted interviews with Brigade captains and leadership over the past few weeks. There were some common themes that we discovered.

One of the most common topics was around burnout. Both brigade leaders and members are feeling the stress of their heroic efforts and volunteering their time to run brigades. We found that brigades that built out a more robust leadership core with defined responsibilities did not exhibit as much burnout. However, we recognize that many brigades depend just on one or two people to get off the ground and continue to keep the lights on. Thank you for your hard work and dedication, and don’t be shy about reaching out for support.

Other common themes were around the desire for some type of mentor/mentee program and to find better ways to connect both brigades and individuals in the brigade network. Another issue that came up from a few brigades were concerns with city engagement. It was really about what to do when they can’t get someone from the agency side, whether a staff member or elected official, to partner with the brigade.

The last thing I’ll mention: we heard some brigades feel pressure to work on coding projects. While this is a core component of what many brigades do, some brigades are focused only on developing civic engagement in their communities. And that is very much in the spirit of what civic tech is all about. NAC members expressed interest in figuring out the best ways to alleviate the pressure to write code as a brigade moving forward.

Our country and our communities need the expertise and experience from civic hacking leaders now more than ever.

Actions the NAC would like to explore

Erie then led the group through a session to help us determine where we should act. We took a deep dive to discuss a few topics that we felt were best covered during this in-person meeting, where our precious time together was already slipping away. These topics included:

• NAC structure — We discussed the idea of designating delegates to represent NAC members who could not attend meetings or functions to represent elected members. We also discussed different models of representation, like at-large and regional delegates. The decision was to work with the community to explore options and Jill Bjers volunteered to lead the creation and goal definition of a Brigade Action Team (BAT) for NAC election models.
• Improved communication — We recognized the need for better communications between the NAC and the brigade network and vice versa. A quick analysis highlighted the NACs current communications to the network include a semi-weekly newsletter and blog posts when we feel like something needs to be communicated. We talked about building out a better web presence and possibly having some type of discussion forum beyond Slack. Any desired outcomes from these efforts would focus on peer-to-peer connections among brigade members, increased engagement, and increased transparency. To move forward, Jillian Robertson (Code for America Communications Manager), will attend our next NAC meeting to help us begin this analysis.
• Brigade Action Teams (BATs) — One of the first initiatives the NAC started in 2017 was the idea of action teams to tackle certain opportunities in the Brigade network. These started with a lot of enthusiasm, but got off to a rough start. I’m running the Days of Action BAT and can speak from first-hand experience. However, we think there is a lot of potential for the BATs to be successful if we have a framework for success, formula to act against, and keep it time-bound. Vyki, Noel, and myself will report back to the NAC by our next meeting with a proposed framework for proposing, spinning up, and spinning down a BAT.
• Open source civic tech projects — From the listening sessions, we heard that many brigades desire to have a listing or catalog of open source projects they can easily deploy for their community. During this discussion, we felt it was important that projects listed have a main contact as well as a maintainer. Additionally, each project should be categorized by their state, such as deployed, in progress, or MVP (minimum viable product). Next steps are for Christopher to reach out to the Code for America infrastructure team and report back at the next NAC meeting. We believe there is some opportunity for clean-up of legacy components, but we also want to be careful about spinning up something new if we can use something that can get us started. We agreed upon and articulated setting a goal for the brigade network of developing and supporting high quality open source code, these actions will help us achieve that goal.

There were several topics that we agreed upon through the exercise that we didn’t have time to discuss during the in-person meeting, but had a lot of interest to pursue. These items included:

• Build out a Brigade leadership academy that walks people through the different levels of using technology, data, and design to build up their communities (thanks Noel)
• Develop a playbook for burnout, signs of burnout, things to avoid, how to deal with it, etc.
• Build a Brigade website to give brigades a centralized place to find out information about shared knowledge, mentorship, and what the NAC is doing
• Diversify the NAC (through the election reform) considering location, gender, orientation, and other criteria (thanks Noel)
• Curate suggested projects that can be spun up in different municipalities
• Assign each brigade a NAC member and peer captains that brigade members can reach out to with questions or for help, essentially a Brigade buddy program (which you can do below)

Worst NAC selfie ever, but we got all of us in there, including Harlan Weber and Neil on the hangout.

The future of the NAC and brigades

While we are looking to start a BAT to explore NAC delegates and election reform (thanks Jill), we spent a lot of time talking about alignment and the Brigade rallying cry we developed earlier this year. With regards to alignment, there was a strong desire to make sure the Brigades are aligned with the Code for America mission. We learned that they too are reworking some of the language around that. Jen shared with us that the wording from one of the earlier versions was almost verbatim. While we agreed not to wordsmith during our in-person time, there was definitely a sense that the opportunities in front of us are tremendous, and we can’t do this alone.

Our country and our communities need the expertise and experience from civic hacking leaders now more than ever. This is a movement, and we are stronger together. Code for America is ready to stand with the brigade network to create positive change and engagement in our communities. To make government work for all people, by the people.

Take action

Ready to make change happen? Here are a few things to get you started.

• Sign-up for a Brigade Buddy! We’ll be matching brigade members with their counterparts in different brigades and encouraging you to check-in with each other at least once a month.
• Sign-up for a Brigade Action Team as we revamp for phase two and look to make the teams stronger and more focused.
• For the latest on our progress, sign up for the Code for America newsletter.
• Find your local brigade and join us.
• Save the date for upcoming fall events:

** National Day of Civic Hacking on September 22–24; and

** Brigade Congress on October 14–15 in Philadelphia, PA

• We’d love to hear your feedback. Chime in using the comments below or email us at nac@codeforamerica.org.

Addendum — Code for Baltimore hack night

I wanted to add, for transparency, that after our in-person meeting, members of the NAC joined Code for Baltimore for a special hack night. I always find it refreshing and inspiring to see a well-organized community bring together people who want to make change happen. Attendees could work on their Civic Idea Hub project or new coders could work on learning modules to test their coding skills. Luigi didn’t want to miss his opportunity to actually hack at a hack night, so he paired up with a Code for Baltimore member and got to work on Civic Idea Hub.

While I’m not a very active coder, I choose to explore building out a framework for phase two of the Brigade Action Teams. Vyki, Noel, and I huddled around a table and fleshed out a first draft. Considering the long day we had, we made a lot of progress. And that’s what this civic hacking movement is all about: getting together with people who want positive change, and chipping in what you can, when you can.