Social Impact Innovation Hub aims to harness tech talents

A resource-sharing hub for social good is gathering builders for the inaugural Tech For Good Alliance event on June 24 at Arcadia Brewing. The event, which will take place on the last Wednesday of each month, is not just another tech mixer, said Michelle Frechette, the founder of the Social Impact Innovation Hub.

"The initiatives under the Social Impact Innovation Hub currently are three-pronged. One, we're looking for a physical space. Two, we are launching the Tech For Good Alliance, which is a working group, not just a networking event," she told Taproot. "The third prong is the events, which is the In The Loop events." At the first In The Loop event at Brighton Block on May 27, Taproot saw robots by Aro Robotic Systems serve ads and help to bus dishware, learned Technology Alberta is collaborating with Frechette, and heard mostly from people focused on environmental sustainability — more reporting on them is coming soon. The event, which has another edition scheduled for Sept. 16, was co-hosted by another of Frechette's ventures called The Connected Kitchen Project and involved a wide consortium of partners.

The Social Impact Innovation Hub is just past the ideation phase, Frechette said, with goals to secure space to help social-good organizations accomplish their work and to recruit board members who mean business. Meanwhile, Frechette said she already leverages "super-connectors" to solve problems through shared resources. For instance, she is on an advisory board for Action for Healthy Communities and is exploring opportunities to spin off a suite of SaaS capabilities for tax training and other professional services that a for-good company may lack.