Strong referral networks depend on strong connections between organizations. As One Degree expands our work with 211 systems and community partners, we’re building the infrastructure that makes those connections easier to create and scale.

We recently launched a new self-service capability that allows organizations on One Degree to invite other organizations to formally connect and exchange referrals.

Previously, setting up these partnerships was a manual process. Now, an organization can send a partner invitation directly to another organization. The recipient can accept through a simple login or signup flow, and once the partnership is approved, both organizations are notified and can begin exchanging referrals.

Building the foundation for larger networks

This may seem like a simple workflow improvement, but it solves an important challenge as referral networks grow.

If every relationship between organizations has to be configured manually, expanding a network requires more administrative work with every new partner. Self-service invitations allow organizations to establish connections more directly, while One Degree maintains the review and safeguards needed to support trusted partnerships.

That becomes particularly important as we deepen our work with 211 networks. A 211 ecosystem can include many community-based organizations, service providers, and frontline professionals that need to coordinate referrals across organizational boundaries.

Giving organizations the ability to build these relationships themselves creates a foundation for networks that can grow more efficiently without requiring One Degree to manually establish every connection.

It’s one more step toward what we’re building with One Degree: connected networks where organizations can coordinate more easily and people can move between services with less friction.

Earlier this year, we shared why interoperability matters to One Degree: when systems don’t talk to each other, the burden of connecting them falls on frontline workers and the people seeking help.

Today, we’re excited to share an important milestone: One Degree’s FHIR integration is live.

FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) is a widely used standard that allows different systems to exchange information in a consistent, structured way. For One Degree, implementing FHIR means referrals can move between One Degree and partner systems without requiring frontline workers to manually transfer information between platforms.

What does that look like in practice?

When a frontline worker creates a referral in One Degree, a structured referral record can now flow directly into a partner organization’s system in a format its software already understands.

And the exchange goes both ways. When the partner takes action on that referral—such as accepting, completing, or closing it—the updated status can flow back to One Degree in real time.

That means frontline workers can see what happened to a referral without having to leave One Degree to make a phone call, send an email, or check another system.

Building on shared standards

Our integration uses FHIR, the same interoperability standard used across healthcare systems, and follows the Gravity Project’s Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) guidelines for representing social needs information.

That matters for scale. By building around established standards rather than creating a different custom integration for every organization, we’re laying the foundation to connect One Degree with more partners and systems over time.

This milestone builds on our collaboration with Elimu Informatics and is supported by the California Data Exchange Framework (DxF) Technical Assistance Grant.

We’ve long believed that interoperability isn’t an add-on. It’s foundational infrastructure for a more connected social safety net. Shipping our FHIR integration brings us one step closer to that vision.

Read our January post on why California’s DxF and interoperability matter

Finding the right resource is only part of the journey.

A family may find a food, housing, childcare, or other program they qualify for, only to face another barrier: a PDF application, a complicated web form, a new login, or another request for information they’ve already provided.

At One Degree, we’ve spent years making it easier for people to find essential resources. Now, we’re working on what comes next: making it easier to actually enroll.

Using AI to bridge the enrollment gap

Through One Degree’s AI Innovation Lab, we’re developing technology to reduce the administrative burden between finding a service and accessing it.

Our work includes two approaches: one that transforms static PDF intake forms into digital workflows, and another that explores how AI agents can help people and navigators complete third-party web forms using information they’ve already provided.

Importantly, we’re not asking community organizations and government agencies to replace the systems they already use. Instead, we’re exploring an enrollment layer that can work across existing forms, websites, and systems.

This work is especially important to our growing partnerships with 211 networks. We’re starting alongside 211 Bay Area and Interface Children & Family Services, with the longer-term goal of developing infrastructure that can help 211s move people from referral to enrollment.

Scaling what we’ve started

We’re excited to participate in Tech To The Rescue’s AI Impact Scaling Program, supported by Google.org. The program helps social impact organizations with proven solutions expand their reach with AI by connecting them with vetted pro bono technology partners and providing support around scaling, data readiness, cybersecurity, and responsible AI.

For One Degree, this is an opportunity to build on the prototypes we’ve already developed and move from experimentation toward secure, practical, and scalable AI-powered enrollment infrastructure.

We’re excited to take this next step with Tech To The Rescue, Google.org, our 211 partners, and the technology community.

For the past twenty-five years, a lot of the energy in the social sector has gone into solving what is a core problem: helping people find the services they need, when they need them.

Together communities have built resource directories, call centers, referral platforms, coordinated care networks, and information exchanges. And it has worked. In fact, the national 211 network now covers 99% of Americans. Information that once lived in binders on a caseworker’s desk is now searchable online. That progress is real, and it matters.

But here’s what we’ve learned after more than a decade building One Degree: finding a service and successfully accessing that service are two very different things.

A parent who gets a referral for childcare assistance still has to complete intake forms, gather documents, verify income, coordinate appointments, and follow up across multiple agencies — often with no shared process, no common intake, and no one able to keep track of whether any of the providers have the capacity to help. Often a referral is just the beginning of an obstacle course most families were never told they’d have to run.

The social safety net doesn’t just have a referral problem. It also has an enrollment problem.

Why We Wrote This White Paper

We’ve been thinking about this for a while at One Degree. And over the past year, as advances in artificial intelligence have started to change what’s actually possible — in conversational intake, document processing, eligibility screening, multilingual support, workflow automation — we felt it was time to put our thinking on paper.

Today, we’re publishing the second in our white paper series on the future of America’s digital information and referral ecosystem:

From Referrals to Enrollment: How AI, Interoperability and Trust are Transforming Social Service Navigation

It’s a paper about a shift we think is already underway, even if it isn’t fully visible yet. The shift from referral infrastructure to enrollment infrastructure.

What That Shift Looks Like

Enrollment infrastructure isn’t about replacing caseworkers or automating decisions. It’s about removing the administrative friction that still keeps too many families from getting the help that they need.

Think about what that could look like in practice. Intake that happens through a conversation, not a form. Eligibility screening that’s dynamic and personalized, not a static PDF. Follow-up that’s proactive, not dependent on whether a family remembers to call back. Document workflows that don’t require a person to fax the same paperwork to five different agencies.

None of this is science fiction. The tools to build it exist. What’s been missing is the infrastructure to connect them — and the shared will to invest in building that infrastructure as a public good rather than a proprietary product.

Why 211 Matters Here

At the center of this opportunity is an asset that doesn’t get enough attention: America’s 211 network.

For more than two decades, 211 organizations have been the trusted community gateways to the social safety net. Their value isn’t just their data. It’s their relationships. Their local knowledge. Their accountability to communities rather than to shareholders.

That matters enormously right now — in a moment when everyone is asking hard questions about data governance, AI ethics, and who should own the infrastructure that connects people to services. 211 organizations have a unique opportunity to serve as the backbone of enrollment infrastructure precisely because their mission has never been to monetize the people they serve.

But many of those systems are running on technology that was designed for a pre-internet world. The opportunity — and the urgency — is real.

A Note on AI

We know AI is a loaded word in this sector. A few months ago we spoke at a Health Leads webinar on AI and health equity, and the fear in the chatroom from people doing this work every day stayed with us.

That fear is understandable. And a lot of the concerns people raised — about bias, reliability, data governance, corporate power — are legitimate. We share them.

But the answer to those concerns isn’t to step back. It’s to step forward. If the social sector, the public sector, and community-based organizations don’t actively participate in shaping how AI gets applied to service navigation, it will still get built — just by someone else, with different incentives.

We wrote this white paper partly as an invitation: to funders, to policymakers, to 211 leaders, to healthcare systems, to anyone who believes that the infrastructure connecting people to help should be built in the public interest.

Read the White Paper

[Download “From Referrals to Enrollment” →]

We’d love to hear your reactions. What are you seeing in your own work? Where are the enrollment gaps showing up for the communities you serve?

This conversation is just getting started.

—

One Degree is an Oakland-based nonprofit empowering people to build healthy and fulfilling lives by improving access to life-changing social services. Learn more at about.1degree.org

Language should never be a barrier to accessing essential services. Across the social service ecosystem, we know we have a long way to go to reach that goal. However, One Degree has taken one important step. The platform is now fully available in 17 languages. This includes not only the public-facing web experience, but also every touchpoint across the entire client referral experience.

When a community partner using the platform in English sends a referral,  the client now receives the complete experience in their preferred language. This comprehensive localization spans every client touchpoint:

• PDF Printouts: Easy-to-read physical copies that navigators can print to share with clients directly in-person.
• Automated Texts: Follow-up messages delivered directly to clients’ phones in their preferred language.
• Email Correspondence: Clear, accessible documentation of referral details and action items, so clients have a reliable record of the support available to them.

At the heart of this update is a commitment to build trust and remove the friction that slows down collaboration and strains case manager capacity. By eliminating the back-and-forth that language gaps create, this feature takes a key step to make the bridge between a client and life-changing services seamless, transparent, and straightforward. 

Supported languages include Arabic, Armenian, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Farsi/Persian, Filipino, Hindi, Japanese, Khmer, Korean, Russian, Spanish, Thai, Ukrainian, Urdu, and Vietnamese.

Visit 1degree.org to learn more, or schedule a demo to see multilingual referrals in action. Have any questions?

I recently spoke on a Health Leads webinar about AI and health equity. More than 350 people attended, representing healthcare, government, academia, philanthropy, and nonprofit organizations. These folks are working every day on some of the hardest problems in society: equitable access to healthcare, housing, food, benefits, and social services. What surprised me most during the conversation wasn’t the questions about AI. It was the level of fear, and the sense that AI was something happening to the social sector, rather than something we could help shape.

What I saw in the chatroom

During the webinar, I kept an eye on the chat, and it was one of the most active chatrooms I’ve ever seen on a public webinar.

What shocked me most wasn’t skepticism about AI… because skepticism and a critique of the AI systems are healthy. But what surprised me was how much fear and anxiety there was.

People were (rightfully) worried about environmental impact, bias, corporate power, reliability, job loss, surveillance. All valid concerns. All important conversations to have. But the tone of many comments suggested something deeper, like a sense that AI was something happening to us, rather than something we could shape.

I live and work in a tech bubble in San Francisco, and even some folks on my own team have shared similar fears with me. But I didn’t fully appreciate the severity and breadth of those fears until I watched that chat scroll by for an hour.

After the webinar, I prompted Gemini to create a visual graphic of the comments section, which turned out to be pretty interesting, and you can check it out above. Here are a few of the comments that stood out to me.

The fear of AI is not new

One person wrote, “I really wish that we could just stop the AI train. I think it’s incredibly destructive and could literally kill us all.”

It’s a familiar comment. Every major technological shift has produced similar reactions. When railroads were first introduced in the 1800s, doctors warned that the vibration of trains would damage the human body and cause serious medical problems (I actually referenced an 1862 Lancet article about this during the talk). When the internet emerged, many people believed it would destroy social relationships. When smartphones appeared, people worried about addiction and surveillance.

But in each case, the technology became core infrastructure. And society reorganized itself around it.

The same will probably be true for AI. The question has never really been whether a technology will exist. The question is who builds it, who controls it, and who benefits from it.

Fix the system, but people need help today

Another comment during the webinar said, “Instead of needing to rely on AI to navigate the system, we could just make the system easier to navigate and we’re choosing not to.”

I actually agree with that sentiment. Our current systems didn’t become complex by accident; they are the result of policy choices made over time. Affordability is a policy choice. Health equity is a policy choice. Administrative burden is a policy choice. We should absolutely work to make these systems easier to navigate and more equitable.

But that kind of change takes decades. It requires policy reform, funding changes, system redesign, and political will. In the meantime, millions of families are navigating fragmented systems right now. They are filling out the same forms over and over, waiting on hold, riding buses across town for appointments, and trying to piece together help from dozens of different organizations that don’t talk to each other.

Any tool that reduces paperwork, administrative burden, and time spent navigating bureaucracy can make a real difference in people’s lives today. That’s always been my stance, even back when I started One Degree in 2012.

The reliability debate

Another participant raised concerns about reliability, citing studies showing high error rates for some AI systems, and asked whether it was responsible to expose users to unreliable tools.

This is an important concern, but it also reflects a misunderstanding of how these tools should be used. I believe that AI should not be making final eligibility decisions or replacing professional judgment (at least not unless we reach a level of reliability that even humans rarely achieve). But AI can be very useful for moving and organizing data, summarizing documents, translating information, pre-filling forms, and reducing administrative work.

Social service and healthcare systems still have big barriers in the form of paperwork, intake forms, phone calls, follow-ups, and administrative friction. If AI can reduce that friction, it can free up staff time, reduce errors from manual data entry, and make systems easier for people to navigate.

AI is already here, whether we participate or not

Right now, while many of us are debating whether AI is good or bad, the technology is already being adopted at massive scale. People are using AI for legal advice, medical questions, benefits questions, housing questions, and emotional support, whether we think that’s a good idea or not. Chatgpt is already the largest single provider of mental health support in America!

The reality is that AI is not waiting for the social sector to be ready.

My organization, One Degree | 1degree.org, builds technology that helps people access food, housing, healthcare, and public benefits. We started using AI not because it was trendy, but because we had very real problems, like trying to figure out how to interoperate between multiple data silos of community resource information with different taxonomies.

What we’ve learned is that AI is just one tool in our toolbox.

Most of our platform is still built using traditional deterministic software, databases, rules engines, workflows, APIs. We use generative AI only where it actually solves hard problems. And a big part of our work now is simply learning: learning how to build with generative AI, how to push its limits, where it breaks, where it works well, and where it shouldn’t be used at all.

It’s important to understand these tools now, not because we want to use AI everywhere, but because we need to know how to harness it and apply it in ways that actually benefit people and move us toward more equitable systems.

AI is an infrastructure moment

If we are serious about equity, then we should care about who is building these tools, who controls the infrastructure, whose values are embedded in the systems, and who benefits from them.

Because if the social sector, public sector, and healthcare sector do not actively participate in building and shaping these tools, they will still be built — just by someone else, with different incentives.

This moment reminds me again of the railroads. The biggest impacts of railroads were not medical, as early critics feared. They were economic and social. Railroads connected some cities and bypassed others. Some towns grew rapidly, while others declined. Railroads raised huge questions about infrastructure investment, corporate power, and equity.

Technology, like rail systems, becomes infrastructure. And AI is in a similar kind of infrastructure moment.

What organizations should do right now

So what does that actually mean for organizations, clinicians, community health workers, and nonprofit leaders right now?

Most organizations do not need to build AI models. But every organization should be thinking carefully about how these tools will change their work, their workflows, and the people they serve. In many ways, AI tools are becoming like spreadsheets or shared documents, which are tools that not every organization builds, but tools every organization eventually uses.

The most important place to start is not with the technology, but with the problems. Instead of asking, “How do we use AI?” a better question is, “Where are we struggling to make an impact? Where are people dropping off? Where are we wasting time? Where is paperwork slowing things down?” AI is pretty useful right now for very specific operational problems.

It is also important to be careful about what decisions we automate. Using AI to summarize notes or help fill out forms is very different from using AI to determine eligibility or generate risk scores. High-stakes decisions should still involve human judgment and accountability.

Another lesson many organizations are learning is that AI problems are often actually data problems. If your data is incomplete, inconsistent, or biased, AI will simply amplify those problems. Investing in better data systems, data governance, and data quality may ultimately be more important than investing in AI tools themselves.

Organizations also need to invest in their people’s understanding of AI. Staff need training not just on how to use AI tools, but on when not to trust them, how to verify outputs, how to protect sensitive information, and how to think critically about where these tools should and should not be used. Many organizations will need internal AI policies and principles, just as they developed policies for email, data security, and cloud software over the past two decades.

And perhaps most importantly, the communities we serve need to be involved in the design and testing of AI tools. Otherwise, we risk building systems that work well for institutions but not for the people who actually need them.

A message for funders: get off the sidelines

For funders, I have one message in this moment: get off the sidelines.

Technology systems always reflect the people who pay to build them. This is a major technology shift that is going to change healthcare, social services, and how people access benefits and support. If funders do not engage, the future of AI in healthcare and social services will be built primarily by large vendors and institutions, optimized for compliance, billing, and efficiency (think EHRs, HMIS, CLR systems).

We don’t just need small grants for experimental AI tools around the margins. We need investment in community-owned digital public infrastructure, data systems, governance, and shared platforms so equity is built into these systems from the beginning, not added later as an afterthought.

Don’t let anxiety turn into inaction

And for everyone else reading this (nonprofit leaders, healthcare providers, social workers, policymakers), here’s my advice for right now: don’t let anxiety turn into inaction. Start learning. Start experimenting. Start asking questions. You don’t need to become an AI engineer (and TBH, you won’t need to be), but you do need to understand how these tools work and where they fit into your work.

Every major infrastructure shift reshapes society (railroads, electricity, highways, the internet). AI is likely in another one of those moments. The biggest questions are not technical. They are social, economic, and political. Who benefits? Who gets left out? Who controls the infrastructure? What systems are we reinforcing, and what systems are we changing?

AI is here whether we like it or not. The question is not whether we use it. The question is whether we help shape how it is used.

If we care about equity, we cannot only critique the future. We have to help build it.

We’re excited to welcome Erik Arnold to One Degree. His lived experience, deep technical expertise, and long-standing commitment to strengthening the nonprofit sector bring a powerful combination of heart and discipline to our next chapter.

When you speak with Erik, one theme becomes clear: systems should work for the people they are meant to serve. That conviction is not abstract. It is personal.

Erik grew up as the youngest son of a single mother. His family relied on food stamps and the support of community-based organizations in their town. Those early experiences gave him a lasting appreciation for the safety net, not as policy, but as something real that families depend on. He understands what these services mean from the perspective of someone who benefited from them, and that perspective continues to shape how he thinks about technology, impact, and responsibility.

Erik entered the tech world in Seattle in the early 1990s and was, as he puts it, “lucky enough” to be part of a startup founded by Bill Gates. Over time, he became increasingly interested not only in building technology, but in improving how technology companies engage with the social sector.

In his view, traditional corporate social responsibility efforts like small donations, volunteer days, even one-off prototypes, can be well-intentioned, but often fail to “move the needle.” In some cases, they even distract nonprofit teams that lack the resources to absorb short-term initiatives. What Erik advocated for instead was lasting engagement: partnerships grounded in ethical, sustainable models that help nonprofits succeed over the long term.

That perspective led him to Microsoft in 2017, where he helped found the Tech for Social Impact team within Microsoft Philanthropies. As CTO for Microsoft Philanthropies and a General Manager of the team, Erik helped grow an initiative supporting hundreds of thousands of nonprofits worldwide. He oversaw a billion-dollar software donation portfolio, led engineering teams dedicated to the sector, and shipped products designed specifically to meet nonprofit needs.

Since early 2025, Erik has worked independently with nonprofits, foundations, and mission-driven companies to help them navigate a shifting funding landscape and use digital technology more strategically.

A formative experience earlier in his nonprofit career sharpened his systems mindset even further. During a visit to PATH’s operations in Kenya, he saw firsthand the complexity of delivering services in resource-constrained environments. In a clinic supporting mothers and children with HIV, a doctor showed him a USAID form used to order medication. A new medication was available, but it wasn’t in the dropdown menu. The doctor asked a simple question: “How do I get it in the dropdown?”

Behind that question was a deeper issue. No one on the ground knew who built the system, how it connected to headquarters, or what would happen if the form were changed. For Erik, that moment crystallized a core insight: too often, technology in the social sector becomes fragmented, built around grant cycles or reporting requirements rather than around the lived experience of the individual receiving services.

“What we should be tracking is the individual and the services they’re getting, and whether they’re getting the right services.”

When systems are designed around anything else, the result can be an ecosystem of disconnected tools that burden frontline staff instead of empowering them.

That systems-thinking approach is central to what Erik is excited to build at One Degree: moving from a collection of semi-connected solutions toward a cohesive, scalable platform, one that is performant, compliant, easier to support, and built for real-world adoption.

Erik understands how to improve estimation and planning, how to create better visibility into workstreams, and how to shift teams from reactive execution to proactive strategy. Just as importantly, he bridges business and technology fluently. With “one foot in business and one foot in tech,” he translates across program leaders, engineers, funders, and partners.

He also brings a clear perspective on nonprofit innovation. In his experience, nonprofits are not resistant to change.

“It’s not the smarts. It’s not the desire. It’s that nonprofits don’t have the resources.”

Sustainable impact requires investing in people, systems, and infrastructure, not simply minimizing overhead.

Erik’s arrival strengthens our ability to build technology that is not only innovative, but sustainable, interoperable, and built to last.

Outside of work, Erik is a lifelong tabletop gamer who started playing Dungeons & Dragons in the early 1980s and even wrote a dice-rolling program on a TRS-80. He enjoys hiking and spending time outdoors in the Pacific Northwest, and he’s an avid cook who finds joy in preparing meals for friends and family.

Welcome, Erik. We’re glad you’re here.

For more than a decade, One Degree has been building technology to help people find and access life-changing services. Along the way, one challenge has remained stubbornly constant: systems don’t talk to each other. As a result, the burden of coordination falls on the people least equipped to carry it—help seekers and frontline staff—who are forced to re-enter the same information, navigate duplicative workflows, and bridge gaps between disconnected tools.

This is why interoperability matters. Not as an abstract technical ideal, but as a practical, human one.

Today, far too much time in social care is spent manually transferring information from one system to another—copying assessments, re-creating referrals, or following up by phone or email to confirm whether help was received. Every handoff introduces friction. Every delay risks someone falling through the cracks. True interoperability has the power to change that by enabling real-time, standards-based data exchange that meets people where they already are.

That belief sits at the heart of our participation in California’s Data Exchange Framework (DxF). Through the DxF Technical Assistance Grant, One Degree has been able to make focused, intentional investments in the infrastructure required to support real-time sharing of social drivers of health (SDOH) assessment and referral data. This kind of funding is critical: it recognizes that interoperability is not “extra,” but foundational public infrastructure that requires time, expertise, and coordination to get right .

As part of our December 2025 progress update, we shared our ongoing investments in API based DxF-aligned data exchange and reaffirmed our commitment to implementing nationally recognized standards, including the Gravity SDOH implementation guide. Just as importantly, we finalized a partnership we are genuinely excited about: a collaboration with Elimu Informatics – Advisory Services.

Elimu is a rare kind of partner. Their team includes key contributors to the Gravity SDOH standards and deep, real-world experience running production-grade FHIR infrastructure. They understand not only how interoperability should work on paper, but how it actually functions in live systems with real providers, real workflows, and real constraints. Through this partnership, Elimu is supporting architecture design, implementation, and workflow development as we move toward production and training.

Together with our partners—including 211 Ventura—we are aligning on the specific data fields and workflows needed to enable meaningful, real-time exchange. The goal is not technology for technology’s sake, but practical interoperability that frees up time for frontline workers and reduces the administrative burden placed on people seeking help.

We see this work as part of a larger shift. Interoperability is how we move from fragmented, siloed systems to coordinated systems of care. The DxF grant made it possible to invest in this foundation, and our collaboration with Elimu gives us confidence that we’re building it the right way—grounded in standards, informed by practice, and focused on impact.

We’re excited about what comes next, and grateful to be building toward a future where sharing information is the easy part—so people can focus on what matters most: showing up for one another.

We’re excited to welcome Leslie Kerns to One Degree’s Board of Directors. Her commitment to dignity, narrative change, and systems transformation reflects the heart of our mission.

When you speak with Leslie Kerns, one theme rises above all others: the belief that every person deserves the chance not merely to survive, but to thrive in this world. It is a philosophy shaped by her earliest memories, watching her mother, a single parent of six, pull her family out of poverty and into the middle class through determination, resourcefulness, and a deep sense of purpose. “We should do whatever it takes to flourish,” Leslie shared, reflecting on the guiding principle that has shaped every chapter of her life.

“That idea, that we’re meant to thrive, not just get by, has informed every career decision I’ve made.”

This commitment to meaningful impact propelled Leslie from an early career in law into public relations, nonprofit communications, advocacy, and ultimately social change consulting. She led communications, advocacy, and integrated campaigns at firms like M&R and partnered with organizations such as Public Welfare Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the Vera Institute of Justice, and The Frameworks Institute. With each career move, she grew more focused on whether her work created real, measurable improvement in people’s lives, continuously choosing to “do more,” as she puts it, to ensure her daily work translated into better outcomes for communities. That intention led her to launch 1235 Strategies, a consultancy named after her childhood street address. Leslie leads the firm while assembling senior-level partners as needed, creating teams tailored to each client’s goals. “Strategy should reflect an organization’s goals and what it takes to achieve them, not the services or people a consulting firm happens to have under one roof,” she explained. 1235 Strategies brings top talent together to deliver communications, branding, narrative change, and advocacy strategies that help purpose-driven organizations accelerate impact.

This same ethos is what drew Leslie to One Degree. In her words, the alignment felt immediate and profound. One Degree’s mission, to make essential resources accessible so that families can build healthy, fulfilling lives, mirrors her own belief that systems should empower people to flourish. She also sees the organization’s approach as both innovative and deeply practical: “Technology helps so many of us in the middle class and above easily meet our daily needs, from finding housing to accessing healthcare to applying for jobs. There’s no reason that the same technology can’t be used to help lower-income families meet theirs.” Leslie speaks candidly about the broken social safety net and the harmful assumptions embedded within it. The idea that lower-income individuals don’t engage with digital tools or won’t follow through if offered online pathways reflects our incorrect assumptions. “These assumptions aren’t intentional,” she said, “but they’re still harmful. They hold us back from designing systems in ways that respect people’s dignity and capabilities.” For her, One Degree is dismantling those assumptions by proving that modern, human-centered technology can and should be accessible to everyone.

On the board, Leslie hopes to contribute her experience as a strategist, communicator, and narrative architect, skills that bridge policy, partnerships, digital engagement, media, and social justice. She has helped organizations shift public sentiment, connect communities to benefits, and use narrative to advance structural change. She sees an opportunity to bring those tools to One Degree in a way that strengthens both the organization’s growth and its impact.

“If One Degree thrives, then more low-income families and communities can thrive”

Outside of her professional life, Leslie brings a vibrant sense of creativity and joy. She is an avid practitioner of improv, a hobby she calls both playful and grounding. She performs with a studio in Los Angeles and describes the practice as an antidote to stress, a pathway to presence, and a reminder of the importance of play in a world that often demands constant seriousness. 

We are honored to welcome Leslie Kerns to One Degree’s Board of Directors. Her commitment to dignity, her belief in people’s potential to thrive, and her leadership in narrative, strategy, and impact will strengthen our work in powerful ways. As we continue building a more connected, compassionate, and technologically modern safety net, her voice and vision will help guide the path forward.

Welcome, Leslie. We are grateful to build this future with you.

This week, One Degree had the opportunity to present at Google.org’s Generative AI Accelerator Demo Day, marking a major milestone in our journey to transform how families access the social safety net.

Out of more than 3,000 applicants worldwide, One Degree was selected to join the 2025 Google.org Generative AI Accelerator, a two-year program supporting social impact organizations using AI to tackle some of the world’s most complex challenges. Demo Day represented the culmination of six months of intensive collaboration, experimentation, and product development alongside the Google.org team and an extraordinary cohort of peers.

At Google HQ, our team shared a vision for what digital public infrastructure for the social safety net can look like and unveiled two new AI-powered tools designed to make that vision real.

Reimagining Access to the Social Safety Net

For millions of families, getting help today feels like searching for a needle in a haystack. The social safety net is fragmented across nonprofits, public agencies, and healthcare systems that often lack the digital tools needed to coordinate effectively. Families are left navigating unreliable information, complex eligibility rules, paper forms, and inaccessible waitlists—often at moments of crisis.

At One Degree, we see this not as an inevitability, but as an opportunity to fundamentally rethink how people access help.

At Google.org Demo Day, we showcased two AI tools built through the Accelerator to tackle the biggest friction points in access and enrollment. Our AI Resource Navigator uses natural language processing to understand the way people actually ask for help and connects them to relevant, human-verified resources in seconds. Our AI Intake & Enrollment Tool simplifies paperwork by converting paper and PDF forms into digital experiences and pre-filling information when available, reducing enrollment time and administrative burden for frontline staff.

Together, these tools point toward a future where families can find and enroll in help in minutes, not months, and providers can spend less time on administration and more time supporting people.

Gratitude and What’s Next

This work would not be possible without philanthropy and partnership. We are deeply grateful to Google.org, the Accelerator team, our executive sponsors, and our Google squad members for believing in this vision and pushing us to build better.

Demo Day was not an endpoint, it was a beginning. As we move forward, we remain focused on building AI-powered infrastructure that helps families access the right resources faster and supports frontline providers in doing their best work.

Stay tuned as we continue shaping the future of social care together.

We are proud to share with you One Degree’s 2024–2025 Annual Impact Report, a reflection of the progress we made together in strengthening the social safety net during a year of immense challenges. 

This year, we saw firsthand the cracks in our system as families faced wildfires, immigration threats, and disruptions to public benefits. Yet we also saw hope. With partners ranging from LA County DHS and ACES-LA to new collaborators like Interface Children & Family Services, we demonstrated how trusted community networks and next-generation technology can work together to keep families from falling through the cracks.

We also took bold steps into the future by exploring how generative AI can transform access to essential resources and benefits. Our work this year laid the foundation for AI-powered tools designed to make finding and enrolling in resources even faster and better. 

Thank you for believing in this work and for standing with us as we build a more equitable, connected, and compassionate social safety net for all.

We encourage you to dive into the full report and see the impact your support made possible:
Read the Annual Impact Report

As our work expands to meet rising community needs, your support helps fuel the innovation and collaboration required to strengthen the safety net for everyone. Every donation counts!

Donate Now

We’re grateful to have you with us in this work.

With gratitude,
The One Degree Team

The world of generative AI, led by platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini, is changing how we think about information access. For nonprofit professionals dedicated to connecting people with vital resources, the question isn’t if AI will change our work, but how we can use it effectively and responsibly.

At One Degree, we are focused on developing a One Degree AI Assistant to be a trustworthy and powerful tool for resource search and access. As this is our first entry into generative AI, we conducted a series of user tests and interviews with our Community Feedback Group. This group comprises a diverse mix of help-seekers, direct service providers, and healthcare workers. Through this process, we’ve gained critical insights into what makes a specialized AI solution stand out from general-purpose leaders in the market.

The Problem to Be Solved

Our community members face persistent, systemic challenges when searching for help, including:

• Wading through outdated and inaccurate resource information.
• Wasting time on long eligibility processes only to find they don’t qualify.
• Having to fill out the same paperwork repeatedly.

While a gentle optimism toward AI exists, citing our recent survey data, so do distinct fears. This includes concerns regarding resource verification and accuracy (“Will AI just make up information?”), the loss of human empathy, the potential for algorithmic bias, or unethical data use. This can be an incredible risk for people facing vulnerable situations. It takes an intentional and rigorous effort for AI-enabled solutions to have the community’s best interests at heart.

Comparing the AI Landscape for Resource Search

We sought comparison feedback on our in-development AI Assistant alongside general-purpose models like ChatGPT and Gemini. We did this through several rounds of user testing, comparison feedback, and in-depth remote interviews with our community. Here is what our participants found:

One Degree AI Assistant

The One Degree AI Assistant was described by one tester as: “a ChatGPT for resources for people.” The familiar chat interface was intuitive, and testers appreciated its focus.

• Strength: Focus and Actionability. “I think that it gives you what you need and then some,” noted one participant. Participants found the information level “enough to take action on a resource but not too much to be overwhelming.” Its core value lies in being intentionally focused on verified, actionable community resources.
• Weakness: Speed and Transparency. Compared to the high-speed, advanced back-ends of the larger platforms, some testers noticed a slowness in our Assistant’s responses. Furthermore, a tester noted that they missed the visual cues that platforms like ChatGPT use to show an “undergoing and thinking process” such as real-time typing. Though subtle, this provides transparency and signals to the people that “Something is happening.”

ChatGPT and Gemini

Many research participants stated that they had familiarity with ChatGPT, which made our Assistant easier to interpret initially. Even though those who said they weren’t particularly tech savvy shared that they had experience using generative AI platforms. However, when tested directly for resource access, the limitations of general AI became clear:

• Strength: Thoroughness and Layout. Some participants appreciated the sheer volume of information these platforms provided. ChatGPT was also noted for using tables to organize results, making resources easier to compare and contrast. Tags with linked sources on some text also offered a layer of trust by stating the source of the information, including a hyperlink.
• Weakness: Overwhelm and Unpredictability. A common critique was the sheer volume of text, which was seen as “long-winded and difficult to read.” One interviewee commented on Gemini: “It is visually difficult to process… It’s just a wall of text to me at this point.” Crucially, the information was often unpredictable. Sometimes contact numbers were present, other times they weren’t. Participants found themselves having to take an organization’s name from the AI response and “do more research just to find a phone number. It’s just a lot of waste of time.”

Traditional One Degree Search

Interestingly, the traditional, non-generative AI One Degree search with its card-based interface received positive feedback for its readability and predictable format.

• Strength: Readability and Consistency. Participants appreciated the structured format, which made addresses, phone numbers, and hours easy to locate. “I like the break up of different things… it just doesn’t look like a report I’m reading,” one person shared. The predictable layout eliminated the need to “hunt for information,” where time is a precious commodity in urgent situations.

Key Takeaways

Our research confirms a crucial point for the nonprofit sector: Given the existing field of generative AI tools, there is still a clear need for AI training and specialization to work effectively as a tool for social service navigation.

While general platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini offer global scale and flexibility across many topics, their data, user experience, and use cases are not optimized for social service navigation. Because of this, we are working to train a specialized AI Assistant to  focus on:

1. Trustworthiness: For our community, accuracy and relevance are critical, not just convenient. Standard AI models pose an unacceptable risk to vulnerable populations because they can hallucinate or provide out-of-date information. Even when an AI platform offers credible information, it must provide assurances to verify its accuracy. But the fact that it’s unclear where they’re pulling the data from and how accurate it is, significantly erodes the trustworthiness of the dominant AI chatbots.
2. Information experience: Throughout user testing and in-depth interviews, a clear preference emerged: participants preferred information to be succinct and well-structured. They don’t want to comb through a conversational chat or an in-depth analysis. They need specific details that allow them to take the next step toward accessing a resource.
3. Value proposition: The One Degree AI Assistant is powered by One Degree’s curated, human-verified database of nonprofit services and public benefits. Every response is grounded in accurate, up-to-date, and community-reviewed data — not scraped from the chaotic sprawl of the internet. This means our AI doesn’t hallucinate, doesn’t guess, and doesn’t send people down dead ends. Instead, it surfaces only verified, useful, and available resources. That focus is what makes One Degree AI a tool our community can trust by default.

One participant shared their experience using ChatGPT and Gemini to seek resources and stated in an interview, “I haven’t been blown away by anything by AI bots. I haven’t been blown away because I could do the same thing with Google.” This highlights the distinct challenge of having to offer a unique value proposition that existing tools like ChatGPT or Google search don’t specifically address.

We are incredibly thankful for the guidance from our Community Feedback Group. Their stories and insights are steering the development of the One Degree AI Assistant to ensure it is not just another piece of technology, but serves as an essential tool that genuinely reduces the friction between a person and the help they need.

This month, millions of families across the country will be impacted by the Trump Administration’s efforts to deny and delay access to the nation’s largest anti-hunger program – SNAP

For many, this will mean one less grocery trip, one more hard choice. It’s another reminder that while Washington debates, families go hungry.

When the federal government makes it harder to access the safety net, local communities have to make it easier.

That’s exactly what we’re doing here in California.

Together with Interface Children & Family Services, the operator of 211 Ventura County, we’re piloting a new digital referral system to close one of the biggest gaps in the state’s social care landscape: enrollment in Medi-Cal’s Enhanced Care Management (ECM).

The Challenge

Across California, fewer than 1% of Medi-Cal members are currently enrolled in ECM, despite the state estimating that 3-5% qualify. The barriers are well-known:

• Providers don’t know how to participate
• Managed care plans are struggling to build relationships with local nonprofits
• Community-based organizations are unfamiliar with billing processes
• And Medi-Cal members often don’t even know these services exist

The result? Tens of thousands of eligible Californians—people with complex health, housing, and behavioral needs—remain disconnected from the care coordination and social services they need to move forward.

The Solution

Our collaboration with Interface is creating new solutions that will allow 211 operators to screen potentially millions of callers for ECM eligibility and then make secure, pre-qualified referrals to local ECM providers. 

When someone contacts 211 for help:

• A trained specialist screens for Medi-Cal eligibilty
• Matching algorithms identify qualified, local ECM providers
• Referrals are securely transmitted only with the caller’s consent
• ECM providers receive all the application information they need to request service approval from the client’s Managed Care Plan

In Ventura County, the data is already showing what’s possible:

• 958 callers screened
• 383 likely eligible for ECM services

Building Tech That Works for People

This partnership demonstrates the power of community-based infrastructure. It’s not about creating another app or portal. It’s about meeting people where they already are.

By connecting 211’s trusted front door with One Degree’s world-class nonprofit technology, we’re helping managed care plans, providers, and counties work together to:

• Increase enrollment
• Reduce administrative headaches
• Strengthen accountability and reporting
• Deliver care faster and with greater dignity

This is what it looks like when local innovators step up as the federal safety net frays. Because when they make it harder, we make it easier—one call, one referral, one family at a time.

Last week, I had the honor of sharing the One Degree | 1degree.org story at The Rockefeller Foundation’s Amplification event during the NationSwell Summit. As part of the U.S. Big Bets Fellowship, I got to share why I believe so deeply in the need to invest in nonprofits that are building digital public infrastructure and why we need community-rooted organizations, not just tech giants, creating the next generation of AI tools.

I’m grateful to the Rockefeller Foundation for giving me the mic. That one pitch led to thoughtful conversations with leaders from across the country (from Tulsa to New York) who are trying to reimagine how to serve people better in this day and age. It reminded me: this is how change starts. In rooms where ideas collide over lunch and dining room tables and the connections spark some interesting conversations.

NationSwell network in full effect

The NationSwell Summit itself was a great experience. I met Greg Behrman during NationSwell’s founding days, and seeing the community he and his team have nurtured was inspiring. This network has grown into a vibrant collective of do-gooders across sectors.

The backdrop of the Summit was complex and layered: an accelerating AI revolution on one side and a looming government shutdown on the other. And who bears the brunt of these seismic shifts? Vulnerable communities. People who rely on services like SNAP (who are already navigating a tangled web of bureaucracy) face the greatest risks (with SNAP benefits . My pitch was, in many ways, about that very urgency: the need to streamline and strengthen access to safety net services now, using the best tools available.

AI, governance, and what was missing: ownership

One of the most powerful moments was a small-group dinner focused on AI and governance, attended by senior leaders at some amazing philanthropies and organizations: Omidyar Network, EqualAI, Cadence, Gates Foundation, Tulsa Innovation Labs, Rockefeller Foundation, Block, and others. The talk was mostly about guardrails, liability, trust, and literacy, which are all critical.

But something was missing: ownership.

Because right now, only a handful of companies own the future of AI. And if we’re not careful, governance becomes a spectator sport, where a few build, and the rest of us comment from the sidelines.

This is why I keep saying that we need community-based organizations and public interest technologists to jump into the AI waters. Start building. Start testing. Start understanding what this technology can and can’t do. We cannot afford to only theorize. We need to own something real, something useful, and something that reflects our values and serves our people.

The Builders will govern

Honestly, as I sat in that room surrounded by some of the most influential leaders in philanthropy and corporate social responsibility, I was struck by how much thoughtful conversation was happening, and how strong concerns and deep values were being surfaced. And yet, it also felt like we were one step removed. We weren’t quite in the room where AI was being built. We were in the room discussing what others are building.

Because of that, the conversations were largely about playing defense, not offense when it comes to AI.

To be clear, philanthropy can play an important role in this moment to put up guardrails, convene smart minds, and think carefully about long-term impacts. But when it comes to shaping the future of AI, only a handful of builders are playing offense, and by that I meant actively using this technology to share the world we live in. We need to change that.

We need to equip more of people (community-rooted, mission-driven builders) to play offense, too.

Philanthropy can also play a role there too, but so far, only a handful of funders have made bold moves in this space. Many are still taking a wait-and-see approach or launching coalitions to study the problem rather than deploy their funding on real implementation happening today.

At the end of the day, those shaping the future of AI will be the ones building it, and not just thinking or talking about it.

And that’s why it’s so important for philanthropy to deploy its resources now… to fund organizations that are already deeply embedded in communities and well-positioned to build technology and AI that is community-centered, community-owned, and grounded in equity.

Huge thanks to The Rockefeller Foundation for the opportunity to share One Degree’s work through the Big Bets Fellowship. And thanks to NationSwell for hosting such a thoughtful and energizing summit!

Over the next 10 years the federal government will be cutting over $1.1 trillion in safety net funding. The pressure on state and local governments to respond will be extraordinary. To step up to the challenge local public sector leaders will need to find better, more scalable and more affordable ways — to work together with each other — and with the social sector.

For the past twenty-five years the national 211 network has been collaborating with local communities as the system of record to help tens-of-millions of Americans find and access life-changing benefits and services.  This historically not-for-profit Information & Referral (I&R) ecosystem is being buffeted by political, commercial and technological change. These changes once promised to modernize and transform how social services are coordinated and delivered; but that has not yet happened.

The steep cuts in federal funding will compound these challenges leaving state and local governments without the time, or money, to continue to tolerate a status quo that already leaves too many kids and families behind. This White Paper is addressed to local social service advocates, agencies, funders, providers and policy makers unwilling to settle for a world that has not yet embraced the digital solutions we need to take care of each other.

Download the full white paper here: Technology for a Healthier World