Bay Area/Oakland codes

San Francisco Foundation

In 2016, San Francisco Foundation (SFF) funded a cohort of youth development programs supporting youth of color in Oakland and San Francisco to unlock their potential and pursue futures in STEM. SFF came to Spitfire because they wanted to build the communication capacity of the cohort and help them engage new audiences in their work. After working closely with the cohort, which includes Donald E. Glover Center, Hack the Hook, The Hidden Genius Project, and United Roots/Youth Impact Hub, we learned that what these organizations provide to their community goes far beyond coding classes. They support youth of color to reimagine the tech space and become architects for the future. With this in mind, we set out to support the cohort to develop compelling messaging about their work so they could raise critical funding and change the narrative about tech in the Bay Area. Our work included developing a communication plan to help the cohort set and reach their collective objectives, providing trainings on elevator pitches and tailored messaging to help them build their capacity to own and lead the work, and drafting messaging, one-pagers, website content and toolkits to help make it as easy as possible for the cohort to communicate about their work with key audiences.