mRelief is a Chicago-based all-woman software development team. Their niche is streamlining social services delivery through eligibility determination for public benefits done through adaptive questionnaires available online and through text messaging.
In November 2014, Smart Chicago provided $15,000 through our CivicWorks Project, which is funded by the Knight Foundation. Here’s a blog post about that and other investments. mRelief has gone on to receive a Knight prototype grant and a Knight News Challenge grant on their own.
Also since November 2014, we’ve hosted text-messaging for three of their programs: Early Learning, RTA Ride Free, and Medicaid, under our Developer Resources program.
In January 2015, we conducted a CUTGroup test for mRelief— see the results here. Rose Afriye of mRelief wrote a guest blog post about the experience: The Civic User Testing Group and Other Listening Strategies.
Smart Chicago partner Purple Binder created their first API in July 2013. Smart Chicago funded this work in order to serve our Smart Health Centers project. In January 2015, mRelief integrated with this API, which implements the Open Referral standard.
In August 2015, we worked with mRelief to add the Chicago Early Learning Finder into their service and integrate it with our Chicago Early Learning Portal project.
“This mRelief support is exactly why Smart Chicago exists— to provide critical early support for great products that help people”, said Smart Chicago Collaborative Executive Director Daniel X. O’Neil on the mRelief launch.
