From huge, government-run behemoths like the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to small nonprofits, there are thousands of organizations dedicated to helping veterans, service members and their families. And, as much good work as they all do, they may not be doing a great job of coordinating their efforts.
“When I was discharged from the Army, transitioning from active duty military to the civilian sector wasn’t as efficient of a process as it should have been,” Taylor Justice, cofounder and CBO at
said. "There’s a lot in the news about veterans transitioning, or the issues that they face; but I lived it, along with our founder and CEO, Dan Brillman.”
What Justice, an Army infantry officer, and Brillman, an Air Force Reserve pilot, found were over 400,000 nonprofits, government agencies and educational institutions trying to help veterans.
“There are huge amounts of resources,” Justice said. “The problem is that they’re fragmented, and veterans are having a very difficult time connecting with those resources at a local and state level. So, what we created here at Unite US was a coordinated network technology platform.”
The duo, along with their third co-founder Andrew Price, created a software tool that allows all of those organizations to send secure, HIPPA complaint electronic referrals to one another. Think of it kind of like case management software, only where multiple organizations use the same software and can compare notes. That way, someone being serviced by several organizations at one time — say, a homeless outreach organization, the VA and a work placement organization — can be tracked, and organizations can coordinate their efforts.
To do this, Unite US works with geographic communities, networking them together. So far, they are operating in nine different communities, including some big ones like New York City, and the states of Florida, North Carolina, Illinois and Virginia. They plan on being operational in 23 more communities by the end of the year.
But, the technology has proven so effective that it's left the civilian sector looking on enviously.
“We’ve realized that the lessons we learned from the veteran and military community aren’t unique to those populations,” Justice said. “It’s actually the exact same issues that all citizens of all demographics are facing in the United States. So, starting in July 1, we’re going to be expanding to support all human and social services.”
That means nonprofits and governmental agencies offering assistance to all sorts of people, even those with no ties to the military, will be able to use Unite US' technology. And, that matters a lot, especially to people who rely on those sorts of services.
You might assume the founders of Unite US were doing similar work in the military — maybe building database software to track military assets or working at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center — but they weren't.
“I was an infantry officer. Infantry officers are boots on the ground, supposed to kick in doors. We weren’t building out software tools, I was responsible for a platoon of men to go out and execute missions," Justice said. "I think really where the military prepares you to excel in the civilian sector is to be able to identify problems and go out and find plausible solutions to those problems. It gives you the initiative to go out and solve a problem, instead of, you know, to just sit back and complain.”
