In January 2000, staff of Action For Boston Development (ABCD) and Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC) began meeting to discuss an inter-agency collaboration to provide human service providers and residents of Boston a source of accessible and accurate information on resources available across the city. ABCD had already developed an online resource directory and BPHC was exploring the idea of a citywide resource directory through their current website. Based on our agencies' shared vision and commitments to improving the lives of all Bostonians, the we were able to swiftly develop and implement an action plan. The results and ongoing collaboration are realized with the availability of this website.
ResourceNet was originally conceived and designed by ABCD in response to welfare reform legislation of the late 1990s. In October 1996, ABCD hosted a conference, “What's Going On? The Impacts of Welfare Reform in Boston and Strategies for the Future”. This conference helped to build coalitions among many different advocacy, recipient, and service provider groups in the Greater Boston area and thus, the idea for ResourceNet was born, originally an answer to the question, “What comes after welfare reform?”.
It was decided that readers would need assistance navigating through all the information and that electronic access to the information would make the timeliness of updated information easier to deal with. Indices were developed to enable readers to look up information according to their needs-for example, a case manager may need to find services for a client who only speaks Spanish, and a list of organizations who provide services in Spanish would make that case manager’s search much easier. Following that lead, four main indices were created allowing users to search for organizations by service provided, language, neighborhood, and alphabetically. In developing an online version of the directory, those indices made the directory searchable, which greatly increased its utility.
After premiering ResourceNet in early 1998, requests for copies of the directory and from organizations hoping to be listed began pouring in to ABCD. When the second edition of the directory came out it had been expanded by 75 organizations to include 300 human services organizations and programs across the City of Boston.
