Free Technology Services

What is the Community Tech Worker program?

Community Tech Workers help business owners save time and money by integrating technology into their businesses. Rooted in the Community Health Worker model, Community Tech Workers aim to take on the digital divide affecting small businesses, while piloting a workforce development model to move young people into tech-related fields. Community Tech Workers offer free one-on-one training to help business owners better integrate technology into their businesses, to improve the business’ efficiency and increase profitability. 

Community Tech Workers are available to meet Monday-Thursday from 9:30-4:00 p.m. Both in-person and virtual meeting options are available. Get started by scheduling an intake appointment with a community tech worker on the Detroit Means Business website.

Services

Our goal is to increase the digital capability among Detroit business owners. We specialize in teaching business owners how to: 

  • Update websites
  • Create social media images 
  • Automate social media posts
  • Optimize point of sale systems
  • Automate electronic inventory systems
  • Integrate third party apps (e.g. scheduling, delivery, project management)
  • Establish cybersecurity protection

What We Don’t Do
We’re not a help desk. We don’t do content creation for websites or social media and we don’t do routine updates to websites -- but we will teach you how to update your own website, or how to use free software to make effective social media, and how to read the back-end analytics to see if your posts are working.

How it Works

  1. Businesses can schedule an intake appointment with a community tech worker on the Detroit Means Business website. The community teach workers will:
    • Meet to learn more about clients’ needs and pain points
    • Propose a scope of work for resolving clients’ issues. This usually includes some combination of training on specific software for the business owners or their staff, and referrals to other resources.
  2. Once the client and tech workers agree on priorities, follow up appointments are scheduled as needed.

Meet the Team 

The Community Tech Worker program is a collaboration between the University of Michigan’s Detroit Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Project (DNEP), the Ford School of Public Policy, the School of Information, and Detroit nonprofit Jefferson East, Inc. Funding is provided by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.