Year in Review - 2019
Objective Zero 2019 Highlights
2019 was a great year for our organization - we saw tremendous growth in the number of downloads and new users, trained hundreds of Ambassadors, built new partnerships, and received several grants that will allow us to improve the user experience, support more veterans, and make quicker and more meaningful connections! We cannot continue to do what we are doing without the time, talents, and generous donations of our amazing supporters! As we reflect on 2019 and look forward to 2020, we wanted to share a recap of the past year- you can see our 2019 impact here.
Our Impact to Date
VA Partnership
The beginning of 2019 offered huge news for us to announce: our partnership with the Department of Veterans Affairs! Our partnership with the VA enabled us to provide support to a greater number of veterans and provided us access to the expertise and mentorship of leaders in the VA.
“At VA, we are working to prevent Veteran suicide by using an approach that looks beyond our traditional health care settings,” said VA Secretary Robert Wilkie. “Our partnership with Objective Zero is an integral part of reaching Veterans where they live, work and thrive, and we are looking forward to working more closely with them.”
Edison Awards
We also learned that Objective Zero was a finalist for an Edison Award in the health and wellness/mental health category and ended up getting GOLD, the highest award possible! The Edison Awards recognized excellence in innovation, and we were truly honored and humbled by the opportunity to showcase our work on a larger scale.
AAS Conference
We had the tremendous good fortune to attend the American Association of Suicidology’s 52nd Annual Conference in Denver and look forward to attending again in 2020! (Pictured with Duane France, one of our early supporters and advisor!)
Testifying before Congress
OZ Co-founder, Justin Miller, testified before the Committee on Oversight and Reform on childhood trauma and also spoke about Objective Zero. Justin’s story and his experience transitioning out of the military was the inspiration behind Objective Zero, and his testimony before Congress was every bit as powerful as the story he shared with us.
VA/DoD Suicide Prevention Conference
In August our team made the trip to Nashville for the VA/DoD Suicide Prevention Conference, making new connections, seeing old friends, and spreading the word about Objective Zero!
Bloomberg Data for Good Exchange
Our CTO, Luca, shared the stage with Foursquare’s CEO and founder, Dennis Crowley, at the 2019 Bloomberg Data for Good Exchange to discuss the Foursquare for Good initiative. Luca has been instrumental in shepherding our technology as we look to 2020 as the year we launch our newest and most ambitious plans for our app!
Visible Connect Accelerator
In September, we attended a week in Denver for the Visible Connect Accelerator, meeting with mentors, experts, and learning from fellow tech nonprofit leaders!
AUSA Conference
The OZ Team was in Washington DC for the Association of the United States Army Annual Conference. One of the highlights was meeting Gary Sinise, who does so much for the military and veteran community!
The Today Show
The OZ Team was in NYC on Veterans Day, Chris and Justin were live for a segment on the Today Show!
5th Annual Vettys
Objective Zero has been nominated for an Academy of United States Veterans Vetty Award in the suicide prevention category! We’ll be attending the awards ceremony on January 18th!
Twilio Impact Fund Grant
The Objective Zero App uses Twilio products to connect our users to Ambassadors through text, voice, and video. Thanks to this grant, we will be expanding our platform to a web-based app and creating quicker connections in 2020, allowing us to reach more veterans!
Program Evaluation with the CDC Foundation
We recently found out that we were selected along with six other VSOs to work with the CDC Foundation on program evaluation, as part of the CDC’s upstream approach to veteran suicide! We will be working on this project through July 2020 and looking forward to finding ways to better our program!
Thank you to our volunteers, donors, partners, and supporters!
There’s no way we would be where we are today with the time, talents, and donations from our supporters! Our State Directors and volunteers are spreading the word in their communities, attending events and sharing our app as a resource to the veterans and service members in their area. With generous donations from the individual donors, and groups like the USNA Class of 1998, Harvard Business School, and American Legion Post 8 Auxiliary, we have been able to create new integrations like the Patrol Base and service academy filtering option, and provide the Objective Zero App for free for all users!
2019 in Photos
