Tools you use, not tools used on you
Our software works for the person in front of it: a resource map with no login, a benefits calculator that keeps no record of you, a profile you control and can walk away from.
Our commitments
Tech for people. Not for surveillance.
We build community technology: tools that help a neighbor get housed, get covered, get hired, and get connected. There is another kind of technology out there, the kind that watches, scores, and punishes. We do not build that kind. Not for any customer, not at any price.
Where we stand
Technology does not need to subjugate.
Most of the people we serve have already been watched plenty: by courts, by systems, by databases that never forget. They do not need more monitoring. They need doors that open. Every product we make is measured against one question: does this give a person more power over their own life, or less?
Nothing moves without a yes
When agencies share through our platform, every share needs the person's specific written permission, and they can take it back. Connection never means surveillance.
Built here, answerable here
We are a Fairfield County nonprofit. The people our tools affect can walk into a coalition meeting and tell us what to fix. That accountability is a feature, not a risk.
The hard lines
What we will never build.
These are not aspirations. They are product decisions we have already made, and they apply to every current and future GrowthWorks and GhostyBoy product.
No mass facial recognition
We will not build, buy, resell, or integrate mass AI facial recognition or biometric identification. Our cameras count nothing and recognize no one, because we do not point cameras at people in the first place.
No automated enforcement
We will not build code-violation sweeps, predictive policing, compliance dragnets, or any product whose job is to catch neighbors and generate fines or charges. Our compliance tools help organizations meet their own obligations, never police the public.
No selling personal stories
A person's story is theirs. We publish aggregate community data, like how many beds a county has, and never an individual's history. Personal information is not a revenue line here, and it never will be.
No scoring people with AI
Where our products use AI, it drafts, explains, and summarizes for a human to review. It does not assign risk scores, make eligibility decisions, or decide anyone's fate. People decide about people.
Data practices
Minimum collection
Destroyed, not kept
Small circle
Oversight
How we treat data we hold.
Good intentions are not a policy. These are the practices behind every GrowthWorks product.
We collect as little as possible
If a tool can work without knowing who you are, it does. Public tools like the resource map and calculator ask for nothing and store nothing about you.
Accidental data gets destroyed
If private information reaches us that we did not need or should not have, we do not quietly keep it. We destroy it, and our public tools actively block personal details from being posted in the first place.
Access is strictly limited
Sensitive data is reachable by a small, named group of staff with a reason to touch it, and every access leaves a trail. No broad internal access, no exceptions for convenience.
Someone checks the checkers
Access rules, audit logs, and consent records exist so our practices can be inspected, by partners, by funders, and by the communities we serve. Ask us and we will show you how it works.
Where this is going
These limits are what let us build big.
Community intelligence without surveillance, neighborhood robotics, disaster readiness, a shared workspace for public and private partners: none of it is safe to build without the lines above drawn first. Our vision page walks through what we are making happen, and what it looks like when it reaches one family.
Why it matters here
Trust is the whole product.
People in recovery, people leaving incarceration, and people in crisis will not use tools they do not trust, and they are right not to. Our platform only works because a person can say yes to sharing their story once, watch where it goes, and say no whenever they want. Surveillance would not just be wrong. It would break the very thing we are building.
That is the whole bet. Technology does not need to subjugate. In the right hands it does the opposite: it hands people the keys.
Hold us to it.
If you think one of our products crosses a line, tell us. If you want these commitments in writing for a partnership or grant, we are glad to provide them.