Work with NOLO

Community-resource information decays quietly. A program closes, an intake window moves, a waitlist reopens, a phone number is reassigned — and nothing in the system holding the record knows. The cost lands on the person who traveled across town, and on the staff member who sent them there.

NOLO is built around that decay rather than around the size of the list. Every published record shows the source it came from and the date it was last checked. Where a source does not state a fact, the field reads UNKNOWN instead of being filled with a plausible guess. Records that are no longer usable are marked rather than deleted, so a referral made from an old printout can still be traced.

• Verified local resource dataSource-labeled records for a defined geography or service area, refreshed on an agreed cadence.
• A verification project with defined boundariesA named set of programs, counties, or service lines checked against named sources, with the evidence and the check dates handed over.
• An audit of resource data you already holdWe take your existing list and report what has changed, what is unreachable, and what cannot be confirmed either way — as a findings document, not a replacement for your system.
• Structured data exports and interoperabilityMachine-readable extracts and HSDS-oriented interoperability work. See Data & interoperability for what exists today and what does not.
• Navigation materials for your populationPrint-ready preparation guides and referral packets for a specific service line, discharge process, or program — plain language, with sources shown.
• A bounded pilotHospitals and health systems, health plans, city and county agencies, reentry programs, school district homeless liaisons, aging and disability services, libraries, housing agencies, and community organizations. Small, scoped, and time-limited by design.

A directory answers “does a program like this exist.” That question is largely solved. The unsolved one is “is this particular record still true today, and how would I know.”

NOLO treats that as the product: provenance on every record, a visible check date, uncertainty labeled rather than hidden, human review as the publication gate, and conflicting information preserved instead of silently overwritten. The rules are public and specific — you can read them before you talk to us, on Methodology & trust.

These are constraints rather than caveats, and several are enforced in the product rather than promised in a policy document. NOLO does not rank or recommend providers, does not sell placement or advertising, does not determine eligibility, does not assert bed counts or real-time availability, and does not create client accounts or store information about the people who use the site.

NOLO is not a HIPAA-covered entity and holds no security or accessibility certification. An engagement that would require one has to begin with that conversation rather than end with it.

NOLO is in public beta and is operated by one person. NOLO announces funding relationships only once an award or contract is finalized; none has been finalized to date. The public-benefit service is currently an unincorporated project. A separate Kentucky LLC exists for contracted data work and is not the charitable applicant. NOLO is not recognized as a 501(c)(3) and has no fiscal sponsor, so it does not represent contributions as tax-deductible. Coverage today is Louisville Metro and the ring counties, and it is uneven — some categories are well developed and others are thin, which the site says openly rather than averaging away.

If continuity matters to your organization, raise it in the first conversation. Data portability and a defined exit path are reasonable things to ask a small vendor for, and the answer belongs in the agreement.

Email dustin@nooneleftoutside.org — it reaches Dustin Collins directly.

Useful things to include: the population or geography you are responsible for, what resource information you rely on today, and what goes wrong with it. A first conversation is a conversation — there is nothing to sign and no proposal attached.