The Crisis
Every major disaster in the last twenty years has exposed the same failure — not in the people who respond, but in the systems built to coordinate them.
Resource tracking systems crash under surge. Search and rescue teams cover the same ground while entire communities go unchecked.
Volunteers, nonprofits, and agencies all respond — but without a coordination layer, the help becomes part of the problem.
Disasters Are Accelerating
Communities are hit before they've recovered from the last one. The frequency and severity keep increasing.
The Safety Net Is Shrinking
Non-lifesaving disaster recovery cut. Twenty states suing to restart preparedness grants. $24.4 billion funding shortfall.
The Response Is a Mess
After Helene, 54 fire departments, hundreds of nonprofits, and thousands of volunteers responded — across 19 different systems with zero shared visibility.
This pattern isn't local.
It's global.
The Help Exists
People respond. They always do. But they are overwhelmed.
Citizens
Three out of four people turn to neighbors before any agency.⁶ People with trucks clear roads. Nurses triage on front porches.
Organizations
Small nonprofits manage thousands of requests on spreadsheets. Faith-based groups self-organize through group chats. Everyone responds.
Emergency Services
85% of state emergency agencies cite infrastructure limitations.⁷ Working with tools from a different era.
The Gap
In 1986, Congress passed Goldwater-Nichols to force the military branches to coordinate. It worked. Nobody ever passed the equivalent for civilian disaster response. The organizations doing this work are extraordinary — they just can't see each other.
The technology to close this gap didn't exist two years ago. It does now.
The Solution
The Coordination Loop
SOS is coordination infrastructure that connects citizens, nonprofits, government agencies, emergency services, and vendors — so that when someone needs help and someone else can provide it, the connection actually happens.
The system doesn't just respond to disasters — it learns from them. Revenue from connecting homeowners with vetted contractors funds coordination for people with no insurance, no savings, no safety net.
Real-Time Coordination
Maria texts: "my roof collapsed. Three kids, no car, no power."
2:14 PM
Matched to Riverside Community Shelter (2.1 mi). Capacity confirmed. Three open beds.
2:14 PM — instant
David — retired teacher with a truck — gets the route. ETA 12 minutes.
2:15 PM
Red Cross case worker notified. Maria's intake pre-filled from her initial text.
2:15 PM
FEMA resource tracker updated. Maria's request no longer duplicated across 3 agencies.
2:16 PM
Three kids confirmed safe. Maria connected to long-term housing pipeline.
4:47 PM
Six people. One family. Two minutes.
That's what coordination looks like when the infrastructure exists.
Why We Started
THE ORIGIN
SOS started during Hurricane Helene. Our founder's farmhouse was damaged — he lived in a donated RV for three months. Scraped 4,000 missing persons off Facebook because 211 was down. Drove RV deliveries. Brought Starlink terminals to neighbors cut off for weeks.
THE RESEARCH
20 months of research across two decades of disasters. Every after-action report from Katrina through Helene. Coordination science from MIT and the World Bank. Field interviews with people doing the work. Fourteen structural problems documented. Zero solved between 2005 and 2024.
THE VALUES
Partners keep their data. Citizens control their privacy. No profiles. No surveillance. Communities deserve infrastructure that works for them, not on them. The values are structural, not aspirational.
Our Core Finding
The instinct is already there. What's missing — is infrastructure.
