The United States has roughly 1.4 million governments, charities, and congregations that administer human services programs and over 75 million people that reach out to these programs.  But finding the right one at the right location providing the right service can be difficult and daunting.

Now enter Aunt Bertha, the online marketplace that helps people search for food, health, housing, or education programs through a simple ZIP code search.  It is doing what Monster.com did for jobs.  Or what eBay.com did for rare goods.  By entering three questions – anonymously – about family size and income, users can immediately find out if they qualify for a program.  No more poorly written government websites.  No more spending long days searching for nothing.  And most importantly, no more giving up on not finding what one needs.  The platform is intended to help users find a program suitable for them within seconds.

Erine Gray, the creator, calls Aunt Bertha “the one everybody in the neighborhood goes to for advice”.  She is someone that can be trusted.  And because the website gathers government programs from federal to local levels, the company’s popular tagline is: “Aunt Bertha picks up where Uncle Sam leaves off”.

Gray’s motivation for starting the platform comes from his own experience as a child benefitting from social service programs and while working to improve human services as a government consultant, where he noticed it was far too complicated for residents to seek and apply for services.  Last year the company achieved B Corp certification.  With this governing structure, the Aunt Bertha team hopes to build an organization that is self-sustaining and would stay true to the mission of making human service information more accessible in order to help the millions of families that need these programs to live.