Momentum Episode 38:
Building Smarter Disaster Response with Jotform Enterprise

What if the way we respond to disasters didn't just restore power, but reimagined it entirely by replacing diesel generators with clean energy and building more resilient communities in the process?

On today's episode, we talk with Will Heegaard, the founding director of the Footprint Project, an organization working on the front lines of climate disasters to deliver renewable energy solutions when they're needed most.

Faced with the challenge of operating in chaotic, high-pressure environments while coordinating volunteers, managing logistics, and deploying rapidly scalable energy systems, the team needed a way to stay organized, responsive, and efficient.

By using Jotform Enterprise, Footprint Project has streamlined everything from volunteer intake and deployment coordination to data collection in the field, helping them move faster and make smarter decisions when every second counts.

Welcome to Momentum, a podcast by Jotform where we talk about the technology, productivity tips, insights, and best practices that help us move forward in business and in life. Let's get started.

Three, two, one. Liftoff. We have a liftoff. Maintaining momentum.

Well, hi, Will. So nice to formally meet you. I know we've been talking back and forth a little bit over the last couple of weeks. I'm so excited to finally meet you and get to talk a little bit about the Footprint Project.

Oh, thanks so much for having me. It's a joy to be here.

Right on. Do you want to just start with kind of a quick introduction to yourself and then maybe just an overview of what the Footprint Project is and what all you do out there in the community?

Yeah, for sure. So my name is Will Heegaard. I work as the founding director of Footprint. We are a now 17-ish people. We just hired a bunch of folks in the last couple months, based in New Orleans, and then we have a regional office in Asheville, North Carolina.

Our mission as a nonprofit disaster service organization is to help build back greener after climate disasters by mobilizing cleaner energy infrastructure to communities in crisis.

We operate a fleet of mobile, renewable microgrid infrastructure that we move around to offset carbon and fossil fuel use during major disaster events.

Yeah, that's an amazing cause. It makes me wonder, like, how did you get started? How did that whole project begin? I mean, I guess you saw a need and filled it.

Yeah. And, you know, in odd kind of circumstances, yeah, I saw, we saw needs, and this is a group of, you know, I helped, I kind of started this back in 2016, 2017. We founded in 2018 as an incorporated nonprofit and I started banging it.

So I started banging my head against this wall years ago and then slowly, you know, a lot of people also joined me in banging my head against this wall. And I think we're starting to see some cracks in the wall as the more heads we get banging on it.

But the long and short kind of, I'll try to make this a short story, but before starting this work, I was working as a paramedic in Minneapolis and had done some international disaster response missions as a medical, you know, kind of with a medical background and as a program manager.

So I was right. What kind of tipped my scales for me to pursue this as an independent org was really after a seven month stint doing program management for a large nonprofit called International Medical Corps during the Ebola outbreak.

I had been brought on to manage this Ebola recovery program where the grant had been written. So we were supposed to support five rural health clinics in Guinea, West Africa, extremely poor, one of the poorest countries on the planet, going through the largest mass medical emergency in recent memory.

The plan was to support five clinics with generators, gas generators, fridges, and training to draw blood and store that blood and then transport it to the regional lab so they could test for Ebola and viral hemorrhagic fever, meningitis, and really nasty, scary diseases. They needed their fridges to work.

The original plan was buy generators, reimburse those clinics for gas to run the generators, hope the generators don't break so the fridges stay cold, maintaining this chain of infrastructure.

I had heard about solar refrigeration, and I was like, wow, this sounds really hard, pretty risky, expensive, and cash transfer in really poor countries, reimbursement can be particularly messy at an infrastructure level.

So I was basically like, hey, I've heard of solar refrigeration. Are these units available?

Our logistics officer came back the next day with a quote for solar refrigerators. We installed them in a month. We figured out how to do that instead.

I came back from that response really wondering why we weren't implementing this type of technology at scale for domestic U.S. disasters.

I was back in 2016 in Baton Rouge for the Louisiana floods and we've been running around to different disasters for about 10 years now, and it's the same thing different place. We send gas generators on gas trucks to run aid stations that are distributing bottled water, pallets of plastic, and plastic tarps that go on roofs.

The disaster response industry is really a fossil fuel supply chain pushing legacy infrastructure and legacy tech into communities that are repeatedly affected by major climate events. We really need to break that feedback loop.

It's one of those things I couldn't really look away from and started tinkering with solar and battery solutions for running fridges and communications and cell phones, just started moving them around to U.S. disasters and offering them up to partner responders.

Here we are now, eight years later, scaling the effort to deliver sustainable infrastructure solutions at scale for U.S. and now international disasters.

Wow. That's fascinating because you don't even really think about these types of things in disaster response. People just want whatever they can get to them as quick as possible.

So being forward thinking like that is pretty cool because a lot of people haven't really put that type of thought into disaster relief.

Thanks. I mean, I think it's important. I've been speaking to different groups and at an event last week, I asked the crowd of about 200 people how many have been affected by a power outage in the last year in the U.S.

I'm actually surprised by how many people have been affected by these events. We are collectively living through a major transition in terms of our energy and how we power our lives, homes, and lifestyles.

The energy transition is one thing, but also the number of people affected or who know someone affected by floods, fires, or power safety shutoffs is significant. We need to share our stories and learn from each other to get through this together.

A lot of media says when a disaster happens everything falls apart, but every disaster I've seen or read about shows that people who come out strongest are those who work together to survive. Disaster response and recovery is a team sport.

People come together because your food is about to go bad, so you might as well cook for your neighbors. Coming together is the name of the game. There's no other way to do it.

It's how we've gotten here for the last 200 million years and how we'll get through the next.

It's inspiring to hear you fostering a new way of responding to disasters. You have supported tens of thousands of people. Are there any stories that really stick out and have left you inspired long-term?

So many. I'll pick a couple. One recent story was after Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina, our largest response to date. It was the first time we hired people from the community to work long-term recovery. We now have a five-person staff and a regional hub there.

In the early days, we got a request from a small rural community nonprofit called Whammy, a housing support nonprofit up in the mountains north of Asheville. They requested any battery portable solutions because power was expected to be out for a while.

We loaded up a truck with portable battery generators, which we call lunch boxes because of their size. Our team trained the leaders of that organization, and they immediately knew where the units should go, like to people with electric wheelchairs or on oxygen.

They trained up and knew how to utilize these assets for their community. That story shows our job during disasters is to provide behind-the-scenes infrastructure services, allowing frontline groups to serve their communities better.

We don't need to know where every person is; we just need to get the tech to the people who know where it's needed. Those groups exist all over the country. Our goal is to outfit frontline workers with tools to keep their communities safe during storms.

We don't need to overthink it. Get the equipment out, train people how to use it, and they will know where it needs to go.

It's almost like peace of mind, knowing exactly who needs it right now and ensuring they get the services they need in that moment.

We often overcomplicate things. We just need to get the right tools to the right people, and they will know how to use them.

The world is noisy these days, but moments of clarity give me hope because people know how to survive out there; we just need to get them the right tools.

Every time you see a disaster, it's amazing how people come together. Sometimes we seem divided, but when we need each other, everyone comes together. Those are inspiring moments, though it's sad when people drift apart again afterward.

I don't know if you've heard of the book A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit. It's a fantastic disaster study showing how disasters mirror celebrations because they force people to stop, come out of their homes, meet new people, and gather in meaningful ways.

Some people report disasters as traumatic, but others say those are the most meaningful times, the best and worst of times happening simultaneously.

Disasters create a sense of community that has been lost. We used to get together because we were huddled in our houses without ways to connect. Technology has taken us in the opposite direction, with people fighting online.

I don't want to romanticize disasters because they're traumatic and people lose lives, but they do bring people together through a classic trauma bond.

Switching to something lighter, I was hoping to get to this so I don't have to go to my therapist this week.

Yeah, totally. It's good for me too. We can save a couple of bucks with this job podcast as collective therapy.

Switching gears, I'm interested to know how you've implemented technology, specifically how Jotform has jumped into your workflow and helped alleviate bottlenecks and issues you had before.

For sure. Our operations and systems lead, Ray, quickly gravitated to Jotform after implementing Salesforce to track assets and sites. We support hundreds of communities with over 500 mobile microgrid units scattered across the country.

As we built the fleet map and tracking process, Ray realized Jotform was the best fit for connecting our existing platforms, updating and linking data, and giving end users the best experience for checkout, reporting, and returns.

We use Jotform for trailer towing checklists to ensure tires are inflated and brake lights work. It started as a way to connect disparate IT systems and quickly became a platform for internal and external data collection.

It's common for technology to start as one thing and then spiral into the entire organization.

Conditional Logic in Jotform allows complex workflows, and simple interventions can have big impacts. It's amazing how simple things can be complex behind the scenes.

Jotform connects all our platforms surprisingly simply, and I know millions of human labor hours went into building something that meets our specific needs easily.

Jotform aims to make it as easy as possible to do insanely complex things. It's a fun puzzle.

When I first started, I thought it was just a form company and would be boring, but filming case studies showed me how complex and versatile it has become. You can basically run an entire business on Jotform.

It's impressive to see how software ecosystems fit together like puzzle pieces, from Jotform to Google Suite, Salesforce, and hardware monitoring our physical energy assets.

The bridge between the internet and physical world allows real human benefit, like powering insulin refrigerators. Mapping these connections would be fascinating.

Jotform has evolved a lot since we started using it, and building a puzzle while the pieces change is challenging but exciting.

The ever-evolving world of tech you see in the field has changed significantly since you started with solar generators.

Back in 2018 and 2019, there were no all-in-one solutions on the market. Now you can buy portable solar units at REI that keep your fridge running for hours, and people build microgrids with Amazon-ordered parts.

It's exciting to watch the evolution of renewable infrastructure technologies like solar, battery units, and modular wind turbines. Some of this tech feels like Martian rover stuff, and we love playing with it here.

There's a documentary called Waking Life with a quote about living through the most exciting moment in human history, facing the biggest problems and opportunities we've ever had to solve.

In the chaos and high stakes you deal with, how has having structured data changed your ability to respond effectively? How are you using Jotform in the field, like when checking out equipment?

From a tactical perspective, we have different forms like our standard equipment use agreement, which is a rental agreement less scary than a car rental. It's a release of liability from us to the user, often at no cost.

Some groups are mutual aid workers without nonprofits, and we waive liability. The form is conditional and can be filled out offline in the field or emailed for signature, then connects to our asset database in Salesforce.

We have an outgoing donation agreement for loose solar panels and wiring not tied to assets, distributed through our free stores where people can pick up items for resilience hubs or emergency preparedness kits.

We use Jotform for travel per diem requests, logistics processing, shipping, trailer towing checklists, and in-kind donation receiving, coordinating large donations of solar panels across warehouses.

In the field, the equipment use agreement and outgoing donation agreement are our bread and butter. They work offline and upload when back on Wi-Fi or Starlink.

Do you take donations through Jotform or have a separate service? We have a donation offering form on our website for companies or individuals to offer excess inventory of solar and climate tech.

We're seeing solar companies offering their own units for disaster response temporarily, creating a mutual aid model where we act as a clearinghouse for matchmaking assets with clients, automating contracts and delivery.

One thing I thought about is the ability to take all information offline because internet capabilities are often unavailable in the field. Having forms save and upload later is a critical workflow.

Offline workflow was critical in our platform research. Now, every field team deploys with a low earth orbit satellite like Starlink and backup communication devices, creating a comms hub at the field command spot.

Tablets go out with trucks delivering equipment hours away from the field hub. The comms game is evolving, and someday we hope for universal cell service, especially in disasters.

I hope to disconnect on a river trip next week, but in major disasters, connectivity is life, critical for search and rescue and medical records.

When I started in 2013, the aid hub used expensive, low bandwidth satellite internet with limited access. Now you strap a small device to the roof and have internet everywhere.

Starlink doesn't work without power, so we shipped hundreds of solar suitcase power packs paired with Starlink to Jamaica after Hurricane Melissa, delivering critical comms to emergency centers, health centers, fire stations, and schools.

Power and comms are intertwined; you don't want power without comms and can't have comms without power. It's a game changer.

Looking ahead, what will the next 10 years look like for disaster recovery? What new technology will change things?

I struggle with the dual-use nature of tech, where the same tech can help or hurt people. Drones and AI, hardware and software infrastructure, will dramatically change disaster response, as they're already changing modern warfare.

Military tech often trickles down to civilian use, like the internet. Corporates use drones to scan disaster areas and find bodies, as seen after Hurricane Helene.

Tech trialed in low-resource countries is influencing U.S. disaster response. For example, drones deliver blood and lab samples in Africa, faster and cheaper than motorbikes on difficult roads.

The same tech serving low-resource countries will be critical for higher-resource disaster needs, while military tech continues to influence civilian life.

Drones on hardware and AI on software sides will change how we operate, though it's a double-edged sword.

Blood delivery by drone makes perfect sense in flooded or off-grid areas where roads are lost.

There are still many pieces to solve, like charging devices. AI runs on data centers, which are political issues. We're living through weird tensions and double-edged swords.

We can't control everything, but we must use the tools we have to protect those we love. Our job is to get cool tools to folks who don't often get them, and how they use them is up to them.

I like the analogy of navigating rapids and hoping for clear water, eventually smoother, hopefully not heading toward a waterfall.

If we are heading toward a waterfall, we'll go together for better or worse.

If anyone listening wants to make an impact, where should they focus?

I love this question. First, give money to Footprint; we do great things with it. You can donate on our website. You can also volunteer, especially in the Gulf South and Appalachia where our staff hubs are.

If you have fancy solar or climate tech to deploy or lend, please reach out via our in-kind Jotform form.

My favorite answer is to talk to your neighbors before the next storm, find out where your fire station is, and learn their disaster plan. Get involved locally because those are the people who will help you during major events.

Get involved at a local level. They will be the ones chainsawing you out or checking on you. This doesn't have to be complicated; take a CPR class or wilderness first responder training if you want, but at minimum, talk to your community and get ready.

This stuff is coming; it's not an if but a when. The reality is that most response is done locally by people you live next to. It's not that no one is coming, but the public response infrastructure will be overwhelmed.

You will meet your neighbors whether you want to or not. After this, find your closest fire station and say hi, especially before hurricane or wildfire season. Take care of yourself because it's going to be a long couple of years.

We've still got another 20 years until 2050, so we've got a ways to go.

Connect with your neighbors and get involved in your community. Plant a tree if you want to.

Well, I can't thank you enough for being on the show. It's really inspiring to chat with someone doing great work and shed light on your impact and how technology helps you.

It's a great conversation. Tech doesn't solve everything, but it helps. We're living through a unique moment in human history where a combination of tech and humanism can go a long way.

We're going hard on tech, but we need to come back to humanity a bit. I hope we can figure this out.

Thanks, Will. It was a pleasure talking to you, and hopefully we can chat again soon.