Corporate grants expected to boost AlertID employment

A for-profit business that doesn't charge anyone for its services expects to employ about 30 in Reno within the next year, with the possibility of hiring several hundred more in the next five years.

Instead, AlertID LLC expects to finance its growth through grants from large corporations that want to support its child- and neighborhood-safety initiatives.

The company headquartered in Reno has been drawing a lot of media attention in recent weeks as it launches its second product, My Neighborhood.

The product, which is undergoing tests in Reno, provides instant e-mailed and text alerts about crime, fires or natural disasters in a user's neighborhood.

It also connects users to police and fire authorities, allows them to share information with neighbors and provides a crime map that shows criminal activity nearby.

Neither consumers nor participating police and fire agencies pay for the service, and it's won strong support from local agencies. Washoe County Sheriff Mike Haley calls introduction of the service one of his department's priorities for 2011.

The company is partnered with television station KRNV in the Washoe County project.

From Reno, AlertID LLC co-founder Keli Wilson says the company expects to roll the technology into other U.S. markets. Initial targets, she says, are counties with 500,000 to 1.5 million residents.

As the company expands, it expects to create about 30 jobs in the Reno area within the next year and 300 to 400 jobs within three to five years, says Wilson's husband, Rob.

"There's a lot of talent available here," he says.

To finance that staff growth, as well as the extensive data-processing horsepower necessary to track and report crime in neighborhoods across the country, AlertID LLC expects to win support from major corporate sponsors.

It's already had success with that model.

The company's first product, AlertID, has won backing from AT&T and Overstock.com. AlertID, launched last year, provides an online location where parents can store pictures and information about their children that can be quickly accessed by health and law enforcement workers.

Like the My Neighborhood product, AlertID is offered free at www.AlertID.me. Keli Wilson says the company hopes to enroll 1 million families into AlertID this year.

But that growth rate has nothing to do with business, Rob Wilson says.

"It's just the right thing to do," he says. "We don't look on this as a business at all."