Volunteers and Technology

Re: Replicating Day of Service (4/26 w NTEN) in Boston

jcravens42 — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 07:50:21 GMT

Recruiting the volunteers will be easy. Coming up with short-term, quick fix projects at nonprofits will be harder. Nonprofits have trouble identifying such projects at their own organizations, and mobilizing their own resources to support the volunteer in the project (the volunteer doesn't just walk in and start working without prep and support by staff). This list of tasks is great, but realize that it probably took a lot of phone calls, visits and hand-holding to help these nonprofits fully-define these projects and have them ready for a volunteer to walk in and do. So deal with that first, before recruitment. Here's an additional list of short-term assignments for tech volunteers.

Once you have the list of assignments ready for volunteers, then you can start recruiting. VolunteerMatch, Idealist, Craigslist, your local volunteer center, and your local newspaper will all get the word out, as well as making sure everyone on the onlne networks of your choice knows and are willing to pass on the word to their own network.

The Day of Service is great. Another great one-day tech-volunteer event are the Accessible Internet Rallies (AIR) events by Knowbility.

Re: Replicating Day of Service (4/26 w NTEN) in Boston

ewj — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 19:31:12 GMT

There must be a number of user groups in Boston. Get it onall of their agandas and get them involved. Go for it.

Replicating Day of Service (4/26 w NTEN) in Boston

btrandolph — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 03:40:17 GMT

I met Beth Kanter at a tweetup last week and we exchanged a few emails about the upcoming Day of Service event in SF. (bit.ly/uMdvl) I was disappointed to learn that there was no comparable event in Boston, then I thought what if? I have some contacts in the NFP space, so I think I could produce a wish list of "quick fix" projects. However, I am pretty clueless about how to marshall the tech talent to work on the projects. If I can pull it together by April, great - otherwise I'm thinking May or June timeframe.Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated! Todd