

Join reddit, xkcd, dtoid, ars technica & more - donate your hacker skills to non-profits - kn0thing
http://feedaneed.org
Instead of asking for money, we thought we ought to pool the talents of our community (and the greater geek community) to improve the most worthy non-profits we could find (submissions and voting going on until next week).  And for volunteering your time, you become eligible for some great prizes...
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mhartl
I like this idea in principle, but as with most such programs---e.g., high-
priced corporate attorneys working a day at the public defender's office---it
ignores comparative advantage. It makes you feel good, and it's a public way
to look good, but if you want to _do_ good it's better to work the same amount
of time for the highest-paying client you can find and then donate the
proceeds to a charity of your choice.

~~~
netcan
Agree & Disagree.

I would even add that on top of the fact that lawyer in question is almost
certainly more expensive then they would have hired otherwise they'd probably
get more value from the cheaper because they'd be more picky about where &
when. A similar example is aid tourism. People visit a country for 3 weeks &
help to build a school at a cost of a couple of $k in countries where
unskilled labour goes from $3 a day. The organizers generally end up with a
small margin for helping with the project (building materials, salaries for
the actual workers, etc.) & some tourist money gets spread around.

It's terribly inefficient. A tourist spends 3 weeks and (say) $3k. The
organisation gets $500 cash, $200 worth of labour & the area has about $500
dropped on food, souvenirs & billets.

They'd be at least 2X -3X better off with just the cash. but...

But they wouldn't get the cash. The time & money would be spent on ordinary
holidays, local charities, social activities or the likes. The lawyer might
get a scheduled day off, 20% time or procrastinate. (I admit, it works worse
when it's institutionalised)

The other issue is side effects. The aid tourists tell people about it,
continue to contribute, influence politicians a certain way, educates his
children, etc.

I'm not a programmer (though I might fall in the bacon cooker category), so I
feel funny about taking a position here. But I think that the combination of
free software, access to the web & the free web have a powerful equalising
affect in this world. Connecting the right people with the right
organizations, could have a profound effect. When I was in primary school, a
substantial donation would be old (10, 20 years) encyclopaedias for developing
countries. If you don't have access to much, an encyclopedia is an important
learning/teaching resource. Practically no longer necessary if you have access
to the web. Information is available free. Access to it still costs though.

Once we get to a point where online teaching materials are allow a person to
achieve an education on par with Universities, we (as pg just discussed) get
past credentials or find new ones & enough of the labour market is
internationalised (it is happening pretty fast), the key out of poverty
becomes web access, computer literacy, English literacy & above average
intelligence (maybe). These are manageable hurdles. Far more manageable the
current keys: competent government & lack of major conflict for prolonged
periods.

The potential return is huge. Really huge. Any way you look at it. Economic
growth. Utility. Health. Worrying about efficiencies at this end is like
fretting about the price of servers when building a Google. Have a look at
what East Timor's _National_ University lists as it's
needs:<http://www.untl.labor.net.au/need/it.html>

To give you an idea of potential ROI: an additional 10k graduates contributing
10k per annum to GDP would represent a 20% increase.

~~~
hueypriest
"The other issue is side effects. The aid tourists tell people about it,
continue to contribute, influence politicians a certain way, educates his
children, etc."

Good point for the feedaneed.org project as well. I anticipate that at least
for some volunteers there will be meaningful side-effects (they donate $,
continue to volunteer their service, tell others about non-profit x, etc.) I
think that for most people, there's a stronger connection when you spend time
on a project, than when you just donate $.

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ryanwaggoner
If you're not a hacker and you'd like to contribute your skills, you might
want to checkout <http://taprootfoundation.org/>

Also, I found it a bit lame that feedaneed.org requires you to sign up for a
reddit account. Just me, though.

~~~
kn0thing
You're not the first person to have mentioned taprootfoundation in response to
my FeedANeed pitch, I second that recommendation though I haven't personally
had any experience with them.

As for the lameness of requiring a reddit account, this was so that donors
could be contacted without any concern of exposing an email address to a third
party. It was just the first method that came to mind, esp. given the
simplicity of reddit registration.

My feelings won't be hurt if you never use that reddit account again :)

When the times comes, it can be deleted here:
<http://www.reddit.com/prefs/delete>

Though, every time an account gets deleted, we kill an alien.

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scorxn
For those of us with specific skills that may not be needed but want to help
anyway...

Suggestion: Change 'How would you like to contribute?' to checkboxes or add a
radio button for 'Either'.

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netcan
Interesting point: <http://s3.amazonaws.com/feedaneed.org/index.html#non-
profits>

From what I can understand, they are going to end up with a few hundred
pledges of technical persons' time in small blocs. The leading projects are
not those that I think would benefit tremendously from a few hours with a
technical person. I imagine they have plenty.

The are mostly either directly software related (Free Software Foundation,
GNOME), Web Based (Kiva, Watchdog.net), technical in nature (Engineers Without
Borders, Solar Energy), very big fish (Medicines Sans Frontier) or others that
probably can easily get what a programmer can give them in a couple of hours
(atheist organisations & such).

As an exercise in community allocation of resources, I think this has hit a
wall.

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kn0thing
Also, if any of you would like to become official partners, email me at
alexis@reddit.com (all this takes is something nifty to offer as a prize for a
lucky volunteer -- it could be a free 1 yr. subscription to your site, pile of
schwag, or an extra ATI Radeon you regret using your VC funding to buy)

~~~
fallentimes
Great idea - count us in (just emailed you).

~~~
sachinag
What, Dan gets listed and our game offer doesn't? Boo hiss.

~~~
kn0thing
Apologies, I was suffering from email bloat and missed it. Dawdle is now
listed - thanks! Some gamer is going to be quite pleased.

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sh1mmer
Yahoo have been doing some stuff with Social Innovation Camp
(<http://www.sicamp.org/>) in the UK this year.

The SI camps have been an incredible success in helping charities. I cannot
recommend doing this kind of stuff enough.

Part of the reason to do this over donating is that often the biggest problem
charities have is getting tech advice without an agenda. Talking them through
their choices and getting them a prototype can be the most helpful thing you
can do.

~~~
Tichy
He, and I find it difficult to find charities that don't have an agenda to
give tech advice to. I mean at least an agenda I could agree with :-( Would be
nice if this reddit approach would bring something up.

~~~
sh1mmer
Obvious you should agree with a charity's agenda before you help them. The
problem I was refering to was the charities getting advice about technology
that isn't trying to sell them something.

Obviously consultants have to eat too, but a lot of charities pay the same
kind of rates as SMEs for technology, which I find slightly depressing.

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ejs
Signed up, but I am not really sure what (of any difficulty) could be
accomplished in only 2 or 4 hours.

I guess 2 hours of tagging photos would work, as long as the learning curve is
short.

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bporterfield
I've literally been talking about the same idea with friends for almost a
month now! We'd met with quite a few non-profits with the intentions of
providing some unique contributions using our technical/marketing skills, but
soon realized that the barrier to entry for that kind of assistance was high
and that we'd probably do better to reduce this barrier to entry and let
anyone with design/marketing/programming/etc skills help for a few hours on an
existing, managed project. Our plan is to reach out to non-profits to help
them generate new ideas for promoting their cause, then break up tasks and
provide an interface for those that want to contribute over the web - looks
pretty close to what you're doing!

I think it's great that you've put this together. I'd love to speak with you
directly about your experience and how we might be able to assist you or work
together in the future. If you have a minute, could you contact me at ben @
widgetinvolved.org?

Again, great initiative and best of luck.

~~~
bporterfield
edit: found your email in comments, so no need to contact! Again, great work.
Think of how much you could accomplish for non-profits if half the visitors to
this site spent 1 week working on a project instead of reading articles -
amazing!

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diN0bot
What do ya'll think of the voting part?

A single ranking of companies makes sense if I wanted to throw money at
someone, but if I'm volunteering I want to find a good match. That means a
more personalized algorithm combing project missions with kind of work.

I like the idea of assignments because they're like challenges and that's
motivating. But the work modules each org is offering should be better
filterable and searchable, and one should be able to change one's assignments.
My experience with volunteers is that we are much more likely to do something
we care about. My experience with non-profits is that we can take all the
help, both amount and variety, we can get!

I also think the down-voting is offense (that's why I moved to hn rather than
reddit, so I guess I'm not surprised). Some of the orgs near the bottom seem
pretty good, but now they're the unpopular kids at the party.

~~~
hueypriest
Agreed that it would be ideal to let people select the projects that are most
interesting to them or for which they are best fit. Once there is a list of
needed projects from non-profits, what would you propose is the best way to
make this match?

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callahad
Also in the Twin Cities area: <http://www.overnightwebsitechallenge.com/> Help
give a nonprofit a new website.

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jwesley
Very cool. I am not a hacker, but offered up my online marketing skills.

~~~
kn0thing
Thanks. Neither am I, but someone is getting some top tier logo consulting ;)

