
Micro-volunteering - robg
https://www.sparked.com/
======
codeslush
You got me all the way to the sign-up step! ;-) I would only want to sign-up
if there were actually a task I would be interested in completing. Why get me
to that point, only to have me turn away?

A simple change could have resulted in a different outcome. I went through the
wizard, picked my interests, identified that I was in good company and tasks
needed to be completed -- but without seeing those tasks, I really didn't want
to sign up for yet another website. So, present the tasks to me! At least a
summary. Then, I could have made the decision if it was something I wanted to
continue with. Instead, I exited the site. Probably a lost opportunity for
both of us (and the non-profits who needed assistance).

Is there any harm in presenting a summary of the tasks? Then, when I select
one, register or logon to contribute. Maybe I stand alone in this hesitation
to register - certainly, A/B testing with the very slight modification I
describe would be a worthwhile effort.

One other bit of input - everything looks pretty clean up to the registration
page. It feels "busy" to me. Also, the input boxes behave inconsistently (the
hint text sometimes dims, sometimes disappears on hover state).

Good job though and I think it's a great idea. Just this past week, I wanted
to volunteer my time for the holiday's but didn't really know where to start.
I actually thought about calling the local chamber of commerce to see
who/where/what could use my help.

~~~
retroafroman
This is exactly what I came to post. I had the same experience in wanting to
see the opportunities available before signing up. You're definitely not
alone.

------
brig
Hi all. Great to read your feedback on Sparked. Quick answers to some of the
comments:

* I hear you about wanting to see challenges before you commit to signing up. We've got some modifications to the onboarding process in the works that are along these lines. Totally agree with you all.

* Re: business model. We make money by selling the platform to corporations as a way to manage their employee volunteering programs. We are now a certified B-corp, btw.

* Re: "micro" - we consider micro to be anything that you can conveniently fit into your day. So that could be 2 hours or 2 minutes. In all cases, it's less time and less commitment than most other forms of volunteering. We tried very very micro tasks initially (image tagging) - these took about 30 seconds each... but people didn't find these kinds of tasks interesting over time. So, we expanded how we thought about micro.

* Re: Dool: sorry that the page refreshed and you lost your answer. Haven't seen or heard of that happening before, but we're looking into it immediately to see if there's an ajax bug. Definitely not an intended behavior.

-ben rigby cto & co-founder sparked.com

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dools
I just signed up and did an accessibility review for the Cancer Council, South
Australia :)

I didn't really care about signing up to see what was available as I was
curious and it was very little effort to type in my details, and a pretty
quick process.

I can't see how to add my company name which I'd like to do if I'm going to
continue to volunteer my time and expertise - especially if Sparked is going
to be making money out of it.

One of my primary motivations for doing pro-bono work is as a P.R exercise.

It's cool - there are some very specific types of work that this will be good
for and I intend to return and try and do one a week.

My only complaints?

1\. The page randomly refreshed while I was typing my post and I had to retype
everything (this time I drafted it OUTside the browser!!)

2\. The "verify email" doesn't have a valid plain text part so I had to open
the email in gmail rather than copying and pasting the link from pine into my
browser.

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lukejduncan
For IT stuff they are things ranging from: "please give us feedback on how we
should redesign our site" to "design a mobile app". The design-a-mobile-app-
one I looked at led to feedback that what hey really wanted was a mobile
website and a good exchange with the poster. For non-IT it's like, we need a
copyrighter on this one project, we need a logo, etc.

I'm curious how effective this will be for most non-profits. I would love to
hear serious feedback after the fact.

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Brashman
Looks interesting. I'm curious to see what some of the micro-volunteering jobs
are before having to sign up.

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keane
It seems like a number of requests are very similar to other existing
requests. For example, many organizations are asking 'How do we improve our
donation process?'. Rather than have volunteers answer the same question
numerous times, it would be helpful to have a resources page that is shown to
the nonprofit before they post their question. I am reminded of systems like
Digg/reddit that alert you a story has already been submitted or systems like
the Stack Exchange family that show duplicates and similar questions.

Instead of having volunteers copy and paste their answer repeatedly, having a
page comparing and contrasting the various online platforms (PayPal, Razoo,
Convio, etc) could prevent things from getting lost in the shuffle. These FAQ
and Resources pages could be edited wiki-style and non-profits could
periodically request reviews and additions to the wikis rather than opening up
completely new support tickets.

------
byoung2
_Sparked is created and offered by The Extraordinaries, Inc., which was
founded in July of 2008 as a for-profit social enterprise (and a certified
B-Corp)_

Any idea how they plan to make money?

~~~
byoung2
[http://springwise.com/non-
profit_social_cause/extraordinarie...](http://springwise.com/non-
profit_social_cause/extraordinaries/)

 _The Extraordinaries is in the process of becoming a B Corp.; its business
model will eventually include charging organizations a fee for each task
completed, according to a report on NPR._

------
Vivtek
I went ahead and signed up, although having to sit through a presentation to
get that far was somewhat onerous. (The presentation was fun, though, so it
wasn't that bad.) I agree with other posters that at least a sampling of tasks
available should be visible right at the outset for interested experts.

There's no facility for attaching files. If your output is anything other than
short text in forum format, I don't know how you're expected to proceed.

That said, there are two texts for translation from German, and that's the
kind of stuff I'm happy to do. Of course, one of them was 2,390 words, which
is about a day's work for most translators. I'm not sure how "micro" that is.
It would take me about two hours. If I end up with a couple of hours free this
week, I'll consider doing it, but it seems a little disproportionate.

But - a very interesting site overall. I'm going to hang out there and help
out from time to time.

Somewhat off-topic: I was a little taken aback at how many people talk about
SEO on this site. I've always thought that if you produce interesting content,
SEO will take care of itself. Are people being unreasonable, or am I being
dismissive? (Check all that apply...)

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latch
I liked the idea, but I went through the 15 web design ones (the closest to
programming), and its either stuff like "rate our site" or configure our site
with X (joomla, zazzle, wordpress).

Its a great idea, but for programming (and I'm not saying anyone claimed
differently), micro-volunteering doesn't seem feasible.

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ciupicri
I'm waiting for a real OpenID login, not the Facebook monstrosity.

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sgue
Great idea, but unfortunately the site doesn't work in Mobile Safari - can't
choose an issue, so can't view opportunities.

~~~
htsh
Perhaps this is something they can get a micro-volunteer to help them with.

~~~
Vivtek
Speaking for myself, I'm happy to volunteer for small non-profits, because
they really need it, and ten minutes of my time can really make a difference
(I just translated a 100-word paragraph about an award from German to English,
for example).

But Sparked themselves are a for-profit venture. I'm not 100% sure that's
going to be viable, but I'm not willing to give them my time for free if
they're going to turn around and make money off it.

~~~
adaugelli
Wanted to quote from the Founder's answer above:

"Re: business model. We make money by selling the platform to corporations as
a way to manage their employee volunteering programs."

Non-profits do not pay to use the platform or for any tasks completed. Large
companies pay an annual fee to enable access for their employees and related
reporting metrics.

~~~
Vivtek
The parent comment to my comment was to the effect that they could use the
microvolunteering concept for their own development. To a certain extent, I
could even see volunteering for them (getting the word out or something), but
I personally would draw the line at actual technical work for free for a
money-making venture, unless there were public karma attached or the code in
question were open-sourced or something.

~~~
brig
To make sure I got it right: 1) you would volunteer for sparked.com (the
business) up until a certain point - when it started to feel like real work.

2) you would volunteer for a _nonprofit_ on sparked.com at any time -
regardless as to if it felt like real work.

That right? \- ben

