
Ask HN: Non-profits looking for volunteer developers? - reasonattlm
In theory, developers should be able to do great things for non-profits. In practice, it seems hard for a developer with spare time to find a non-profit to work with. Somewhat nuts considering that the open source community has plenty of experience with all the issues of volunteering, distributed teams, etc, and there are some great teams out there - hundreds or thousands of developers willing to put in time over the long term to help advance good causes with their skills.<p>So treat this as a who's hiring post, more or less, but for non-profit volunteering with technical skills.<p>(A thought on the issues: reliability is the key, central value needed for a technical volunteer. In any non-profit, volunteers come and volunteers go, but it is very challenging to find people who follow through on a commitment to stay for a given project, or to act as support for a non-profit site for the necessary months and years to build up familiarity with the systems used. When it comes to technology, those rare few are absolutely necessary, however - you simply can't run a tight ship if developers flake out on a regular basis. This is especially true when it comes to projects wherein the team is scattered across the US or the world, and rarely meets in person).<p>My ulterior motive: I get to tack my search for a LAMP developer volunteer for the very hip Methuselah Foundation in here an early comment.
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d2viant
This brings up an interesting question. You can't deduct time or services
donated from your annual tax return, but could you deduct the value of the
product you gave them? If I create and donate a website to the nonprofit, can
the value of that be deducted based on fair-market value?

~~~
portman
No, you may not.

The relevant sections of the tax code are in Pub561 and Pub526. Basically: the
IRS would consider your custom website to have a FMV of $0, because it
couldn't be sold to anyone else.

If you made a genuine software tool that was applicable to more than just the
charity (and you successfully sold copies of that software), then the FMV
would be the purchase price of the software in the open market.

There was a law passed in 2004 (can't remember which, sorry) that cracked down
on the charitable donations of intangible property.

[1] <http://www.irs.gov/publications/p561/index.html>

[2] <http://www.irs.gov/publications/p526/index.html>

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reasonattlm
So, the Methuselah Foundation is looking for a reliable LAMP volunteer -
someone who is very interested in the future of longevity science, and can
help build and maintain:

[http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/12/the-methuselah-
fo...](http://www.fightaging.org/archives/2010/12/the-methuselah-foundation-
needs-a-smart-reliable-technical-volunteer-linux-php-mysql.php)

<http://www.mfoundation.org>

"The Methuselah Foundation, founded back in 2003, aims to promote and support
scientific progress towards defeating age-related disease, repairing the
damage of aging, and greatly extending the healthy human life span. To that
end the Foundation has raised more than $10 million in funding pledges, and
their initiatives include the Mprize for longevity science, the recently
launched NewOrgan Prize, investment in tissue engineering startups such as
Organovo, and - prior to the establishment of the SENS Foundation as a
separate entity - the funding of Aubrey de Grey's research program for
rejuvenation biotechnology.

"These activities, and the networking to support them behind the scenes, have
had a great impact upon the state of the aging research community, media
treatment of longevity science, and public perception of the plausibility of
medical research aimed at reversing aging. Thanks to the efforts of the
Foundation volunteers and thousands of supporters, the environment for
longevity science today is far improved over that of ten years ago. That in
turn means that our chances of seeing working rejuvenation medicine within our
lifetimes are also improved."

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BvS
I'm working for a German based non-profit on a project called spenden.de
(roughly translates to donate.com). We are planning to do something inbetween
www.guidestar.org an www.charitynavigator.org (the regulatory framework in
Germany is much different therefore the comparison is very rough). Currently
there is only a placeholder on the main page but you can find our prototype at
<http://beta.spenden.de>. The new site is developed in RoR.

We are thinking about making the code available as open source and are able to
provide donation receipts but the latter would probably only help you if you
fill your taxes in Germany.

Currently we are relying on freelancers which are doing a great job and don't
charge their usual rate but since our budget is extremely limited we could
move much faster with some extra help.

I even started to teach myself some programming but might never be able to
contribute significantly to the project (codewise).

If this sound at all interesting to anyone please let me know. I have very
good experience with people working from abroad so at least that shouldn't be
an issue. Besides actually code contribution a mentor helping me to improve my
RoR skills would also be very appreciated (I'm currently at chapter 4 of
railstutorial.org but without any prior programming knowledge this might be a
long journey... ).

~~~
npcomplexity
i am new to RoR but have significant programming experience and would like to
help. contact me at helpspenden at soven dot org

~~~
BvS
I have sent you an email.

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clojurerocks
Im a social entrepreneur who just started volunteering my programming skills
to various non profits. Im working on probably about 5 projects right and
could certainly use your help. Plus im looking to connect with other volunteer
programmers as well to establish a group of some kind to talk about issues and
projects we can build to deal with them. Whats a contact for you?

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autarch
The animal rights group I work with, Compassionate Action for Animals
(<http://exploreveg.org>), has several technical tasks that we could use help
with.

I'd say that top of the list is helping us convert from Plone to Drupal. This
involves working on a new information architecture (though I've started work
on it), a new design, and converting all the existing content.

I'd also like help developing VegGuide.org (<http://vegguide.org>). It's kind
of like Yelp but focused on vegetarian- and vegan-friendly restaurants,
grocers, etc. The site is built with Perl, using the Catalyst framework.
Unfortunately, it's using a crufty old ORM I built, which makes working on
certain features much harder.

Contact us (info@exploreveg.org) if you're interested.

~~~
clojurerocks
Sorry but why would you want to use drupal. Its a very limiting piece of
software that is non scalable and non customizable. Why dont you create
something custom that allows the site to be flexible. Im working on moving
some non profits i deal with off drupal and joomla as well since both are
crap.

~~~
clojurerocks
I was kidding. Sorry if my dry humor was missed.

When i first got involved with pro bono work i looked at drupal and joomla and
decided i preferred to focus on custom solutions because i have a background
in that. Obviously thats not always the best solution as its sometimes more
trouble then its worth.

Good luck with your sites though. :-).

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zachster
Our NP just got accepted into Give Camp. They're telling us we're going to get
a lot of support (if only for a weekend). <http://givecamp.org/>

FYI, ours is Remas: <http://www.sendremas.org/>

We're doing price comparison for sending money overseas. So obvious, but so
needed.

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woodhull
The sunlight foundation does an amazing job of connecting volunteer engineers
with opportunities to help make the US government more transparent and
accountable: <http://sunlightlabs.com/>

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portman
Not sure if it's still as good as it was in the early 2000s, but
<http://www.idealist.org> is a wonderful directory of NPO and NGO volunteer
opportunities.

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kevinburke
If you're willing to give a slightly larger commitment, try Code for America:
<http://codeforamerica.org>.

