How Can Techies Give Back?

KReilly asks: "As the school year starts back up for me, I have been looking for a volunteer program I could work in. This year I have been considering creating my own non-profit organization, but I still lack a clear picture of what I hope to accomplish. I have read about communities wiring classrooms for the internet in California, and repairing computers donated by businesses for schools. I would like to do this, but find many schools and libraries would deny this donation since its maintenance would be too big of an investment for them and they do not want to experiment with Open Source alternatives that would lower the PC repair cost. So my question to you is how do you, as a tech, give back to society and aid in social programs? And, any information/advice you wanted to share on my original idea would be much appreciated."

Comments

Check with CityCares

[Anonymous Coward]

CityCares specializes in matching volunteers with local opportunities. Check their website for links to your local CityCares affiliate.

Volunteer with NPower

[gokubi]

I work for NPower, a nonprofit that works with other nonprofits to help them use technology. We do all sorts of things around technology: training, planning, building networks, building applications--all at heavily subsidized rates.

We also match volunteers with nonprofits that need help and don't want/can't pay consulting rates.

I don't know where you are, but there are 9 NPowers nationwide [check our site] plus a number of "sister" organizations of ours do similar work in cities we don't have a presence in, like Compumentor in San Francisco.

Check us out. Also check out N-TEN, a national membership organization of nonprofit technical assistance providers.

Re:Volunteer with NPower

[b!arg]

I was going to suggest NPower, but there also some decent websites out there that list opportunities. Two of note that I know of are www.volunteermatch.org and www.idealist.org. I'm working on a volunteer project that I found on the latter.

If you are in a U.S. city there is probably also a non-profit organization that essentially finds volunteers for other non-profits. Here in Seattle it is called Seattle Works and there are a bunch of them throughout the U.S. that are all related. They are a good source for volunteer opportunites of any kind. Good luck and godspeed.

United Way

[Seraphim_72]

Consider looking into the local branch of the United Way. Here in Minneapolis they run a volunteer needed column in the paper and I just checked they had at least 9 positions open looking for techies in Minneapolis/St. Paul. The cool part about the United Way is that they are a roll up of many different organizations. You can easily find one that you like and work with them. Hmmm...a place needs a database developer...might have to give them a call

Also look for something like this - Volunteer Twin Cities in your neck of the woods.

-Seraphim

some suggestions

[dan_bethe]

• GeekCorps for international stuff
• TechCorps for American stuff (maybe just California, I don't remember)
• VolunteerMatch to find all volunteer opportunities around the world, some even virtual over the Internet