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Tech-Related Volunteer Gigs
jeffomatic writes "Here's a question for Service Day: what kind of volunteer opportunities are available out there for the technologically-inclined? I'm a software developer and I'm wondering if there's anyone in the field engaged in pro-bono work, like IT or teaching or web design or whatnot. I'm not at all above rolling my sleeves up and working at shelters or the local park, but it occurs to me that my professional skills might be usefully applied in the service context as well. I'd like to hear about what other people are doing, in terms of projects, time commitments, organizations, etc." Or just commit a patch to your favorite project.
A few things come to mind. You could volunteer and show a few elderly individuals how to use a computer. That sort of thing can be very frustrating or very rewarding depending on who you teach and how patient you are. You could also work on open source projects that aid the disabled. Then there is things like helping an old lady sell her stuff on ebay instead of say a garage sale. I know a lot of elderly folks have many things just laying around collecting dust and could use the extra income. Just a few ideas, I'm sure others will come up with some more inventive things.
Depends. I prefer education so it is volunteering for a regional science fair as a judge and giving classroom presentations for National Engineering and Technitians Month (NET Month)out here.
I actually prefer donating labor to the environment through the local park & rec. department. Gives me a chance to get out in the big blue room and move some dirt around through tree planting, landscape maintenance and other things I don't do on a regular basis but are actually kinda fun for a day project.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
My brother used to collect peoples old and rejected computers, make sure they worked, clean of the hard drives, set up an operating system, and then give them to a kind of "after school help kids with their homework" place. Computers get recycled, Kids get tools they need.
My local needle exchange (don't start flaming, they're people volunteering their time to improve the health of their fellow citizens, regardless of what you think of drug use or how best to respond to it) has a couple of contracts with City and State health departments that they need to do a lot of data reporting for (how many clients, how many referrals, etc) which they were collecting slowly and tediously using paper records, then wasting even more time on every three months collating the data to send to the funder. I wrote them a simple php frontend to a mysql database to let them enter data as they go, which then automatically generates the quarterly data files they need to submit to funders, freeing them up to concentrate more on service delivery (and giving them a better sense of how their service was running as a nice side effect).
Most non-profits I've seen in the past five years are using woeful data collection methods; almost any of them would be eternally grateful if someone would spend a few days or weeks to set something up and then maintained it on a volunteer basis.
On a shameless plug note, the abovementioned non-profit needs a new home for its 1U server - if you're in the San Francisco bay area and can donate rackspace & connectivity, drop me a line.
Anybody interested in going this route, as I have, can get a Linux distro targeted towards children (3yrs and up) that runs well on donated second hand PCs.
http://www.quinncoincorporated.org/
We are currently helping others across the country setup their own local initiatives.
http://www.mhall119.com
If your good at something never do it for free.
I can't even begin to comprehend that idea.
Seriously. If I'm good at something, it's likely because I've put a lot of time and effort into perfecting it. If I've put a lot of time and effort into perfecting it, it's likely because I enjoy doing it. If I enjoy doing it, then I will do it every chance I can get.
I'm a software developer because I love doing it. I get paid to do it, but I also do it in some of my spare time for free, and I'll happily do it for others who want me to do it for them.
I also play guitar for free, fly planes for free, and have sex for free.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
If I enjoy doing it, then I will do it every chance I can get.
In that case, you should do it somewhere you will get paid and then you can donate the money to the charity.
That is much more efficient than donating your skills to a charity. The assumption of course, is that a business can make better use of your skills than a charity - or, in other words, if you are a high priced SAP consultant, you are better off earning $300 for an hours work and donating that money to get some PHP dev to work for the charity.
It is just the principle of 'comparative advantage'.
I work as a volunteer software mentor for the local high school robotics club. It's part of the FIRST robotics program (www.usfirst.org). It inspires kids to careers in science and technology, and makes better use of my 30+ years of software development than, say, picking up litter on the highway or toting 2x4's for Habitat.
Agreed, I used to work for 2 different non-profit orgs in Newcastle, NSW, Australia when I lived there... was tough times, hard to find work, so I just gave my expertise to these people. I received about 6 months worth of work fixing computers, replacing equipment for cheaper to run, more efficient equipment, or even just making sure their security was up to scratch (easy to do as they were all running *nix distros of different flavours).
Any org will jump at the chance of a free techie, the reason being that most of the time the parts cost much less than the techie. Case in point: a graphics card dies in a machine, the card costs A$100 (cheap card, rip-off pricing), the tech will cost at minimum A$200-A$250. For most non-profits that's a "dead machine" scenario where they lose a computer, printer, etc, due to the cost of repair.
The other end of the spectrum would be as has been said in databasing, maybe even software development, or even teaching workshops - there are quite a few tech orientated non-profits out there that need people from the industry to run workshops or hold group discussions with youth/out of work people.