In the past two weeks, two separate individuals have told me about “a guy” who is planning to create a new social network for volunteers. Maybe its two different guys with the same plan. Either way, said dude(s) might appreciate some unsolicited, pre-build feedback.
Match.com for the social sector: If you’ve ever thought, “Hot damn, I am the Iceman of social media/marketing/PR,” then you, too, have something to offer to this guy. Your ideas, for one. And your pro bono participation.
The volunteer social network in question is intended to connect needs with professional skills. It’s so clever, and unprecedented. Picture a place that puts what you’re good at side-by-side with what you care about. It’s already been attempted to some extent but the current models are flawed.
Sure, you can already search for traditional volunteer opportunities a la Volunteer Match. But imagine a zing bang new community in which you’ll be able to do legitimate social networky things, like friend people. Oooh.
Sarcasm aside, the community might provide a priceless matching service: participating organizations could search for professional services beyond their budgets and beyond labor typically needed to stuff envelopes, dig wells and serve soup.
I like your idea, Sir; it could be the ticket for vast innovation. But whoever you are, should you choose to accept this mission (and for the love of all that is good and true in this world) don’t create a new network.
There are already several online networks connecting money and jobs with causes. Partner with one of them, and round out the service to include a full menu for “Time, Talent and Treasure.” Idealist.org or LinkedIn sure do feel like natural fits.
Collaborating with local clearinghouses of volunteer opportunities will help keep things amicable and geographically relevant. In the District that might be Greater DC Cares and Volunteer Fairfax, among others. (Don’t squash the little guy, and don’t duplicate services.)
Make it fully user-generated.
To work, the algorithm of the community must allow all involved to crowdsource needs and possible solutions. Some suggested activities to help the flow:
- Wiki-washed profiles of causes/nonprofits that need services. Anyone should be able to edit the profiles and rate/review the group. Maybe there will be a ranking system! (Swoon.)
- Pass-along tools to forward opportunities to friends (“The Need Feed”). Word of mouth referrals should be easy.
- An open comment forum that allows people to comment/live chat about alternative ideas for to solve a problem, and who could be a good fit.
Personal user profiles will be effective if they’re specific and searchable, including
- Your strengths and gifts (legal, finance, human resources, accounting, media, marketing, SEM, web design, origami, video production, “the digital landscape,” etc.) rated on a scale from amateur to master (“I cannot do 4th grade math, but I am God’s Gift at php and Rails.”)
- Your preferred causes (health, microfinance, clean water, AIDS, homeless, arts, farming, GLBT, faith, environment, furry creatures, etc.)
- Your qualifications (work/volunteer experience to date) including referrals from others
- A wish list of groups you’d love to work with
Trick it Out for Sharing Purposes
The online social network would be best served as a repository of opportunity and people profiles. Content should be “embeddable” everywhere else: other online communities, blogs, nonprofit websites, mobile phones.
I might get a social media yellow card for saying so (see for yourself) but this has the makings of a splendid widget or desk top app. A few ideas:
- Pro bono needs near you (tailored to your zipcode, skills and interests)
- Crisis needs (disaster response and issue alerts)
- The latest needs identified by your favorite organizations
- Notices/referrals from friends
Final advice: get the right people on the bus at the right time
Kelly at The Nonprofiteer might have been channeling Good to Great’s mantra when she posted yesterday about the need to efficiently recruit board members. First identify goals and tasks, then find the right people. Even if they lack some of the requisite skills, a little upfront training will help them learn the ropes.
With that in mind, the new network should appropriately weight passion – not just map prior experience with specified need. A nonprofit should be able to maximize your conviction to assist with a big fundraising effort, even if you don’t have a marketing bone in your body. Not all pegs fit round holes, but there’s more room in that hole than you think.
Anyone know the guy? What do you want him to know?
This is great Qui – sometimes when we get those overwhelming feelings to do good and “bring people together”, the social networking platform comes to mind to those who haven’t already been washed over in them. With sites like Ning.com, I believe that the personalization and niche focus is key, much like what you have touched upon here.
Another great network/website that was recently redesigned is JustMeans.com – they bring together social responsibility news, jobs and overall connectivity in the realm of doing good. Might want to check that out as well (or maybe point this guy in that direction).
Partnering up I think is the way to go and take advantage of venues that are already coming out to spread the word.
Save yourself the time – a great voluteer network exists in the Taproot Foundation. “If you build it they will not come.”
Sweet post! There’s a lot of unnecessary duplication of effort out there. This theme is cropping up in many different areas!
Hi Lee – thanks for referencing the Taproot Foundation. A great network but limited reach – 6 metro areas. DC is one of the markets listed, but only 3 opportunities are listed. With broader reach (into markets nationwide) and more community-enabled features, it could be fantastic. Maybe Taproot needs to merge w/ Idealist, Be The Change or Volunteer Match.
I get about 2 calls or emails per week from someone who wants to do something akin to (or exactly like) Iceman.
The ability to make nationally or internationally scaled high skill volunteerism a reality has been an ongoing discussion for YEARS. Beyond my phone and my computer, the conversation comes up almost constantly whenever a group of the volunteerism guard get together. The folks thinking most significantly about this right now are Taproot Foundation, Corporation for National and Community Service (who are trying to figure out how and what to fund in a big way, but are primarily throwing spaghetti at the walls (which isn’t so bad, mind you)), the Case Foundation, a half dozen corporations (IBM, Accenture, Starbucks, Timberland, and Pfizer among them), Civic Ventures focusing on the Boomer Generation, United Way of America, the Brookings Institute, of course VolunteerMatch and Idealist.org, and about a dozen others.
(POL/Hands On says they are, but they aren’t doing much external through their transition).
In short: a new online network or service will do nothing (as has already been stated), and the politics and personalities of connecting people with volunteer opportunities runs much deeper than a web-service anyway. Even partnering is something that will mean being much more in depth than online integration or platform sharing. I’m as big a social media evangelist as they come (well, except for Qui), but volunteerism in general is inherently NOT about online platforms, and high-skill/pro-bono volunteerism most definitely is not.
The critical factor that is continuously overlooked at the highest levels of figuring out high-skill volunteer matching is the development and support of volunteer MANAGEMENT.
Imagine a company who said they would love to hire 1,000 or 10,000 new brilliant, specialized engineers to do something extraordinary, but didn’t hire a single new HR professional to recruit, hire, train, support, and maintain those engineers. That is essentially the approach most of the social sector, online world, and corporate sector is taking to the effort of increased high-skill volunteerism at the moment and it’s incredibly frustrating to watch.
A volunteer can’t just show up on site even simply to paint a fence. Someone needs to orient them, guide them, give them the tools, etc. A volunteer absolutely cannot show up and serve a vital high-skill function in a nonprofit or NGO (accounting, law, design, marketing, media, etc) without a leader in the organization hosting and working with them.
If we’re going to get better at the matching (which we SHOULD do) online, then we’re also going to have to simultaneously (or even previously) build and be tremendously better at the managing of volunteers too.
I don’t exaggerate when I say I could write ten pages of response here, but I’ll end simply by saying THANKS, QUI, for writing a great piece as always!
[...Crickets...]
You mean that the tools don’t like, do all the work? Then we are ALL out of jobs.
Okay, kidding aside, Jake you bring up a frustrating issue that is going to bite a lot of people in the arse within the next couple years. Community management. Beyond the volunteer networks, any and all communities are susceptible to inspiration overkill. Give them the platform, tell them its theirs, but don’t walk away or chaos ensues.
Counseling clients/leadership to “give up control” doesn’t mean abandoning ship. Engaged community members (volunteers in this case) deserve attention, stewardship, training, l-o-v-e. But in a hands-off kind of way.
Metaphor of the day: your community is a committee. It needs to be facilitated in some way to be productive and happy. Talent management at its best.
Not to belittle the unique challenges faced by volunteer network. Just thought it’d be worth pointing out similarities. So thanks, Jake – really strong (and scary) points.
Made me revisit community management discussions from the past – still like Jeremiah’s “4 Tenents of Community Managers” http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/11/25/the-four-tenets-of-the-community-manager/