Hunting Technical Volunteers in the Wild
Sometimes I feel like I have one foot each in two canoes. The nonprofit community and technology community are both seaworthy vessels, but when trying to bring the two together there are a lot of ways to fall in a lake. Also, I like to stretch my metaphors.
These two posts (next one soon) are directed at nonprofit/NGO people who are trying to find good technical volunteers, or even technical staff. There have been posts on this topic before. There are many like it, but this one is mine. Since civilization is collapsing, now is a very good time to find (underemployed) technical people to get deeply involved with your cause. It helps them stay sharp, feel good, and fill gaps on their resume, and it helps you get things done.
These are their natural habitats.
Meetups
Each major acronym / jargon nugget / buzzword is usually accompanied (in a moderately large metropolitan area) by a regular meeting of people interested in that topic. To wit, I’ve attended Austin’s PHP, Social Media, and 501 Tech meetings, and I’ve heard of groups for Linux, Ruby on Rails, Python, MySQL, Java, and Javascript. There may even be user groups for a product you’re using: Wordpress, Blackbaud, Drupal, Joomla, etc. Plug ‘Your City’ + ‘Thing You Need Help With’ into a search engine.
If you contact the group’s organizers ahead of time, they might have some tips or send you some contacts right off the bat. You should attend at least one meeting. Even if you don’t stay for all the gobblety-gook and just announce yourself at the beginning, it’s far easier to curry favor when you show up in person.
Online User / Professional Groups
For folks who can’t meet regularly in meatspace, there are plenty of online groups, sometimes hosted at a technology specific site, sometimes on LinkedIn, Facebook, Google Groups, or other. Again, search engines should have no trouble finding these. Make yourself an account, e-mail the administrator, read their FAQ, and post your intentions. If you fire off a bunch of newbie questions you might brusquely be told to RTFM, which stands for “Read the Gosh Darn Manual’. If you instead ask doe-eyed and innocent for general, introductory help, people may trip over themselves to demonstrate their ability to help you.
Search Lifestreams
Twitter, Friendfeed, Facebook, and other services usually have some searchable component. Friendfeed and Twitter particularly are built in such a way that it’s OK for a strangers to connect. Let’s say you’re a newly minted, wobbly-kneed Joomla administrator. Follow 50 people on Twitter who seem to know what they’re doing. Some of them will follow you back. Tweet out questions when you need help. You’ll get answers.
If you don’t want to clutter up your personal or organization’s account, you can always create a separate one for specific communities.
Your Network
Even if your entire constituency hunts-and-pecks at their keyboards with a frown whenever they are forced to use computers, they might have daughters, sons, friends, relatives who do “You know, things with the internets to make the websites talk to my email.” Hit them up with the message “We’re looking for help with {frightening technology term} at the head office. We’d love to hear from you or anyone who might know about it.”
The Watercooler
Using a platform or enterprise system? Sign up for, search through, and then post in the main developer/administrator bulletin boards of your platform (SalesForce, Convio, SAP, etc). Find people who seem to be exceptionally active and message them directly.
Just like fundraising, it’s all about the ask.
