Prelude Interactive

The Lights. Camera. Help Festival is happening again this year, and if you live in Austin or are visiting in the last few days of July, you should get some tickets and go.

Why?  First, altruism aside, it’s an interesting, engaging event.  Last year just by sitting on my tookus for a few hours I learned a lot about how nonprofits and causes approach film and video, how they use it, and what they need from the public to help their missions.  Some of the films were hilarious, some were touching, and of course some were boring or bad, but that helps the good ones shine in comparison.  I’m particularly looking forward to Adventures for a Cure, about four diabetic cyclists doing a very, very burly ride across the US.

It’s also a great way to support not only the organizations on display, but Lights. Camera. Help. itself, which is also a nonprofit providing services to other nonprofits – helping them produce better video materials and helping them use those materials more effectively.

It also might just change your life a little bit.  Viewing the gristly and wrenching “Fowl Play” – about industrial chicken farming – led me very quickly down the path of raising some chickens of my own.  Sometimes a nonprofit has to beat you over the head with reality, and in this case, it worked….sort of, they really want you to be vegan but I’m not ready for that yet.  Let me know if you want some eggs!

From 2010 February

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This might not be the only such product being developed, but it’s notable nonetheless.  Siteonmobile appears to be a toolkit that will allow for ‘compressed web interactions’ supporting existing (or new) web services.  What does that mean?  I think it means that it will be easier for websites to support a few common features that will work via voice or SMS.  The service also seems to promise ease – perhaps an automated method of showing Siteonmobile what you want it to do, and it does the hard work?

I carped on something similar back in aught nine.  I think more causes should think about reaching more of their constituents through these channels.  How much easier would your life be, as a homeless person, if you were able to double check bus times, shelter availability, and work opportunities from your phone?

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As an English major, the bulk of my internship applications were editing jobs at publishing companies or magazines. I thought I was a pretty strong candidate for these jobs, and that I would certainly get one of them, but apparently the hundreds of other English majors at UT desperate for jobs in their field had the same idea. Needless to say, I was turned down. Several times.

The Prelude Interactive internship had been at the back of my mind as I began to worry what I would do all summer, and when Ehren emailed me requesting an interview near the end of the spring semester, I allowed myself to hope that my summer would not be wasted watching zombie movies and playing video games in an effort to ward off the boredom.

I prepared for my interview by familiarizing myself with the Prelude Interactive website. I was scared. The “About Us” page was full of terms like “PHP” and “data migration” that left me completely in the dark. However, since I learned of the opportunity via a mass email from my public relations professor, I figured I wasn’t required to know programming languages and website development for the job (although I did ask a few of my computer-savvy friends to explain some of the more difficult terms).

After learning more about the company, I realized that this would be a great place for me, and it would be an internship that I could be proud of, and not only use as a resume builder. I could feel good about working with a company that worked towards a goal not simply about making money, but about supporting causes and nonprofits that could help change the world for the better.

So when I got the internship I was pretty excited. And now that I have been working with Prelude Interactive for a few weeks, I am happier than ever. I have been working hard on compiling a comprehensive database of volunteer management software, a subject I am now well versed in even though I didn’t know volunteer management software existed in the spring! I’ve also been working on copy and testing for HelpAttack!, which I thoroughly enjoy, since I get to see my improvements implemented on the site.

For me, the best part about working on the VMS database and HelpAttack! is being able to see the results of my work put into action toward socially responsible causes. As I see the database grow, I feel good in knowing that it will eventually be a useful tool for nonprofits and other volunteer-based organizations that have trouble finding the right type of software for their company. Whenever I give notes on editing and layout concerning HelpAttack!, I get to see my writing or ideas being used to help build a website that could eventually be a great moneymaking tool for many worthwhile causes. It’s work that I can take pride in.

Interning with Prelude Interactive has been a rewarding experience for me, not only because I work for a company with positive goals, but also because my work is taken seriously into consideration. I don’t do the menial jobs that I imagine are common in other internship positions. Instead, I get to make a difference and actually help people out! And that’s awesome!

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Growth!

As threatened, we are growing.  A few weeks ago I settled on the right person to become Prelude’s first real hire.  We’ve been doing great work with contractors for a while, but now that we’re up to around 500 hours of effort a month, it’s clear that I’m the bottleneck.

HelpAttack!

As you may have noticed we’re involved in HelpAttack!  Our mission is to build a platform that will help people pledge and give based on their passive online activity.  What does that mean?  Think about pledging $0.25 per Tweet for the month of July to the United Way.  Or maybe $0.50 per Facebook update to Mobile Loaves & Fishes, or $1.00 for each Flickr upload to a nonprofit photography center.

The HelpAttack! “Alpha” is launching to a small pool of people and nonprofits mid June, and all of them have promised to not be too mean about the bugs that they find.  We aim to release a beta version in early August and will start building up a user base from there.  You can sign up for the beta on http://helpattack.com.

Interns!

We also have three industrious interns this summer.  Jason Gladu is back, and is currently researching the science of volunteerism, volunteer psychology, and other topics.  In addition we have an English major at UT soon to enter her senior year, as well as a Masters graduate student who will be helping with marketing, SEO, and analytics for both Prelude and HelpAttack.  Hopefully they’ll be up for making an appearance on this blog to augment or interrupt my ceaseless droning.

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Vis-a-vis a conversation with Hilary Mason and Chris Wiggins, Jake Hofman pointed me towards Catchafire.org.  Ever since getting involved in the nonprofit technology sector, I’ve been curious about skilled volunteering, and somewhat fascinated by the lack of attention paid to it.  Catchafire wants to make it easier for people to participate as effective skills-based volunteers.

Unfortunately, I see a similarities with Smart Volunteer, an older organization that never quite…caught the fire, as it were.  The founding stories of these two organizations are almost identical.  Replace Rachel with Dan (and others), “investment banker” with “management consultant,” and hauling lumber with painting (schools in both cases!) and you have it.

Both organizations are/were trying to create their own communities of nonprofits and volunteers, rather than piggyback on the far larger communities which already exist. I think this is a critical mistake on Catchafire’s part, because so much energy, luck, and extra effort is needed to build and sustain such a community of users.  I was very impressed that they had already build a LinkedIn connector, but I think their service could fly farther, faster as a LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook app.

Even aside from massive general purpose social networks, there are many sites that already have an existing large community of users and nonprofits:  VolunteerMatch, Idealist.org, Everywun, Causes, All For Good, Social Actions, OpenAction.org, etc.  Also, don’t forget the 20-30 software suites that nonprofits already use for volunteer management.

I think that strategically, rather than trying to directly serve the public, Catchafire and similar startups should build tools that could be licensed or sold to these other companies.  This way they could concentrate on solving the tough, general problems that all these sites face – but don’t have the bandwidth or focus to solve for themselves.  One of the VolunteerMatch conferencegoers I know said he had yet to hear of such a pitch – someone designing tools & technology with VolunteerMatch as a customer rather than competitor.

I also don’t think either organization has made much progress into the difficult human resources issues of skilled volunteering.  Extracting, tracking, annotating, searching, and matching skills is an incredibly difficult problem.  Just ask the swollen HR departments at large companies and nonprofits – finding the right person for a job is time intensive, highly domain specific, and frequently prone to costly, inefficient error.

I also think that the projects already populating Catchafire may miss the mark with the general public.  They seemed to general and abstract to me at first, and I think the listed projects are too heavily oriented towards capacity building – press releases, donation engine and website support.  Perhaps people who want to start volunteering want to serve the mission, rather than serving the organization?  I don’t have any articles to cite here, but I’m starting to look for them.

The Catchafire.org site is pretty, but would do well to borrow Kiva’s emphasis on images and tangible, unique stories from the end beneficiaries – third world entrepreneurs in Kiva’s case.  Photos and stories pull harder on the heart strings than and motivate people to take action.  Again, I lack proven references, but it’s definitely worth an A/B test to see if Catchafire’s conversion rate increases.

Remember, this post is based on a cursory examination of the site and I have not used it heavily as either a volunteer or a nonprofit/NGO.  Am I missing the point and trying to shove Catchafire into the wrong pidgeonhole?

Update:  I actually spoke with Rachel Chong of Catch A Fire and she explained a little more about their concept and what sets them apart.  Their model does commit significant resources to both the task specification and personalized matching aspects of skilled volunteering, and she stressed that charging for the service requires that nonprofits have some ‘skin in the game’ – another choice that sets them apart.  I think the more people who are using their skills and resources to enable more skilled volunteers, the better, but I remain unconvinced that this is a scalable model.  Nobody has come up with an algorithm for skilled volunteering yet, and it’s just plain hard to scale a services business.  So, in other words….we’ll see what happens!  Lucky for Rachel, I’m wrong most of the time.

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