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Better Volunteering for Web Geeks

atroche.org

60 pointsatroche33 comments

I help run an organization, radicaldesigns.org. We work exclusively with groups (mostly nonprofits) that have a mission we believe in. We've been around for 8 years now. Some advice, from my experience:

1. Long term support is what organizations need.

It's a rare software project that doesn't need some kind of support. If there's no one to call when it breaks, or needs to scale, or when a new staffer shows up and the previous one didn't train them (happens all the time), then they will stop using it. It's possible for a well meaning developer to hang an albatross around the neck of an organization by building something they depend on, but not have any support plan worked out.

This can be mitigated by hosting the applications for the clients, in exchange for a hosting fee. If you don't host it yourself, then you have to deal with sysadmining unfamiliar boxes in a crisis situation, where the problem could be a change anywhere on the system. No fun!

Along with hosting, offer a help desk at an hourly rate. Nonprofits really benefit from this because they have a lot of turnover, and you end up becoming the institutional memory for the organization's tech. Even if you have turn over too, chances are there's a better understanding at your tech shop of what is going on.

2. Cheap is better than free.

Pro Bono sounds noble, but I've found it leads to... bad things. There's something that changes in people's mindset when something is free. Client expectations can become extremely unreasonable, and it's hard to polish something when you're not getting paid. Where "done" is becomes extremely vague, and you would be surprised at how doing someone a favor can end up making everyone unhappy. So charge money. Be cheaper than industry standard, much cheaper if you can, but make it a real project with a real budget. This helps everyone to prioritize.

3. Nonprofit might not be the best business model.

The main disadvantage on being a nonprofit (at least in the US) is that you cannot work on political campaigns. We're a workers co-op instead. It's been working out pretty well for us. However, we've never tried to be donation driven, so I'm not sure how that would factor in. I think you should look at a balance of donations and charging for labor, and find the business model that supports both. Or have two organizations, a nonprofit and a co-op, to handle the two different revenue flows. It think getting direct donations and grants will be hard. At any rate, that money will come with a mandate of some kind. So I would encourage you to cast a wide net, have a look at co-ops and other business types as well, and make sure you pick a model that can support all the revenue streams you want.

Cheers,

Ted

Thanks for the insights, Ted. It makes me so glad to see that someone else has struggled through some of these problems and done as well you as you guys clearly have.

Do you really provide support for most of the clients featured in your portfolio? There are so many! How much less do you charge than a typical IT company? Do you include the cost of support in the initial fee?

I totally agree with you that surviving on donations and grants alone would be too hard. For the first projects that Radical Designs did, were you able to charge? How did you convince organisations to go with you? And how long was it before you established your current business model?

Sorry for asking so many questions!

Im dealing with a few social enterprises myself and the funding is definitely one of the biggest challenges. Grants are certainly one way however relying on them can be problematic because they are hard ot get initially but at the same time its easier to get them once you get them the first time. Also usually they dont cover the total costs involved. Donations can be tricky because you have to get people to know about the product and to want to give money. Some are trying other ways such as developing mobile apps and selling them. My thoughts also is to talk to foundations and very wealthy people who might be open to investing in high technology products that will help people.

Don't mind the questions at all. So, to be clear we don't offer general IT services, we only do individual projects for clients (usually websites and custom applications). Most clients don't need too much support, just an occasional training. We offer a standard support package as part of the host fee ($50/month, free 1/2 hour of support via the help desk). Usually the support contract is separate from the initial project. For projects, we used to do a flat rate bid, but that sucked because it was hard to define "done" or account for changing requirements once the project was under way. So we now give an estimate with a number of line items, and bill by the hour. This works out well because you let the client decide when to stop.

We are cheaper because we don't pay ourselves industry standard wages (shitty, but that's the main cost), and we don't bilk the client for non-productive hours. In contracting, that's where the real money is: you charge by the week or month, not by the hour. We charge by the hour and are transparent about costs. Small nonprofits have very tight budgets so this is attractive to them.

RD got started really as an extension of the activism people were doing at the time. David Taylor, who started it, was working on a number of campaigns and eventually needed help, so he brought some friends in. Projects got big enough that they needed real support, so money got involved. David didn't charge much at first, and the projects were small, but as we were around longer things started to gel up and eventually we started working with larger clients. It took us a while to sort out our business model, there were a lot of bumps along the way. Also, we never did any advertising, it's all been referrals so far. I don't recommend that! If you want to jump start the process, the best thing to do is talk at nonprofit tech conferences and get out in front of potential clients. You can also find potential clients who look like they may need your services, and email them. If you get in enough rolodexes, have a reassuring web presence, and do good work, you will start getting a steady stream of calls.

I had seen a few projects like GiveCamp that try to do this for nonprofits. They would get together on a weekend and hack on database/web projects, and then turn it over to the organizations.

It seems like a great improvement on this would be an organizational structure like the author suggests. Such a group can do more planning/design and provide ongoing support for the client non-profit. I also agree with the idea of doing this at some minor fee, nothing to break the bank for the client. But there is certainly some sort of price you can charge that can help keep expectations realistic so no client takes unfair advantage of the group's generosity.

I was hesitant to participate at my local GiveCamp event though because of the lack of future support for the organization. At the end of the event the maintenance responsibility is handed off to the nonprofit. That's completely fair to the developer that there be no expectation to do any more work on it.

But that non-profit didn't have the ability to get that software developed, so how could they maintain it either? It's great that they get donated a free copy of Visual Studio and some books from the GiveCamp sponsors, but if they could use that to maintain software, they could've written it themselves in the first place. What if some bug emerges a week after delivery and they can't even use that app at all? All that effort's been wasted and the charity could be stuck with broken software.

Yeah, you're definitely right. The only solutions I can think of are:

1) Training someone at the organisation to maintain the software (which could conceivably take a LONG time, and is fragile because that staff member could leave at any time)

and

2) Charging for long term support. The problem here is that maintaining legacy code is boring and frustrating, and it's going to be hard to get volunteers to do this willingly. So, we'd have to charge closer to the going corporate rate for it. Plus, it'd bloat the company with support staff, leading to increased bureaucracy, etc. (which is exactly what we'd be trying to avoid with the whole 'startup feel'.)

This is a good point. My thoughts have been that if the product uses cutting edge technologies people might be more open to doing the work or helping out for a lesser charge. Hence why i use django as well as redis and mongodb and android.

Hi,

We started a not-for-profit web development organisation 7 years ago in the UK (Aptivate.org) to serve NGOs, IOs and charities particularly in the international development sector.

We've worked with organisations like the World Health Organisation, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, the UK Department for International Development, Open Society Foundations as well as smaller organisations.

Our proposition is to provide high-quality "commercial grade" services with an understanding of the international development sector, at reasonable prices.

We do all our software development with an open source license wherever possible.

We have a mixed model of skilled staff and volunteers.

...and we're hiring. So if you're a damn fine Django developer and want to work in this sector, feel free to apply: http://www.aptivate.org/job-web-developer

We're always looking for skilled volunteers too.

We're based in Cambridge (UK) and Brighton (well, Hove, actually).

Cheers,

Alan

I've done volunteer web work via The Taproot Foundation (https://www.taprootfoundation.org/). It feels a bit more "consultant-ish" than "startup-ish", but there are a lot of great opportunities. Check it out if you're in the LA, San Francisco, Chicago, NYC, or DC areas and interested in volunteering your time and skills.

Im a web programmer and social entrepreneur currently developing django driven web sites for a few non profits. Im also hoping to develop an incubator next year to help get more technology driven non profits off the road. Im always looking to connect with others interested in similiar.

Is there anyway you can do a group email list or a google document or something for people interested in this to stay connected?

I'am a django dev too (+IOS if needed). I'm definitely interested by this kind of work. Where are you based ? I'm in Brussels, Belgium.

Is there a way for me to contact you? Im in the us. Thanks!

I'm the CTO at TUMIS.com, we are one of 2-3 boutique dev shops in the Bay Area, CA, US that work 99% with social justice organization, social enterprises, green businesses, campaigns across the country. We are not a non-profit- more like a B corp with worker shareholders. Have been in business for 10 years. There are similar shops that meet regularly via NTEN and TechSoup conferences. Taproot Foundation just received a very large gift - they do most of what you described, they have some paid staff to wrangle the volunteers.

I'm about to graduate college and have been considering doing something like this, but have zero business experience. There are plenty of non-profits that are doing great work, but relatively unknown and without much of a web presence, if any.

I'd love to be involved with this. I'm in Chicago/Iowa, and have some decent web app experience. Java, JavaScript, Ruby, Python, UI/UX and that newfangled HTML5 stuff.

rdgoetz@iastate.edu

Can i contact you to discuss some projects im involved with?

Yeah, go for it. I have a fairly busy semester, but I'm trying to find time to work on something like this anyway.

I forgot to add Objective-C/iOS above, but I've never deployed a full app.

Funny you should post about this... we actually started something similar in Singapore. Just a FB events page and posterous site for now. First project happening this weekend in fact: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=277529252262119; http://sdcrux.posterous.com/

Count me in for backend work (Perl, mostly) and anything database-related. My location varies, so I'll have to be remote, but I'm good at remote. Email in the profile.

Oh - I will, at least, probably be in Europe for a year or two starting this fall. So that's better than the US, anyway, in terms of remoteness.

I'm up for something like this. The idea is actually quite nice and those charities do need web visibility. I'm quite decent at writing PHP code and I know my way around HTML and CSS, but i'm not a web designer and javascript is something I have not used often. Email me at toni@aleprok.eu if my help is needed.

Sure, Toni, I'll keep you in the loop. Where are you based? Obviously we can work with people remotely, but one of the best things about this would be hanging out (in person) with like-minded people.

I'm from Finland. I agree it would be nice to hang out in person, but people live where people live.

Hi, I'm Carl. I am more of a non-technical guy (even though I am currently learning ROR), and would love to help with anything that has to do with logistics, marketing (including SEM and SEO), along with project management. Feel free to reach me at my profile's email.

Also, look at GroundWire.org. They work with mostly environmental organizations. They have a non-profit (Grants + Private Funders + lower cost Services revenue model. As a US Non-profit, they file an IRS Form 990 and publish a detailed annual report.

I'd like to be involved. I write JavaScript (including canvas, but not WebGL and other 3D stuff) and HTML for the most part, and I can write PHP, but don't have much experience in it. Based in India, by the way.

You might want to check out The Superfluid http://thesuperfluid.com/ . It does exactly this: share you skills among projects without involving money.

I had a similar idea. I even offered to help like two non-profits I knew personally. They did not take me up on my offer. I guess building a website was the last thing on they wanted to worry about.

Great idea! I'm likely to be in London in 6 months (i have a degree to complete first) but would love to be kept in the loop on this project. James@scrunchup.com if there's a list I can be put on?

You'll probably get enough developers involved. So I'm offering my availability to provide help with inbound marketing (blogging, social media, SEO, A/B testing, etc).

I'm very interestedin this too, I'd like to volounteer if it's possible.

HCI, Web development, brainstorming

kongchinhua at gmail

I would defo be up for this. Am a developer ASP, PHP, HTML, etc...

I don't live in London but only up the road in Liverpool.

I work for myself now doing photography (15 years in the IT industry), so am free almost every weekday.

Dave (thedavebaxter@gmail.com)

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