Roundtable 12/15/2009: Volunteers and Non-Profits

Submitted by Jesse on Mon, 12/14/2009 - 10:00

Jesse joins Joe Donahue on WAMC's Roundtable on 12/15/2009 at 11 AM to talk about gifts this holiday season: specifically how you can give your self (as in volunteering) to non-profit causes. And, more important, how non-profits can prepare for volunteers and use them productively and respectfully.

One key URL for volunteers to know is http://volunteermatch.org which provides a nationwide database of opportunities sorted by category and location. Organizations need to know about it, too, so that they can list their opportunities and attract the most useful volunteers.

Then comes the issue of how best to use volunteers. We'll be talking about how to structure work for a changing cast of volunteers. Here's Jesse's paradigm:

Whether they are manual or automated, systems and procedures can be characterized by the resources that they require to develop and use.

Idiosyncratic. Call it ad hoc, improvised, or even chaos. These procedures often make sense to their originators. Others can learn them, but they reflect one person's (possibly changing) vision. They can be manual or automated. Lots of analytics and domain knowledge needed for developers; lots of training needed for users.
Generic Building Blocks. These systems build on building blocks such as printed forms and databases. You have to add your customization. For automated systems, developers need generic database and language skills as well as user interface skills to reduce user training needs.
Targeted Building Blocks. You can buy the customization in preprinted forms for specific businesses or databases for non-profits. Fewer skills and resources needed for development -- you're buying it. Easier to use if you match the building block.
Peel Me a Grape. In the immortal words of Mae West, just ask someone to do the whole thing.

Figure out where in this paradigm your organization is and where it wants to be. in the world of technology, we're moving from the generic building blocks level (databases and programming) to the targeted building blocks level (CMSs like Drupal and even more specialized layers on top of them such as CiviCRM).

Here are some the URLs we're likely to talk about. These are all open source. (To be updated Tuesday afternoon)

Content Mangement Systems (CMSs)