The liquidity question, part two
People may get ever busier, but they also appear to find more time to volunteer. Witness the plethora of studies that saw the numbers of people donating their time reaching record numbers, particularly in the US. To most experts this is the result of the terrorist attacks of 2001. Not since the attack on Pearl Harbor has the country seen this kind of lasting increase in volunteering.
But press coverage of these studies often omits to mention one key fact: While the absolute numbers of volunteers are certainly up, for many this translates only to a one-time experience. Of the 65.4m American adults who volunteered in 2005, nearly one third did not do so in 2006, according to a report by the Corporation for National and Community Service.
It is certainly possible that many volunteers have simply lost interest and want to spend their free time on less socially-correct activities. But it is also true that most charities focus mainly on motivating people to volunteer, instead of putting resources into making volunteering a rewarding experience and offering appealing opportunities to do it again. Many US organisations do not even have a paid person in charge of volunteer coordination, according to a 2004 study by the Urban Institute. And if they do have such an employee, it is unlikely that this person has received proper training for the job.
It is safe to assume that the situation is not much better among the majority of organisations dedicated to solving development problems, particularly those based in developing countries. Worse, they are probably even less set up to work with online volunteers. Jayne Cravens, one of the rare experts in the matter, as the manager of the UN’s online volunteering site until 2004, argues that “the biggest obstacle in online volunteering is the lack of an organisation’s capacity to involve any volunteers effectively.”
This looks like bad news for Lughenjo. What use is a skills and knowledge exchange if there is no real demand? Yet only where there is a major challenge can a major opportunity arise and we believe that there are ways to stimulate demand.
- One, of course, is to make it as easy as possible to post “help” requests. The existing online volunteering sites tend to be hard to use – for both donors and those asking for help.
- Another way of creating demand is working with major international and local NGOs to get them to serve as a kind of aggregator of such requests. In recent weeks, we have been talking to more than a dozen organisations to get them on board.
- But most importantly, we will need to identify a “killer application” for Lughenjo to take off – in the same way that Pez Dispensers, Beanie Babies and other collectibles helped eBay to get traction.
Any suggestions for what THE task could be? Is it copywriting, help with accounting or just answering questions?
July 13th, 2007 at 10:32 am
“Any suggestions for what THE task could be? Is it copywriting, help with accounting or just answering questions?”
I think you’ll find that donating money or paying for in-country training is the critical task, because once your system opens, that’s what will be asked for.
July 13th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
What Lughenjo lacks is fun. Here is my how-to list on how to kick-start the project.
1. Run a contest to find the best how-to list on how to kick-start Lughenjo.
2. Find volunteers to build a Lughenjo page inside social-networking websites.
3. Find volunteers to build a Lughenjo page inside Wikipedia and other similar sites.
4. Find volunteers to build a Lughenjo volunteer exchange for world’s university students.
5. Find volunteers to build a Lughenjo volunteer exchange for world’s housewives.
6. Find volunteers to build a Lughenjo volunteer exchange for world’s executives and businessmen.
7. Find volunteers to build a Lughenjo volunteer exchange for world’s retirees.
8. Find volunteers to manage forums inside these exchanges.
9. Find volunteers to become Lughenjo representatives in world’s countries and cities.
10. Find volunteers to go out and bring in more volunteers.
Hope many will follow.
July 14th, 2007 at 10:00 am
From a personal point of view, as a copywriter who’s always looking to bring that particular professional skill to volunteering engagements, I’d echo the call.
July 14th, 2007 at 1:51 pm
In the meantime, how about reading this article, which has appeared at http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1772
‘Life Behind the Veil’: Launching a Beauty School in Kabul, Afghanistan
July 16th, 2007 at 1:17 pm
Instead of listing help requests, Lughenjo should list the most-active, ongoing projects. To do this, it should publish all projects that are seeking/receiving assistance. Then, it should ask readers/volunteers to make contact with the project owners/organisers. After that, it should ask them to send feedbacks of their experiences from first to last.
It can be assumed that the most-active projects are those that the readers/volunteers send most feedbacks. Also, it can be assumed the number of feedbacks they generate can indicate the level of their activeness. Therefore, Lughenjo should compile the numbers and rank them in order. This means, in the end, the list will also be the ranking of the most-active, ongoing volunteer projects on earth.
And by having this ranking, Lughenjo will attract attention of the public and media, charitable and NGO organisations, as well as people wanting to be volunteers.
July 20th, 2007 at 3:35 pm
You don’t need a killer application.
You need an application that does what it needs to do! It does not have to be fancy, fluffy, high tech or anything. It has to be efficient. Most website I know have failed here for two reasons:
The first, the obvious, is that there website is badly designed
The second, dogmatically ignored, is because of their belief that the website is THE tools by which teh world’s problems will be solved.
In most case, user bypass cumbersome websites by using independent tools that have been developed to higher standard with higher functionality than a single proprietary website trying to offer an all-in-one solution.
To be honest, when it comes to online volunteering, everything could be dealt with with a single static content web page and email. Technology is not the answer.
Roger
August 2nd, 2007 at 5:35 am
To be honest, when it comes to online volunteering, everything could be dealt with with a single static content web page and email. Technology is not the answer.
I agree. A BBS board and a sequential autoresponder setup is better than all the php put together.