Monday, February 20, 2012

A Little Goes a Long Way-Micro Volunteering

A Facebook post by my fellow blogger Liz Vibber alerted me to Sparked.com, the world’s “first micro-volunteering network” In a fun, engaging way, this site finds out what you are interested in and offers you options (challenges) that use your talents to help nonprofits in meaningful ways--all online.

After reading this article-Would You Volunteer More If you Could Do So in Your Pajamas? by Jessica Roy, I had to check out the site for myself.

In less than 3 minutes, I had selected my interests and entered my talents and was choosing between 2 challenges (both in the research area) to either help a youth organization find potential grantors or to recommend education apps to a school. Both challenges were clearly written and already had three useful responses from micro-volunteers. I felt that I could invest 30 minutes to an hour researching information and be able to provide something of value to the nonprofits.

Across the challenge selection page are four examples of success stories and it is evident that the “group think” process is helping these nonprofits with research, brainstorming ideas, social media, technology, marketing, blogging, etc.

This friendly email is an example of the site's appeal:

We want to be the first to high-five you for becoming a microvolunteer. You may not be able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, but you're using the power of your unique skill-set to help nonprofits. And that's an awesome super-power.

If your organization is looking for ideas, wants to test out a tag line, or needs help in areas related to social media or technology it is worth checking out Sparked.com.




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