a drawing of the earth with a heart, a chat bubble and a star orbiting

Coyote Helps:

mobilizing online volunteers to help make interactive spaces kinder & more public-spirited 

I have an idea for a nonprofit. There is nothing like it. It would fill a need I've been seeing for years, but didn't know how to address. It would also be an all-volunteer (unpaid staff) organization, and I would manage it, entirely as a volunteer myself (unpaid).

The name? Coyote Helps. It would be focused on helping to make interactive spaces kinder and more public-spirited, by mobilizing online to volunteers to engage in activities that help make the Internet a place where people can more easily engage with the human, environmental and community causes they care about most, as well as explore new causes.

This would be done through leveraging online volunteers and existing online resources - online communities, volunteer matching platforms, apps, information-sharing sites, etc. - to help people connect with causes they care about and to learn about issues from credible sources, and to help nonprofits, NGOs, government programs and other mission-based initiatives connect with potential supporters. The result, I hope, would be for parts of the Internet to be flooded with credible, up-to-date information about

and all the other things that can help people connect with their neighbors, meet new people, and feel more a part of their communities.

Through these efforts, I would also want certain topics that are discussed online to engage a lot more people and for resources and conversations about them to flourish, like initiatives that promote inclusion, or ICT4D, or Tech4Good, or accessibility, and more.


More about why I want to do this.

What we now know as the Internet was launched in the 1970s. There was no World Wide Web when the Internet started. A lot of the interactions people had on the Internet before the World Wide Web were via text based online communities called USENET newsgroups. There was very little misinformation on it. There was little for-profit advertising. There was a LOT of information-sharing, friendships, learning and fun.

The launch of the World Wide Web brought millions more people online. But even with that onslaught of new cyber citizens, in the 1990s, the Internet was still a nicer place than now: it had far less misinformation and far less people who were online only to cause havoc. Civic engagement flourished, as is documented here.

However, the rise of social media has contributed to greater polarization of both political views and resources. More and more resources are going behind paywalls. A lot of the Internet is strategically-placed misinformation and hate speech, and the use of artificial intelligence has amplified this. The “good” places of the Internet, like web sites where people can find volunteering opportunities, or apps that help people find causes to support, are being drowned out by click-bait web sites and AI-generated content. And all this supposed online connection has happened with a rise in people feeling even more isolated, depressed and lonely.  

Coyote Helps would be a small effort to mobilize humans to counter the negativity of the modern Internet. Volunteers would do this by amplifying volunteering opportunities, volunteer testimonials, stories about philanthropy, civic engagement and other encouraging, enlightening content on various online communities and social media channels. All of the things volunteers can do through Coyote Helps are detailed here - but please note that volunteers are NOT expected to do everything detailed here - or even most of what's detailed on that page.

The goal of sharing content across social media channels and online communities is to remind people that there are great ways to come together for good, whether it's a local nonprofit farmer's market, a chalk art festival, a small music festival, a children's theater production, a city council meeting, a candidate's forum, or any opportunity to volunteer or become more civically engaged and aware. It's also a small way to counter the negative information, endless criticism and personal attacks, and AI slop that is permeating online spaces and that is dividing people.

Coyote Helps - me - would provide documentation that confirms hours contributed by its volunteers for court-ordered community service or high school graduation, provided those volunteers are officially enrolled as Coyote Helps volunteers and provide adequate proof of their contributions. HOWEVER, volunteers would first need to get permission from whomever is requiring them to do community service to volunteer with Coyote Helps.

It would be emphasized repeatedly that Coyote Helps has no formal partnership with any company mentioned on its web site.  This nonprofit would have no formal affiliation whatsoever with Reddit, Meta, BlueSky, Mastodon, etc.  That lack of official affiliation would be really important in order to keep the effort independent.

What Exactly Would Volunteers Do?

Volunteers via Coyote Helps would make a commitment to provide on-topic, quality content to select Reddit communities (subreddits - online communities on Reddit) and to provide information on their own social media channels via BlueSky, Mastodon, Instagram, Facebook, etc. about volunteerism, volunteering, civic engagement, philanthropy and good things happening in their own community.

High-performing volunteers might be asked, or could ask, to take on additional moderation and facilitation duties for a subreddit (and possibly multiple subreddits), or even to manage other volunteers. 

These activities would be done via the volunteer's own social media or platform accounts.

Volunteers via Coyote Helps would agree to follow the nonprofit's Code of Conduct, as well as the rules and codes of other platforms.

In fact, note that  a person would NOT have to be accepted as a volunteer for Coyote Helps to do 90% of the volunteer tasks recommended. A person could just do them, on his or her own, without ever talking to me and without being affiliated with Coyote Helps. The reason to enroll as an official volunteer with Coyote Helps is so that the volunteer could get documentation from Coyote Helps that affirms what the person did as an online volunteer (and when), so that the volunteer can frame these online activities as supporting a nonprofit organization (Coyote Helps), and to get guidance from Coyote Helps leadership about online moderating and facilitating.

How to Volunteer.

To become a volunteer, a person would
I know how to supervise and support volunteers, but I'd be happy to provide more details on how I'm going to do that, if any potential board members are interested. And speaking of board members....

I need at least three board members.

I would need at least two other people to serve with me as board members for me to be eligible to make this a nonprofit. All I would ask of board members is that they:
That's it. Those are the only real obligations the board would have. Board members would have no donation requirements.

I would like to have at least two board members other than myself. Honestly, I will take as many as I can get.

I'm working on the by-laws now and will share them on this web site.

Once I have those done, once I have at least two more board members, and once I have a job and some income so I can pay for all this, I will

But the nonprofit still wouldn't start operations when I do all of that, because I need to get board liability insurance. Supposedly, annual policies for nonprofits routinely start under $500 to $750 a year for a $1 million limit. Which is great, but I don't have the money. And as I'm committed to paying for this myself, I can't do anything at all until I get a job. Only once I get the funds and am able to purchase a policy would the nonprofit start operations.

You know my email address. If you are interested in being a board member - which, right now, comes with zero responsibilities other than thinking about what you want on your biography on the list of board members - contact me.

Why won't you fundraise / solicit donations?

For the first two years, I really, really don't want to do that. I want to prove that this works before I start asking people for donations.

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