{"id":242,"date":"2011-06-07T15:09:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-07T15:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coyoteblog.posterous.com\/short-term-tasks-for-tech-volunteers"},"modified":"2017-05-16T20:05:28","modified_gmt":"2017-05-17T03:05:28","slug":"short-term-tasks-for-tech-volunteers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/2011\/06\/short-term-tasks-for-tech-volunteers\/","title":{"rendered":"Short-term tasks for tech volunteers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There are a variety of ways for nonprofits, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), schools, government agencies and other mission-based organizations to involve volunteers to help with <em>short-term <\/em> projects relating to computers and the Internet, and short-term assignments are what are sought after most by potential &#8220;tech&#8221; volunteers. But there is a disconnect: most organizations have trouble identifying short-term tech-related projects.<\/p>\n<p>Back in 2005, myself and by members of <a href=\"http:\/\/forums.techsoup.org\/cs\/community\/f\/\" target=\"_blank\">TechSoup Global&#8217;s Volunteers and Technology online discussion group<\/a> brainstormed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.coyotecommunications.com\/volunteer\/techvolideas.html\" target=\"_blank\">a list of short-term projects for tech volunteers<\/a>. I&#8217;ve added a lot to it over the years &#8211; and <strong>just updated the list yet again this week<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>These <a href=\"http:\/\/www.coyotecommunications.com\/volunteer\/techvolideas.html\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>one-time, short-term volunteering assignments<\/strong><\/a> might takes a few days, a couple of weeks or maybe a month to complete. But each has a definite start date and end date, shouldn&#8217;t go on longer than a month (<em>maybe<\/em> two) and does not require a volunteer to make an ongoing commitment to the organization &#8211; once an assignment is done, the volunteer can move on to another assignment, or stop volunteering with the organization altogether.<\/p>\n<p>There are also many long-term, ongoing assignments for tech volunteers, of course, such as web design, web site management, being on-call for tech problems, backing up systems, producing live online events, etc. But before an organization involves volunteers in such high-commitment endeavors, the organization should consider creating a few <a href=\"http:\/\/www.coyotecommunications.com\/volunteer\/techvolideas.html\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>short-term assignments<\/strong><\/a>, to get used to working with tech volunteers and to help staff identify the best candidates for longer-term assignments.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tags<\/strong>: <span style=\"color: #808080;\"><em>volunteering, volunteers, episodic, microvolunteer, microvolunteering, engagement, engage, community, outreach, staff, employees, civil society, technology, help, IT, ICT, ICTs<br \/>\n<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There are a variety of ways for nonprofits, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), schools, government agencies and other mission-based organizations to involve volunteers to help with short-term projects relating to computers and the Internet, an&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20],"tags":[51,226,737,477],"class_list":["post-242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community-volunteer-engagement","tag-apps4good","tag-hackathon","tag-hacks4good","tag-tech4good"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3fFJB-3U","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=242"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3244,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/242\/revisions\/3244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}