We’re in the Globe and Mail!

Today, Urbantastic was featured in the Globe’s Life section. It’s a tremendous milestone for us. Perhaps this will be a break-thru moment for micro-volunteering?

The article is below:

Too busy to volunteer? Not if you’ve got a spare couple minutes

Ben Johnson knows you want to do some good, you just might not want to do it all the time.

As he sees it, most organizations want volunteers to jump right into a long-term relationship, whereas many people would rather start with a first date, or maybe just have a fling.

“There needs to be a way to have a first-time experience,” says Mr. Johnson, co-founder of Vancouver-based micro-volunteering website.

Traditionally, non-profit organizations have asked that volunteers make an open-ended commitment to perform tasks that may not reflect their special skills, which often makes recruitment difficult. Micro-volunteering, however, offers people the chance to do specific tasks they are ideally suited to, and to do so in bite-size chunks.

Most of the tasks posted on Urbantastic require a few hours or a few days work at most, Mr. Johnson says.

Organizations have used the site to recruit help in writing grant proposals, creating websites and even sewing book bags.

Kevan Gilbert, project manager of creative technologies at Vancouver’s Union Gospel Mission, used the site to get help on several projects, including a report on technology that would allow donations via texting.

Online outsourcing saves non-profits the trouble of creating positions for volunteers, he says. “They can work in the areas of their specialty from the comfort of their home and still make a huge difference.”

Earlier this year, Mike Rowlands was on the Urbantastic website when he saw that New Hope Community Services, a Vancouver-based agency that assists immigrants, was looking for help in how to use software to keep in touch with donors. In particular, the agency wanted to know details about Salesforce.com, a website for customer relationships management.

It was an easy question for Mr. Rowlands, 37, the president of Octopus Strategies, a Vancouver firmthat provides brand, communication and fundraising strategies.

“I just shed some light on implementations of Salesforce that we’ve done with clients and shared some best practices,” he says. “That’s really the nice thing with Urbantastic, you can just jump on and answer a couple of questions and make a contribution that’s actually really valuable because it’s simply expertise that they don’t have in-house.”

Or you could make a difference wherever you happen to be, and in less time than a commercial break.

The Extraordinaries, a San Francisco-based organization launched in 2007, is capitalizing on the fact most people have a cell phone to deliver micro-volunteering opportunities to mobile phones.

“People are excited to figure out that they can use two minutes of their spare time to connect with something they’re passionate about using their phone or personal computer,” says co-founder Jacob Colker.

The site has a tool that lets users tag photos to help a museum catalogue its photo collection, he says, and another tool that collects photographs snapped on a mobile phone or taken with a digital camera.

First Aid Corps, a coalition that is working to improve survival rates of cardiac arrests, is using the Extraordinaries site to build a database of defibrillator locations around the world by asking people to upload pics of defibrillators along with location information.

Asking people to upload a photo from a cell phone is an ideal way for non-profits to reach out to younger people, says Ruth MacKenzie, president of Volunteer Canada.

“They’re strapped for time but they want to contribute. So they want to know that when they go in to an agency or when they work at an agency they’ve got something very specific to work on and they know the amount of time it’s going to take and they know when it’s going to be over.”

While roughly 46 per cent of Canadians volunteer in one form or another, 11 per cent of those people do about 77 per cent of the volunteer work, she says. “And those people are over the age of 55.”

Many non-profits have yet to embrace the new model. “Many of them are still recruiting for the more traditional concepts of volunteering, which is long-term opportunities and people who will make a consistent commitment on a weekly basis and they’ll do it for 20 years,” says Ms. MacKenzie. “That is the kind of volunteer that is pretty rare these days.”

Dave McGinn

From Tuesday’s Globe and MailPublished on Tuesday, Dec. 22, 2009 9:27AM ESTLast updated on Tuesday, Dec. 22, 2009 9:51AM EST

Vancouver’s Twestival Upcoming - Time to Vote!

Did you know that Twestival is coming up on September 12, 2009? Twestival is an international movement where people meet offline for one night, have fun and do some good for an important cause in the process. Twestival Local gives cities an opportunity to select a local cause to support. Votes are being taken now to determine which charity will be sponsored. Go now to vote! http://twtpoll.com/booq9p

Expansion!

In the next couple weeks we will be adding new cities. To us, this is a major milestone. We call it, “going National”. That definitely sounds like a milestone, even if it just means a few cities. Anyway, we’re not dead set on where we want new Urbantastic sites to pop up so… Do you have any suggestions? What two cities should Urbantastic expand to next?

Anything but Hamilton and Red Deer :)

Posted via email from Benjamin Johnson’s Blog | Comment »

The Leaderboard!

This week we quietly turned on a new feature on Urbantastic, the leaderboard. Since the idea’s first sketching on our company whiteboard we’ve envisioned a leaderboard as an integral part of the site. This is the beta version of that dream. In the future, we want the leaderboard to rank the organizations on the site in as many ways as we can. I thought I’d take some time to describe the role a leaderboard plays.

Laurel Lapworth has written the best article to date on the subject, and so I will summarize her main points as best as I can.

First, a leaderboard is a list.

Ours is a list of members getting things done. Our currency is the credits organizations dole out to value tasks and reward members for doing good.

Leaderboards show currency, and value.

In one virtual world, there were two leaderboards – one for the member with most ingame gold, the other for the most generous with donations. This kept hoarding down to a minimum – the Warren Buffet/Bill Gates of the virtual world would amass billions and then donate it to guilds on their server. Interesting behaviour. They spent a lot of time to gather resources so they could make massive cyberdonations of pixel currency.

We’re hoping to use our credits in a similar fashion. Hopefully it won’t sound so incredibly nerdy and utterly devoid of meaning :).

The leaderboard recognises their value to the community in which they are placed.

As of today’s post, most of the leaders are a) the co-founders (Heath and I), and b) our biggest supporters. Go figure. Without those leaders, this site would not exist. Without new leaders, this site won’t grow.

It can help a community search, filter and reward participants.

Leaderboards are a shared experience. Those on the list see their work recognized, while new members are given an example to emulate. Not surprisingly, most of the top ten have profile pictures, detailed bios, and successful examples of micro-vounteerism on their profiles. If you’re looking to get started, there are others leading by example.

Final Comments:

There is a competition element to a leaderboard, but I don’t believe it’s a significant motivator for a site like ours. Most crucial for volunteers like me is the sense of trust that precedes future volunteer experiences. As expected, every organization has a vetting process when a newbie wants to volunteer (references, resume, retinal scan). However, that barrier tends to turn great people away, especially when it’s for the umpteenth time. Our goal, and that of the leaderboard, is to add familiarity and trust to every new experience. That’s how we hope to build community. Kind of ironic that the Internet is facilitating this eh?

Benjamin

Food and Ideas

I want to forward along an email I received last night from one of Urbantastic’s most active members, Kevan Gilbert. He works at Union Gospel Mission as the coordinator of interactive design, and is a board member at New Hope Community Services. Here’s what he had to say:

Hey guys,

If you’re in town this Saturday, there’s a couple events you might dig: ethnic food and good workshops.

The food part: crazydelicious ethnic cuisine to raise money for a charity in Vancouver called New Hope (They help refugees get settled in Vancouver / I help out these guys with a bit of volunteer work.) We’re talking tandoori chicken, vegetarian and meat samosas, fancy rice, Indian, Malaysian, African food and more. $30 is the cost — you should come! You can save yourself a seat on the website. [See task to help out!]

The SECOND one is an unconference called Vancouver Change Camp. It’s happening on Saturday at BCIT’s downtown campus, and it’s all about learning how the web is becoming central to government and non-profits making serious change. I actually get the chance to SPEAK at the conference, leading a 45-minute session about non-profit web strategy. (Forget my session, though, there’s a guy from Google speaking, too!) It’s $25 at the door for the full day. More info here: http://vanchangecamp.wordpress.com/

Microvolunteerism Defined

Until recently, there was no clear definition of micro-volunteering. We decided to take a stab and included it into our About page. And, while we’ve we’ve had some people attempt to define it, this has just muddied the waters. Quite often, the activities are indeed small, but restricted to Twitter, mobile phones, or some other medium. We feel that this is best described as virtual volunteering.

Virtual volunteering has been around for thirty years, but first became popular when Impact Online sprang to life in 1996. It struggled for years and has since been renamed Volunteermatch . Wikipedia gives a great definition, but the gist is that virtual volunteering occurs remotely using technology as a medium. It is to volunteering what telecommuting is to working. My grudge against it, and why I don’t want it confused with micro-volunteering, is that it strips bare the social engagement aspect that is essential for community building.

A look back at Wikipedia and we see three major benefits to volunteering listed: economic, social, and individual career benefits. Putting aside that any labour, paid or otherwise, contributes to GDP, volunteering benefits both society and the individual. What separates volunteering from an internship then is the societal benefits - building more cohesive communities, fostering greater trust between citizens and developing norms of solidarity and reciprocity that are essential to stable communities. This cannot be done through virtual volunteering.

Micro-volunteering is now listed in Wikipedia with reference to our definition and to an article written by Joanne Fritz of About.com. It’s my hope that this entry will bring clarity. A 2004 Ipsos-Reid study labeled 24% of British Columbians as “ready-made recruits”: ones who would volunteer if only the opportunity were more personal and convenient. This confirms what we’ve found: that there is space between regular volunteering, with its associated long-term commitments, and
disengagement. We call what happens in this space micro-volunteering.

Volunteering is a leap of faith, especially with a new organization, new people, or in a new city. It’s also a necessary leap if we want to build a trusting, caring and stable community.

Urbantastic’s primary goal is to make it easier to get involved.

-Benjamin

An Urbantastic Update

Once again, I thought you might enjoy catching up with Urbantastic’s activities. The last time I gave an update was February 26th. An incredible amount has changed since then.

Here are some statistical updates:

• The site has been live for 116 days.
• Over 100 people have joined.
• Over 500 people are following us on Twitter.
• Heath and I have been working together for nine months.
• Site traffic has tripled since the last update.

Back on February 26th, once a person signed up there wasn’t much to do aside from read the news or join an Org’s Posse. Today it’s a completely different world. The news now has a comment feature, and Orgs are now asking questions, posting tasks, and rewarding people for great work. Nine organizations are offering a wide variety of ways to get involved right now. Check it out!

We’ve also been featured by a number of bloggers from Miss 604, to UQ Events, Techvibes, Notes for Non-Profits, and Jessica of YumoRama. This has been a fantastic experience and I appreciate every ounce of support we’ve received.

Not only have we been connecting with bloggers, but we’ve met with:

• Marc at Amuse Consulting
• Emily at Kitsilano Neighbourhood House
• Lauryn at Volunteer BC
• Grace & Ryan at Invoke Media
• Michelle at Take a Hike

And more!

Our goal over the next 60 days we’ll be to continue building our hyper-local audience through social media and also perhaps the traditional media (fingers crossed). Heath will continue to pound away on the keys to create an even better site, and I will be preparing a seminar on communication, micro-volunteering & Gen Y in the late Summer. We’re also planning a special surprise…

As before, until the next update I’ll leave you with this quote:

No person will make a great business who wants to do it all himself or get all the credit. - Andrew Carnegie, Industrialist & Philanthropist.

Benjamin

Moving From Passion to Compassion Marketing

I was reading the latest copy of The Economist this morning and found a great quote that I must pass on. The article entitled, “From buy, buy to bye-bye” chronicles the change in consumer behavior stemming from the current economic downturn. First, marketer John Gerzma peaked my attention with the quote I stole for the title of this post, “There will need to be a move from passion to compassion in marketing”. If you’re in the non-profit sector, what does this mean?

Here’s what really caught my attention:

The downtown will also accelerate the use of social media, such as blogs and social-networking sites, by consumers looking for intelligence on firms and their products. As trust in brands is eroded, people will place more value on recommendations from friends. Social media make it harder for brands to pull the wool over consumer’s eyes, but they also offer companies a powerful new challenge through which to promote their wares and test new products and pricing strategies.

…For one thing is clear: this recession has triggered a wholesale reappraisal by shoppers of the value their habitual brands deliver.

What again, does this mean for non-profit organizations and their brands? I think there is great opportunity here for organizations to position themselves in the public psyche as the most genuine and most compassionate ‘brand’ to associate with. The trick? Engage, engage, engage.

Benjamin