discuss: Finding Volunteers, VolunteerMatch ?
Subject:
Finding Volunteers, VolunteerMatch ?
From:
David Lawyer ####@####.####
Date:
26 Apr 2007 02:50:19 -0000
Message-Id: <20070426025029.GB5768@davespc>
To summarize the situation, I wanted to use VolunteerMatch to search
for LDP volunteers since using it one can search for "Computers and
Technology" and list their zip code as "virtual" meaning that they
will do volunteer work over the Internet. I could find no other
volunteer search website that had these options to use in a search by
potential volunteers. But unfortunately, for VolunteerMatch to accept
our ads, we would need to be classified by the IRS as a non-profit
which would require incorporation.
Another way to do this is to become part of an umbrella non-profit
corporation that may let us use their EIN number and name to give to
VolunteerMatch. Should we check out these umbrella corporations like
"Software in the Public Interest" which Debian operates under?
It's possible for LDP to get an EIN number for free which would allow
us to open a bank account (or the like) at some banks or other financial
institutions (mutual funds, stockbrokers). But our major problem is
not investing our money but recruiting volunteers.
So in the U.S. it's claimed that 8 billion person-hours are spent each
year by volunteers. How many person-hrs. does LDP need? Well,
suppose we need 25 people full time, which amounts to 50k
person-hrs/year. This is only about 6 parts in a million of the
existing volunteer time. But not everyone is qualified to work for
LDP. Perhaps only one person in a thousand would be well qualified
resulting in us needing 0.6% of all qualified volunteers. And there's
a lot of competition out there to get such volunteers. Such
volunteers would have some background in computers and likely know
some type of programming or scripting language as well as being able
to write OK. If they didn't already know Linux they would need to
learn it.
However, LDP has a lot to offer. You get to copyright what you write
in your own name and get to become an author on the Internet.
Volunteer authors will get hundreds of hits when one searches for
their names on Google.
What to do now? I think that we need to improve our website,
especially regarding new volunteers. The "need review" and "in
progress" seem to be out-of-date. Also, the spam one gets when
posting to discuss needs fixing. New authors should be referred to my
short Author-mini-howto or the like and not the long Author Guide.
Once the site is improved, then we can start recruiting from LUGs. We
could send out recruiting brochures to all the Lugs even though this
is almost like spam.
What do you think?
David Lawyer
