discuss: Finding Volunteers, VolunteerMatch ?
Subject:
Re: [discuss] Finding Volunteers, VolunteerMatch ?
From:
Omari Norman ####@####.####
Date:
27 Apr 2007 13:52:09 -0000
Message-Id: <20070427135141.GA24966@cameron>
Great idea. I'd skip the Volunteer Match, though. That would be a better
place to search for potential Linux converts, but not such a good place
to find people who will be qualified to write about Linux.
One recruiting idea would be to find writers who are already out there,
but just aren't working on LDP. For example, look up the Wikipedia
contributors who work on Linux articles, or look up some bloggers who
write good Linux content. Targeted personal appeals might work.
Writing is a big commitment though--I should know; I'm still working on
my howto, over a year after I started!
On Wed, Apr 25, 2007 at 07:50:29PM -0700, David Lawyer wrote:
> 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
>
> ______________________
> http://lists.tldp.org/
--
Don't steal. The government hates competition.
