discuss: Thread: Finding Volunteers, VolunteerMatch ?

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progress" seem to be out-of-date.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

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.

On Fri, Apr 27, 2007 at 09:51:41AM -0400, Omari Norman wrote:
> 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.

VolunteerMatch gets millions of visitors per year and I think that
thousands of such visitors could write about Linux if they first put
some time into studying it and using it (if they didn't already
know/use it).  However, many of those potential volunteers wouldn't
find us even if we were on VolunteerMatch, and others that are
qualified wouldn't want to do it.  But if we could just get one
volunteer every few months it would be a big help because people that
use volunteer match have time to volunteer (otherwise they would not
be seeking a volunteer position).  So the people you do get from
VolunteerMatch are likely to have more time than volunteers recruited
via the Linux community and thus make a much more substantial
contribution to the work of LDP.

> 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.

Good idea and add Linux LUGs to the list.  Finding writers already
writing takes more time but then you have a sample of their writing to
evaluate for clarity and accuracy.  We need a volunteer to do this.

			David Lawyer