For IT stuff they are things ranging from: "please give us feedback on how we should redesign our site" to "design a mobile app". The design-a-mobile-app-one I looked at led to feedback that what hey really wanted was a mobile website and a good exchange with the poster. For non-IT it's like, we need a copyrighter on this one project, we need a logo, etc.
I'm curious how effective this will be for most non-profits. I would love to hear serious feedback after the fact.
Speaking for myself, I'm happy to volunteer for small non-profits, because they really need it, and ten minutes of my time can really make a difference (I just translated a 100-word paragraph about an award from German to English, for example).
But Sparked themselves are a for-profit venture. I'm not 100% sure that's going to be viable, but I'm not willing to give them my time for free if they're going to turn around and make money off it.
"Re: business model. We make money by selling the platform to corporations as a way to manage their employee volunteering programs."
Non-profits do not pay to use the platform or for any tasks completed. Large companies pay an annual fee to enable access for their employees and related reporting metrics.
The parent comment to my comment was to the effect that they could use the microvolunteering concept for their own development. To a certain extent, I could even see volunteering for them (getting the word out or something), but I personally would draw the line at actual technical work for free for a money-making venture, unless there were public karma attached or the code in question were open-sourced or something.
Sparked is created and offered by The Extraordinaries, Inc., which was founded in July of 2008 as a for-profit social enterprise (and a certified B-Corp)
The Extraordinaries is in the process of becoming a B Corp.; its business model will eventually include charging organizations a fee for each task completed, according to a report on NPR.
You got me all the way to the sign-up step! ;-) I would only want to sign-up if there were actually a task I would be interested in completing. Why get me to that point, only to have me turn away?
A simple change could have resulted in a different outcome. I went through the wizard, picked my interests, identified that I was in good company and tasks needed to be completed -- but without seeing those tasks, I really didn't want to sign up for yet another website. So, present the tasks to me! At least a summary. Then, I could have made the decision if it was something I wanted to continue with. Instead, I exited the site. Probably a lost opportunity for both of us (and the non-profits who needed assistance).
Is there any harm in presenting a summary of the tasks? Then, when I select one, register or logon to contribute. Maybe I stand alone in this hesitation to register - certainly, A/B testing with the very slight modification I describe would be a worthwhile effort.
One other bit of input - everything looks pretty clean up to the registration page. It feels "busy" to me. Also, the input boxes behave inconsistently (the hint text sometimes dims, sometimes disappears on hover state).
Good job though and I think it's a great idea. Just this past week, I wanted to volunteer my time for the holiday's but didn't really know where to start. I actually thought about calling the local chamber of commerce to see who/where/what could use my help.
This is exactly what I came to post. I had the same experience in wanting to see the opportunities available before signing up. You're definitely not alone.
I liked the idea, but I went through the 15 web design ones (the closest to programming), and its either stuff like "rate our site" or configure our site with X (joomla, zazzle, wordpress).
Its a great idea, but for programming (and I'm not saying anyone claimed differently), micro-volunteering doesn't seem feasible.
I just signed up and did an accessibility review for the Cancer Council, South Australia :)
I didn't really care about signing up to see what was available as I was curious and it was very little effort to type in my details, and a pretty quick process.
I can't see how to add my company name which I'd like to do if I'm going to continue to volunteer my time and expertise - especially if Sparked is going to be making money out of it.
One of my primary motivations for doing pro-bono work is as a P.R exercise.
It's cool - there are some very specific types of work that this will be good for and I intend to return and try and do one a week.
My only complaints?
1. The page randomly refreshed while I was typing my post and I had to retype everything (this time I drafted it OUTside the browser!!)
2. The "verify email" doesn't have a valid plain text part so I had to open the email in gmail rather than copying and pasting the link from pine into my browser.
I went ahead and signed up, although having to sit through a presentation to get that far was somewhat onerous. (The presentation was fun, though, so it wasn't that bad.) I agree with other posters that at least a sampling of tasks available should be visible right at the outset for interested experts.
There's no facility for attaching files. If your output is anything other than short text in forum format, I don't know how you're expected to proceed.
That said, there are two texts for translation from German, and that's the kind of stuff I'm happy to do. Of course, one of them was 2,390 words, which is about a day's work for most translators. I'm not sure how "micro" that is. It would take me about two hours. If I end up with a couple of hours free this week, I'll consider doing it, but it seems a little disproportionate.
But - a very interesting site overall. I'm going to hang out there and help out from time to time.
Somewhat off-topic: I was a little taken aback at how many people talk about SEO on this site. I've always thought that if you produce interesting content, SEO will take care of itself. Are people being unreasonable, or am I being dismissive? (Check all that apply...)
Hi all. Great to read your feedback on Sparked. Quick answers to some of the comments:
* I hear you about wanting to see challenges before you commit to signing up. We've got some modifications to the onboarding process in the works that are along these lines. Totally agree with you all.
* Re: business model. We make money by selling the platform to corporations as a way to manage their employee volunteering programs. We are now a certified B-corp, btw.
* Re: "micro" - we consider micro to be anything that you can conveniently fit into your day. So that could be 2 hours or 2 minutes. In all cases, it's less time and less commitment than most other forms of volunteering. We tried very very micro tasks initially (image tagging) - these took about 30 seconds each... but people didn't find these kinds of tasks interesting over time. So, we expanded how we thought about micro.
* Re: Dool: sorry that the page refreshed and you lost your answer. Haven't seen or heard of that happening before, but we're looking into it immediately to see if there's an ajax bug. Definitely not an intended behavior.
It seems like a number of requests are very similar to other existing requests. For example, many organizations are asking 'How do we improve our donation process?'. Rather than have volunteers answer the same question numerous times, it would be helpful to have a resources page that is shown to the nonprofit before they post their question. I am reminded of systems like Digg/reddit that alert you a story has already been submitted or systems like the Stack Exchange family that show duplicates and similar questions.
Instead of having volunteers copy and paste their answer repeatedly, having a page comparing and contrasting the various online platforms (PayPal, Razoo, Convio, etc) could prevent things from getting lost in the shuffle. These FAQ and Resources pages could be edited wiki-style and non-profits could periodically request reviews and additions to the wikis rather than opening up completely new support tickets.
21 comments
[ 4.3 ms ] story [ 58.7 ms ] threadI'm curious how effective this will be for most non-profits. I would love to hear serious feedback after the fact.
But Sparked themselves are a for-profit venture. I'm not 100% sure that's going to be viable, but I'm not willing to give them my time for free if they're going to turn around and make money off it.
"Re: business model. We make money by selling the platform to corporations as a way to manage their employee volunteering programs."
Non-profits do not pay to use the platform or for any tasks completed. Large companies pay an annual fee to enable access for their employees and related reporting metrics.
2) you would volunteer for a nonprofit on sparked.com at any time - regardless as to if it felt like real work.
That right? - ben
Any idea how they plan to make money?
The Extraordinaries is in the process of becoming a B Corp.; its business model will eventually include charging organizations a fee for each task completed, according to a report on NPR.
A simple change could have resulted in a different outcome. I went through the wizard, picked my interests, identified that I was in good company and tasks needed to be completed -- but without seeing those tasks, I really didn't want to sign up for yet another website. So, present the tasks to me! At least a summary. Then, I could have made the decision if it was something I wanted to continue with. Instead, I exited the site. Probably a lost opportunity for both of us (and the non-profits who needed assistance).
Is there any harm in presenting a summary of the tasks? Then, when I select one, register or logon to contribute. Maybe I stand alone in this hesitation to register - certainly, A/B testing with the very slight modification I describe would be a worthwhile effort.
One other bit of input - everything looks pretty clean up to the registration page. It feels "busy" to me. Also, the input boxes behave inconsistently (the hint text sometimes dims, sometimes disappears on hover state).
Good job though and I think it's a great idea. Just this past week, I wanted to volunteer my time for the holiday's but didn't really know where to start. I actually thought about calling the local chamber of commerce to see who/where/what could use my help.
Its a great idea, but for programming (and I'm not saying anyone claimed differently), micro-volunteering doesn't seem feasible.
I didn't really care about signing up to see what was available as I was curious and it was very little effort to type in my details, and a pretty quick process.
I can't see how to add my company name which I'd like to do if I'm going to continue to volunteer my time and expertise - especially if Sparked is going to be making money out of it.
One of my primary motivations for doing pro-bono work is as a P.R exercise.
It's cool - there are some very specific types of work that this will be good for and I intend to return and try and do one a week.
My only complaints?
1. The page randomly refreshed while I was typing my post and I had to retype everything (this time I drafted it OUTside the browser!!)
2. The "verify email" doesn't have a valid plain text part so I had to open the email in gmail rather than copying and pasting the link from pine into my browser.
There's no facility for attaching files. If your output is anything other than short text in forum format, I don't know how you're expected to proceed.
That said, there are two texts for translation from German, and that's the kind of stuff I'm happy to do. Of course, one of them was 2,390 words, which is about a day's work for most translators. I'm not sure how "micro" that is. It would take me about two hours. If I end up with a couple of hours free this week, I'll consider doing it, but it seems a little disproportionate.
But - a very interesting site overall. I'm going to hang out there and help out from time to time.
Somewhat off-topic: I was a little taken aback at how many people talk about SEO on this site. I've always thought that if you produce interesting content, SEO will take care of itself. Are people being unreasonable, or am I being dismissive? (Check all that apply...)
* I hear you about wanting to see challenges before you commit to signing up. We've got some modifications to the onboarding process in the works that are along these lines. Totally agree with you all.
* Re: business model. We make money by selling the platform to corporations as a way to manage their employee volunteering programs. We are now a certified B-corp, btw.
* Re: "micro" - we consider micro to be anything that you can conveniently fit into your day. So that could be 2 hours or 2 minutes. In all cases, it's less time and less commitment than most other forms of volunteering. We tried very very micro tasks initially (image tagging) - these took about 30 seconds each... but people didn't find these kinds of tasks interesting over time. So, we expanded how we thought about micro.
* Re: Dool: sorry that the page refreshed and you lost your answer. Haven't seen or heard of that happening before, but we're looking into it immediately to see if there's an ajax bug. Definitely not an intended behavior.
-ben rigby cto & co-founder sparked.com
Instead of having volunteers copy and paste their answer repeatedly, having a page comparing and contrasting the various online platforms (PayPal, Razoo, Convio, etc) could prevent things from getting lost in the shuffle. These FAQ and Resources pages could be edited wiki-style and non-profits could periodically request reviews and additions to the wikis rather than opening up completely new support tickets.