CommuniBlog

One of the hot topics in nonprofit land this month is the launch of AllForGood, a new site that pulls volunteer opportunities from various nonprofit websites and aggregates them to make it easier for everyone to volunteer. Techcrunch does a nice job summarizing them. They’re a big deal, with lots of press, people calling them a “craigslist of service”, etc etc.

But there also appears to be the teeniest bit of uneasiness in some pockets of the non-profit community. Some of this appears to be legitimate skepticism to All for Good’s open source and licensing arrangements, that I’d need to examine further to have a perspective on where I stand. But there’s also perhaps a bit of annoyance more related to the people than the product.

I mean, come on, who are these guys? They’re sleek and tech saavy and well connected with both the business world and some of them have ponytails! And they just appear from Google-land, invading the nonprofit space, forcing others to start using their platform that is little more than a jazzed up VolunteerMatch. It’s your idea, your life’s work, your passion, and they waltz right in and don’t just do pretty much exactly what you’re doing, but do it…do it better than you can?

I can definitely identify. This recent wave of technological advancements in the nonprofit landscape has made me seriously question my ability to become the socially entrepreneurial goddess I thought was my destiny. I’m pretty much at technologically unsaavy as you can be growing up in my generation. I am absolutely a PC, not a Mac. Google ads make me vaguely suspicious that someone is spying on my computer. And the first blog post about CommuniTeach came not from me, but from my 10 year old cousin Matthew. My fear of technology is almost embarassing, and these new developments are not good for me.

Or is it? As Ami Dar, founder of idealist.org, once said, “Technology is a tool. People are amazing”. I take this to mean that technology is not an end to itself, but it is a means. A means to reach out to others, build community, make it ever easier for people to find ways to help and learn from one another. If I truly believe the second part (and I do) then I need to come to terms with the first.

Likewise for those who feel the pressure from AllForGood. Learn from them. Examine their open source software. Leverage their resources to bring more people to your work. Even if this new, um, volunteermatch for service ends up dominating the volunteer matching space, you can use a blend of your creativity, nonprofit sensibilities, and newly acquired tech skills to enter some new even more incredible space to help the world and all the amazing people in it.

As for me, well, I had my first tweet a few days ago. @spressto. And my first Communitweet at @CommuniTeach shall soon follow.

It’s a start.