The Extraordinaries…transformative microvolunteering tool, tricky profit-making company, or something in-between?

NPR had an interesting article yesterday about The Extraordinaries, a new social entrepreneurship start-up that enables people to micro-volunteer through their mobile phones. I go back and forth about this concept, in part because it collides with many pre-concieved notions about my favorite types of social ventures.

1. I think that volunteering should be about building lasting relationships with people and organizations. The Extraordinaries promotes volunteering in 3 minutes or less.

2. I think technology should be primarily used by the social sector to encourage people to connect in real life. The Extraordinaries involves connecting with people through your mobile phones.

3. I believe that everyone should be able to contribute and help one another. The Extraordinaries currently is only open to people with super snazzy smart phones with expensive monthly plans.

4.  I get uncomfortable when social entrepreneurship organizations develop methods of revenue generation that don’t jive with their mission or otherwise seem questionable. The Extraordinaries, which encourages volunteerism, plans to make money by charging organizations for each volunteer task. That feels questionable.

The first two points are pretty self explanatory, and certainly not organization deal breakers. Longer, sustained volunteering is probably better than The Extraordinaries‘ approach, but people are busy and it’s better than nothing. Transformative? Perhaps not. But neat? Certainly. And the third one is probably me being a little unfair.

But I’m still a little skeptical, however, on point 4, The Extraordinaries‘ business model. According to the NPR article, “Not a nonprofit, The Extraordinaries is in the process of becoming a B Corp., a social entrepreneurial enterprise. The company plans to make money by charging organizations a per-task fee. ” Say what? From what I understand, that means that The Extraordinaries is profiting from every “volunteer” action a well-meaning professionals provides.  This is theoretically justifiable if you’re a nonprofit trying to sustain your org (although I wouldn’t like it then either). But as a “B Corp” company trying to make money at the end of they day, it feels wrong.

Their volunteers are actually more like unpaid contractors, working for The Extraordinaries and making money for them through nonprofit labor, but compensated only by the fuzzy feeling of doing good.

Now, to be clear, there is nothing wrong with an organization doing good while doing well. There are plenty of great organizations and companies that earn money in ways I accept and applaud. And our own revenue model has not been refined. But I don’t know. Their approach would be like CommuniTeach telling all the teachers that they had to teach for free because they were doing good for society, but then furtively charging the learners for each class they take and keeping the cash.

So yeah…I don’t know. The jury is still out on my opinion of The Extraordinaries. What do you think?