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Nonprofit Mashups, AngelWish and KarmaGeek.org

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Shimmy Mehta of Angelwish.org initiated a discussion on taking developer skills and leveraging them to help local nonprofit organizations. Taking an example from Angelwish.org, which makes it easy for people to grant wishes to children living with HIV/AIDS anywhere in the world (wish granting in the US and UK is facilitated through Amazon.com).

Shimmy raised the idea that each of us as developers have the ability to really increase the efficiency of our local nonprofits with basic IT support or with a mashup based on the particular needs of the nonprofit. An example might be to help a "meals on wheels" program insert delivery information and meal information into google maps to provide the delivery volunteers with a clear map of where to go. This simple, low maintenance creation might save them a great deal of time.

Kevin Lawver has registered karmageek.org (wiki) to start a community where non-profits can find help from developers and other content area experts.

Needed: volunteers to KarmaGeek get off the ground and start operating today.

Proposed strategic plan for KarmaGeek.org:

  1. Charity fills out grant application with their project specifics. Choose categories: 2 hours, 2 days, 2 weeks, 2 months, 2 years
  2. KarmaGeek's volunteers develop/write RFP's on behalf of grantees
  3. Vendors/Service Providers with people on the beach, PR needs, need to develop new areas of expertise within their organization, etc. BID for RFP's
  4. KarmaGeek chooses the best vendor/service provider and solidifies contract between service provider and charity
  5. Karmageek monitors project progress and rates/critiques upon completion. Somehow manages reputaation process in a way that remains grateful to pro-bono service providers and doesn't hurt their businesses.

The Business Development needs for this initiative are as follows:

Do some more research to avoid duplication of effort/determine if we can integrate this program into an existing organization to avoid the hassle of registering as a separate 501c3 organization.

  1. Start by getting a bunch of web shops and teams of geeks, as well as individual developers and project managers, signed up and committed.
  2. Create a community interaction page/forum where different members of this community can suggest to others that they join together to bid for an RFP, etc. Great way for programmers to meet and connect with other folks!
  3. KarmaGeek maintains geeks' commitment to join, gives marquis PR to members: banners for the larger webshops, links to sites for the individual contributors... the point is that the suppliers are getting some positive publicity and linkage in return for their helping out
  4. Once this infrastructure is in place, approach the non-profit community through networking and listservs to start to receive project applications

Folks who helped talk about this:

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