Government 2.0 Rocks the Volunteer World

If you've ever volunteered in a soup kitchen, or spent a Sunday helping a community group get a local baseball field ready for the season, then you know how good it feels to lend a hand.

The problem, as it turns out, is that finding the places that need you and matching them to your skills and schedule can be somewhat daunting.

That's left volunteerism to the retired, the unemployed, and a handful of weekend warriors.

But on a sunny Saturday afternoon, I watched the internet change the way people both ask for and find spare hands. And I watched New York City Government once again use technology to fundamentally change the way real folks can help each other with city government acting as the central meeting point.

The solution is a centerpiece to Mike Bloomberg's whole Government 2.0 initiative, NYC Service.

I put NYC Service to the test, or more to the point, watched as my college-aged son used the service. The idea was pretty straight-forward: he's home from school and has some free time other than work. He wanted to volunteer but wasn't sure who needed him or how his skills would fit with the programs in our area.

In the past -- before Service NYC -- it would have been walking around the neighborhood, knocking on doors, asking if local soup kitchens or museums had a place for local volunteers. A daunting and labor-intensive process.

But NYC Service changes all that.

He simply put in his zip code, specified the distance he was willing to travel, and listed some of his skills. The site is surprisingly functional for a government-run operation. The design is clean and functional, and most importantly there are a HUGE number of organizations looking for you to lend a hand.

The site quickly presented a list of interesting volunteer opportunities including a local museum looking for volunteer greeters, a senior citizen group asking for help shopping for groceries, and an animal welfare group looking for folks to help socialize cats.

One click away was a calendar listing the times and dates that the volunteer opportunity exists for, and a contact name and phone number. The site even hands you a pre-written email that you can click to send. Good stuff.

It's not perfect, of course -- it's the first version. The overall registration for the site is a bit buggy, and the implementation of the login (an iframe in a window) could use to be a hover-over form. But minor quibbles, to be sure.

What Bloomberg and his technology team seem to understand is that things like 311 and NYC Service are more than simple add-ons: they fundamentally rethink the role of government, connecting citizens to their community and labor to the needy.

And how is it working? It's less than three months old and volunteer groups are already seeing results. "It's been a huge help," said Matt Wright, Assistant Project Coordinator for the "I Have A Dream" program in Ravenswood, told the Queens Tribune. In June Mayor Bloomberg named the first Chief Service Office to the city -- Diahann Billings-Burford.

Burford said in a recent interview: "I think to serve, it is to sacrifice, using your best gifts, give them to someone else, for another person's benefit. Yet for those of us who engage in service, we know that in that act, we are receiving more than we are giving."

And how is it working for us? Well, after less than an hour of searching, my son found five organizations he'd like to volunteer for, and fired off emails to each of them, seeing if they need him for the rest of the summer. Less than 12 hours later, he's already gotten one response. So we'll see if Blooomberg's NYC Service site can connect hands to work -- but early results say this could be a game changer for community volunteerism.

Follow Steve Rosenbaum on Twitter: www.twitter.com/magnify

Comments

[Steve Rosenbaum - Huffpost Blogger]

I'm not sure I understand the anger here. I'm sure there are lots of great web sites connecting volunteers to opportunities. The fact that I hadn't heard of them doesn't mean they aren't valid or successful. But the City has in my mind a unique megaphone in this area - and the ability to use technology to connect organizations to volunteers. Keep in mind that I found out about NYC Service from my son, who was looking for a place to lend a hand. I don't claim to be an expert here, rather a city resident who's pleased to see the City and the Mayor leaning in to ways to improve services and improve life in the City by using technology. I'm pretty sure that if you asked 10 people on the street what sites they know about that entourage volunteerism, more than half haven't joined the 'party' yet. Doesn't NYC Service increase awareness, and therefore help any and all volunteer organizations looking to get New Yorkers off the couch? This is a great effort - hardly not the only one - but worthy of a bit of praise. A rising tide lifts all boats.

[Robert Rosenthal]

Robert here from VolunteerMatch. Gotta agree with the previous comment. The insight that technology services are helping volunteers connect with great causes is not exactly fresh news (much less a "game changer"). After all, where does the author think Service NYC is getting its listings from? In this case, the data is fed by United Way. But we've been doing it since 1998 with our own public Web site, www.volunteermatch.org, and today over 68,000 organizations participate in our network in communities across the country (without any help at all from Mayor Bloomberg). What's new today is that so many outlets are incorporating technology into their Web services to give their audiences access to volunteer networks. This post actually continues a long line of writing from so-called experts, in particular here at HuffPo, who are confusing their own "Eureka" moments about volunteering with the more than a decade of hard work that leading organizations like VolunteerMatch, Idealist, United Way, and others have done to hotwire the Internet for civic engagement. But before you call me Mr. Grouchy, I do think there's a huge need for voices like the author's who can inspire others to get involved. We need your stories too. But please, check your facts first :)

[aholder]

Interesting post. For a tech guy, I'm surprised that you're just coming to the internet volunteering party. You're a bit late; this is not a new idea. A little bit of research could have shown you that. This is a "me too" site at best. There are at least five well known sites that have been providing this service for the past 8+ years. The content in the search results is populated by them. Check em out.