So fun to see Koodo making a day of it – complete with Jumpie House!
See my last post on the launch of micro-volunteering in Canada – pioneered by Koodo Wireless – and powered by Sparked. Thanks to @DebWeinstein for the photo.
October 15, 2011
Jumpie House! Microvolunteering! Launch Photos from KoodoNation.com
October 13, 2011
Microvolunteering comes to Canada with KoodoNation
We’re really excited to announce that Koodo, one of Canada’s leading wireless providers, has just launched KoodoNation – Canada’s first microvolunteering network – powered by Sparked. It’s been many months in the making and we’re super excited to see it take off. Check it out at www.koodonation.com
Here’s a bit from their press release:
TORONTO, Oct. 12, 2011 /CNW/ – Koodo is very excited to announce Canada’s first online microvolunteering community: koodonation.com. Koodo’s mission in business has always been to redefine mobility; today Koodo is proud to support a social change movement that is redefining volunteering across Canada. An entirely not-for-profit, grassroots community, supported and powered by Koodo, koodonation.com allows consumers and Canadian charities to work together where a huge percentage of Canadians spend their time – online — with the concept of microvolunteering.
And be sure to visit: www.koodonation.com – Screenshot below.
September 23, 2011
A big Salute to Winner of Mashable’s Startups for Good Challenge
We just got the word back from Jacob in NYC who is representing Sparked in Mashable’s Startups for Good Challenge -where we’re one of 8 startups selected for the finals. And the winner is …SunSaluter – an amazing company with a product developed by a 19-year old Wunderkind… it’s a solar powered coil system that adjusts the direction of solar panels to increase efficiency by up to 40%. So, hooray for SunSaluter! And thanks so much to Mashable for selecting us to be a part.
August 25, 2011
Sparked named one of Mashable’s 8 Startups Changing the World!
This is fantastic!
We were selected as a finalist in Mashable’s Startups For Good Challenge. Now onto NYC for the final finals. And we’re in great company. Can’t wait to meet everyone there.
August 1, 2011
Captain’s Report: Nonprofit Happiness, part 2.
This post is by Jenny Li, summer intern at Sparked hailing from UMich. Jenny spent the summer improving Sparked’s nonprofit experience. This is her last report.
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As Captain of Nonprofit Happiness, I’ve spent the summer figuring out what makes nonprofits happy. As discussed earlier, we found that successful challenges make nonprofits happy, and that there are controllable factors for challenge success. Looking back at all the challenges from the beginning of Sparked to February of this year, historically, 47% of nonprofits are happy (have closed a challenge and marked it successful) while 15% are unhappy (marked their challenge as unsuccessful), and 37% don’t close their challenges, which means that we don’t know much about their state of mind.
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Armed with this knowledge, I came up with tactics to increase nonprofit happiness, and tested them on challenges that came in during a two-week period. If successful challenges are instrumental to nonprofit happiness, then I would guide all challenges so that they would have all the factors for challenge success. As reported in my initial post, the reasons for failure usually have to do with poorly written challenges.
I began by emailing nonprofits suggestions for changes, such as uploading resources for design challenges, clarifying information, and adding links to information. Moving on from email, I also commented on challenges, sending in suggestions to add more information. I also directly manually edited some of the challenges–small things like correcting hyperlinking and spacing, adding links, changing formatting, improving challenge titles. So did monitoring 241 challenges improve happiness?
The numbers definitely look better–though the percentage of expired challenges are higher than historic (nonprofits tend to take a while to close challenges – I’ve seen challenges get closed quite a while after expiration). The percentage of closed challenges marked successful are also higher than historic, and even better, the percentage of closed challenges marked unsuccessful is much lower. This is great! Even though 50% of the challenges in the two-week period are still open, these numbers are looking pretty good. So which tactics should the Captain of Nonprofit happiness continue to do and which ones didn’t work?
Emailing the nonprofits was not very successful. Nonprofits responded best to comments posted directly on their challenge pages… this tactic resulted in edits to the challenge title and brief that resulted in better responses by volunteers and better overall results.
February 4, 2011
A snapshot of Sparked’s global reach
I ran a batchgeo report today for an investor report and was blown away by the sheer number of cities in the world that have concentrations of Sparked volunteers. Clearly, we have much more of a global presence this month than we did last month, and it’s growing. Click the image below for a close-up!
January 3, 2011
Microvolunteering Monday: Help Health Nonprofits with Online Giving, Logos, Thank You Letters, Business Cards and Social Media
Welcome to the first 2011 edition of Microvolunteering Monday, where we highlight a sampler of microvolunteering challenges on Sparked. This week's Microvolunteering Monday is focused on challenges posted by nonprofits working on Health issues.
To start working on one of these micro-volunteering challenges, log into your Sparked account. Also, if you know of other health-related nonprofits that could use help from the Sparked microvolunteering network, send them a link to the nonprofit sign-up page.
Cancer Services of Northeast Indiana needs your help with:
- Writing a witty thank you letter
- Optimizing their website for online giving
Chimo Animal Assisted Therapy needs your help with:
- Designing a logo
Miami-Dade Area Health Education Center needs your help with:
- Social media tips
- Brainstorming 5 revenue-generating ideas
Moebius Syndrome Foundation needs your help with:
- Creating a newsletter template
Philos Help needs your help with:
- Brainstorming ways to use social media to get the word out about their fundraising campaign
- Optimizing their website for online giving
Progressive Health Partnership needs your help with:
- Designing a business card
- Identifying bloggers they should connect with
Britt Bravo writes for the Sparked.com blog and her personal blog, Have Fun, Do Good.
December 20, 2010
Micro-volunteering Monday: Design logos, T-shirts, Twitter backgrounds, badges
We’re experimenting with a new blog post series, Micro-volunteering Monday, where we highlight a sampler of micro-volunteering challenges up on Sparked. This week’s Micro-volunteering Monday is focused on Design.
To start working on one of these, or other micro-volunteering challenges, log into your Sparked account.
If you work for a nonprofit that needs help with a design challenge, create an account for your organization on Sparked, and post your challenge.
- Atlas Corps
Design a unique background image for our Twitter account - Blue Planet Foundation
Design a logo for our “Be the Change” clean energy campaign - Hope Phones
We need a simple but sharp banner-style photo for the Hope Phones Facebook Page. - Save a Mother
How can we make our website better? List 5 Things - Sparked (that’s us!)
Design a badge for Micro-volunteering on MLK Day - Sustainable Coastlines
Design branding for our YouTube channel - World Food Program USA
Design a T-shirt for the World Food Program USA
Britt Bravo writes for the Sparked.com blog and her personal blog, Have Fun, Do Good.
December 17, 2010
Sparked.com Facebook Page, Twitter Feed + #microvolunteering
To coincide with the launch of Sparked.com, the world's first micro-volunteering network, we've also created a new Sparked.com Facebook Page and Twitter feed, @SparkedCom.
We hope you'll join us in both places to chat about how micro-volunteering can change the world! Be sure to add the hashtag #microvolunteering to your tweets so that we can follow your micro-volunteering ideas, stories and news.
Britt Bravo blogs for the Sparked.com blog and her personal blog, Have Fun, Do Good.
December 8, 2010
A definition of Micro-volunteering
I've just been trolling around the Web reading articles about micro-volunteering. My summary is that there is a heckofa lot of excitement around the concept. But there is also some confusion as to what exactly it is – along with some conflation of the concept of micro-volunteering with a particular implementation of it. So, I will tender a definition (one that we've been using internally for a couple of years), but that we haven't yet presented formally. And here it is:
Micro-volunteering has four defining characteristics:
1. Convenient. It's volunteerism that fits into your schedule when you have time – typically (but not necessarily) via an internet connected device such as a mobile phone or personal computer. In practice, to achieve this level of convenience, there is often no training or vetting necessary.
2. Bite-sized. Volunteer tasks are broken into small(-ish) pieces, so that you can complete a task in the time that you have available (whatever that time may be).
3. Crowdsourced. The nonprofit that needs help asks a large(-ish) group for assistance. Micro-volunteers who have the time, interest, and skills (ideally), and who may be previously unknown to the nonprofit, do the work.
4. Network-managed. The time demands of the manager (e.g. a nonprofit staffer) are reduced by distributing as much of the project management and quality review as possible to the network of micro-volunteers. This work management method differs from a top-down model of project management.
Comments welcome!
-ben
[edited Dec. 8: broke out network-managed into "crowdsourced" and "network-managed"]
[edited Dec. 17: minor verbiage update]
