Posted by Richard at September 16th, 2007

Image from Global Frequency, Issue 3Yes, the first page of my all-time favorite “episode” (issue) of Warren Ellis’s late series Global Frequency. You can get the extended premise at Wikipedia (where else?), but the basic concept is that Byronic heroine makes her dough and does some good in the world by bringing together the time, talents, and brains of 1000 people she has on-call throughout the world. The major players in each episode/issue are the generic action stars, but behind the scenes are hundreds of people across the globe who are constantly using their expertise to analyze data, make recommendations, and design solutions. In one episode, an Anglo-Indian traceur is linked via mobile phone to a criminal interegator and infectious disease experts. You get the idea. Think Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, but designed to save the world from terrorists, supervillains, death metal fans, and other shady characters.

So this is my proposal, in short, which occurred to me as I was attending a volunteer orientation for a community group and regretting that I didn’t really have a large block of time each week to dedicate to helping them with the office work they really needed help with.

What if volunteer coordinators at various not-for-profits could enter tasks and times that occur in the regular life of almost any non-profit short on volunteers. A few “use cases”:

Volunteer Tasks for Anyone: A small community library (or charity book sale) gets a large delivery of books from a donor. The books need to get an initial, non-expert sorting and a quick evaluation of their condition, something no one on staff has time to do. A volunteer coordinator enters the details (location, hours, how many people are needed, basic qualifications, etc.). Potential volunteers in the area are notified by email, text, and possibly even an open note on the Web site. If you have 30 minutes over lunch, you could show up, sort a few books. If you’re off that morning, you could donate a few hours. Volunteers might require minimal supervision.
Volunteer Tasks Requiring Specific Qualifications: A mother’s day out program might have one volunteer call in sick or need to leave for two hours. The volunteer coordinator logs into a Web app, specifies the time and task, and then decides what credentials are required and what networks/groups the call should be distributed to. Depending on user preferences, qualifying potential volunteers in the area might get a text message or email with contact information.

Volunteer Virtual Tasks: The organization needs proofreaders to review the annual report. Instead of having one person come in for 8 hours to read and markup the text, the volunteer coordinator breaks the task into several pieces. All credentialed volunteers in that agency’s area or network are notified about the task. Additionally, the coordinator can choose to post an open call for potential volunteers to contact her/him about getting being approved to work on the project.

    I’m still contemplating the specifics, but essentially I’m looking for ways to bring “artificial artificial intelligence” to the volunteer world.

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