Offering Free Technical help to Charity

[WotNxt]

This is an interesting idea but would be tricky to manage.

People who will give their time for free but are in other full time paid work will generally need to work out of hours and remotely. I think these are the type of people you are thinking about - the likes of the typical contractor on this board.

To work in this way you would need to break down the project into manageable packages (what size/skills?) that individuals could take on.

To prevent the silly requests you could allocate a notional budget based upon the amount of hours volunteers would commit (in advance) over the project timeline. Each work package could be estimated and there would be a finite limit to what could be fitted in and so this would give a mechanism to prioritise requirements.

Since you would be reliant on people's good nature to keep contributing you would not be able to forecast delivery dates with good accuracy - but then that is true on most projects anyway!

You would need to have some "trusted" staff to review and test the systems to ensure no "nasties" were slipped in e.g. Trojans, unlicensed stuff, etc.

The ad-hoc and remote working nature of such a project would lend itself to way the Open Source community works so maybe it would be useful to look at the way they operate.

This could be an excellent way to fill time between contracts whilst learning new skills and keeping your CV full and fresh.

It will be interesting to see how (if) this develops.

Good luck.

[TheFaQQer]

I would do something like this between contracts (if only!) but I don't do any of the things that you want for this one.

Best of luck with it all, though.

[GWilliy]

Thanks to everyone for your contributions, some interesting points have been raised.

WotNxts correlation with Open Source Projects is very interesting, does anyone know of any source code control & project management software used by open source projects or does it not use these things by it's very nature.

I'll do some investigation.

I don't see any reason why people who made contributions could'nt mention this on their CV's maybe with some kind of official thankyou.

The Graph is currently showing much as I had hoped with 50% willing to contribute if they had time.

I think utilizing some existing full time staff - Project Managers & Technical Architects - it could be possible to put something together.

Maybe a small Project first for proof of concept,

mmmmm I'll think on

GW

[TheFaQQer]

I would do something like this between contracts (if only!) but I don't do any of the things that you want for this one.

Best of luck with it all, though.

Should have said - as a consequence of not being able to help out (even if I wanted to), I've not voted. There's not even the obligatory AndyW option that I could have chosen

[thunderlizard]

Out of all the charities I know, Oxfam is the least likely to want to go down that route, simply because it's the most businesslike. It's not afraid to spend on advertising because it knows anything else would be a false economy, & I don't see why CRM would be any different. (Their CRM is flipping good as it is. Yesterday they sent me a free red AIDS ribbon "as a thankyou": today they sent me a disaster response request...)

& incidentally, Barbara Stocking has done some great stuff with it and thoroughly deserves her tenth-of-what-she'd-get-in-the-private-sector salary.

[chicane]

WotNxts correlation with Open Source Projects is very interesting, does anyone know of any source code control & project management software used by open source projects or does it not use these things by it's very nature.

The most mainstream choice for source control in open source these days is Subversion. Trac is fast becoming the mainstream choice for project management, although it's pushing it a bit to call it "project management software".

[Churchill]

Churchill
Ref

You actually posted

to which I said you should do a bit of research first & you respond with


if you click on the profile - this clearly states the Highest Salary
see this for a shortcut
http://www.intelligentgiving.com/charity/202918/numbers

Ref


Your previous comment

Clearly shows you in your true light.

Thanks for persistently trying to destroy something that is simply trying to do some good.

Annual income - what the charity received in the year £310,500,000
Annual expenditure - what the charity spent in the year £298,000,000
Admin costs - what the charity spent to run itself £1,000,000
Fundraising costs - spent to increase income £77,200,000
Reserves - spare cash the charity can use however it chooses* £43,500,000
Estimated government income** - carrying out gov't policy £23,100,000
Highest salary £90,505

Can you categorically state that from the fundraising costs, no incentives are offered to employees or freelance fundraisers?

This is where I catch him out folks...

[sasguru]

Annual income - what the charity received in the year £310,500,000
Annual expenditure - what the charity spent in the year £298,000,000
Admin costs - what the charity spent to run itself £1,000,000
Fundraising costs - spent to increase income £77,200,000
Reserves - spare cash the charity can use however it chooses* £43,500,000
Estimated government income** - carrying out gov't policy £23,100,000
Highest salary £90,505

Can you categorically state that from the fundraising costs, no incentives are offered to employees or freelance fundraisers?

This is where I catch him out folks...

What's your point?

[Churchill]

What's your point?

Fundraising costs - spent to increase income £77,200,000

Ask for a breakdown of the "Fundraising costs" and all will become clear...

Almost in the realms of £500k for webservices...

[sasguru]

Fundraising costs - spent to increase income £77,200,000

Ask for a breakdown of the "Fundraising costs" and all will become clear...

Almost in the realms of £500k for webservices...

It seems to me that if the income raised is greater than the amount spent to raise it, this is a justified cost. Are you saying this is not the case?