Site Idea- Competitive Volunteering. Wanted- Advice, Thoughts, Realistic Expectations

Virgil_Leads_You

I was wondering about the feasibility of my idea for a new networking site that focused on volunteer work.

I've seen a generous amount of media, displaying the time people dedicate to achievements, and other virtual bells & whistles. I was wondering if someone could apply the same psychological effects to volunteer work.

This would be my site idea.

It would be a social network / game, developed to both track and inspire civil and social duties. Think of it as a volunteer based, Facebook-Craigslist hybrid. “Saving the world, one odd job at a time.” (or something cheesy like that)

It would be targeted toward political activists, volunteers, socialites, and gamers.

Participants would create profiles on networks, largely organized by their town or city.

Participants, Volunteer Organizations, Activists, etc, would be encouraged to post jobs with which players would complete.
Upon completion of jobs, players would then receive experience for specific classes or skills, (Think “Level 2 Tea Bagger”, “Level 3 Moving”, "Level 8 Baby Sitter" etc.) selected or created by job posters.
Players could also earn exp by donating money to activist/volunteer groups. Eventually, jobs requesting specific classes or levels would be posted by said organizations.
Certified organizations (Political Parties, Shelters, etc.) would be marked to give some objectivity of skill importance.

A non-volunteer work based network could also be created parallel to the system, operating similarly, for local freelance type work.

Volunteer work information would be organized and recorded, and shown along with resume compiling tools/applications.
Applications would also be created to “show off” volunteer data and levels or achievements on networking sites i.e. Facebook, 4 Square, My Space, OkCupid, Xbox Live etc.
The site would breed competitive volunteering, all while giving organizations the help of streamlined, volunteer worker information.

Capital for servers and site costs would be made from adspace, or possible games ala purchase points, or from a membership cost for the potential parallel non-volunteer work account.

What do you guys think?
Also, does anyone know if this has already been done before?

Notch

My friend Winky was talking about creating a site just like this. Perhaps you two can talk and collaborate on this. He's already come up with several ideas about it.

Virgil_Leads_You

I'd be happy brainstorm with the dude. Although, I'm not so much interested in creating the thing, as I am into discussing it, and/or seeing someone else make it.

Eat it You Nasty Pig.

It seems like tracking people's volunteer hours would be the biggest technical hurdle.

Virgil_Leads_You

Maybe have time = experience pts for skills / levels.

I'm thinking that you would not be able to total the entirety all the volunteer work into one pool, due to people including club levels and non-volunteer oriented stuff.

edit
I mean, I would assume that it would just be a matter of people uploading a digit for exp, and each organization have their own value for it. You might not even need to list volunteer hours.

Eat it You Nasty Pig.

Well, tracking performance, whether you want to denominate it in raw hours or using some weighted measure.

Tracking itself would be a pretty tremendous logistical challenge, assuming you want to have mechanisms that prevent people from just outright lying. And then you have to figure out how to weight someone who's doing some gratis grantwriting against someone who volunteers with loaves and fishes or something.

I actually was part of a similar effort to this within one organization; we tracked different canvassing metrics and used them to assign people to groups (primarily for motivational purposes, but occasionally the data got used for other things.) We did it mostly for our own amusement because an intern wanted to try it out as a project and it kind of caught fire with the staff; even with defined metrics to work with (doors knocked, lawn signs, etc.), weighting them against each other was a huge challenge.

Virgil_Leads_You

Yeah, I can see that. The organization would have to check and see if the job was done and post your name on it. How they would validate that Bob passed the fliers they gave Bob would be difficult. I suppose it would be a preset amount of exp for showing up, where they give you the benefit of the doubt.

celandine

What if you offered something for the organization to log your hours -- sort of like employers do? They enter how much you worked and maybe a rating.

Why would organizations do this? Well, it's in their interest. Having an Angie's List for volunteers would permit them to be more discriminating in whom they accept. They can find experienced people and avoid the bad workers. They can also find good candidates to cold-call -- hey, there's this guy in the area who volunteers all the time, maybe he'll give you a hand. You could set up the permissions in such a way that organizations only get to use the rating/searching service if they contribute to it.

billwill

sorry to bring back a close to death thread, but does a social network for volunteering exist at all? i'm not speaking of one that tracks your hours and gives you skill levels and all that, i just mean a place like a combination of facebook/meetup where people can find volunteers and all that jazz.

because if that exists, i'd be interested in joining.

Eat it You Nasty Pig.

it's not really social networking, but idealist.org might do what you want.