Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?

#1

Post by akmarinov » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 11:00 AM UTC

Hey,

I work at a service oriented dev company and from time to time we have some bench time to utilize. I'd like to keep people engaged on projects and ideally exposed them to best practices as much as possible.

What's the best way to find places to "donate" our time to certain charities or non-profit organizations?

Right now people are going out to our most used third party open source software repos and actively contributing there, but I'd like to do more of a full on apps.

Thanks

Re: Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?

#2

Post by Mizoguchi » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 11:09 AM UTC

Charities are generally incompetent at managing projects, building and maintaining products.

Considering teaching instead.

Check out Big Brothers Big Sisters mentorship program, I think your contribution there could be more impactful.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?

#3

Post by brudgers » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 1:10 PM UTC

When it comes to critical work, well run charities and non-profits typically pay for professional services.

It just isn't worth the overhead of dealing with people who believe they are doing a favor when those people are not committed.

If you want to use slack time to help charities, rent a van and drive the team down to the soup kitchen. Standing behind the counter in a hair net will build more character than being DRY.

Good luck.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?

#4

Post by thenipper » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 1:32 PM UTC

brudgers wrote: post #3

When it comes to critical work, well run charities and non-profits typically pay for professional services. It just isn't worth the overhead of dealing with people who believe they are doing a favor when those people are not committed. If you want to use slack time to help charities, rent a van and drive the team down to the soup kitchen. Standing behind the counter in a hair net will build more character than being…

Having worked at an NGO doing data work for years, this. Sadly most charities aren't in a position to easily accept outside professional help for a variety of reasons. Going down and doing work at a soup kitchen or just donating $$ will have a larger impact.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?

#5

Post by haolez » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 1:36 PM UTC

I like this take from Carlos Slim on charity: https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-WHB-3852

Basically, the best way to do charity is to first accumulate a lot of wealth. Only then will you be able to move the important pointers. Obviously controversial, but still refreshing to see a different take.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?

#6

Post by kacperlukawski » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 1:41 PM UTC

I'd say doing some sort of training might be the most beneficial thing you can bring to the NGOs. There are also organizations such as Omdena (https://omdena.com/). They solve different challenges and would probably appreciate some support, even some sort of mentorship. We supported them that way at Qdrant, and organized a semantic search workshop, while one of their local chapters was implementing a chatbot.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?

#7

Post by pogopaule » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 1:43 PM UTC

Something like that? https://github.com/protontypes/open-sustainable-technology

I contribute to https://karrot.world/ sometimes.

Also found this interesting https://hospitalrun.io/

Re: Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?

#8

Post by pella » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 1:43 PM UTC

https://www.hotosm.org/ "HOT is an international team dedicated to humanitarian action and community development through open mapping."

see --> https://www.hotosm.org/partners/volunteer-engagement

"VIRTUAL AND REMOTE VOLUNTEERING OPPORTUNITIES We can support you to quickly engage large groups of employees to help map places vulnerable to natural disasters or experiencing poverty

For the past ten years, the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) has been the global leader in community mapping, supporting humanitarian responses to nearly 100 disasters and crises. During this time we have refined virtual and remote volunteering methologies to make it easier for organizations to engage employees through digital mapping and drive social impact. As many organizations shift to remote work, we are more than ready to help you stay close to the issues that are most important for your Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) goals.

Join the Missing Maps project to improve your employee engagment and Corporate Social Responsibility programs!

What? Digital volunteering to map vulnerable unmapped places: your global workforce can quickly get started, working together on the same activity! HOT can support you with mapping training webinars across all timezones."

or just OpenStreetMap - write to https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/dev

Re: Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?

#9

Post by dbg31415 » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 1:44 PM UTC

It's hard... because you want to give your time to non-profits, but inevitably they won't be able to support or enhance what you do once you leave. Then that leaves them in a worse spot.

I do a lot of work with an animal shelter, and I remember 10-ish years ago some fancy agency came in and donated a new website... only, it took staff time to help gather requirements, and test, and we all had to go through training... and it came with some license fees, and we then had to hire more devs to work on the code since it wasn't something anyone in-house knew. (The agency offered a "discounted" maintenance rate that was still like way outside of our budget.)

Long story short, we had to throw out the nice new website after about a year, and have our in-house guys re-build a junky one that they could could support and manage. Then go through training again... and in the end, the "donation" cost us a ton of time and effort that could have been put into making the old site a little better. And... it was painful, right? Like it took another year to get things sort of where we started.

It's hard to give tech away, right? Like you have to have the supporting staff, infrastructure, knowledge... I think you'd be better off just making some money, by taking side projects, and donating the money to the charity of your choice.

Unless you're going to be a long-term volunteer, and commit to supporting and maintaining everything you build, it's generally not worth it for the org to use stuff that is beyond what the current staff can repair / re-build.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?

#10

Post by jakevoytko » Mon, Apr 03, 2023, 1:50 PM UTC

You can just donate labor to something you like or believe in. A friend of mine has done free sysadminning for a small summer camp for like 20 years. Just runs the website, does some light account management, and makes sure all of their software stays up-to-date. This kinda thing is more approachable if you know a friend of a friend who needs help, rather than trying to cold email people.