Be the most expensive consultant for traditional for-profits that you can with your spare time, and donate that money directly to the causes of your choice.
Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?
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Re: Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?
#12As board member of various non-profits here's my advice on this:
Contribute to a few OSS projects. Don't donate 5 hours to humane society of brooklyn or wherever you are based. That won't move the needle much for humane society, might even cause larger tech debt problems, and who knows what else. Well run charities pay for ongoing professional services.
So here's what I'd do if you know of a charity that your team cares about, ask them what tools they use, what challenges they have with those tools, are there any features they wish existed. If multiple orgs have these similar issues, then work on some open source solution or cheap solution + really good documentation for it, and offer that up.
Re: Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?
#13I think most benefit would be to come in as a consultant or trainer for a few hours. Share some of the best practices from your world and create some knowledge transfer to similar professionals in the nonprofit world. Nonprofits tends to be behind for profit when it comes to things like source control, project management, and architecture.
Re: Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?
#14I 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.
But then you get folks like Sam Bankman-Fried, who long claimed exactly this as his motivation for his crypto business.
The question is, is it likely, or even possible, to be motivated to make lots and lots of money, and then have that process of earning lots and lots of money not affect you? Is everyone who chases a seven-figure-income destined to eventually become an asshole?
Re: Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?
#15Personally, I use my spare time towards organizing a group that supports and nurtures developer communities in my area [1].
My organization is itself a 501c3, and our charitable mission is to provide developers with opportunities to learn and network. We do this by organizing monthly technical meetings, networking events, career panels, and hackathons. All at no cost to our members (no fees, tickets, or dues).
We also provide support to a larger network of meetup groups in the Tampa Bay area [2]. These groups are more specialized into specific disciplines/areas of interest. Many of these died out during the pandemic so rehabilitating that scene is an important mission for us as well.
Re: Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?
#16Be the most expensive consultant for traditional for-profits that you can with your spare time, and donate that money directly to the causes of your choice.
This is usually the most efficient approach in regards of impact.
However, there is a case for volunteering directly for cause one is passionate about — you feel more fulfilled, it is enriching, you get to know people who care about the same things you do, you have a chance to be involved in making decisions and so on.
A friend (software engineer) recently spent some time helping some organization to plant trees. Some other friends (also engineers) make lighthearted fun of him, saying that his time would be much better spent making money and then donating it to someone else to plant the trees. But I don't think he made the wrong decision.
Re: Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?
#17If you're in the US or Canada check out FIRST Robotics Mentor Network: https://info.firstinspires.org/mentor-network
You would be helping out teams of high school students build and program their robots for competitions. This generally happens around January-April but most teams also work on their skills in the off-season.
I do this in an in-person capacity but virtual mentorship opportunities are available as well. Topics that are helpful for the team to learn in the coding space would be Java and code management best practices (mostly Git). If you have a bit of mechanical knowledge that can help as well.
I just came back from a competition happening on the weekend and it's a very rewarding experience.
Note that you'd need a Youth Protection screening (in Canada it's basically a Vulnerable Sector Screening with the police) because you'd be working with kids.
Re: Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?
#18One way could be to work with a tech collective that supports different causes. Riseup (riseup.net) is one. It may be more of sysadmin and platform work than developing apps though.
Unless you can commit for a longer term, it probably may not be worth their while.
Re: Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?
#19It's been a while, but the most rewarding experience I had in this space was engaging directly with a small local charity. I just pitched them the idea of me getting 10 minutes with every worker that had to use a PC as part of what the charity did. I used the time to interview them, and try to identify something that affected the largest swath of workers.
As it turned out, what I helped them with wasn't code, but a bit of configuration and tuning, but they said it honestly created about a hour of time back per day for most of the workers. There was part of a flow that would often grind a long time and/or error out. Making that fast and reliable was the best low-effort thing I could deliver.
Re: Ask HN: Best way to “donate” dev hours to charity?
#20My city has a nonprofit called Code for Good [1] that is specifically focused on getting the tech & design community together to help other local nonprofits. I've volunteered with them countless times and the events are always super impactful. Maybe you've got something similar locally?
It also might be worth developing a program yourself if you're passionate enough about it. There are a few dev shops in my city that run their own charity projects every year where they invite nonprofits to submit proposals for the work they need done, and then the shop picks a few projects to work on for free. Those seem to be super popular as well.