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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?

#51

Post by jamilton »

badrequest wrote: post #45
arolihas wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible if you're way of making lots of money doesn't involve scamming or exploiting people.

There is no way of amassing a huge amount of money in Capitalism without exploiting people brutally or at the very least vowing to do so.

Sure you can, for sufficiently small amounts of "huge". Lots of tech jobs make much more money than most other jobs without directly exploiting anyone. You could take issue with working for companies that are themselves unethical, but I think as long as you're not working for a particularly unethical company like Meta or a defense contractor, you're doing okay.

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

#52

Post by harlanji »

thenipper wrote: post #4
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.

The best offsites I've gone on have been working for charities/community service. Better than hanging out with drinks or doing some other random 'fun' activities by far.

I know that's not exactly the question, but adding that donating labor is also enjoyable to many workers. In my case the best was at the SF-Marin food bank, and Feed My Starving Children was fun too. Even picking up trash around a neighborhood with a work center was okay, nice to get outside.

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

#54

Post by narag »

tyingq wrote: post #19

It'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 b…

I second that. People working in small scale down-to-earth charities often needs practical immediate help.

My experience offering help to big organizations can't be worse. First was a long time ago, I was unemployed and pennyless. Some NGO appeared on tv asking for volunteers to go to Africa for some humanitarian project. I called. "Sorry, we need no more people (after an hour on air saying they desperately needed many), can you instead donate some money?"

Second time, I offered free consulting after a similar request. They rebounded me between some employees, then silence.

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

#55

Post by senthilnayagam »

There are many projects on GitHub which have been abandoned or archived, current developer does not have time to maintain it. you can find projects which interests you and work on it.

I have a concept called Fosstercare, where I planned to support Free and OSS software which people are using to be supported. but I could not pursue then, but with the advent of GPT4 and AutoGPT it makes sense to revive the idea again.

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

#56

Post by tfehring »

yreg wrote: post #16
humanistbot wrote: post #11

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.

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. Som…

Related reading: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/3p3CYauiX8oLjmwRF/purchase-f...

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

#57

Post by devsda »

KRAKRISMOTT wrote: post #48
tyingq wrote: post #19

It'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 b…

Can you bill the time as a tax write-off?

how does it work in practice? Are you expecting to offset the potential value of your donation(billable consulting hours) against your actual income ?

If true, this has so much potential for fraud and abuse that I doubt this is allowed.

Imagine a motivational speaker billing businesses for one week and "donating" time for another week to charities effectively nullifying their income.

I think write-offs are generally on cash basis and on expenses incurred.

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

#58

Post by juvvel »

This might not be the answer you're looking for, but I've frequently heard that charities are in dire need of people willing to do hands-on work instead of the "comfy" administrative stuff. Someone who is willing to guard the entrance to a DV shelter, for example, or someone to come in and do a few loads of laundry. I know we want to help with the skills we have, but it seems charities already have enough supply of people wanting to do some low-key work. Meanwhile the real problems go unsolved.

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

#59

Post by vivegi »

There are many good ways. Best way is very subjective.

Let me suggest what I did. Our company partnered with a local chapter of Habitat for Humanity and we (my colleagues and I) volunteered to help our local community housing projects with cleanup (yard and street cleanup, powerwashing sidings etc.,).

This happened on our own time. If you and your company are willing to utilize bench time, that is great.

When my son turned 16 (his birthday falls in November), we decided to go to the soup kitchen downtown and spend time helping out during the Thanksgiving holiday.

There was this time when we were raising funds for a cancer foundation. I announced I would shave my head if we crossed a certain target. It was nice to see every one of my DRs rallying the troops and campaigning to attain the target. I kept my promise when we reached the goal.

Personally, for me, putting in the hours directly in the communities was fulfilling; more so than contributing cash donations (which I have done), although the cash might have been even more impactful upon rational analysis.

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

#60

Post by seattle_spring »

KRAKRISMOTT wrote: post #48
tyingq wrote: post #19

It'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 b…

Can you bill the time as a tax write-off?

No. If you mean "deduction", then the answer is still no.
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