Pro Bono!
I have been volunteering with non-profits for quite
some time on many different projects, and I find that
working pro-bono is not all that easy. Finding
projects to work on is the toughest part. I signed up
with Taproot Foundation, which matches
your skills with organizations that need your
help. A great idea! It satisfies one's
conception of what is perfect! You have skills,
you want to help, organizations need your help,
Taproot brings you together. Tada!
They had a lot of marketing and design projects (my area of expertise), which I found very unusual and appealing. I was excited about the work they do, the competence level of volunteers, the organizations they work with. It seemed very impressive. I could see a lot of non-profits benefitting from skilled volunteers with a design background, because design projects are otherwise expensive as hell! Even companies that work specifically with non-profits charge exorbitantly for design work! I considered approaching Taproot not only to volunteer, but also for my organization. So I did! I signed up to volunteer, attended the orientation, uploaded my resume and was raring to get started!
It has been disappointing so far. There is a fair bit of competition among volunteers, because you sometimes have to bid for projects or are put on a waiting list before they call you and put your through a few rounds of interview. At the end of the process you are either "yay"ed or "nay"ed.
I have been "yay"ed by Taproot, but I still find this process absurd. Finding a paid, full-time position in a non-profit organization has not been this hard! Every time I've applied for a full-time salaried position, I was called immediately for an interview! So I am confident it can't be my lack of skills that are hampering my chances of being selected for a project! That being said, one can presume that people who finally make it to the projects through Taproot must be of very high caliber!
I tried VolunteerMatch.org, an online website that lists volunteering opportunities in the country by location, area of Interest, skills etc. Again, a great idea. I have found this website useful, but the site works just like any other online job site, and finding a volunteering opportunity is as tough as finding a salaried position! It shouldn't have to be! I wouldn't blame VolunteerMatch as much as the organizations listing opportunities on their site for this. Perhaps they find the whole process of hiring and training volunteers, and then managing them cumbersome and not worth the effort!
During Earth Month in April, I signed up for a whole lot of volunteering projects that required a lot of physical labor - house construction projects, planting trees, cleaning the river, etc. These have been the most enjoyable projects so far and I will continue to do them. However, they have also been the most popular projects despite being physically demanding, requiring many hours of manual labor. Each project takes in 50 to 100 people, perhaps more, and still hundreds of people have to be rejected because the slots are filled out almost immediately after the projects are listed. The good thing at least is that they take volunteers in on a first come first serve basis. So the rejection is less personal. Also, if you are really dying to work on a project you can shoot them an email and profess your allegiance to their cause, and they will take you in.
Something about the difficulty in finding pro bono projects doesn't sit well with me! I can't seem to figure out why it is so hard to work for free. Volunteers should not have to be rejected for any reason. Perhaps there is an explanation for why free work is harder to find than paid work or why some volunteers even have to pay to volunteer!! (a whole different issue, for some other time)
Some of my friends who volunteer have groused about this as well! So this is really a shout to all the organizations that need volunteers. We are out there, willing to work for you and waiting, so do your bit and reach out to us! :)
A related article I found on this
They had a lot of marketing and design projects (my area of expertise), which I found very unusual and appealing. I was excited about the work they do, the competence level of volunteers, the organizations they work with. It seemed very impressive. I could see a lot of non-profits benefitting from skilled volunteers with a design background, because design projects are otherwise expensive as hell! Even companies that work specifically with non-profits charge exorbitantly for design work! I considered approaching Taproot not only to volunteer, but also for my organization. So I did! I signed up to volunteer, attended the orientation, uploaded my resume and was raring to get started!
It has been disappointing so far. There is a fair bit of competition among volunteers, because you sometimes have to bid for projects or are put on a waiting list before they call you and put your through a few rounds of interview. At the end of the process you are either "yay"ed or "nay"ed.
I have been "yay"ed by Taproot, but I still find this process absurd. Finding a paid, full-time position in a non-profit organization has not been this hard! Every time I've applied for a full-time salaried position, I was called immediately for an interview! So I am confident it can't be my lack of skills that are hampering my chances of being selected for a project! That being said, one can presume that people who finally make it to the projects through Taproot must be of very high caliber!
I tried VolunteerMatch.org, an online website that lists volunteering opportunities in the country by location, area of Interest, skills etc. Again, a great idea. I have found this website useful, but the site works just like any other online job site, and finding a volunteering opportunity is as tough as finding a salaried position! It shouldn't have to be! I wouldn't blame VolunteerMatch as much as the organizations listing opportunities on their site for this. Perhaps they find the whole process of hiring and training volunteers, and then managing them cumbersome and not worth the effort!
During Earth Month in April, I signed up for a whole lot of volunteering projects that required a lot of physical labor - house construction projects, planting trees, cleaning the river, etc. These have been the most enjoyable projects so far and I will continue to do them. However, they have also been the most popular projects despite being physically demanding, requiring many hours of manual labor. Each project takes in 50 to 100 people, perhaps more, and still hundreds of people have to be rejected because the slots are filled out almost immediately after the projects are listed. The good thing at least is that they take volunteers in on a first come first serve basis. So the rejection is less personal. Also, if you are really dying to work on a project you can shoot them an email and profess your allegiance to their cause, and they will take you in.
Something about the difficulty in finding pro bono projects doesn't sit well with me! I can't seem to figure out why it is so hard to work for free. Volunteers should not have to be rejected for any reason. Perhaps there is an explanation for why free work is harder to find than paid work or why some volunteers even have to pay to volunteer!! (a whole different issue, for some other time)
Some of my friends who volunteer have groused about this as well! So this is really a shout to all the organizations that need volunteers. We are out there, willing to work for you and waiting, so do your bit and reach out to us! :)
A related article I found on this
