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The Rise of Microvolunteering

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The Rise of Microvolunteering
June 22nd, 2012

By Guest Blogger: Mike Bright

Microvolunteering can be described as easy, quick, no (or low) commitment online or offline actions that benefit a worthy cause. The United Nations Volunteers’ report, ‘State of the World’s Volunteerism’, describes microvolunteering as 1 of 3 fast growing trends in the global volunteering arena. How has this come about? Modern microvolunteering networks first started back in 2008 with Microvoluntarious, a system for non profits to post requests for help with simple actions that people with professional skills could complete in 15 – 120 minutes. Similar schemes have been set up with Sparked (US), Koodo Nation (Canada), Troopp (India) and Brightworks (UK), which all attempt to tap into the skills that professionals have and are willing to use to do good. But what if unskilled microvolunteering could appeal to the masses?

UK based Help From Home (established in 2008) has collated over 800 non-skilled microvolunteering opportunities that can be dipped in and dipped out at any time to suit a person’s lifestyle, regardless of their professional skills. Orange’s Do Some Good mobile app taps into the unskilled microvolunteer and is riding the wave of the explosion of apps proliferating this market. A paper, published by the UK’s Institute of Volunteering Research this June, explores microvolunteering through smartphones. It discovered that over 83% would recommend microvolunteering to friends and family, whilst 95% plan to continue microvolunteering in the future. The ‘on the go, on demand and on your own terms’ approach to volunteering has been gaining increased coverage in the media, including features in the Huffington Post, BBC, & New York Times. UK volunteering organizations (eg. Volunteering England) have picked it up too, many now creating new volunteering categories in response to its popularity. Even the UK government is promoting micro volunteering via its official Number 10 website. Riding on the back of this popularity are non profits and charities who are creating new microvolunteering positions or using the term to describe micro-actions that previously were labelled as traditional volunteering. RSPB, Marie Curie Cancer and Resolve International are all great examples of this.

So what is the future of microvolunteering? It seems to be diversifying and expanding! New initiatives are now beginning to emerge, namely ZiviCloud (Germany), Microvolunteering Consultancy (Romania), TagDel (Denmark), Microvolunteering Parties (UK), and Volunteer Anywhere (UK). Microvolunteering actions will continue to be innovated. A recent article touches on the effect that technology could have on the microvolunteering arena, including cyber microvolunteering, augmented reality and 3D printing

Summary
Microvolunteering can be described as easy, quick, no (or low) commitment online or offline actions that benefit a worthy cause.The United Nations Volunteers’ report, ‘State of the World’s Volunteerism’, describes microvolunteering as 1 of 3 fast growing trends in the global volunteering arena.

Description
Modern microvolunteering networks first started back in 2008 with Microvoluntarious, a system for non profits to post requests for help with simple actions that people with professional skills could complete in 15 – 120 minutes.

-UK based Help From Home (established in 2008) has collated over 800 non-skilled microvolunteering opportunities that can be dipped in and dipped out at any time to suit a person’s lifestyle, regardless of their professional skills.

-Orange’s Do Some Good mobile app taps into the unskilled microvolunteer and is riding the wave of the explosion of apps proliferating this market.

Tags: Crowdsource, Crowdsourcing, Help from Home, Microvolunteering, Volunteers

Posted by Tonya Van Dijk

Jun 27, 2012 02:56 am GMT Viewed 815 times

Author: Mike Bright Source

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Getinvolved! Jul 04, 2012 02:15 pm GMT

Hey guys,
Thanks for sharing our blog! So glad you liked it. Hope it inspires some fantastic microvolunteers!
Anyone looking for volunteer opportunities (micro or otherwise) should check out our Matching Tool at www.getinvolved.ca for skills and interest specific postings!

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