Micro Volunteering - real opportunity or silly gimmick?

Sounds pretty gimicky to me but it is a good way to market volunteering to people that might not otherwise be willing to find the time - the real test is the outcome, does standing at a bus stop for a few minutes really make a difference or encourage people to get involved in smehting more substantial? At the end of the day it is a novel concept and it's got us all talking which is a good start...

I like it. And once people start giving a small amount of time they're often willing to get further involved.

I'm thinking it sounds very gimicky & not sure the people in the uk would buy in but if it gets people engaged I willing to give it a bash. Be interested to hear what types on activities people got involved as I'm not sure how viable it would be for us?

Gimicky but there has always been interest in fast track CRB-less one off volunteering opportunities, I wonder if the UK's volunteering infra-structure could handle the micro approach?

Here's the thing: social media works because it provides a platform for assembling, accumulatively, lots of small discrete actions. Things in and of themselves that would not add up to a hill of beans, now can. Take for example, an edit on Wikipedia or sorting a few MPs' filed expenses.

Micro volunteering kind of follows this logic: now with social media, we can break volunteering up into its component tasks. In this way, volunteering becomes accessible to the time pressurised.

The argument against micro volunteering, as I understand it, is twofold. Firstly, skepticism about how practical this approach is (what about training, etc). And secondly, that by breaking volunteering down into tasks, you're kind of ripping the guts out of volunteering. If it's just about completing a series of tasks, then it's more akin to a broader, more general form of giving, along the lines of plain participation (volunteering without the need for protracted commitment).

Personally, I'm clear that breaker volunteering down to it's component parts is valid and is unquestionably taking volunteering in a new direction. However I think the current models put forward by the Extraordinaries need a lot of refinement. I thought the Spanish experiment Microvoluntarios was more interesting, although they don't seem to get mentioned much and I'd love to read about any assessments of the impact they think they've had.

Thanks for this Patrick, useful explanation. I can see this really taking off if not for the fact that people will be increasingly accessing the net via their mobile devices - just seen an item about a Morgan Stanley report predicting that more than 50% of people will be surfing via their mobile devices than via desktop PCs (link here) in just 5 years time - that's not far off at all. So virtual volunteers, of which there are tons, will be looking for more mobile versatility and at the very least we will need to be able to provide information via mobile platforms.

@paddaniels - obviously my Spanish is good enough to understand the Microvoluntarios site ;-) ... but for those less linguistically accomplished, could you explain a bit about how it works?

I think the difference is this: The Extraordinaries seems to be looking at opening up micro opportunities to volunteer on your mobile (not just search and apply for volunteering for different tasks on your mobile).

Microvoluntarios seem to be using the task-focused opportunities as an interface between volunteers and the opportunity providers. It's a more traditional opportunity search site like Do-it or Volunteer Match (just the opportunities are categorised by time required 15 mins, 30 mins up to 120 mins.

Extraordinaries is really interesting in taking this approach, but I think this type of involvement (similar to Amazon's Mechanical Turk) may well be difficult to sustain and will require a critical mass. I wish them all the best but I think it is tough at this end of the social media platforms (can scale, but need lots of engaged users). Idealist are doing some interesting stuff in this area too.

I think task-focused volunteering opportunities are interesting in that they are using technology to break down barriers to volunteering and putting a lower threshold to entry. Once people engage in one task, there's loads of evidence to suggest that a good proportion then go on to engage further. Think this model is adaptable to loads of us involving in supporting all kinds of volunteering- while the Extraordinaries model requires a load more resources and is for more specialist volunteering ops (I think for the time being at least).

what do you think, daft gimmick or valuable opportunity to make
a difference?

I believe micro volunteering has a great future and really can make a difference. The Extraordinaries is just one method amongst many to enable people to engage in volunteering like never before.

For instance, Help From Home features over 500 initiatives/actions all vying for those spare minutes and even seconds in your life which could be devoted over to helping worthy causes.

BTW, I'm biased about micro volunteering as I've been involved in it for approx 4 years now. I first started doing some online actions and worked my way up to creating a website about it. I still do traditional volunteering but now find I can spend my time more purposefully via micro volunteering outside of the volunteering activities I spend with my local blind institute.

BTW, the website I set up is called Help From Home and for my views on the pros and cons of micro volunteering / philanthropy, click here