The need for tech volunteering in the social development sector

knadh · 22 November 2022 12:53

Over the last couple of years, a few of us volunteering under the umbrella of FOSS United, have been helping non-profit organisations working in the social development sector with tech capacity.

I have realised that this sector has extremely limited technical capacity which seriously affects their ability to do the important social development work they set out to do, be it work with civic issues, poverty, education, or climate. Here, tech isn’t the solution to these problems (it rarely is), but is aid to solving problems better, reducing wast of time, money, and effort. Even tiny optimisations can be deeply impactful and meaningful in social development.

Here are a few examples where volunteers actually built software pro-bono for social development orgs. Many of these were quickly built on top of Frappe (instead of something like Django) as it comes baked with a lot of high level workflows and components that most of these orgs require. Turns out, often, it’s CRUD, forms, views, reports, permissions, and data based workflows. Case studies for these are pending.

We helped PeriFerry bring down a manual process that would take 8 hours to 20 mins.
Volunteer checkin platform for the Robin Hood Army.
India Labour Line.
Volunteer management platform for Living My Promise.
HR, Payroll system for Waste Warriors.
WIP: Civic services / volunteering platform Samaaja with ReapBenefit.
Kerala Digital Archive, open document repository using Omeka.

Volunteering to help social development orgs and non-profits

After having spoken to dozens of non-profits and helped them in whatever ways I can, I’m now convinced that it is possible for technologists to create significant impact by helping social development orgs become efficient with tech, often with surprisingly minimal time and effort. This is an area that we, the tech community, seem to have neglected.

Often, trivial advice can save an org significant amounts of time and money (which NGOs are always struggling for). Here are some actual examples from my experience:

“No need to do all of that, just use WordPress. If you don’t have any way to install it, you can signup online on wordpress.org”
“You don’t have to build a mobile app. A simple static site will solve the problem, has no maintenance, and can be done for free by using X, Y, Z …”
“Just use Metabase for creating and publishing dashboards. No need to get any software built.”
“Why not just use Whatsapp or Telegram instead of trying to build an app?”

The amount of money that the NGO world loses to proprietary from-scratch software development when there’s absolutely no need to, is astounding and saddening. Why? For the simple reason there are very few tech folks in the NGO world as opposed to the industry. This is not going to change because the NGO world can never compete with the industry when it comes to money to attract tech talent. Also, due to this systemic lack of tech capacity in the NGO world, most NGOs do not even know whom to ask for help or what to ask even.

Alongside the time I spend working on my hobby projects, I’ve decided to dedicate time to helping as many orgs this way for as long as possible. Sometimes advice, sometimes hands-on software dev. Whatever I can. I’ve started to see this as a hobby even!

I think every tech person, especially FOSS folks who are interested in contributing to projects, should consider volunteering time to help NGOs and orgs in the social development sector. The impact there can be immense.

For those who are interested (please do leave a comment here), maybe we should create a group or a mailing list or something to share volunteering opportunities that come our way.

asd · 22 November 2022 13:18

A hundred times this! I don’t have time to volunteer because I’m already struggling to meet the 100 volunteering things in this sector. Will happily share some opportunities

vivek · 23 November 2022 05:07

I am interested in volunteering. My developer journey started as a consultant for a non profit org so I will be glad to go back to my roots.

mrkaran · 23 November 2022 05:11

Happy to volunteer and contribute to this initiative in any way I can.

Ritesh_Shrivastav · 23 November 2022 05:12

I too would love to volunteer.

iamd3vil · 23 November 2022 05:14

I am also interested in contributing in whatever way I can.

ajinasokan · 23 November 2022 05:15

I would be happy to help

sunilgoli · 23 November 2022 05:18

Would be happy to help.

joe · 23 November 2022 05:41

+1. Interested in helping out.

Donald_Lobo · 23 November 2022 15:54

A few comments and thoughts based on my experience:

Would be good for someone @ FossUnited to coordinate the various projects and keep track of whats being done where.
The above helps us deploy similar solutions for similar needs and maintain some consistency across the initiative
Ensure that we are building and reusing on open source and already existing solutions. Deploying a custom solution for common needs does more harm than good in the mid-long term
Documentation, testing, training and handover are also super important aspects for NGOs. If we have someone managing the whole thing, the NGO can always come back to this group when they need help or something is broken
Understand what the NGO is doing, empathize with it, and try to see the bigger picture. Many a times their immediate need is not the most important need

Happy to assist and help with this

lobo

Krutika_Thakkannavar · 24 November 2022 14:20

Hi folks!

I’m a UI/UX designer. I have been volunteering with a few organisations like Robinhood Army, Reap Benefit, Indic Digital Archive, etc helping them with design. I’d like to share my experience of volunteering here in the hope that it’ll motivate more folks like you to spare some of your time for the social good

Volunteer hours - This is not set in stone. It differs from project to project and the time dedicated by everyone on the team. Sometimes a project might demand more hours than anticipated. A project like designing brand identity takes a couple of days approximately. Here, you only need to design and hand it over. While a project like designing a website is a much slower and longer process. This requires some coordination, a couple excel sheets and weekly/fortnightly calls to track progress with every volunteer on the team. You’ll stay associated with the project for as long as the site goes live and sometimes even after that. I’m guessing the timelines will look similar for developers as well. The key here is to be flexible with the number of hours you think you’ll dedicate for a project. Always keep some buffer.
Finding projects to volunteer and volunteers for projects - In my little experience, what has helped getting more volunteers on board or to find projects is just talking about being open to taking up social or FOSS projects. Now when I meet new people and when I’m asked what do I do, I tell them I’m a designer at Zerodha and that I also volunteer at FU, RHA, RB etc. That immediately strikes a conversation and in a few minutes I know if someone’s interested to volunteer or has a project that’s seeking volunteers. This might work if you’re into socialising. If you’re living a hermit life, endorsing that you’re open to take up FOSS-for-NGO projects on you git profiles or personal websites should help you. And like @knadh rightly put it - FOSS-for-NGO is a loose, largely casual match making program that’s literally driven by conversations.
Volunteering is like a backpacking trip - Sometimes you meet people you totally vibe with and have the best travel experience. Sometimes the experience can be sour. But you’re on the journey none the less and with each trip you take, you experience and learn something new
The joy of giving back to the society - This is what’s been driving me to volunteer my time to these social projects. It is indeed rewarding. Being associated with the people and the NGOs that are instrumental in bringing changes in the society at whatever scale has a great sense of accomplishment. While I’m doing some good for the society, I’m also bettering my skills and broadening my knowledge. It’s a win-win

I hope this helps, especially if you’re new to this and do not know where to start. If you’re a seasoned volunteer, please share your experience too. Would love to learn

shri · 30 November 2022 08:05

I have volunteered with NGOs such as Robinhood Army, Claylab, and Santushta. As @Krutika_Thakkannavar said, volunteer hours differ from project to project; I spent only a few hours on these projects, but they had a huge impact on the organization. I would also like to give a big round of applause to Frappe, which made it easy for us to build tools.

knadh · 30 January 2023 14:09

OTTER

Had a long conversation with OTTER. They help run training and onboarding programs for social development orgs to get tech enablement. They’re around 5 years old, and they educate social dev orgs about free tech services available in the market that they can use (mostly proprietary SaaS tools). They have program management capacity, but not internal tech or development capacity. They’ve worked with 1000+ NGOs so far.

Spoke about the obvious risks of onboarding social dev orgs to free-of-cost, but proprietary SaaS tools that lock them in. They’re aware, but don’t have any avenues or resources to work with FOSS alternatives that are as easy to onboard as their proprietary SaaS counterparts. They mentioned that the social dev orgs are put-off by the cost and complexity of trying to find consultants who can install and maintain FOSS tools for them. This may be something as simple as getting a DigitalOcean instance and installing WordPress.

I also had a conversation with the Ashoka foundation recently where we discussed the idea of creating a program where their fellows (social entrepreneurs and change makers) get hands-on experience tinkering with FOSS tools that solve their day-to-day problems. Tools like Metabase, Glific, ERPNext etc. OTTER suggested a similar idea. They have data on the biggest tech related pain points experienced by most social development orgs, the low-hanging-fruit problems (eg: finance management, forms, communication etc.). With this:

Identify a few easy to use FOSS tools that solve common, but big problems.
Identify and train a few small IT shops / consultants who can easily install and services these tools for a reasonable fee.
Identify volunteers from the tech industry who may be interested in participating.
Run a program with several dozen social dev orgs and let them tinker and familiarise with these tools.
Connect the orgs to volunteers and IT consultants.

^ See how it all goes!

Kalvium

Kalvium is a hands-on, mentorship based experiential tech learning alternative to the conventional BTech degree. They partner with colleges and universities and replace the BTech program with their program (DISCLAIMER: Rainmatter Capital, with which I’m associated, has invested in them).

Their students are looking for hands-on projects to work on as a part of the course and for internships, which also generates actual credits for their BTech course. I suggested that it may be interesting to create a program where projects come from the social development world. A potential win-win scenario. Students get to work on real world projects that have actual social impact, and social dev orgs get their problems solved.

Connected both OTTER and Kalvium to TinkerSpace and T4GLabs (who now work out of TinkerSpace) to explore the possibility of kick starting these programs. TinkerSpace in Kochi (backed by FOSS United) seems to be slowly turning into a space where the FOSS tinkerer world and the social development world physically intersect. Excited by the possibilities!

Donald_Lobo · 8 February 2023 17:37

this guide is worth a read: Don't Build It. A Guide for Practitioners in Civic Tech - MIT GOV/LAB | MIT GOV/LAB

@Anil_Gulecha as we spoke, I think we can start using and deploying Kalvium students to:

Help us design and build platforms
Work with NGOs on the field (see above guide) to understand and learn more about the issues and problems above and beyond the tech lens

knadh · 2 April 2023 16:32

A few of us (volunteers from FOSS United Foundation and representatives from Ashoka Foundation, Tech4GoodLabs, Tech4GoodCommunity, Tech4Dev, ONI, Kalvium, TinkerHub Foundation), ReapBenefit who have been having these conversation in silos, met up in Bangalore to brainstorm and figure out actionables.

Key issues that were discussed:

The social development sector severely lacks technical capacity (knowledge, awareness, skills, access).
The tech world at large has little visibility into the social development sector.
There is no easy or natural technology discovery mechanism for non-tech-savvy social development orgs. There is an inability to frame problems in a way where a readily available FOSS tech solutions can be discovered even via simple searches.
A significant number of tech/organisational problems are low hanging fruits that repeat across organisations. Things like CRMs, data collection, management and reporting tools, inventory mechanisms, volunteer and project management systems, finance management tools etc.
Many orgs also have an app-first, “not built here” view which prevents them from exploring FOSS solutions.
Massive amounts of money, time, and energy are wasted on trying to build software from scratch, or are blown on proprietary systems that also result in vendor lockins. Most social dev orgs are not tech companies capable of building or commanding tech.

Actionable experiments:

Identify the most common, long-hanging-fruit usecases and problem statements across social dev organisations. Identify out-of-the-box FOSS solutions for those and map them. Prepare an open framework + playbook + docs specifically from a social dev organisation perspective.
Identify and onboard a pilot group of IT/tech vendors and consultants and equip them with this framework to offer installation/usage/support services to social dev orgs. Once an organisation is able to frame their requirements and map it against the framework, it should be possible for them to quickly turn to someone who can equip them with it. This should ideally cost only a fraction of what would otherwise be wasted trying to reinvent systems from scratch or getting vendor locked.
Work closely with a pilot group of “role model” organisations to equp them with appropriate FOSS for their needs and training + tinkering experience. Present evidence for a number of usecases, high quality FOSS exists out there and no software has to be built. The criteria for an org to be a “role model” can vary and does not depend on its size or age. Such an organisation should be in a position to influence other organisations in the same space to adopt similar playbooks.
Setup an internship+mentorship program to connect skilled tech students to social dev projects and orgs. Kalvium, for instance, has students who can dedicate time to projects for a whole year. The bet is that students get to work on meaningful real world projects with social impact and social dev orgs get to connect with the tech world. Even if a small percentage of interns start paying attention to social development projects as a result, that’s a win. This is a long term attempt in hopes for seeding a culture of volunteering.

Based on the outcome of these experiments (perhaps in a year or a year and half):

Organise meet-ups, workshops, and a FOSS/tech/social development conference. Present case studies and evidence: “For most usecases, FOSS works out of the box. Don’t waste time and energy trying to build software from scratch.”
Organise workshops for funders of social dev orgs and present the case studies and evidence. It is important for funders to know that their money will not get wasted on software development dead ends if FOSS playbooks are adopted.

This is the gist of the discussions. T4GLabs and T4GCommunity have very graciously agreed to be the program office for this project. Once things get going, a new thread can be started with specifics and progress, and once there is some semblance of a structure, a number of avenues for volunteering for everyone who has expressed interest here should open up.

I am personally very excited and deeply convinced about this. A project like this can ideally only “fail” upwards. Best case scenario, it increases awareness significantly and kick starts sparks of a FOSS+tech+social development ecosystem that may slowly grow and sustain on its own. Worst case scenario, we would have helped a handful of impactful social development organisations with technology and the general lessons can be documented and released as a research paper for posterity. Win-win.

It is important to note that the goal of the project is not to provide technology services for free (as in cost) to social development organisations. This is not “charity”. The goal is to bridge the massive gap in FOSS technology awareness, knowledge, and access between the tech world and the social development world, to enable discovery of high quality FOSS that solves common and widespread problems, and to enable social dev organisations to focus on their work without having to waste huge amounts of time and money on futile technology pursuits.

knadh · 5 September 2023 05:48

Update

A lot has happened over the last few months in trying to build a structure to some of this work. This has resulted in the formation of an alliance of like-minded orgs that are working towards FOSS adoption and tech capacity building in social development orgs. OASIS - Open-source Alliance for Social Innovation and Sustainability.

The alliance is organising the OASIS Summit 2023, on 14th (Thursday) of September at BIC (Bangalore International Centre) in Bengaluru. The summit aims to get social development orgs, social entrepreneurs and innovators, techies to come together, to have hands on experience on easy-to-attain, low-cost FOSS technologies that are relevant to their work. The summit will have panels, talks, workshops, and FOSS experience pop-ups focusing, including stories from social entrepreneurs and orgs who have have big breakthroughs in their work thanks to FOSS adoption.

Sign up for the summit here: