More than a decade since the popularization of the Internet, innovation is still taking place faster than ever. Now one of the most interesting applications for volunteer recruitment and management — previously available only for the iPhone — is coming to a Web browser near you.
The Extraordinaries is a “micro-volunteering platform” that allows organizations to engage supporters via small actions that supporters can take. The concept — crowdsourced volunteer work in the model of Mechanical Turk — is unique. By enabling nonprofits to market their opportunities to volunteers as well as provide tools to complete those opportunities directly from the tool, a new category of volunteer work is slowly being born.
Some tasks can be completed anywhere and at anytime. For example, AmeriCorps Alum created a task asking its supporters to provide feedback whenever their supporters might have a few minutes to spare.
Other tasks are better suited for the mobile phone. For example, KaBoom, the playground builders, asks its supporters to help build a map of possible projects by taking photos of playgrounds in their communities.
Currently, eight different types of tasks are available for organizations to choose from.
Recently, The Extraordinaries also released an embeddable Web-widget, allowing organizations to engage their supporters right from their Web site. For example, Big Cat Rescue allows its supporters to catalog images for its archives.
What do you think? Does your organization have tasks that are suitable for micro-volunteers? If so, will your organization give The Extraordinaries a shot? Let us know.
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Thanks for the comment MarsBars. To answer your question about the business model, many (if not most) of the tasks on our platform will be free to the non-profits (ie image tagging). Some of the higher value tasks however — like translation — will incur a small fee. In this way, we let as many non-profits as possible use our system to engage their supporters and get real work done, and yet cover our operational costs. WRT ways to engage your supporters, I encourage you to check out the “engage” page on our website: . Thanks for your interest!
Regarding whether or not our organization has opportunities for this kind of volunteering, I’m unsure. There may be, but I won’t bring it to my boss until I have all the details.
I still don’t understand how their model works, as far as funding. Do nonprofits pay for the privilege of working with The Extraordinaries? Do volunteers pay for the privilege of downloading their software onto their phone?
Who picks up the tab?
Thanks for the post Robert! We appreciate the support and look forward to working closely with VolunteerMatch and your member organizations to increase engagement and volunteer participation.