The Obama administration is pushing for a “craigslist of service”, and several people have stepped up to describe what this might be like. It’s clear we need better tech support to get America volunteering.

But current systems for mobilizing volunteers— e.g., ThePoint, PledgeBank, VolunteerMatch —are not likely to yield the dramatic increase in volunteer participation we’re looking for. In order to have a big effect, a system must do three things that current solutions don’t: they need to make volunteering more fun, more financially sustainable, and more adaptable to our busy lives. Furthermore, as long as these sites are just searchable databases, and offer no serious help with coordination, the number of initiatives is still bound by the number of coordinators.

Our system actually addresses these concerns, and has real potential to bring service to a new level. Below we describe the various ways Groundcrew acts to encourage volunteering and services.

Making volunteering rewarding & financially sustainable

National programs like Americorp are one way to make volunteering pay. Some volunteer positions offer prestige, experience, and connections which can pay off in other aspects of life. But can we make a direct link between time volunteering and availability of resources? This is exactly what we do with Groundcrew, by letting neighbors offer up use of their resources to local, high-achieving volunteers.

• Step 1: You volunteer, help a neighbor, or create joy
  In Groundcrew, any action that generates positive experiences, or that people appreciate, is grist for the mill.

• Step 2: You get points for what you do.
  The scoring system is similar to RealityAllStarz, CouchSurfing, or Ebay, and involves a system of reviews, coupled with an attack-resistant trust metric

• Step 3: People in your neighborhood agree to share their stuff with high-performing volunteers
  We have a simple interface for describing what you want to share, how exclusively, during which hours, and whether the sharing is automatic and based on information (such as the number to a combo-lock) or involves a telephone or SMS check-in.

• Step 4: The best volunteers have cars, tools, and many other resources available to them at no cost
  This saves volunteers money and allows them to volunteer more. It also makes more and larger ad-hoc volunteering projects feasible, and empowers a whole community with access to additional resources.

Helping with coordination

Much of the discussion around national service makes the assumption that more volunteers are needed, rather than more coordinating organizations. From our own experience, we doubt this. Improvements in the efficiency and availability of coordination may dramatically increase the number of projects that get done.

With Groundcrew, we work this angle by giving experienced volunteer coordinators a powerful new system for mobile coordination and messaging. We also bring new coordinators into the mix by providing a friendly interface with many helpful tips for first time coordinators. And we let new organizations spring into being dynamically around the tagged dreams and desires of community members.

• Existing organizers get private squads.
  Organizations using the service sign up for a squad. This gives them a signup page to which they can direct members, fans, employees—whomever they want to coordinate. These agents will sign up with their mobile number and their email, and answer some questions and when and how they’re willing to be available for the squad. Organizations can then mobilize and coordinate their available agents using the tools mentioned above.

• Unaffiliated organizers can bid to use public squads.
  Community members can also float ideas and projects for consideration by the various public squads, which cover general topics like volunteering, adventures, art projects, celebrations, and mutual aid, in an area. If there is support for a particular idea, those interested in organizing it can access the availability of public squad members and mobilizing them using the same tools.

In all cases we offer real-time, map-based tools for coordinating, a big step up from using cellphones, trainees, and deep hierarchical structures.

Making volunteering possible in our lives

Free time is precious these days. Most people have had the experience of over-scheduling themselves and are wary of it. SMS and mobile technology has a great role to play in making ad-hoc volunteer opportunities available to us, and in letting community organizers react to availability, instead of depending on it.

With Groundcrew, you describe your schedule and your interests generally, then report variations via text message or our mobile apps. So if you find you have an hour free unexpectedly, you can send a text message reporting your availability. Alternatively, agents can have the system poll them about availability when there is unmet need.

Volunteer coordinators can view this data in a powerful, aggregated, geo-spatial way. They can react to changes in availability, interest, and skillset in their volunteer pool in real-time. They can crafting volunteer experiences which are right-sized for people’s availability and timeframe.

Our goal with this is to make community engagement as straightforward and flexible as watching youtube. You send a text, you get an assignment. On your terms. From experience, we see this can lead to a 100x increase in the availability of volunteers for projects.

Making volunteering fun

Our mission is “to make technology that changes how it feels to be alive”. We apply that to volunteering the same way we do in other areas: by bringing new opportunities for teamwork, community, and adventure to everyone.

The technical structure of Groundcrew volunteering is adventurous. When you are ready for action, Groundcrew lets organizers see your immediate location and availability, and sends assignments directly to your phone. You get to be an agent, like James Bond, receiving live instructions whenever you like.

We also encourage this in the text of the site, by suggesting that volunteer coordinators think about fun and engagement when they design their tasks. And we offer an interface and a set of suggestions and templates which makes this easier. A real-time, map-based interface for coordinators— where volunteers have profiles that list past assignments and interests —is inherently conducive to better volunteer experiences.

Conclusion

We think there’s tremendous opportunity in GPS/mobile for updating the whole spirit (and demographic) of volunteering. Our product is in a great position to do just that.

If you want to get involved, a great first step is to join our group on facebook or the groundcrew-discuss google group, and feel free to reblog or digg this article.