Obama-inspired Craigslist for volunteers sparks controversy

When Barack Obama was campaigning for the presidency, he pledged to create a “Craigslist for service” – a comprehensive Web presence that would help people across the country find volunteer opportunities. Now, after months of quiet work, a coalition of nonprofit groups, technology developers, and others is about to unveil its interpretation of the president’s vision – a new Web site called All for Good.

The site, which is currently managed by Google – will gather in one place a wide spectrum of information about volunteer positions and events nationwide, using open-source technology so that groups can use the computer code to package the data in different ways.

The project has attracted support from some heavy hitters in the new-technology world – including Craig Newmark of Craigslist and Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post – and participation from many nonprofit groups that have agreed to share their volunteer opportunities.

But it has also alienated some charity leaders who say the coalition is duplicating efforts charities already had under way, and putting significant pressure on groups to participate to help carry out President Obama’s agenda.

“Very powerful actors have entered the nonprofit ecosystem and created something that already existed, that is blooming, is growing, and has to accommodate a new reality,” says Peter Deitz, who founded Social Actions, an online database of ways people can support social causes. His group had already developed an open-source technology that is similar to All for Good’s.

Michael Schreiber, president of Truist, a nonprofit group that provides technology to 360 volunteer centers to help them recruit and manage volunteers, says his organization wants to “support the Obama administration and the broader vision for deploying volunteers in a productive way.” However, he says, leaders of All for Good have “squeezed” him to prove that commitment by participating in the project, despite his group’s concerns about how its data could be used by third parties under the open-source approach.

All for Good’s supporters see it differently, portraying the project as a way to use new technologies to get as many Americans as possible involved in solving the country’s social problems. “We all openly share our data and then everybody has access to all the data,” says Michelle Nunn, chief executive of the Points of Light Institute, a volunteer and civic-engagement group. “That’s a really exciting prospect.”

Source:

Suzanne Perry for www.philanthropy.com