Second I'll let you know that this is actually incredibly difficult. Generally speaking NPO (503Cs)aren't set up for technical volunteering. so you will have to search a little. They generally default to paying consultants mainly due to just a complete lack of familiarity.
Here's a couple of strategies:
- find a charity that you are interested in volunteering to. Charity Navigator keeps tabs on them and you can find a charity that fits what you are looking for. Email them and hopefully they will contact you about helping.
- Reach out to whatever University is in the area. The computer science department will often get requests for help with pro-bono projects... they can probably put you in touch with the right person/ project.
and lastly if you want to give us a hand we'd love some help (https://github.com/jppope/academic-intervention ). We're working on a project to help reproducibility and open access in science. We work on the project every Thursday night after work. We have a couple of PhD candidates advising and a small team of coders working on the build.
Hopefully these suggestions help! I've had similar problems trying to give my time and technical skills away for a good cause, so I feel your challenge.
First You are Awesome for wanting to help out!
Second I'll let you know that this is actually incredibly difficult. Generally speaking NPO (503Cs)aren't set up for technical volunteering. so you will have to search a little. They generally default to paying consultants mainly due to just a complete lack of familiarity.
Here's a couple of strategies:
- find a charity that you are interested in volunteering to. Charity Navigator keeps tabs on them and you can find a charity that fits what you are looking for. Email them and hopefully they will contact you about helping.
- Reach out to whatever University is in the area. The computer science department will often get requests for help with pro-bono projects... they can probably put you in touch with the right person/ project.
- https://www.donatecode.com/
- Open source! Don't forget about open source projects. they need love too
- Organize Charity hackathons and get people together (Here's one we ran that was enjoyably successful: https://www.meetup.com/IPAs-and-APIs/events/249340851/)
and lastly if you want to give us a hand we'd love some help (https://github.com/jppope/academic-intervention ). We're working on a project to help reproducibility and open access in science. We work on the project every Thursday night after work. We have a couple of PhD candidates advising and a small team of coders working on the build.
Hopefully these suggestions help! I've had similar problems trying to give my time and technical skills away for a good cause, so I feel your challenge.