Points of Light

Through celebration and fanfare -- to the tune of a Presidential Summit on Volunteerism in Texas today, Presidents’ Obama and George H.W. Bush will come together to mark the 20th Anniversary of the Points of Light.

If you remember back to 1989 when President Bush spoke of a thousand points of light in his Inaugural Address (or even if you don’t), personal computers were becoming commonplace in the West, and mobile phones even if clunky and awkward were quickly becoming a symbol of status. Nintendo had just released its Game Boy, and Microsoft’s first version of Office was available to consumers. These devices and programs were so new and transformative – but never could we imagine their power to mobilize the “thousand points of light” the President spoke of to take action in their communities, let alone halfway around the globe.

And while today we have new devices and symbols of status that we attach to our ears, or on our belts – we have to think that we are only at the cusp of what’s possible when using technology to address some of our worlds most pressing problems. We can micro-lend or micro-volunteer but there’s so much more that could be done if we could collectively recognize the potential of these tools. Even so, we know that the tools alone can’t sit with a child who’s battling cancer or feed a single mother who just lost her home. What’s more, the tools themselves are only as effective as we enable them to be.

Sure, today’s unprecedented technology allows us to reach new audiences, or connect advocates to share their stories, but the call to action must be clear, it must be actionable, and it must show impact. Today’s volunteers may be savvier when it comes to finding volunteer opportunities on their iPhone, but they expect an experience that matches the ease to which they found it.

New platforms like All for Good, the uber-aggregator of many of the online volunteer matching sites like Idealist, VolunteerMatch and Network for Good - is a powerful tool, but then again, it’s only as powerful as the opportunities that nonprofits upload. When I enter my zipcode into a search engine and let it work its magic, I don’t want to find an opportunity that’s outdated or already over capacity. I’ve taken the first step, and I expect to be matched with an opportunity that makes sense and is available.

We certainly didn’t know the extent of what technology could provide back in 1989 – let alone the creative things people would do WITH the technology to change the world, but there are still endless opportunities to put it to better use. Perhaps it’s creating an individual profile that allows us to upload our skills, our interests and our availability and then be more appropriately matched with an opportunity to serve. This is worthy of a post itself, so I’ll save it for another day – but a best case scenario would be for people to be matched through an online platform, with something they enjoy doing repeatedly rather than a bunch of “one and done” experiences.

This may go beyond providing good volunteer opportunities, to making it more of a relational experience between volunteer and organization. So even if it’s a good opportunity, the organization should solicit feedback, provide follow up, ask what it could do better, etc. There are sites like Great Nonprofits that are allowing folks to rate their experiences and share knowledge so that others can make more informed decisions about where to give or volunteer. Or the new mobile iPhone app, Catalista, that enables you to find a volunteer opportunity in your area using your phone's GPS coordinates and then invite your friends to join you, and rate your experience.

The platforms can have all of the bells and whistles in the world, but the big question that remains is how do we get nonprofits to use these tools in a smart way that provides up to date, clear opportunities for engagement and that will make more people want to use them to volunteer? We can demonstrate their success, lift up examples, but we are already doing that, and it’s not changing the game. How do we help nonprofits get savvier about what they post? Is there a way to incentivize this behavior so that they will provide better data? Or, is this just something the market will have to decide?