Check out this article about a San Francisco company that promotes “micro-volunteering.” Interesting concept – you can volunteer minutes of your time for a worthy cause.
I can think of several “down sides” to this new trend – the volunteer isn’t truly connected to the cause, the volunteer is given a false sense of “making an impact,” and goes away thinking that they have “done their duty” toward mankind (or animal kind, or whatever), the nonprofit may get a minute’s worth of value from the volunteer, but doesn’t accomplish a lot in the grand scheme of things.
Of course, the website boasts a number of “up sides” to the concept. See what you think:
NPR Article: The Extraordinaries and Micro-volunteering
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Update on Micro-volunteering. My skepticism about the effectiveness of micro-volunteering has been echoed by other nonprofit reporting sites. Check out the “Full Contact Philanthropy” blog:
http://www.fullcontactphilanthropy.com/2009/11/why-im-not-extraordinary.html