Micro-Volunteer via Your Mobile Phone

You’ve participated in micro-credit, probably participated in micro-blogging, and now here is your chance to try your hand at micro-volunteering.

If you’ve ever considered, pondered or briefly mused about the noble idea of volunteering at some point in your life but never got around to it, you’re not alone.  Each year, millions of Americans consciously think about giving back via volunteering but never actually get to it. Given the perpetually growing to do lists we each have on hand at any given time this comes as no surprise. So what if there was a way you could truly volunteer, say 5 minutes, while you’re in line for a latte? Not possible? Well think again because now you can and you too, can be Extraordinary.

New start-up, The Extraordinaries, is employing the intelligence of smartphones to empower each of us the ability to micro-volunteer. These awesome folks have developed a way for you and me to lend hand without the burdensome time commitment of a regular volunteering gig. By using your mobile phone, you can deliver skill based volunteer tasks to organizations in need. If you carry a smart phone, you can now volunteer “on the spot and on-demand.”

Their promise:  “Suddenly, it becomes possible to volunteer during spare time. So instead of making a lengthy time-commitment to a single organization on a single day per year, you can volunteer for many organizations many times throughout the week.”
So, what exactly can you do as a micro-volunteer? Here are a few possibilities:

•    Translating a nonprofit’s Website into a foreign language
•    Recording GPS location of potholes and city infrastructure issues for municipalities
•    Identifying birds for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology
•    Tagging images for the Smithsonian
•    Transcribing ancient texts for ReCaptcha
•    Reviewing congressional bills for hidden pork
•    Fact checking for reporters

Very cool indeed. Today we challenge ourselves and you to go ahead and be extraordinary!

• Empowers individuals the ability to micro-volunteer via smart phone aplications
• Organization Type: B-Corp
• Website: www.theextraordinaries.org
• Founder(s): Jacob Colker and Ben Rigby
• Founded: 2008
• Location: San Francisco, CA, United States