Announcing the launch of Sparked.com: the world’s first micro-volunteering network!

by Jacob Colker, CEO and Co-founder of The Extraordinaries

It's been 2 1/2 years since The Extraordinaries first set out to explore how we could harness spare time and deliver it to nonprofits. We have had a series of success and, well, efforts that were less than successful. And now we're proud to announce the launch of Sparked.com -- the culmination of everything that we've learned since July of 2008.

 

Sparked stays true to our original mission to make it easier for people to volunteer, and still enables nonprofits to get volunteer help from lots of people with minimal effort on their part. But, the key distinction is that we've expanded micro-volunteering from only projects that take "a few minutes" to include more types of projects, including skills-based work that can take up to an hour or two -- still within the realm of volunteering that you can make fit in your busy day. This broadening of scope reflects what we've discovered is the true need in the nonprofit community, highly skilled expertise.   

Traditional volunteering has a handholding process that requires a lot of time for both the nonprofit manager and the volunteer. Sparked dramatically reduces management time required by the nonprofit, making it easy to post projects and get work done.

Hundreds of nonprofits from all over the globe have already begun to increase capacity by leveraging Sparked’s talented pool of volunteers, including the Grameen Foundation, Surfrider Foundation, the United Way, the American Red Cross, Room to Read, and First Aid Corps. Current projects include creative design, job description review, new product brainstorms, website focus-grouping, and media relations strategies. 

 

Here's how it works:

• Nonprofits post challenges (work requests for small projects), identifying the cause area they work in and the skills needed to solve the challenge.

• Micro-volunteers from all over the world log on, and solve the nonprofit challenges that match up with their individual interests and professional expertise.

 

Sparked Enterprise

With Sparked, we're also responding to a need we noticed in the corporate world for a turnkey solution to employee volunteering. For corporations and small businesses, Sparked helps employees volunteer online for nonprofits all over the world within a custom team, which tracks group impact, drives personal recognition, and highlights custom campaigns.  It’s a totally new and innovative approach to setting up and operating an Employee Volunteering Program, and we're pretty excited about the early results, including a 450% increase in employee engagement for one of our enterprise customers!

 

Ultimately, Sparked makes volunteering as convenient as using Facebook, for nonprofit managers, corporate employees, and individual volunteers. It’s a bold step into the future of volunteerism, and we hope you enjoy it.

Welcome to Sparked!

 

Comments

[Ashkon Jafari]

Jacob and team,

Thanks for Sparked.com. We have been using it for a week and have found it to be extremely helpful and also fun to use. Great user experience and user interface.

My wish-list!...
-Upload feature embedded into the challenges
-Ability to close a challenge
-I've noticed a couple hang ups at times

Ashkon Jafari
Co-Founder, Executive Director
www.StudentMentor.org

[Daniel Bassill]

Can you explain the process a bit more. Do volunteers pick from the complete list of projects submitted by non profits, or does Sparked.com act as an intermediary, to choose which projects it presents to volunteers?

Is there a portal where volunteers and nonprofits from the same sector might be connecting and sharing ideas with each other, so there would be less redundancy of creating the same type project over and over by different volunteers for different non profits?

I lead the Tutor/Mentor Connection in Chicago, and aggregate information specific to non-school, volunteer-based tutoring and/or mentoring programs. Included is a searchable database of over 200 Chicago area programs. An intermediary that works with us to connect volunteer talent to all of these programs on a more consistent basis would be a valuable partner. Visit http://www.tutormentorconnection.org and browse the links. They include information from all over the world that volunteers and non profits, and donors, might use to help this type of program reach youth in more high poverty neighborhoods.

I have worked with groups seeking to be intermediaries between corporate volunteers and non profits, but they create their own bureaucracy that causes the non profit to submit proposals and narrow the choices of volunteers. On the T/MC site we point to the entire Chicago region and say that great tutor/mentor programs are needed in every poverty area. This means volunteers could be connecting in well-organized programs, or in emerging programs. They all need help.

If you've taken out some of the bureaucracy, or middle-man role, that would be great.

[Robert Connolly]

Enjoy this process a great deal. I am curious if you all have run any stats on ratio of folks who post challenges and also answer challenges as well. I was struck in just how this worked on me. I posted a challenge - got a great response back, then immediately felt the obligation to reciprocate. this seems to be social media at its best. I am curious as to how that is working.