All across the country, high schools are making sure that their students receive a different kind of education, one that extends beyond their textbooks and the classroom. Many schools have already added community service to the list of graduation requirements for their students, and a growing number of schools are following suit.
The trend comes at a time when outreach and volunteerism are more prevalent and more ubiquitous than ever. While community service has played a part in college admissions for some time now, many schools are taking a step further and actually requiring that their students participate in volunteering programs in order to enhance their academic experience. The goal is to not only give back to the community, but to offer students a chance to take their education outside of the classroom and gain real-life experience through helping those in need.
Typical service hour requirements range from 10-40 hours per year for each student, and most schools offer assistance in finding volunteer opportunities and transportation to get to them. School board members in support of such programs have said they hope the mandated service hours will help students become better-rounded, improve their leadership abilities and aid in college admission. Board member Susan Forbes from Lockport Township High School (one of the most recent schools to adopt a community service requirement) said that in her experience students who would not have otherwise chosen to participate in service projects were very glad to have done so and appreciative of the opportunity by the end of their service engagements.
Opponents to the mandated service hours have said that the decision to volunteer should be left to the student, and not enforced by the school district. The trend, however, seems to show no signs of slowing down.
Whatever the reason, we think it’s great that more and more students are getting involved and giving back to their communities, and we encourage those looking for volunteer opportunities to install the All for Good Google gadget by going to www.allforgood.org. Keep up the great work!
In the wake of the current economic recession there seems to be a silver lining approaching… or should I say a “green” lining. Recent job polls show an increase in the number of green jobs in the United States over the past fiscal year, one which may lead to a sizeable shift towards a more environmentally sustainable future. The Associated Press recently posted an article stating that 5% of Missouri’s jobs are tied to the ‘green’ economy, and other states (such as California and Wisconsin) have made similar claims of the booming renewable energy industry.
While many other industries have seen significant declines in the past year, the renewable energy sector seems to not only be weathering the storm, but thriving in the midst of it. Much of this push comes from the White House and the current administration’s desire to jumpstart the US economy partly through the creation of green energy jobs. On December 16th, the US government said it plans to pour five billion dollars into fostering jobs growth in green technologies and clean energy. The plan, which is part of the $787 billion economic recovery plan launched in February, would offer a 30% tax credit to investors in factories using wind and solar energy technologies.
While the green jobs market may not be the solution to all of our economic woes, it certainly is helping to shed some light (pun intended) on the situation. And who knows? Even if it doesn’t result in an economic boom, it might just leave the planet a little greener for the future generations.
We at All for Good are extremely excited about the new shift in clean energy jobs and would like to encourage those interested in this area to check it out further!
More information can be found at http://www.greenjobs.com/
It’s the holiday season – a moment of reflection as we look back on the year that passed and gaze forward at the year ahead. All for Good remains a young startup in every respect. Its hard to believe that our launch took place less than six months ago! We are proud of what we have been able to achieve in a short period of time. However, make no mistake, we still have lots of room for improvement.
To that end, we really need ideas, suggestions, thoughts, etc. UserVoice has been a good forum to solicit ideas on new product features and functionality. We review it on a regular basis, so please keep this feedback coming! We hope that you will let us know how we can do better.
For time being, we are heads-down and planning ahead for a productive 2010. We want to stick to our mission – to enable more people to serve – and to do so while supporting all our varied partners as much as possible.
One item that we want to undertake right away is to streamline the Terms of Service (TOS) for API partners. Our partners at Volunteer Match brought to our attention the fact that our API appeared to require partners to “sublicense” our data. Such a request would violate the terms of the specific version of the Creative Commons License (CCL) that governs our use of VolunteerMatch listings. This claim prompted a deeper review of our API TOS further revealed that it contained some unnecessary language that we could shed without comprising the TOS itself. Moreover, they also informed us that some API executions do not comply with the CCL requirements around attribution.
We are preparing to make some changes in early 2010. Per the earlier point, we plan to eliminate the sublicense reference and delete other superfluous requirements such as the compliance with the Google Base terms of service (this was a legacy issue that became obsolete after we integrated SOLR into our platform). We also will be visiting with API partners to remind them of the need for CCL compliance. As we plan to take these steps, we wanted to notify the public (you!) and open a channel of conversation.
Do you have other ideas about how we could improve All for Good and our API TOS? If so, please let us know. Feel free to add comments to this post. You also could offer thoughts on UserVoice, especially if they are related to the core product. Again, before we move ahead, we want to hear from you.
In closing, hope you are having a wonderful holiday season. We wish you all the best for a productive and prosperous 2010.
Looking for a way to give back this holiday season? Why not give the gift of ‘you’ to someone in need by volunteering? The holidays are a great time to get involved in special outreach programs, find out about local volunteer organizations, and get to know other members of your community.
The Salvation Army always runs programs during this time of year, including toy drives, food bank support, and events to help the homeless. Toys for Tots is currently seeking volunteers across the US. Visit their site to find out about nearby drop-off locations and opportunities to get involved. If you live in Boston or Philly, you might check out Cradles to Crayons which is a wonderful group that needs donations and labor to help bring school supplies and toys to children.
We salute the effort by the White House to expand the United We Serve campaign to encourage people to stamp out hunger during the holiday season. Check out the toolkit posted online at serve.gov to learn more about how you can take personal steps to make an impact and alleviate hunger in your community.
Most people choose to volunteer on issues that have affected people we love. Its unfortunate that so many of us know people who have suffered from HIV/AIDS. It truly remains a global epidemic. The world commemorated World AIDS Day this week, and many of the groups doing meaningful work to combat the disease need help, particularly during this time of year. Our friends at google.org launched a useful microsite for World AIDS Day earlier this week that provides helpful suggestions on how to get involved (including All for Good!) so you might check that out.
Monetary donations can also be a great way to give back for those who might not have the time to volunteer. Online sites such as JustGive.org and WorldVision offer a wide range of charitable organizations and causes that users can donate to. Our friends at GlobalGiving and Universal Giving make it possible donate to organizations and projects online. Try Changing the Present to give a very specific item in the name of a friend or loved one – while making a difference along the way.
If you care about improving schools here in the US (and who doesn’t!), we recommend DonorsChoose. If you want to support education and literacy efforts overseas, visit Room to Read, an organization doing Carnegie-esque work around the world. We also are intrigued by Vittana, a new service that allows you to help fund student loans in developing countries through person-to-person micro-lending. Its an innovation on the Kiva model which we also love.
Finally, we are big fans of Network for Good, the nonprofit coalition that pioneered online donations. They continue to do some of the most impressive work in the field to enable donations across the Internet. And NFG CEO Bill Strathmann sits on our board, so we will take this opportunity to give a shout-out to his organization.
All for Good wants to inspire all Americans to donate something – their talent, their time, their capital – during this holiday season to support the cause of their choice. Help us make this goal a reality by spreading the word to your friends and family. ‘Tis the season for giving… and volunteering!
Today we are reflecting on September 11, 2009 as a National Day of Service and Remembrance, thinking about how we can honor the memories of those who were lost on that difficult day. As people across the country attempt to recall their legacies in different ways, we are trying to do our part by improving All for Good so that people and organizations can more easily use our application to strengthen their communities. We already have added “tags” (see our posting last week) to make it easier to find listings that relate to this important day. Now, we are trying to extend All for Good across the social graph.
We are pleased to announce that we have improved our presence on Facebook significantly with the help of the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS). As everyone knows, Facebook is the fastest growing social network with an estimated 300 million users. As a result of our collaboration with CNCS, it is now easier for Facebook users to find and create opportunities within Facebook.
Simply visit the CNCS Facebook page – facebook.com/serve. You will find a newly added tab that demonstrates the flexibility of Pages as a home for all types of content and allows our users to create an event from an AfG listing, and invite friends to those events.
All these events will be public. We hope that it dramatically will increase Facebook’s repository of searchable events. Perhaps most importantly, the application includes a section showing events created by your friends, network, and everywhere. This will enable users to see not just what’s available, but also what’s popular. We hope that this feature will be especially useful for schools and universities, civic organizations, faith-based institutions, and companies.
We also have developed a very compelling social gadget on iGoogle, and promoted it on the top right hand side of the page. This enables folks who use Google as their home page to view opportunities on an ongoing basis and share them with friends. You can check out this gadget by visiting igoogle.com today, or clicking on the app link here.
As we reflect on this day, these innovations feel small in comparison with the enormous sacrifices that so many have made. Nonetheless, we hope that everyone can do their part. To honor the fallen, lets try to remember that we all work for good.
We would welcome your feedback. Please let us know your thoughts on these changes or how we can make All for Good better. Click here to share your story.
September 11, 2009 is a National Day of Service and Remembrance, and here at All for Good, we’re excited to help Americans find ways to participate in this historic day. We’ve created a special September 11 tag to identify listings that are a part of this event, and will be promoting it on the AllforGood.org frontend and allowing our API partners to easily retrieve these listings. Serve.gov will also be promoting September 11 opportunities heavily on their home page.
We want to be sure that all of our listing partners can ensure that their appropriate listings are included with the September 11 tag. To ensure that your listings are included, make sure they include one of the following terms in the title or description:
September 11
9/11
National Day of Service and Remembrance
Please let us know at prov…@allforgood.org if you have any questions.
One of the top concerns we’ve been hearing from nonprofit organizations who list volunteer opportunities on All for Good is that their opportunities aren’t updated on the site as frequently as they need. This happens because All for Good doesn’t directly receive volunteer opportunities from nonprofits – we crawl feeds from partners like VolunteerMatch and Idealist just like Google web search crawls web pages. Crawlers don’t immediately update, they take time to find new information.
Today, we’re rolling out improvements to All for Good that will help solve this problem and improve search quality for users. The biggest change, which you won’t see directly, is that our search engine is now powered by SOLR, an incredible open source project that will allow us to provide higher quality and more up-to-date opportunities. Nonprofits should start seeing their opportunities indexed faster, and users should see more relevant and complete results.
We’re also making searching easier by launching categories. When you go to All for Good, you now have the option to search by categories of listings in addition to keywords, making it easier to find opportunities you’re interested in. Categorization is just the first of several features we’ll be adding in the coming months to help you find interesting ways to give back to your community.
We hope you’ll try out All for Good and participate in a service activity this summer. If you’re interested in helping others do good, you can get involved in All for Good by contributing to our source code, developing an application with our API, or embedding the All for Good gadget on your web site or blog.
All for Good, which launched last month, is still in alpha, and it’s being continuously improved thanks to the work of several companies and individuals, including Google. All for Good is an open source project that depends on community contributions to be successful so we hope you get involved by helping with development, submitting volunteer listings and using the API.
We wanted to let you know that we just launched some changes that will help you get more out of the site.
The first thing you’ll notice when you load AllforGood.org is that the home page has been reorganized to make the listing of volunteer activities in your area much larger and more prominent. All for Good is all about helping you find and share ways to do good in your community, so we wanted the home page to put those opportunities front and center.
We’ve also updated the home page to include a YouTube video that explains how to use the site and we made it much easier to access the All for Good gadget, which lets you display volunteer listings on your website, blog, iGoogle page, or Gmail account.
If you use the site’s search functionality, you’ll also notice that the volunteer opportunities that appear should now be much closer to your location. Improving location-based search was the most requested improvement from our users, and we hope these changes will make it easier for you to find places to volunteer near you.
Finally, All for Good now offers UserVoice for user feedback. UserVoice is a service that makes it simple for users to give feedback and ideas to that site’s owners, and we’re using it to respond directly and quickly to your suggestions. Head over to the feedback site and let us know what you think!
We have several new features we wanted to share with you.
Product A quick note to let you know that on Tuesday 7.14 we plan to push a
number of bug fixes and enhancements, most importantly recalibrating
the search algorithm to prioritize location. We expect this to
improve the user experience.
A few other fixes/features of note:
New home page
Location search improvements
UserVoice feedback forum linked to from Help. You’re the expert.
Please share your ideas & weigh in on suggestions from others.
Partners
In the last three weeks since our consumer launch, we’ve had a
tremendous response from interested data and API partners.
Recent YouTube video from Matthew McConaughey on Serving
AfG Weekly Metrics as of 7.6.09
Some topline metrics from last week’s site activity.
Over 60,000 visits
More than 200,000 Total Listings
Applications
Lots of great apps and API work going on in the developer
community. If you’ve created something cool, let us know so we can
help you spread the word!
Today marks the start of the President’s United We Serve campaign asking all Americans to make meaningful changes in their communities for 81 days and beyond. To make it even easier for you to get started, the team here has been busy adding new features to All for Good to connect you with as many opportunities as possible — no matter where you are or what you’re interested in.
Some of the new things you’ll see on the site include:
All for Good widget: Add the All for Good Widget to your website, blog, Gmail, and iGoogle homepages to track and browse volunteer activities. You can also find specific volunteer opportunities and customize searches to show listings in a particular geographic area or interest area.
Share: Share the opportunities that you find most interesting with your friends, family and colleagues through Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Beebo and more.
Catalista app: Use the Catalista app to find real-time, local opportunities on your mobile phone—so no matter where you are, you can always be connected to service opportunities happening that day, weekend, or month near your area. You can also track the impact of and rate your volunteering experience.
API: The All for Good API lets you create applications using the opportunities we aggregate.
We’re also excited to see how some of our early partners are using the All for Good API and widget. We’ve been working with MTV, who just launched a new website, serve.mtv.com, powered by All for Good. And we’re also starting to see some cool service initiatives on the site like YouTube’s Video Volunteers, which connects skilled video makers with nonprofits who want to broadcast their causes through video.
That’s just a start–we’ll keep adding new innovations as they’re created by the team and the growing developer community-at-large. We love the feedback we’ve been getting from you so far. Keep it coming and get out there and start doing good!
Are you looking for ways to give back to your community? All for Good makes it simple to find and share volunteer activities on a national level--or even in your own backyard.
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