Volunteers

[Steve]

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Techie Volunteers Fill a Need at Charities and Schools 

by Olivia J. Abel


(NY Times)---The Lenox Hill Neighborhood House has been providing
services to the needy on the Upper East Side of Manhattan for more
than a century. But the past year has seen a threefold growth in the
number of people served by the agency's education programs, and
David Kirchoff, its director of community services and education,
credits this expansion to a new breed of technically adept
volunteers. 

These volunteers designed and maintain a database that, among other
things, tracks program participants. "We manage much better now,"
Kirchoff said. "Now I can pull up a profile on someone in our World of
Work program and see what classes they've taken, what skills they've
acquired." 

The database is also used to generate program reports. "It makes us
more responsible to our funders and our own board of directors,"
Kirchoff said. "We can justify our needs. Because of it, I was able
to hire a new teacher." 

Carl Goldschmidt, a 27-year-old software engineer who was working for
HBO (he recently quit to attend graduate school in London), set up
the database as a favor for a friend. But then he had a thought: What
if he could recruit other corporate techies with a benevolent streak
and get them working on projects at nonprofits all around the city? 

In 1998, spurred on by a class on community leadership, Goldschmidt
founded Voluntech.org. He was soon joined in running the group by
Eric Hancock and James Brooks, who both work at HBO. Eighteen months
later, more than 80 volunteers from Voluntech.org are working with
almost 40 nonprofit groups, doing things like setting up Web sites,
designing databases and teaching Internet classes. 

Voluntech.org tends to focus on small grass-roots organizations. 

"These places really need us," Goldschmidt said. "They can have the
most caring staff in the world, but you can't get anything done today
without technology." 

A handful of other organizations provide similar services. One of
them, called Mouse, works to integrate technology into New York City
public schools. Another, Compumentor, based in San Francisco, was
founded in 1987 and offers things like low-cost consulting services
and year 2000 planning for nonprofit groups and schools. 

Goldschmidt cites a clear reason for the emergence of such groups:
The salaries of information technology professionals have
skyrocketed, putting their services out of reach for many nonprofit
groups. "This is a pressing problem," Goldschmidt said. 

A 1999 survey by Computerworld, a trade magazine, put the average
total compensation for a computer operations supervisor in the
nonprofit industry at $42,600, well below the overall average of
$50,687. In the business sector, it was $75,444. 

"I had a good tech person," Kirchoff said, "but then he got a job on
Wall Street making five times as much. Now he wears three-piece suits,
gets a chauffeured car to take him home to New Jersey and has catered
meals. I guess sitting up late with me eating pizza didn't compare.
But he says he misses the sense of community." 

Shannon Leskin, chief executive of Philanthropy News Network, which
runs a series of national conferences on nonprofit groups and
technology, said that technically adept volunteers had become vital
to such organizations, as have corporate donations. (Microsoft
donated all the software to the Lenox Hill Neighborhood House.) 

But Ms. Leskin said nonprofit groups must educate themselves to meet
the information-technology industry halfway. "When we first started
the conferences a year ago, there was a heavy focus on the Internet,"
she said. "But then we had to take a step back and look at basic
infrastructures, like phones and hardware and software. We had people
having epiphanies when they learned they could bookmark a Web site." 

Goldschmidt said that volunteer recruitment had been accomplished so
far by word of mouth and through the Volun tech.org Web site
(www.voluntech.org) and an occasional slide presentation at corporate
information-technology departments. "We try to make projects
manageable," he said. "There should be an end in sight." 

The volunteers who are recruited take on a variety of projects. Ron
Thomas, 44, leaves his job as a system analyst at Time Inc. on most
Thursday evenings and heads to the Lenox Hill Neighborhood House,
where he is updating Goldschmidt's database. " "But I'll do
troubleshooting -- anything they need," he said. 

Thomas said he had benefited from the work as well. "It has
absolutely helped me build my technical skills," he said. "I learned
a new database at Lenox Hill, and now people at work are always
coming and asking me questions about it." 

Another volunteer, Peter Choe, 30, who works at Con Edison, also
discovered an unanticipated bonus from helping out at the School of
the Future in Manhattan, a public high school where he helped set up
the school's snazzy Web site. He loved instructing students, he said,
so he now teaches Java programming at Baruch College of the City
University of New York. 

Frank Brando, who works in technical support at Young & Rubicam
Advertising, recently revamped an I.B.M. laptop that had been donated
to Weird Sisters, a group that supports women who are pursuing
performing arts projects. Brando, 33, installed a computer program
that can manage the mailing list, which had been handwritten, to
announce things like performances. 

One nonprofit group that has asked for help is Project Enterprise,
which provides business loans to entrepreneurs living below the
poverty level. The executive director (and only full-time staff
member), Vanessa Rudin, 34, is a former software analyst, and she is
eagerly awaiting two volunteers to set up her database. "Most small
nonprofits need database management and Web design work," she said.
"But many don't even know where to begin. It's like picking a car
salesman -- who do you trust?" 

Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company 
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