Help from Home

We entered a Nominet Trust funding competition last Autumn, in which we were shortlisted down to the final round.  Unfortunately, as with all other attempts at obtaining funding from various funding sources, we didn’t quite succeed.  I hear alot about the fact that microvolunteering is the ‘next big thing’, or ‘it’s on the rise’, butContinue Reading

In our 5 years of operating, we’ve carried on developing projects and promoting microvolunteering on absolutely no income and a single small funding grant 4 years ago.  We’ve reached a point now where it would be really handy to have some money at our disposal to add additional functions to our website.  Although we’ve resistedContinue Reading

We missed out on our February update because we took a short break from operations and weren’t able to file a report in time. We shall give ourselves a severe threshing for being so lacksadaisical! We’ve had a few volunteers come on board that lasted beyond our initial response to their emails – most commonlyContinue Reading

Happy New Year – a bit belated, I know, but better late than never. To kick start the New Year, we released a project focused around Global Awareness Days.  We formed a collaboration with Click Aid International in the guise of a blog that would provide background information about certain International Awareness Days, accompanied byContinue Reading

It was a quiet month this month, what with Christmas and New Year celebrations to contend with. We started a campaign to promote microvolunteering to Rotaract Clubs, firstly to the UK and then we’ll be expanding globally in the New Year.  Rotaract Clubs, if you weren’t aware, are opened to 18-30 year olds who wantContinue Reading

Quite a few things happened during the month, so here’s a précis of everything. Events – IBM Research invited me to be a panellist during a workshop/session on microvolunteering at the CSCW 2013 event in Texas. Two problems came up straight away.  I’d have to fund my own way there from the UK and plusContinue Reading

Hot on the tails of the disappointment with NESTA’s decision not to fund HFH, we have now been informed that we’ve reached Stage 2 of an award run by Nominet Trust. This funding body focuses on projects that use digital technology to benefit society and we’ve submitted an application to add some enhancements to ourContinue Reading

Not much happened over the previous month, due mainly to the fact we took a break from operations for approximately three weeks. Anyway, we teamed up with a supporter of a charity called Moving Mountains, to raise money for them via a humorously (hopefully) pre-written Claim-To-Fame Family Tree gift.  Moving Mountains is a charity thatContinue Reading

A lot to report here, so I’ll be brief on all of them: – The biggest news (well the biggest news with the biggest potential) is that Help From Home has got through to the last round of the NESTA’s Innovation in Giving Award. Up to £50K could be paid out.  Never in a millionContinue Reading

July proved to be a very busy month for volunteers helping out Help From Home. I’m now sort of beginning to realise that the way you word a request for volunteers can make a huge difference to the take-up rate. I introduced a role called Odd Jobs which are the little jobs that once they’reContinue Reading

Volunteers, banks, parties, articles – quite a few things happened last month, that made it a more active month than most, and things didn’t really begin to happen until the 2nd half of the month. We’ve been getting a bit of publicity via our ‘The Rise of Microvolunteering’ article, which has been circulated in quiteContinue Reading

Had some very interesting chats with several organisations during the past month. First off was Give More, a UK wide campaign to encourage people to give more time, energy and money to UK communities. They liked the ethos of our approach to encouraging people to give more time, to the extent that they included usContinue Reading

We’ve created our very first crowdfunding project and we’re quite (ok, very) excited about it. We would like to add some twinkle and sparkle to people’s Profile pages when they log in, so that they can monitor: – how much time they’ve spent microvolunteering – what causes they’ve supported – what their impact is We’veContinue Reading

We have been very fortunate to recruit a highly respected PR guru who has offered to volunteer some of her time to help us out with a fair bit of media exposure regarding the impact Help From Home is making. She wishes to compile a general article on microvolunteering for a UK / Global press release and is looking for case studiesContinue Reading

We are proud to announce that we have a new service up and running in the guise of our Free Microvolunteering Consultancy Service. It’s aimed at introducing non profits to the concept of microvolunteering, followed by advice/guidance on creating actual microvolunteering actions themselves. As far as we know, we’re pioneering this service as we believeContinue Reading