This month our friends at Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) led a global hack for humanity, bringing together close to 1,000 people to hack for social good in over 28 cities including Warsaw, where they worked in close collaboration with NetSquared and Fundacja TechSoup. Technologists teamed up with subject-matter experts to solve a wide range of social and environmental problems by building software applications.

Elliot Harmon, Staff Writer at TechSoup recently wrote a great, information-packed blog post that we want to share to wrap up our series on human capital. Our goal was to share tips, resources and examples of how civil society organizations can best tap into the human capital potential.  In this post Elliot shares key ingredients to make technology volunteering projects successful as well as some additional useful tips and resources. 

-- Originally posted on the TechSoup Blog --

Continuing our series on how nonprofit organizations can tap into the human capital potential, I thought it might be helpful to pull together some resources that will help nonprofits avoid common pitfalls and follow best practices when working with volunteers.

Whether you are a nonprofit just starting to use human capital or have already established internal structures to manage your volunteers, engaging them in meaningful and productive ways can be both rewarding and challenging. 

Here on the Net2 blog we have been writing about how nonprofits can leverage limited-term and high-skills based human capital to accelerate their mission-driven work.  But nothing is better than a real-world example -- and we've got a great one from right here at TechSoup Global!

In tough economic times marked by cuts in funding, many nonprofits remain in need of technology and business solutions that are beyond their grasp. According to the Community Corps, 40% of the 1.5 million U.S. based nonprofits claim to lack the technology they need to effectively serve their constituents. 

In the summer of 1998, I signed up for a three-week long volunteer project on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. As part of a small team, I helped refurbish a house that was home to about 15 Native American children (ages 13 months to 16 years). They were facing issues ranging from fetal alcohol syndrome to abuse and neglect.