Seventy-eight volunteer developers, database administrators and designers came together for
Southwest Ohio GiveCamp this weekend, and as a result, 13 nonprofits came away with things like free website redesigns and cell phone applications.
Volunteers donated about 1,940 hours of their time to produce final products equating to about $194,000 in value.
“The nonprofits couldn’t do this on their own,” says Eric Schwartz, who has helped organize the event for the past five years. “It works out every year to be usually $14,000 of labor for each nonprofit if they were to pay to do it on their own, and we get it done in 2.5 days.”
According to one of the nonprofits, calculations indicate their project would have actually cost around $33,000, so $14,000 is conservative, Schwartz says.
This year, there was also a children's code camp, which took place Saturday afternoon.
“It’s good for us as parents—your kids are going to learn what you do for a job,” Schwartz says. “And you’re starting to teach the next generation of kids to do this.”
The best thing about the weekend, Schwartz says, was seeing nonprofit representatives hanging around with the team of volunteers working on their projects.
“Those are the most successful projects—where they work alongside each other, get to know how to work it and provide feedback,” Schwartz says. “And at the end, it’s just great to see their eyes light up when they see this brand new thing.”
Do Good:
• Connect with Southwest Ohio GiveCamp on
Facebook.
• Once you connect with the organization, learn about its
volunteer-needs so you can help SWOGC help even more nonprofits next year.
• Check out SWOGC's
portfolio of work.
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