Giving away a project

Most of the small organizations on this coast are doing something genuinely difficult with almost no margin. The website is rarely the hardest part of that. It is often the part quietly costing them the most.

A donate button that works on a phone is not a small thing when most of your traffic is on a phone. An events page people can actually find fills a room. A brand that looks like the work behind it changes how a grant application reads before anyone gets to the second paragraph. None of that is cosmetic. It decides how many people ever encounter what you do.

Those are my favorite projects to be part of, and they are frequently the ones that cannot be paid for. So there is now a pro bono page, and it works like a small grant.

How it works

Applications are open. You fill in a short form about your organization and what would help most, I read them as they come in, and I take on what I have room for.

What gets given away is a real piece of work with a beginning and an end. A small site built. A broken one repaired. An accessibility pass done properly. A newsletter set up so somebody who is not technical can send it every month without asking anyone for help. Something I can finish and hand over, so it is yours when it is done.

What helps

It helps if you can name the specific thing that is not working. "Our events page broke on phones when we changed themes and signups dropped" tells me what to go and look at. "Our site needs help" may be just as true, but I cannot tell from it whether the job is a week or three months, and I need to be able to finish what I start.

Being nearby helps too. If the people you serve are on this coast, I can come and meet you, which usually makes the work better.

And it goes faster when somebody at your organization can spare an hour or two along the way. Not to manage anything, just to answer the questions only you can answer, and to look at it once while it is still easy to change.

None of that is required. If the need is real, apply anyway.

Ask

I would much rather hear from you than have you decide in advance that the answer is no. If it turns out to be bigger than a project I can give away, I will tell you what the real path looks like, including the parts that have nothing to do with hiring me.

The application is here. It takes about ten minutes, and there are no wrong answers in it.

If you do this work too

If you design, build, write, or take photographs for a living around here, you could run something like this as well. It takes one project and one yes. You do not need a page, a program, or a name for it, and the organizations that could use the help are not hard to find once you start asking.

If you would rather not do it on your own, get in touch. Some of these projects are better with two people on them, and I would gladly split one with a photographer, an illustrator, a writer, or another developer. The same goes if you already give work away and want somewhere to send the parts you do not cover.