Do Some Good

A few of the
charities with
actions on
'Do Some Good'

We first explored the growing craze of quick online volunteering actions or “micro-volunteering” back in March when we spent some time researching (and getting distracted by!) our picks of the online volunteering options offered by Help from Home. 

Microvolunteering is a type of volunteering which continues to grow and the next logical step was always going to be the smart phone. Do Some Good is an app created by mobile phone company Orange that’s free to download on any network. On its launch the range of actions was rather limited and it was only available on the iphone. The launch was clearly deemed a success though, as there are now over 25 actions and users of Android, Blackberry and Nokia phones can also jump on the bandwagon. 

The question is are the actions worth doing and will they actually do some good?  I’d say, so far, ‘yes’. Whilst you probably won’t be able to do all 28 actions (I’ve managed 9 so far) there are a good mix of activities ranging from surveys that are super-quick to fill out, plenty of opportunities to use your observation skills and camera to feed information back to charities, and opportunities to share your knowledge on different issues. 

It’s certainly a great platform for charities to reach new audiences and collect data from a wide range of people. So far 7628 photos have been donated to photofoundation for charities to use in their publicity, and 1755 people have used their language skills to translate bite-size pieces of “how to guides”. It’s helped the NSPCC understand how to target their advice, the Antony Nolan trust find out how we feel about blood stem cell donation and Marie Curie understand how people would want to volunteer for them in person.

Whilst this hasn’t changed my mind that micro-volunteering won’t ever come close to how much fun getting out there and volunteering in person can be, this is a great way to distract yourself on the train and far more productive than Angry Birds!