Hi all. This is Ben Rigby from Mobile Voter. We’ve submitted the “Volunteer Now – by mobile phone” project to this year’s Mashup Challenge. I’m pretty blown away by all of the support that has come to this project already via the Net2 website – and we’re not even at the conference yet. We’ve already found coders, strategists, volunteer coordinators, and even a specialist in mobile phone volunteerism (would you have believed there was one out there?).

One hole for us is a smart marketing plan. We’ve got to figure out how we’re going to get some groundswell behind the application –by convincing people to download the app to their iPhone (or Android phone, when they come out) and then by motivating people to use it. What are some great ideas for how to run a marketing campaign on the cheap? How do we get our service in front of iPhone owners? Do people know people at Apple who can help? Or elsewhere?

And then, to inspire usage, how should we craft messaging around the application? Should we add a game-like component to it – where you accrue points by volunteering? Or do we approach it with a more straightforward tone –eg: ‘there are people and organizations that need your help.’ Or maybe our strategy is to do no marketing… to recruit a select number of people and to ask them to pass it on to their friends. In all cases, I’d love to hear from the Net2 community how you’d approach the challenge of building usage.

Our end goal is to have people make the connection between *spare time* and *social good* - so when you have spare time, you think *social good* and you pull out your phone and see what you can do.

In sum,
What we’ve got so far:
•An application that works (on Android now – on iPhone soon)
•Hooks into non-profits that have volunteer opportunities
•Project managers who can manage a recruitment and/or ongoing campaign

What we need:
•A plan for recruiting volunteers to download the app to their iPhones – and then to encourage ongoing usage.