At the beginning of December, we held a hackathon to test the first draft of a standard that will use open data to connect more people with opportunities to volunteer. The event clearly showed that modernising data infrastructure can help us realise innovative approaches and connect more people to volunteering opportunities. These insights will inform further development of the data model in the next phase of work. Read to the end to see how you can get involved.
Each year in England, 24.8 million adults volunteer in some way at least once, delivering essential support in their communities, from crisis response and youth programmes to supporting vulnerable people and protecting the environment. However, systemic barriers limit the full potential of volunteering to individuals, communities and the economy.
That's why we launched a new initiative in October this year, commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), and working with Do IT and Team Kinetic. Currently, opportunities for volunteers are scattered across more than 47 brokerage platforms with limited interoperability, and data about volunteering is often held in organisational ‘siloes’, making it hard to publish, find and access opportunities. We’re working to change that by developing open data infrastructure and standards to make it easier.
The hackathon
As part of our ongoing work, we hosted a two-day hackathon in London in early December, bringing together volunteer platforms, developers and community organisations, together with academics and infrastructure bodies, to test the first draft of the standard and explore how open data can connect more people with opportunities to help. The hackathon was an integral part of the Alpha phase of the project, and will set us up for the Beta phase, where we’ll develop pilots and test our work in the real world.
For two days, we were joined by 25 participants who took on practical challenges, tested data flows between systems, and discussed what’s needed to make this approach work across the sector.
On day one, we set out what we hoped to achieve and gave guests a thorough overview of the project to date. We took them through our findings from the Discovery phase of the project, the use cases we’d identified and the data infrastructure solutions that would be required to deliver them.
We introduced everybody to the infrastructure we’d developed for the hackathon, standardising the modelling and querying of volunteering opportunity data to make representative sample data available for testing. We then outlined the challenges facing the sector, from fragmented, inefficient data to the burdens placed on data providers, such as integration costs and maintenance.
Getting down to business
Halfway through the day, our hackathon volunteers formed teams with a blend of skills. We matched volunteering experts, data publishers and data users with the architects, data analysts and technologists who would bring the pilot ideas to life.
The teams then defined their problem statements and selected data and tools before creating a simple plan to outline data sources, approaches, and minimum viable prototype requirements. The scene was now set for day two: the build.
Team 1: Do Good
Do Good developed a conversational volunteer-matching chatbot. Taking a user-led approach, their chatbot asked about the personal goals and outcomes a volunteer is interested in, rather than just picking up on keywords. The model asked returning users if they are still volunteering and measured their well-being based on activities and outcomes. It also made prompts for returning users based on their initial starting point, for instance, through a social prescribing website. The model used data that is already available, matching in the background to get high-quality applications from individuals to organisations, while also providing feedback on the volunteer experience.
Team 2: Table One
Table One developed a natural language interface for volunteer opportunities, and focused on a conversational style that allowed people to express their passions and interests, which felt particularly values-based. Users had the option of a temporary or permanent profile and could integrate this, for instance, with a Solid pod to share data. Their approach was user-led, so they wanted to go to where people already are. The interface was multi-channel and easily connected to different AI models, social media profiles, etc, to train the AI. This meant that it will develop and improve over time, and make more informed decisions to help the model. For example, distinguishing between the different types of volunteering a person might want to do.
Team 3: Data With Heart
Data With Heart focused on accessibility and inclusion, as many people with accessibility needs often don’t have enough information to make decisions about whether volunteering opportunities are suitable for them, leading to frustration and a lot of wasted time. Their model reduced the burden of fact-finding on these volunteers, aiming to lower attrition rates and elevate inclusion to drive systemic change. The team identified the need for a defined taxonomy within the data standard to share accessibility information, which empowered people to make informed decisions about volunteering.
Team 4: Everything Everywhere, All At Once
Everything Everywhere, All At Once looked at crisis response and spontaneous volunteering, so that people could share skills and help out in a crisis in a frictionless way. Their open, collaborative situation report provided a live feed of what’s needed in a crisis, as an incident changes. They updated the taxonomy in their API and designed a geolocator to allow volunteers to see nearby opportunities. It also allows QR codes to be used at the scene of a crisis, so volunteers can see whether their specific skills are needed.
And the winner is…
Judging the hackathon were Shaun Delaney (Head of Volunteering Strategy at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport), Kim Sørensen (Director of Strategic Initiatives at the ODI) and Tara Lee (Senior Consultant at the ODI). They wanted to see how the teams prototyped novel tools and interfaces that used standardised opportunity data to solve user problems, demonstrating the tangible value of a connected data ecosystem.
The teams all rose to the challenge, but there could only be one winner. The judges stressed how impressed they were by how much the teams achieved in such a short space of time. After much deliberation…longer than we anticipated…it was incredibly tight, with very little to separate the teams. Nudging out ahead of the pack, Table One came home in first place. The judges praised their in-depth thinking, their consideration of the risks and nuances around the problem, and their suggested plan for getting the idea off the ground.
Table One were awarded £500 to donate to a charity of their choice, which they gave to St John’s Waterloo, which uses its crypt space to host people experiencing homelessness.
Work with us
Our objective for the hackathon was to test the first draft of our volunteering opportunities data standard and API and to explore how open data can connect more people with opportunities to help.
The prototypes developed by Team Do Good and Team Table One showed that consistently structured volunteer opportunity data, delivered through open APIs, can be used to power new approaches to opportunity discovery. Meanwhile the prototypes from Team Data With Heart and Team Everything Everywhere, All At Once provided useful insight to inform the further development of our proposed opportunities data model, building understanding on the types of information that users need in crisis situations and clarifying the need to describe the accessibility of opportunities consistently.
The hackathon clearly showed that modernising data infrastructure can power innovative approaches to connecting people to opportunities.
We recognise that collaboration is critical to the successful development of data infrastructure and standards. There are lots of ways you can get involved in our project:
- Join our data standards working group to help shape volunteering data standards.
- Review our draft standard and provide feedback in our online discussion forum.
- Test our alpha API.
Finally, we want to collaborate with people in the Beta phase of the project, which aims to test our data infrastructure and standards in a series of real-world pilots. If you are interested, please get in touch with us at [email protected].
