FAQs for Charities

A GiveCamp is a weekend-long event where software developers, designers, and database administrators donate their time to create custom software for non-profit organizations. This custom software could be a new website for the nonprofit organization, a small data-collection application to keep track of members, or a application for the Red Cross that automatically emails a blood donor three months after they’ve donated blood to remind them that they are now eligible to donate again. The only limitation is that the project should be scoped to be able to be completed in a weekend.

There are two deadlines for submitting proposals for the Fall 2012 event.

• The initial submission deadline is August 10. Proposals submitted by this date have the best chance of being approved.
• The final submission deadline is September 17. Proposals submitted for the final deadline will still be considered if sufficient resources are available.

Possibly.

Start off with completing the Charity Proposal form on this site located here.

Success for each charity depends on a couple of things, but all starts with involvement. It's critical that members of the charity be available before, during and after the event to ensure that your development team is successful. If your organization is selected, the following requirements are made:

• a representative from your charity must attend the kick-off meeting on Friday, Oct 21. This person should be knowledgeable about the proposal document and the work that our developers are being asked to do
• at least one representative from your charity must be available either in person or by phone during the weekend so that any questions about the application can be answered and the team has the information they need to complete their assigned tasks
• Members of your organization that will be maintaining the application after the event is over are encouraged to attend one of the various training sessions that will be conducted during the weekend. These sessions will include training on the various technical solutions used to build the applications as well as sessions on various Social Media techniques to expand the impact of your organization online.
• lastly, at least one member of the Charity must attend the demo on Sunday afternoon to see the results and take posession of the application. The people you send should include the organization's technical expert, if possible.

It goes without saying that the most successful charity projects result from a strog committment to participate my members of the charity, so you're strongly encouraged to be on site each day.

As many as we can. Our target is to deliver 15-25 completed charity projects.

We will select the number of charities to be helped based on the number of developer volunteers we receive. Our goal is to provide support to 20+ charities in the Seattle area.

Your proposal will be used as the blueprint for your application. The more specific your proposal the happier you will be with your application. This is just some of the information that you might wish to include:

• What is the objective of the system? Describe the problem this system will solve.
• Are you requesting a new application or an update to an existing application?
• If it is not a new application what software was used to create your existing solution?
• Will you be hosting your application?
• What information will you need to track?
• Do any users have special needs?
• Describe the ongoing needs for importing data into the system, and exporting it from the system.
• List any reports.
• Describe performance requirements, issues, and concerns.
• Describe security requirements.

See the charity proposal form for more details.

If you are one of the charities that are selected, we will contact you to finalize your design requirements.

Please stop in and give your support to the developers that are working hard. There are other similar events being planned that you may want to submit your Charity Proposal information to. See GiveCamp.org for information about other such events.

At least one member of the organization needs to be at the opening ceremony, the closing ceremony and available by phone over the weekend. If no one from your organization can make it to the event, perhaps you can work with a surrogate. You will need someone to be onsite at a minimum Friday and Sunday.

A project lead will be assigned to review each submitted proposal. Those project leads will review the submissions and help clarify any outstanding details. It is critical that you are as complete as possible when filling out these proposals so that we have as much information as possible to help us select charities. If your charity is selected then a followup meeting with a lead will be held to collect any further information needed about your charity and your application.

Yes! Each charity will be provided transition training in how to manage their application once the weekend is over. It is critical that someone from the organization attend the training so they can share that information with others from your organization. And depending on the technology used, this person may need to be technical.

The selected charities will be published to the GiveCamp website approximately one week before the event. All charities will also be contacted by email to let them know if they were or were not selected.