Creating a volunteer community
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Myf Nixon's talk at the Brighton Content Strategy Meetup (24.4.12) where she describes how mySociety, and especially their latest project, FixMyTransport, relies on a volunteer community.
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Creating a volunteer community
- 2. We help people become more powerful in the civic and democratic parts of their lives...
- 3. We help people become more powerful in the civic and democratic parts of their lives... by providing them with internet services that provide simple, tangible benefits.
- 17. e: myf@mysociety.org t: @MySocMyf www.mysociety.org www.TheyWorkForYou.com www.WriteToThem.com www.WhatDoTheyKnow.com www.FixMyStreet.com www.FixMyTransport.com
Editor's Notes
- I’m Myf, I work as Marketing & Communications Manager at mySoc
- A complex organisation to pin down and explain to people – partly because we vary, in people’s perception, from a ‘maverick band of hackers’ to ‘a responsible organisation we can outsource our council website development to’ – but fortunately we have a mission statement and this is it
- That is an ambitious remit for a small bunch of people.
- What does it mean in practice? People haven’t always heard of mySoc but they have often heard of our sites. Sites like FixMyStreet.Notice a pothole in local area, broken streetlight, graffiti, you can reportEmpowering people to take action in their own local communityLowering the bar – 54% of people using FMS had never contacted a council beforeDon’t need to know which council or which dept it shd go toAnd the fact that the report is put online is a simple way of ensuring that everyone can participate in their own community/feel empowered. Plus, it tends to ensure things get done.
- Our most-used site WhatDoTheyKnow, for sending FOI requests, recently hit over 100K requestsAgain, demystifying a basic civic right that many people don’t know they have.
- Parliamentary monitoring, TheyWorkForYou, look up your MP’s activity even if you don’t know who they are, subscribe to their activity or to keywords (and contact them via WriteToThem.com). All Hansard is recorded and searchable, going back to 1930s.
- Our newest site, FixMyTransport. Launched August and I’ve been involved with creating the community around it.Report any transport problem – same concept as all our sites in that you don’t need to know who to contact, just where you got on/offHidden agenda – like FMS we wanted to make micro-activists of our users, show them that they don’t have to just put up and shut upLike FMS it also puts the conversation online, encouraging excellent customer service.Note our strapline.
- First: in a move copied from Flickr, we made sure the first 500 users got supportive comments and suggestion for actionThis not a tremendously useful comment but does make the user feel valued and inclined to returnSets the tone for the sort of interaction we envisage for the sitePost-moderated. FixMyStreet has same system, very little trouble
- Remember the aim of getting people to take action? FMT has baked-in micro-activism.User can decide that if the problem is ongoing, it should be a campaignAllows them to tweet, Facebook, email and gather supportThis shows the screen when someone else has added support – also encourages them to spread the word
- Can also ask for advice, or admin can tell them who to write to next if they notice the problem has stalled
- It’s standard for a charity to have a volunteer community – but I think ours is unusual, if not unique. Our volunteers don’t rattle collecting cans or staff charity shops. They provide code patches, or in the case of WDTK they moderate the site, set policy, deal with problem users, and help people submit their requests. Why? Partly for the inherent joy of helping people. Partly because they are people who are passionate about the right to FOI. Partly because we allow them a real say in the policies and direction of the site, and they are valued members of mySociety.WDTK was the model for creating the FMT community in many ways.
- Not sustainable for one person to deal with this and so the volunteers came in – chosen by seeing who had written the most comments and the most helpful adviceWe had a league table of commenters, approached the most enthusiastic, travelled to meet them, parcelled out permissions as we grew to trust them moreCan see two levels on userpic – admin/anorak – at first can suggest people to write to. 2nd level get to reroute problems, mark routes as cancelled, ban users etcThis approach is scalable. I look after the volunteers, try to ensure they feel rewarded. They have a blog to express themselves and access to github where we share and discuss all development ideas, so they have a say on the future of the site. They are people who are passionate about transport anyway.
- And finally, an example of FMT in action – note ‘fixed’ graphic.Stats on ‘fixed’ not very meaningful – becauseNot everyone comes back to markprobs as fixedSome probs are just unfixable or unreasonable Some probs will take months or years to fixSome probs would have been fixed anyway, eg asking for a bus shelter that was going to be replaced anyway
- Can include images – speak a thousand words
- Escalating the problemStrathclyde Partnership for Transport (SPT) act as agents forGlasgow City Council (GCC) with regards to shelter management,however, ultimately the council is responsible for the provisionof new and replacement shelters and as such, has the final saywith regards to shelter provision.
- High 5!