Like you, I've tried to volunteer at places that I thought were doing good, only to find they weren't really interested. It may seem crazy, but most non-profits

Like you, I've tried to volunteer at places that I thought were doing good, only to find they weren't really interested. It may seem crazy, but most non-profits and other social-justice-minded orgs are not interested in efficiency or IT investment. Competition drives efficiency and non-profits aren't really competing with each other that way. Even if you got a job in the field, you'd be supporting a number of nice but computer-phobic people who aren't interested in scaling their efforts. And that's the best case scenario. The worst is... well, consider that non-profits live or die based on how well they communicate with donors; achieving things is often a secondary goal. If you think that going into "social justice" is a way to stay more pure than your commercially-minded classmates, think again. That said, there are a number of places doing real good where CS skills would be welcome, and are awesome places to work. One of them is my employer, the Wikimedia Foundation -- we support Wikipedia and its sister projects. http://bit.ly/WikimediaJobs http://bit.ly/WikimediaJobs Watch this space: more jobs are likely to be posted in the coming months. You might also try: The Internet Archive - http://www.archive.org/about/jobs.php http://www.archive.org/about/jobs.php Tor - http://www.torproject.org/open-positions.html.en http://www.torproject.org/open-positions.html.en