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It's been a while, but the most rewarding experience I had in this space was engaging directly with a small local charity. I just pitched them the idea of me g
by tyingq 4y ago
It's been a while, but the most rewarding experience I had in this space was engaging directly with a small local charity. I just pitched them the idea of me getting 10 minutes with every worker that had to use a PC as part of what the charity did. I used the time to interview them, and try to identify something that affected the largest swath of workers.
As it turned out, what I helped them with wasn't code, but a bit of configuration and tuning, but they said it honestly created about a hour of time back per day for most of the workers. There was part of a flow that would often grind a long time and/or error out. Making that fast and reliable was the best low-effort thing I could deliver.
- etna_ramequin 4y agoSounds like a great idea! What sort of questions did you ask during the interview?
- tyingq 4y agoStarted with some open questions about the most frustrating things about the computers/apps, then leading into "show me, on this PC", so I could see which of those complaints I could do anything about. Then a tally at the end to see what was practical to fix, commonly disliked experiences across users, etc. The one thing I'd do different is ask for maybe 2 rounds of interviews, or longer interviews with 2-3 people to start with. The later interviews I did better, since I understood base concepts better. So I probably missed good info from the people I talked to earliest.
- KRAKRISMOTT 4y agoCan you bill the time as a tax write-off?
- devsda 4y agohow does it work in practice? Are you expecting to offset the potential value of your donation(billable consulting hours) against your actual income ? If true, this has so much potential for fraud and abuse that I doubt this is allowed. Imagine a motivational speaker billing businesses for one week and "donating" time for another week to charities effectively nullifying their income. I think write-offs are generally on cash basis and on expenses incurred.
- seattle_spring 4y agoNo. If you mean "deduction", then the answer is still no.
- xboxnolifes 4y agoEven if you could get a charitable donation deduction here, it would be for $0. Charity deductions are only on the amount being donated, and $0 was donated, $0 is being taxed, so $0 is being deducted.
- narag 4y agoI second that. People working in small scale down-to-earth charities often needs practical immediate help. My experience offering help to big organizations can't be worse. First was a long time ago, I was unemployed and pennyless. Some NGO appeared on tv asking for volunteers to go to Africa for some humanitarian project. I called. "Sorry, we need no more people (after an hour on air saying they desperately needed many), can you instead donate some money?" Second time, I offered free consulting after a similar request. They rebounded me between some employees, then silence.