Lansing saw its first-ever GiveCamp over the weekend, and around 50 software developers responded, building software applications for around a dozen Lansing-area nonprofits.
A GiveCamp is a Friday-night-through-Sunday-afternoon event where software developers, designers, and database administrators donate their time to create custom software for nonprofit organizations. In this case, developers used the basement of the Impression 5 Science Center. In January 2009, a GiveCamp in Dallas served 20 non-profits. A GiveCamp last summer in Ann Arbor served 15. And more GiveCamp events are forming all over the country, such as one in Kansas City in April, Minneapolis in April, and another this summer in Ann Arbor. During GiveCamp, developers are welcome to go home in the evenings or camp out all weekend long. (In Lansing, the YMCA provided a place to shower.) Food and drinks are provided — along with a few game systems for when developers need a little break. Jay Harris, a senior consultant for SRT Solutions in Ann Arbor, was a co-coordinator of the event, along with Jeff McWherter of Web Ascender in Okemos. Harris said most of what the developers built for the nonprofits — which included the YMCA, the Boys and Girls Club, Ronald McDonald House and more — were Web applicaitons, either an improved Internet presence or Web technologies like online forms.
One charity, FLECS (http://www.flecsmi.org/), which offers students assistance with high school pay-to-play fees for extracurricular activities, got its first set of online applications. Lansing’s Ronald McDonald House got its first Intranet containing names of young patients and their families, replacing an entirely paper-based system.