Just before the New Year I signed up at GetInvolved.ca to help them reach their goal of 2,000,000 volunteer hours this year (through the Power of the Hour initiative).  Companies, individuals and organizations can join and set their goals, and then use the GetInvolved.ca platform to keep track of their time spent volunteering over the year.  I’m a huge fan of lists and metrics, so its awesome in that way, and of course the general social engagement of it!  So, I’ve pledged 250 hours for 2010, which might be a challenge because I’ve started to get paid for some of the things I used to do as a volunteer, but it’ll keep me true to my volunteering roots!

I like this site better than some of the other social networking sites for change because it really works at translating online commitments to offline action.  Some of the other sites seem to focus on getting people to commit to certain actions…I find that I always wuss out on these actions because I want it to look good in 140 characters and usually my involvement doesn’t look that pretty on paper (helped with website, wrote meeting minutes, etc).  But GetInvolved.ca highlights the type of action I already take (even if its not really interesting) by focusing on hours instead of actions.  And they push me to do more than I’d usually do.  The other cool thing that they do is let individuals advertise what they have to offer (eg, time, skills, etc) or what they need help with.

As well, they have tons of videos about volunteers, including something called Digital U, a series on how “social media is affecting social change”.  The series seems like its designed for people to get to know about Facebook and Twitter, so if you’ve been working in non-profit/social change web 2.0 for a while, it might not be so useful.  Maybe the future ones will be more challenging?