Day On has been on hold, but with a little work from Nate Angell, Cami Kaos, and Morgan Senkal we’ll be back soon and better than ever. Contact us if you are interested in making Day On happen overall or in your community.

Day On is an all-volunteer, zero-cash-flow collaboration to connect nonprofit organizations that need advice and assistance with volunteers who are ready to help.

Day On was inspired by the idea of MLK Day as a day of service rather than a day of rest: a day on, rather than a day off. The idea came out of Portland, OR’s close-knit, creative, and generous tech community. Our first idea was to hold Geeks Day On in Portland as a one-day event for nonprofit organizations to connect with geeks—people with skills and experience in technology and Internet communications. It would be like when builders visit those special places where manual laborers congregate, looking for the right people to help them with their work. Any nonprofit could come by or contact our team of geek volunteers who would help them understand and solve any issue they might have with technology and/or Internet communications. If no geek present could help with a specific issue, we would reach out to our extended networks to help find answers and assistance. For one special day, nonprofits could get disinterested, quality advice and help with the issues they often have difficulty solving on their own. Geeks faced with nothing immediate to do would volunteer to work on open source projects and other worthy endeavors.

Our founding project was Geeks Day On 2009, a day of service at CubeSpace in Portland, OR during MLK Day, Monday, January 19, 2009 where geeks offered free technology and Internet communications advice and assistance to nonprofit organizations. In 2009, Day On continued to extend its mission beyond Geeks Day On, working with partners NTEN and NetSquared to hold a series of meetups dedicated to enabling geeks to give hands-on technology help and advice to nonprofit organizations.

Looking ahead, Day On is likely to be focused on:

• Engaging nonprofits
• Building community through local face-to-face events
• Helping broker relationships between volunteers and nonprofits
• Keeping low barriers for entry, for volunteers and nonprofits