Actually, there is no catch in this case!
The Overnight Website Challenge brings together professional web developers with Minnesota non-profits to design and create a new website for the non-profit organization in 24 hours. This is an amazing opportunity for non-profits to get over 200 hours of web development done for free and for the developers to get additional experience while having fun. The challenge has a huge impact on everyone involved because it helps build community and gets more young professionals involved.
The reason I am writing about this event on these pages is that it completely exemplifies the type of out of the box thinking that we hope to trigger in our readers. This event creates new opportunitiesto get people involved in their community while building both leadership and professional skills. We always need to keep thinking of new ways to engage people and also share the great work non-profits are undertaking throughout the community.
This year’s event takes place March 20 – 21, 2010 and is actually the 3rd time this challenge has been run. The format of the challenge starts with individuals coming together to form teams of ten and then these teams are paired up with a non-profit organizations. Then, on the appointed day, everyone gathers and has 24 hours to design and build the website before the judges come around to determine who wins the competition.
Looking back at some of the past successes you can easily tell the competition is fierce and everyone is trying to win. One of the organization that benefitted from the challenge last year was Students Today Leaders Forever (a truly amazing non-profit!). Take a look at the recap which including a look at what the original site looked like and then what the team developed — http://blog.nerdery.com/2009/04/students-today-leaders-forever-like-jet-fuel-at-overnight-website-challenge/
The deadline for this year is approaching very quickly or has already past depending on when you are reading this post. Even if you missed the challenge this year please share this story and links with non-profits that you know, maybe they will be able to get involved next year! I applaud the work of Sierra Bravo and all of the volunteer who take time to make a true difference for these non-profits. May this year’s challenge be even more amazing and I look forward to many more years of challenges to come.
DEADLINE: Non-Profits need to sign up by January 8th & Volunteers need to form teams by January 18th.
