Hi James - Thanks for your interest and support!

There is definitely potential for the application/s underlying Two Bob's Worth to be used by different communities or community groups rather than being a single site serving a particular geographic region, and that is the intention.

We are committed to an Open Source development and licensing model for the platform, to facilitate that sort of distributed use, and have registered twobobsworth domain names in the UK and NZ and twobitsworth and 2centsworth domains for the US, which could be used to setup localised versions for these different regional areas down the track.

There are, however, lots of reasons why within a community like Australia, with a relatively common regulatory environment, it may be preferable to have one platform operate nationally and be flexible enough to support lots of local help requesters and organic community volunteering groups and individual volunteers.

Some benefits I see for one platform are:

1. The network effect requires critical mass and therefore the quicker that lots of volunteering opportunities and volunteers are on the platform, the quicker it will grow and the better chance you will have of finding an opportunity that meets your volunteering criteria, or a volunteer with the skills you need. By flexibly "tagging" volunteering opportunities with particular geo, skills and issues related tags, a single platform can create an ecosystem within which a whole range of communities can participate - so if I have an interest in helping refugees and skills in IT, I can go to one place and if I don't initially find a refugee project requiring IT help in my local area I may find a non-IT refugee related opportunity or a non-refugee related IT opportunity.

2. Implementing the governance and community development/support systems around the platform may require as much or more effort as developing the software itself. While it is envisaged that some of the tools built into the software will help hosts of the software to address these issues, just downloading and unpacking a tarball is unlikely to be enough to get a local micro-volunteering project happening effectively. By having communities that share a "similar enough" regulatory and cultural environment participating together, they are likely to get ideas from each other and be able to make serendipitous connections.

3. As much energy as possible should be focused on doing the volunteer work and improving the platform, rather than the installation and maintenance of the platform itself. In the initial years in particular, it is intended that the focus be on getting the fundamentals of the platform and the broader governance and community development/support systems right for selected disadvantaged regions of NSW, for which we have applied for grant funding, rather than on helping people around the world to setup their own platforms using the software (although an Open Source development method and licensing model will enable people to do that and the system should be designed for ease of installation and management).

4. By its nature the platform is intended to support organic growth, which happens most effectively when there is a critical mass of organic material (or volunteers/tasks)! Therefore while we hope to be actively working to get volunteers and recipients using the platform in targeted areas of NSW through government grant, the use of the platform generally will be open and encouraged so that hopefully we'll see its use take off organically across a wide range of communities, from those initial seeds of experience gained in specific regions and shared with others.

5. Good reporting requires good information and it will be easier to generate good reports if the relevant information is in one place. For example, people requesting help will want to check the volunteering "CV" of the person offering to help, to determine if they trust them. This "CV" can be built dynamically from tasks completed through the platform and feedback the volunteer has received. Individuals may want to set volunteering targets against which they can measure their volunteering work across different projects/issues throughout each year. Many organisations set CSR volunteering goals and may wish to promote their staff's achievement of or work towards those targets which the system can generate (with the employee's agreement). Agencies also need to have good statistics about the volunteer work they facilitate for fundraising purposes and it will be easier to generate these reports and maintain the relationship with volunteers across lots of different projects through one system.

So in summary, while it is intended that the application be developed in such a way that it can be shared, used and developed by anyone with the appropriate skills - the focus should be on building a platform that will support increased sustainable micro-volunteering in our local NSW communities first, with the aim that from the experiences we all gain and share through that activity that numerous communities will join in using the existing platform where appropriate, or take the application/s and establish new volunteering platforms in their region.

PS - the above comment was submitted before the deadline for projects to be submitted (I just made a minor edit afterwards which then changed the time on it). In any case, as the project was submitted before the deadline I hope that you will consider the above in assessing the appropriateness of the project for ASiX's support!

Thanks Donnie - great projects that are very relevant.

Michelle Williams also pointed out this site which provides an interesting connection between volunteering and bartering: Gov 2.0 website seeks to spur volunteering, New York-style.