Tweeting good

The trendy thing for any tech company to do these days is build some type of Twitter program.  Not wanting to be left out, we at Idealistics built our own little Twitter utility.  The program, and its functionality, is simple.  The idea is to help twitter users find volunteer opportunities more easily.  Any twitter users can at reply (send a message to) the Idealistics Twitter account with a search term like "homeless shelter" or "mentoring kids" and the hashtag "#volunteer" to get a listing returned to them of local volunteer opporutnities.

We do this by utilizing the allforgood.org website, a collaborative effort spearheaded by Google to consolidate information from various volunteer databases throughout the country.  We use the twitter user's stated location (e.g. "Los Angeles, CA") to determine location for the search query.  So for example, the following message sent to @idealistics on Twitter

 @idealistics children literacy tutoring mentoring programs #volunteer

Would get the following response from the Idealistics Twitter account

@david_henderson here's a list of volunteer opportunities based on your location and search criterion http://tinyurl.com/yhdvbo3 #volunteer

That's it!  If you're on twitter, send us a message and give it a try.