Where to find volunteers — vetted list for SUAS

This is a curated list of places to post our HELP_WANTED.md ask. Each one is a real platform that connects nonprofits with developer or designer volunteers. We have ordered them by best-fit for a small veteran-serving nonprofit.

Best fits (start here)

1. Catchafire — https://www.catchafire.org

Nonprofit-to-skilled-volunteer matching. Free for 501(c)(3) organizations. Designers, devs, marketers, lawyers, accountants — all volunteering pro bono. This is probably the highest-leverage option for us.

To use: register SUAS as a nonprofit (need EIN — 88-3249428), post specific project requests, get matched with volunteers in days.

2. Taproot Plus — https://www.taprootplus.org

Same model as Catchafire. Also free for 501(c)(3). Both are worth using since they reach different volunteers.

3. VetsInTech — https://vetsintech.co

Tech community for veterans. Posting an “SUAS needs volunteers, especially veteran developers” message in their community Slack/Discord channels would land with the exact right audience.

GitHub-native channels

4. GitHub Explore — Nonprofit topic

https://github.com/topics/nonprofit Public listings for nonprofit repositories. Add nonprofit, veterans, charity topics to our repo so we show up here.

5. freeCodeCamp Open Source for Good

https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/open-source-for-good Community of developers contributing to nonprofit projects. They have built tools like mail-for-good and pantry-for-good.

6. CodeForAmerica Brigades

https://brigade.codeforamerica.org Local volunteer dev brigades across the country. Many have GitHub orgs and look for civic-tech projects to take on.

Veteran-specific communities

7. Service to School / Veterans in Tech LinkedIn groups

Post the HELP_WANTED link in any veteran-tech LinkedIn group. Personal posts from Jacob (the founder) outperform organizational posts here.

8. Hack the Hill / Operation Code

https://operationcode.org Veterans learning to code. They look for real projects to contribute to as part of their training.

9. Patriot Boot Camp

Helps veterans start companies, but their alumni often help other veteran nonprofits.

Broad developer communities

10. Reddit

11. Hacker News “Ask HN”

“Ask HN: Who wants to help a veteran-crisis nonprofit?” type posts occasionally land 5–20 serious offers. Post early Tuesday morning Pacific for best traction.

12. Indie Hackers / DEV.to

Less reach than HN but warmer. A founder-voice post from Jacob about why SUAS exists gets responses.

The Jacob playbook (if you only do one thing)

If you only have time for one channel:

  1. Sign SUAS up for Catchafire. Free, takes 30 minutes, gets you matched volunteers within a week.
  2. Post the GitHub repo link there as part of project requests.

That single move outperforms anything else on this list for time-to-volunteer.

How to write the post

Whatever channel you pick, the message that lands looks like this:

Veteran-crisis nonprofit needs help with our website

S.U.A.S. Veteran Crisis QRF is a 501(c)(3) combating veteran isolation through community events. We are rebuilding our public site on GitHub Pages and have a short list of issues looking for owners (logo, theme polish, photo gallery, event calendar).

Site repo: https://github.com/S-U-A-S-Veteran-Crisis-QRF/help

Help wanted page (specific asks): https://github.com/S-U-A-S-Veteran-Crisis-QRF/help/blob/main/HELP_WANTED.md

Open issues with good first issue are entry points. No prior nonprofit experience needed. Veterans especially welcome.

— Jacob Silver, Founder

Copy-paste, adjust slightly per platform, post.