NPR’s All Tech Considered show today talked about a website which helps a person’s friends assist them in times of crisis. The site, Lotsa Helping Hands provides the tools to create a free site at which people can volunteer to help someone out without actually having to ask them directly during stressful times. Among the examples given in the piece and the cases discussed were cooking food for funerals or people who had undergone surgery and arranging play dates to keep kids occupied during such times.

The site gives examples of coordinating rides to medical appointments, keeping track of elderly love one’s care, including confidential legal, financial and medical details from a distance. But they also suggest uses of the product for less worrisome situations like simply organizing volunteer efforts in the community.

What made me immediately think about this as being useful for arts organizations was that I was reading the blog at the Hancher Auditorium today. This summer they had an unfortunate visit by the Iowa River when heavy rains caused flooding. They might have been able to use this web site to organize the efforts of sympathetic supporters to clean up and move equipment and materials to dumpsters and alternate performance sites.

Presumably, the software can also be used for more mundane tasks such as allowing and organizing volunteers who sign up to usher, build, conduct tours and the like. I have passed the link on to the gentleman who handles our volunteer coordination to have him assess its usefulness to us.