Recently I've been looking for a side project and thought that it would be nice if I could leverage my existing skills and interests in a charitable way.<p>Have you been able to use your software engineering abilities for charity? If so, how did you find the opportunity, and what effect were you able to have?
I'm not a serious programmer per se, but I did a lot of Tech work for a homeless shelter years ago. They eventually got a serious Tech guy to take over from me. I'm currently the webmaster for a small local non profit.<p>I recommend you just get involved in whatever charity interests you and, after establishing connections, let them know you have X, y and z expertise to bring to the table.<p>Some super model began showing up at some program and was doing really menial tasks, like serving food in a soup kitchen. She wasn't there long before big wigs jumped on asking her to be the face of their PR campaign.<p>If you are humble, willing to support their cause and you have unusual assets they don't often see, most charities will jump on that just as soon as they understand what you have to offer.
I'm not sure if it counts as charity but my first job out of school was managing data for non-profit bat research project. There was a small amount of scripting and some website work. Not too much intensive programming though. I also did some similar work for a conservation organization that runs out of a local park. That one was volunteer work.<p>Local conservation or biology groups like that typically have a lot of data but not many people with the skills to organize and analyze it. They're usually pretty grateful to people that can help with that.