Instead of donating that 4 hours of time to one specific project in need, why not create a platform for others to donate time? Think of a kickstarter, but for man-hours.
Please, don't just upvote! I'm looking for an organization or project that can use my help. I want to hear suggestions.<p>My skills:<p>* C (I haven't written a compiler, but I'm pretty experienced with the lesser-known intricacies of C)<p>* Web development, Python, and Django (I created Freeversation and have two more projects in the works)<p>However, I can help with anything else as well! I'm a well-rounded coder with some degree of experience in lisp, ruby, C#, Java, and Javascript. I can also help with marketing, writing, or design.<p>Edit: Why the downvotes? Let me know if I've done something wrong.
We are looking for help at Community Plates (<a href="http://communityplates.org" rel="nofollow">http://communityplates.org</a>) - we are a non-profit that gets extra food (that is still good obviously) from restaurants and grocery stores that would normally be thrown out and we deliver it to food pantries and soup kitchens.<p>We use software to connect all of the volunteers with the food runs. We started in April and have over 100 volunteers plugged in to date and are growing quickly. We started in Fairfield County, CT to validate the concept and are so happy with the response we've gotten from the community. We're going to add a few more cities at the beginning of 2012.<p>On the dev side, it's built in PHP on the Kohana framework, with jQuery mobile, and it's tough for me to keep up on my own with my day job and would love some help although it will take a few hours to get your footing so it's probably not worth someone's time unless you can commit 20 hours or so.<p>If you or anyone else is interested or has any questions let me know.<p>Thanks.
Any London hackers who want to get involved with a charitable project should check out Interactivism. <a href="http://simpl.co/interactivism/YP" rel="nofollow">http://simpl.co/interactivism/YP</a>
Following the recent HN trend I suggest open-knesset: <a href="http://oknesset.org/" rel="nofollow">http://oknesset.org/</a><p>They work with Python and Django, and they are trying to make the government more transparent. Their code is on github: <a href="https://github.com/ofri/Open-Knesset" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/ofri/Open-Knesset</a>
Locally a coffee shop is serving free Christmas dinners to the homeless and destitute, they're very grateful for any financial or physical help, maybe there's something like that near you?
This is an awkward post. I don't know if helping some charity with its website is as in the spirit of Christmas as helping in person like earnubs suggests.