Budget 09 (New Zealand)
Team Effect, for those who weren't aware, is based in the clean green isles of New Zealandand our government yesterday released the national budget for 2009. For many it will come as quite a shock.
Predictions of up to 220,000 people out of work within the next year. Two hundred thousand people!! (For our overseas audience, that's 5% of the population of NZ.) Two hundred thousand frustrated, bored people sitting at home getting despondent about how their CV was rejected by yet another job application.
That sux! That really sux!
I have been lucky enough to have very few CV rejections over my career but each one of them cut me deep. It's humiliating and terrifying to be shot down again and again and again. To anyone out there who has applied for more than a dozen jobs in a row and received that woeful "Dear John, Thanks for your CV, but sorry ...” letter, my hat is off to you. You are truly brave and courageous for your perseverance regardless.
"We are seeing around New Zealand ... people showing a great deal of resilience. No one likes this recession, but they're rolling up their sleeves, they're doing what they need to do, to get through it."
Bill English, 29 May 2009, Interview on Campbell Live
That got me thinking about things. I definitely consider myself to be one of the sleeve rollers, but what can I do? I'm just one guy - what sort of impact can one person have in the face of something as big as this "credit crunch"?
....
Meanwhile I am checking my email and coincidentally I'vejust been followed by on Twitter by Claire Sawyers of DonateNZ. Who is this Claire Sawyers, and what is she doing following me? Wasn't she the one in Lost with the baby that we haven't seen since Episode 2?
Nup. Wrong Claire!
I do a little reputation searching using Yasni and it turns out that ClaireSawyers is the founder of http://www.donatenz.com, an awesome organisation busy channelling this national sleeve rolling effort that Bill English is yakking on about to John Campbell on the news. "Donate NZ provides the ultimate simple portal where individuals, organisations and companies can donate goods, time and discounts to schools, early childhood and not-for-profit organisations in New Zealand."
Super simple and super smart. Wow, cool, I like it!
I tell you, it's the Claires of this world that are going to be the difference between this depression (I prefer to call a spade a spade) being a lot less unpleasant all around than the Great one in 1930 that really seriously bummed everyone out. So I fully support what she's doing but again I ask, what can I do?
Decision time.
Decision: I'm going to do whatever is in my power.
..and it is well within my power to provide Team Effect gratis to the kinds of organisations that Claire Sawyers is helping. After all, apart from the thousands of hours of weekends and evenings, and most of my blonde hair that is now grey; Team Effect doesn't "cost" us anything to give to community supporting charity organisations - it is just electrons in the wire at the end of the day.
Will this help? To be honest I don't know. The macro-economist in me believes that it might help streamline fundraising projects at the orphanage, or that maybe it will smooth out the childhood education planning at some Kindergarten in South Auckland, or perhaps it will help the Salvation Army with their amazing and worthy efforts. I really, really hope so!! If using Team Effect helps those guys get more done and stretch their resources further then my one little thing could make a whole huge bit of difference and that would be awesome!
So that's what we're doing here at Team Effect - we are rolling up our sleeves and getting on with making our collaborative project management app better so that it will make a real difference where it counts.
Ka kite ano
Jason Glover (CTO & Co-Founder)
&
Joel Macfarlane (CEO & Other Co-Founder)
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Any non-profit organisation wanting to use Team Effect to better manage their precious time and resources should send an email to ForTheGreaterGood@teameffect.com when they sign-up. Please include your Team Effect unique URL in your email and also a URL to your organisation’s website so we can vouch for you. To prevent fraud, your sign-upemail address should match the domain name of your website (e.g.caroline@plunket.org.nz if you are signing up www.plunket.org.nz). We would appreciate, but do NOT require, some online recognition for our efforts as it will help us reduce our marketing costs.