Volunteer with Mifos in 2014
Would you like to help change the world? Did you know that you can volunteer your time to help build technology that has the potential to lift billions from poverty?
At the Mifos Initiative, we guide the development of Mifos X, an open-source cloud-based platform for delivering financial services to the poor. We use open source technology and the power of community to scale financial inclusion worldwide to achieve our shared vision of creating a world of 3 Billion Maries, a world where each individual has access to the financial services to create a better life for themself and their family. We connect the on-the-ground organizations serving the base of the pyramid with open source contributors building applications on top of the platform to enable financial inclusion to the poor.
We launched Mifos X in 2013 and in 2014, we’re setting out to massively scale the adoption of Mifos X – we cannot do it alone and we are seeking volunteers from all backgrounds to join our community. Whether you’re technical or non-technical, we need bold and passionate volunteers to be a key part of executing on every strategic objective of our mission.
If you’d like to get involved, please introduce yourself by emailing volunteer@payments.mifos.org and go to MifosConnect to ask any questions on how you can get involved with the community. See below for some of the many ways to participate.
Grow the Community
We’ll first start out with some of the non-product focused areas to get involved with our initiative and community.
Join or Start a Mifos Chapter!
Mifos chapters are volunteer-driven groups that promote technology-enabled financial inclusion and empower their local communities to use, collaborate, build, and grow the Mifos X platform together.
Our Mifos Chapters come together to educate their region on the power of Mifos X and technology-enabled financial inclusion, to personally connect with and integrate new users into our global community, to collaborate and support each other through training and knowledge transfer, to innovate by identifying and building out new solutions, and to inspire others to achieve our mission by donating and volunteering.
Our first chapter just launched in Bangalore and we’re ready to help any community members that wants to start their own in their local city. Fill out this form to express an interest in starting or joining a chapter and we’ll send you materials to help you get started.
Volunteer Coordinators
As we onboard all these volunteers, we need friendly and organized individuals who can help us onboard and keep in active communication with each volunteer to ensure they’re able to contribute and give the most value to the community. Look over the responsibilities of our volunteer coordination team and email volunteer@payments.mifos.org if you think you’d be a fit.
Lead a Community Team
Community teams are the foundation of all the work that gets done in the community. They head up the various functional areas of our community ranging from platform to front-end development, community infrastructure, collaboration and support, documentation, product management, app development, reporting, and more.
Strengthen our Initiative
The Mifos Initiative is a 501(c)3 non-profit. We are made up of a small and nimble team that’s distributed globally so apart from needing volunteers in our community we also have roles to assist with the management of the organization and development and execution of our strategy.
Become an Advisor
We are seeking technical and business advisors who can assist our team in a hands-on role with expertise across technology, financial services, business development, non-profit management, fundraising, community development and more.
Marketing
- Graphic Design: assist with developing print and online collateral to promote the product and the initiative
- Video/Interactive Design: assistance in creating interactive video tutorials and screencasts, and videos to promote Mifos
- Web Design: Web design to support in helping us refresh the online presence for our overall initiative and the software community itself.
- Product Marketing: skilled content writers and product marketing managers to assist with positioning of the Mifos product for local markets and copy writing to promote our broader initiative. Drafting case technical and business case studies to showcase the value of our software.
We’re specifically seeking a volunteer Product Marketing Manager: Mifos is cutting edge mission-critical technology for a userbase that is diverse and demanding in their needs. We’re seeking a seasoned individual to help us position Mifos at a global level and help our Partners tailor a value proposition that is uniquely tied to their local market.
Fundraising
To power the core team and maintain the tools and resources to keep collaboration flowing in the community, we need help developing and implementing our fundraising strategy. We’re looking for experienced and energized individuals to help build our donor pipeline, bring in foundational grants, and initiative a comprehensive online giving strategy that helps us bring in donations from the general public.
If you’ve got grantwriting experience, strong ties to the donor community, online giving and social media chops, or are just great at motivating at others, we’d love your help!
Build the Platform
Mifos X is the financial inclusion sector’s first open source platform that is extensible through a full set of APIs. We are looking for developers of all skillsets and languages to contribute to the back-end – our Java-based Mifos X platform, the front-end – our AngularJS Community App, or to leverage our full set of RESTful APIs to build out your own app (currently actively building an Android mobile app).
Browse the architecture to learn more about the design of the platform and look through the following lists to see how you can contribute as a developer:
- Bite-size bugs and other introductory volunteer tasks and features
- Tasks to optimize our community app leveraging the AngularJS framework:
- Longer-term projects ranging from building out mobile apps to SMS notifications modules to Windows installers
Evolve the Product
Are you a product manager or business analyst that wants to listen to the needs of the poor, and shape how cutting edge technologies like cloud computing and mobile banking can be used to fulfill those needs? In this role, you’ll work directly with the organizations in the field delivering financial services to the poor to take their requirements and craft them into user stories and functional specifications that can then be built by our community on top of the Mifos X platform.
Every new feature and innovation that goes into Mifos X is driven by user demand so that it appropriate responds to the needs of the poor. We have just published our product roadmap for 2014 and are seeking product managers, business analysts, designers, and usability experts who can help us design and spec out these features.
Enable Product Adoption
No matter how advanced our platform is or how functionally rich the software is, its benefits can’t be realized until the product is used: that means a product that is translated into the local language, readily available tools to deploy it, and documentation on how to install, configure, and use the software.
We need translators, tech writers, project managers, and operational experts who can help us on all these fronts.
Translation
Mifos X can only have an impact where it can be used financial institutions serving the poor. Having the Mifos X community app readily available in the following languages will dramatically broaden the footprint and potential impact of Mifos X to thousands more financial institutions across the following regions:
- Spanish (Latin America & Caribbean)
- French (Franco-phonic Africa & MENA) DONE!
- Portuguese (Southern Africa & Brazil)
- Simplified Chinese (China)
- Bengali (India & Bangladesh)
- Kannada (India)
- Hindi (India)
- Arabic (MENA)
- Khmer (Cambodia)
- Swahili (East Africa)
All our translations our handled on Translatewiki.net which provide an easy to use web interface for translating the entire Mifos X Community App.
Visit our wiki for detailed instructions on how to begin translating.
Documentation
With a freshly launched product and platform, we’re still catching up with documentation. We need a full suite of actively maintained documentation that allows our community to successfully install, deploy, configure, use, and maintain the Mifos X platform and the various apps they’re using. This documentation consists of technical and non-technical guides including installation guides, user manuals, configuration guides, deployment guides, and technical how-to’s.
The main focus right now is on the user manual and installation guides.
We are actively seeking tech writers and project managers to become a part of our documentation team and contribute to these projects.
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