IT pros provide free labour to charities

An online service that provides free technical support to Australian charities has started up.

The brainchild of Brisbanites John and Yeliz Christian, CharityWorks.com.au matches underemployed and inexperienced IT professionals with jobs and projects benefiting cash-strapped non-profit organisations.

"Undergraduates or newcomers to the IT industry are often looking for pro-bono work they can add to their portfolio of work while they attempt to enter the industry," said Christian.

"And resource-poor charities are always looking for help with their IT-tech infrastructure. So we believe CharityWorks.com.au is a win-win."

According to CharityWorks, Christian himself broke into the industry by volunteering at Queensland and Northern Territory Multimedia in the 1990s. He now runs mailinglists.com.au and was CTO at ABX Global until 2013.

John Christian is also listed as an executive director for Jacaranda Capital, an investment vehicle for web ventures. Yeliz Christian is the social media manager at Jacaranda Capital.

"Most charities in Australia are historically horribly under-resourced and one of the areas that is normally overlooked is a charity's IT-tech infrastructure," said Christian.

The website comes after not-for-profit technology provider WorkVentures launched a low-cost technical support service for underprivileged Australians called SafetyNet in November. That program recruited unemployed youth as IT trainees to give Microsoft-related advice over the phone.

The Sydney call centre was launched by first-ever Microsoft Australia chief Linda Graham-McCann, now CEO at WorkVentures.