Urbantastic Pays it Forward

Urbantastic has started emerging from their cocoon with a completely new pay-it-forward model and yesterday marked a milestone for their new concept. Urbantastic's Benjamin Johnson blogged about it:

Today marked a milestone for myself and Urbantastic. A fellow Vancouverite completed a task for Take a Hike (TAH) that I personally sponsored [see link]. It, in my humble opinion, represents the epitome of the Urbantastic pay-it-forward experience.

It all started a little while back when I did some research for Union Gospel Mission (UGM) and, upon completion, received 50 talents. I then spent some of the talents on a donation to the organization of my choice, and used the rest to sponsor a task for Take a Hike. The idea came after TAH sent me a volunteer application form. It was a run-of-the-mill word document. Anyone who has received a document like this understands the pains of ‘filling in’ such a form. It made me cringe knowing there was a better way, but I didn’t want to bring it up with the staff because I knew how busy they were. With Urbantastic I was able to take the entrepreneurial approach and have it remade into a fillable pdf for free by another fantastic community member.

All this was made possible because of what I did for UGM in the first place. It was a really enjoyable experience helping out the community organizations in two very different ways and the reward and power of the talents enforces my belief that this idea might be a hit.

Urbantastic's about page remains bare but based on the new site and Johnson's comments, it sounds like they've come up with a way for people to donate their valuable time and skills to charities in need. Nice work guys.