National organizations miss a huge outreach opportunity online
13:22, 21 May 2010
.. Posted in Volunteerism and Volunteer Management.. Link
There are lots of public places out on the Internet where people are encouraged to ask questions -- any questions. Three of the most popular, that attract many, many thousands of users, are:
I'm stunned at how often questions are asked about or from
- Girl Scouts (actual troop members, not the organization)
- Boy Scouts
- people who want to volunteer at animal shelters
- people who want to volunteer at hospitals
- people who want to volunteer as firefighters
- people who want to volunteer abroad
- people who want to join the PeaceCorps or volunteer abroad short-term
- students needing community service
Yet there's no one from the national offices of Boy Scouts of America or Girl Scouts of the USA, large volunteer-promoting organizations like HandsOn or All for Good, volunteer abroad organizations like PeaceCorps, or other large, major organizations to answer people's questions in these very public spaces. That means that, most of the time, potential volunteers never get answers to their questions, or they get misinformation about volunteering. And it's not just the people that ask these questions that don't get answers, it's everyone reading the boards as well. That's thousands, maybe millions, of people.
This is SUCH a missed opportunity by national organizations, particularly volunteer-promoting organizations, to reach a thousands and thousands of people, particularly young people, with essential information. It would be so simple to change this: just have a staff member or volunteer check these boards once a week for just one hour, searching under certain keywords and replying to frequently asked questions (FAQs) with standard answers, cut and pasted over and over, driving people to official web sites and FaceBook profiles for more information.
No matter what the size of your nonprofit organization, you should check out these three public ask/answer spaces, to see just how many people have questions about volunteering or some issue that might relate to your own region or organization:
- YahooAnswers (see in particular Home > All Categories > Society & Culture > Community Service)
- LinkedIn (see in particular Home > More > Answers > Non-Profit)
- answers.com
