10:32, 19 November 2010
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When a big news story or disaster strikes, the result can be hundreds, even thousands, of people contacting organizations to offer help, including potential online volunteers. It could be a natural disaster, an act of violence, or a particular issue suddenly becoming the hot item on the news.
A nonprofit organization, NGO, school, or other organization could suddenly be swamped with emails and phone calls from people who want to help in some way online.
Of course it's appropriate for your organization to encourage these spontaneous online volunteering candidates to make an emergency financial donation to the organization -- and be explicit about exactly what this money will be used for. But in addition, you should
think about ways these spontaneous online volunteering candidates could engage in other activities to benefit your organization in a crisis situation:
-
Put up a page on your web site to direct these people to specifically, thanking them for wanting to help in this time of crisis or intense attention. Outline on that page all of the ways they can help your organization both as donors and online volunteers. Direct them to other organizations if there are ways to volunteer at these organizations in some way.
-
Encourage these spontaneous online volunteering candidates to subscribe to your email newsletter, your blog, your FaceBook or MySpace account and/or your Twitter feed, to stay up-to-date on what your organization is doing to address whatever issue or circumstance is occurring.
-
Encourage them to repost your messages to their own blogs, their own status updates on online social networking sites, etc., to educate their friends and colleagues about what is happening.
-
Direct them to where to find information about the online volunteering activities you currently have available.
- Encourage them to write you if they see misinformation online about your organization and its work in this crisis situation.
- Set up a YahooGroup or GoogleGroup only for these potential online volunteers, and tell them online volunteering opportunities will be announced on this group as soon as they become available. You could use the group to brainstorm with these potential online volunteers what activities they could undertake for your organization.
Some things these spontaneous online volunteers could do regarding this crisis or immediate high-profit situation:
- Translate some of your existing material or new information into another language.
- Translate texts or blog comments coming in to your organization from another language into English, so you can read and respond to such.
- Monitor media reports and bring certain articles or information to your immediate attention.
- Monitor online communities and blogs and bring certain information, and even misinformation, to your immediate attention. (more on How to monitor online information automatically and How to deal with misinformation).
- Research what other organizations are doing that your organization might need to urgently know about, such as projects that are mapping eyewitness/on-the-ground reports of critical needs. For instance, following the Haiti Earthquake, OpenStreetMap created a crisis mapping project, mobilizing highly-skilled online volunteers to layer up-to-the-minute data, such as the location of new field hospitals and downed bridges, onto post-quake satellite imagery. This data was made freely available by for-profit companies including GeoEye and DigitalGlobe. The digital cartography — informed by everything from Tweets to eyewitness reports — helped aid workers speed food, water and medicine to where it was needed most.
- Create a smart phone application that is urgently needed. CrisisCamp mobilized hundreds of online and onsite volunteers in Washington, DC, London, England, Mountain View, California and elsewhere to build and refine a variety of tech tools needed after the Earthquake in Haiti, including a basic Creole-English dictionary for the iPhone to help aid workers.
These are not just nice things for online volunteers to do in a crisis; they are critical services. Depending on what the mission of your organization is, you might want to consider including how to deal with spontaneous online volunteering candidates in your crisis communications plans.
The above information is from the revised
Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, which will be published in 2011.
11:45, 17 November 2010
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I am so pleased to have received a VERA (Volunteer Excellence Recognition Award) from
BPEACE. "We annually search amongst our hard working member/volunteers to identify those, among so many, who deserve a particular call-out and recognition..."
I won the "Purple Heart VERA", for helping to support a gentleman in Afghanistan who wants to start a cleaning business. I "bravely delivered detailed technical advice... and urged him to stretch to meet his goals of starting a commercial cleaning business." Unfortunately, he ultimately dropped out of the program. "And that has to hurt." Yeah, it did a little, but I just turned my energies to
helping the other BPEACE advocates with their entrepreneurs and doing some other volunteering with BPEACE -- all of it online.
.
08:04, 12 November 2010
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It's the book that set the course for how I approach volunteer program management.
It's
From the Top Down: The Executive Role in Successful Volunteer Involvement, by Susan Ellis, and the third edition is now available.
In my opinion, the book is
mandatory reading by managers of volunteer programs, no matter what the context -- from an animal shelter to a fire house to a school to a women's shelter to a state park and absolutely everything in between -- as well as by executive staff to whom these managers report.
If you run a nonprofit organization, you need this book.
This book remains the strongest, most compelling argument for executive level support for volunteer involvement at any organization. Because the reality is that, no matter how great the manager of a volunteer program is, that program will NEVER reach its potential without real support at the executive level -- support as in real resources (office space, meeting space, computers, volunteer management training for staff) and real recognition (much more than a mention on the web site and in the annual report saying "... and it wouldn't have been possible without volunteers").
From the book:
"Too many volunteer involvement efforts suffer from "benign neglect." Top executives consider volunteers nice but not essential... volunteer initiatives languish from a lack of high expectations, volunteers are stopped from having substantial impact and from achieving their fullest productivity. The unfortunate fact is that more volunteers are
underutilized than are overburdened."
Some people find the title off-putting, since "bottom up" practice has been a buzz phrase for some time. Susan's book does not dispute the importance of bottom-up program development -- in fact, in many ways, this book is a call for senior level management to support bottom-up development and involvement of volunteers. Rather, its purpose is to help those who work with volunteers to be able to educate their organization's senior management to give real support to volunteers, beyond just lip service. It helps such in-house advocates to encourage senior management to look at the benefits of involving volunteers beyond "money saved in paying staff" and volunteer numbers.
It's not just a lecture book; there are practical tips to help you transform the way your entire organization -- your employees, your donors, even your volunteers themselves -- thinks about and engages with its volunteers.
10:17, 11 November 2010
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I was watching
The Daily Show last night when professional wrestler and best-selling author Mick Foley mentioned that proceeds from his new book,
Countdown to Lockdown, were going to the
Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN), the largest anti-sexual assault organization in the USA.
And then he said,
"I'm also a volunteer online!"
VOLUNTEER ONLINE?!
Turns out Mick Foley is a
RAINN Online Hotline Volunteer. In a
RAINN web video, Foley says, “I cannot think of a better way to spend a few hours a week than helping someone who needs RAINN’s services.” In the video, Foley urges others – including more men - to volunteer online with RAIN: “There is a spot on our team for you."
Learn more about volunteering for RAINN's Online Hotline.
That
Daily Show moment was perfect timing for me, since I
just finished second draft of the revised
Virtual Volunteering Guidebook last week - it's is now at the editor and publisher's,
Energize, Inc., to be released early next year.
I keep saying in the book that virtual volunteering went mainstream long ago - now Mick Foley proves it!
I wonder if there are other celebrities volunteering online... David Duchovny, call me and share your story!
16:06, 10 November 2010
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Many public school districts prohibit felons from volunteering or being paid to work in a school, regardless of the nature of the offense or how long ago the conviction. Others employ a more individualized screening method, reviewing each volunteer applicant's situation individually and making decisions on a case-by-case basis.
In Grand Rapids, Michigan,
a parent is trying to change the blanket ban policy in her school district -- she is the mother of four students, and she is not allowed to volunteer at the school or even to go unescorted inside the school or speak to her children's friends at school because of her of bad checks conviction 10 years ago.
Do blanket bans really keep children safe? Research and statistics say no; what is far more effective is screening for character and attitude, appropriate and thorough training and effective supervision. You can find more about on how to keep kids and other vulnerable populations safe in resources like
Beyond Police Checks: The Definitive Volunteer & Employee Screening Guidebook by Linda Graff, available for purchase via
Energize, Inc. or
Amazon, or
Preventing Child Sexual Abuse Within Youth-serving Organizations, a free publication of the USA National Center for Injury Prevention and Control of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Since low-income and minority residents are disproportionately affected by the criminal justice system, blanket policies also keep these populations out of volunteering ranks. It also means their children are denied what so many studies say keeps kids in school and helps improve student grades: parental involvement in the schools.
A school or other organization that is going to have a ban similar to the one in Grand Rapids should at least prepare an online resource or booklet for students' parents, grandparents and others who fail a criminal background check, that lists school-related service for which they remain eligible, activities they can undertake to support their child's academic goals, and places to find volunteering elsewhere.
My two cents.
13:21, 8 November 2010
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Plan now on how to leverage
International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development, December 5, for your organization!
This isn't a day to honor only international volunteers; the
international in the title describes the
day, not the volunteer. It's a day to specifically recognize
those volunteers who contribute to economic and social development.
Such volunteers deserve their own day!
How do your organization's volunteers contribute to the economic or social development of your community? Start brainstorming now with your volunteers, employees and clients about how your organization's volunteers do any of the following:
- help improve your community,
- bring people together,
- help educate and create understanding,
- address social issues,
- improve people's economic stability,
- etc.
Make brainstorming a fun activity: introduce it as a topic on your online discussion group for volunteers, introduce it as a brown bag lunch topic, make it a blog topic, solicit ideas on
SurveyMonkey from your volunteers, employees and clients, and on and on.
Your goal is to be ready with a press release to send to your local media outlets and a message to post to your web site and blogs about how your organization's volunteers contribute to economic and/or social health in your community on December 5!
In addition, 2011 is the International 10th anniversary of International Year of Volunteers (IYV+10), and the
United Nations Volunteers programme is
leading its promotion. There is already a
IYV+10 logo for you to use in your own materials that recognize this event. In addition, 2011 is also the
European Year of Volunteering 2011. Learn more about
leveraging international days, weeks and years for your organization.
09:16, 27 October 2010
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I have heard many representatives of nonprofit organizations say things like:
- We need an attorney on our board.
- We need an accountant on our board.
- We need a PR person on our board.
And my response is: No, you do NOT. There are many reasons this is a BAD idea, and this article, "
Finding Pro Bono Help through Board Recruitment," details why better than I can say myself!
Yes, it is a great idea to seek pro bono help for your nonprofit or NGO! By all means! You can get volunteers who are accountants, experts in public relations, and even lawyers to help your nonprofit organizations. But there is a BIG difference in recruiting a volunteer for his or her expertise, so that he or she will provide your organization that expertise, and recruiting a volunteer to serve on your board.
Also see:
- Pro Bono / In-Kind / Donated Services for Mission-Based Organizations:
When, Why & How?
There are all sorts of professionals who want to donate their services -- web design, graphic design, human resources expertise, legal advice, editing, research, and so forth -- to mission-based organizations. And there are all sorts of nonprofits and NGOs who would like to attract such donated services. But often, there's a disconnect -- misunderstandings and miscommunications and unrealistic expectations that lead to missed opportunities and frustrating experiences. This resource, prompted by the topic coming up at the same time on a few online discussion groups I read, is designed to help both those who want to donate professional services and those who want to work with such volunteers. It's applicable to a variety of situations, not just those involving computer and Internet-related projects.
- Short-term Assignments for Tech Volunteers
There are a variety of ways for mission-based organizations to involve volunteers to help with short-term projects relating to computers and the Internet, and short-term assignments are what are sought after most by potential "tech" volunteers. But there is a disconnect: most organizations have trouble identifying such short-term projects. This is a list of short-term projects for "tech" volunteers -- assignments that might takes days, weeks or just a couple of months to complete.
- Recruiting Local Volunteers To Increase Diversity Among the Ranks
Having plenty of volunteers usually isn't enough to say a volunteering program is successful. Another indicator of success is if your volunteers represent a variety of ages, education-levels, economic levels and other demographics, or are a reflection of your local community. Most organizations don't want volunteers to be a homogeneous group; they want to reach a variety of people as volunteers (and donors and other supporters, for that matter). This resource will help you think about how to recruit for diversity, or to reach a specific demographic.
- Using Third Party Web Sites Like VolunteerMatch to Recruit Volunteers
There are lots and lots of web sites out there to help your organization recruit volunteers. You don't have to use them all, but you do need to make sure you use them correctly in order to get the maximum response to your posts.
09:07, 23 October 2010
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As long as the sun shines and the fish swim and the birds fly, celebrities will get into trouble with the law.
When I read a report of Mr. or Ms. Famous being arrested and then being assigned community service, I play a mental game of trying to place that person in the appropriate volunteering gig.
For those who are super talented and at least marginally well-liked, it's easy: help the person to lead a workshop for kids in acting, singing, dancing, sculpting, whatever. Have the person help sell tickets to an upcoming performance by a community theater, community choir concert, etc. Take massive amounts of photos and post them on
Flickr with complete info on the nonprofit they are helping. Show them sitting in on the volunteer orientation, and when a new volunteer says he or she doesn't have time, you say, "Look -- Mr./Ms. Famous had to go through our orientation! We make exceptions for no one!" As long as the celebrity in question is talented, known to be somewhat nice, and hasn't done something so awful that I wouldn't want it associated with any organization I care about, I can come up with at least several dozen ideas for them.
But what about the celebrities who are famous for nothing? Or are not nice? Or are not anyone you want anywhere near your clientele? Or aren't anyone you want identified with your nonprofit in any way?
What if the celebrity is, say, Paris Hilton?
Paris needs to do 200 community service hours, no kidding. Or what if its Lindsay Lohan -- who actually
is talented, but the talent is buried beneath a range of very bad behavior and denial? Or Mel Gibson, also talented but also someone who has engaged in behavior many nonprofits do NOT want associated with their organization?
Post your thoughts here. Answer any of these questions:
- If you represent a nonprofit organization, would you involve Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan or Mel Gibson as a volunteer? If so, say what your nonprofit does and what activities you would have any or all of these folks do as volunteers.
- If you represent a nonprofit that would NOT involve any of these folks because their past behavior and involving them could reflect poorly on your organization (and even conflict with the mission of your organization), what kinds of volunteering elsewhere would you recommend for them?
- If you said yes to involving Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan or Mel Gibson as a volunteer, and you started getting calls from current volunteers saying they are going to quit because they don't want to be associated with your organization or these people, or from donors who say they will never donate again, what would you say?
I have my ideas, but
I want to hear from you.
08:00, 22 October 2010
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In June 2010, I launched a new section on my web site designed for those who are
not volunteer managers and are
not professional nonprofit staff -- rather,
these new pages are for individuals, particularly young people, who want to do some good, or need community service hours, or want to fund a volunteering trip abroad, but aren't sure where to or how to get started, etc.
There are now even more resources since that launch four months ago. The newest resources:
The inspiration for these pages came from the
community service section of YahooAnswers, where the same questions about volunteering, community service and fund raising events get asked over and over again. That message board has given me a lot of insight into what young people are thinking regarding community service, as well as how they use technology (they are NOT as savvy about tech as the media and various consultants would have you think).
Other resources include:
By clicking on any of the ads on these pages, you help me raise funds to maintain my entire web site (web hosting, domain name ownership and, ofcourse, my time). Also, I'm not responsible for the advertising that appears on these pages (ads are Google's decision).
08:42, 21 October 2010
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I've added a new page to my web site:
Micro-Volunteering and Crowd-Sourcing: Not-So-New Trends in Virtual Volunteering/Online Volunteering
Back in the 1990s, I called it
byte-sized volunteering: online volunteering tasks that take just a few hours or a few days to complete, like translating some text into another language, gathering information on one topic, tagging photos with certain keywords, etc. Now, the hot-new term for this is
micro-volunteering.
Let's be clear: it's no different than offline, episodic volunteering; just as volunteers who come to a beach cleanup or participate in a Habitat for Humanity work day don't undergo a criminal background check, don't receive a long pre-service orientation, don't fill out a lengthy volunteer application form and may never volunteer with the organization again, online volunteers that participate in a micro-volunteering task may get started on their assignment just a few minutes after expressing interest.
But just as offline episodic volunteering like beach cleanups are more about building relationships, creating more awareness and cultivating more supporters than getting work done,
micro-volunteering needs to have the same goals in order to be worth doing, and that takes having established, tried-and-true volunteer management standards in place.
Micro-Volunteering and crowd-Sourcing are long-term practices -- nothing new about them -- and here are
details about making it work for your nonprofit organization/NGO/public sector org.
20:50, 20 October 2010
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I am frequently asked What is next for virtual volunteering? What will be happening 10 years from now?
As the practice is more than 30 years old, it's an intriguing question. The practice is no longer new -- it's mature and well-established. So, where will it go from here?
Here is both where I think it will go, and where I hope it will go:
- There will be less and less talk of two groups of volunteers -- online and onsite. I've been discouraging the practice of talking about two different groups of volunteers since I started advocating regarding virtual volunteering back in the 1990s, but many organizations and consultants continue to separate the two when talking about volunteers. But the boundary will not last much longer.
- More and more volunteer management trainings and books will fully integrate virtual volunteering practices into their recommendations, doing away with the need for separate virtual volunteering trainings, separate chapters, etc.
- More academic researchers and research institutions will include virtual volunteering in their studies regarding volunteer practices. A report about the state of volunteering in the USA, for instance, will include detailed information about how volunteers are using the Internet as a part of their service, and how organizations are using the Internet to support and involve volunteers.
- Being able to engage in virtual volunteering -- involving and supporting online volunteers -- will become a standard expectation of volunteer resources managers in the USA. Those volunteer resources managers and organizations that keep avoiding virtual volunteering will slowly be pushed aside by people and organizations that have long known virtual volunteering is no fad.
- Volunteer ranks will become more and more diverse at organizations throughout the USA, as the Internet allows for the involvement of a variety of different groups. No one age group or economic level will dominate most volunteer ranks, for instance.
- There will be more and more virtual teams of volunteers -- teams of online volunteers -- working on assignments together, as organizations become more savvy about creating assignments for these volunteers.
- Virtual volunteering will become much more widespread outside of the USA, with many more examples from Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
- There will be much more information available online and in print about virtual volunteering in languages other than English.
- Just as different cultures approach volunteering and people management in different ways, they will put their own unique spins on virtual volunteering. What works in Bangladesh will be different than what works in Ghana, for instance.
- People will continue to come up with new jargon for old practices. For instance, the current talk of micro-volunteering is merely a re-branding of a practice that's been around since the 1980s. The cloud is just another word for cyberspace. The challenge will be to figure out when a new technology term is actually referring to something they have already been doing, versus when it's referring to something truly new.
- The fundamentals for volunteer management -- and, therefore, for virtual volunteering -- will stand. There will never not be a need for clear volunteer task descriptions, for instance. There will never not be a need to recognize the contributions of volunteers in some way. There will never not be a need to know what online volunteers are doing.
Those are my predictions. What are yours?
Post them here.
12:46, 19 October 2010
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Wikipedia is free. It has more than 12 million articles that you can access free of charge. It's a web site maintained by more than 100,000 online volunteers, who create articles and translate them into over 265 languages.
Wikipedia/Wikimedia may not call its contributors online volunteers, but that's what they are, and that makes
Wikipedia/Wikimedia the world's largest
online volunteering endeavor.
Unlike most organizations that involve volunteers, Wikipedia doesn't screen the majority of its volunteers; anyone can go in an edit just about any article, any time he or she wants to. You want to volunteer for Wikipedia, you just start editing or writing any article. That makes it
micro-volunteering, the hot new term for short-term episodic online volunteering.
But, wait -- maybe it's
not free...
The Register, or "El Reg" as its loyal readers call it, reported in January 2009 that
Wikipedia/Wikimedia had estimated that it needed just under $6m to fund its operations through June 30, the end of its fiscal 2008/2009 year.
So, Wikipedia is not free. It has expenses.
Nearly half of that ($2.7m) was for technology expenses. But, why does Wikipedia need to pay any paid staff? After all, volunteers are FREE, right? And Wikipedia doesn't get bogged down with all that traditional volunteer management stuff, like screening and ensuring quality among volunteer contributions, right, so need for any staff to do those things? No need to fund any volunteer management?
Wrong.
It takes a tremendous amount of time, effort and expertise to wrangle more than 100,000 online volunteers and all that they do on behalf of an organization -- even if Wikipedia doesn't call them volunteers, and even if most people at the organization don't consider themselves
volunteer managers.
In addition, while just to edit Wikipedia doesn't require any screening or supervision on the part of Wikipedia, Wikipedia
does have volunteers that help in the management of the site and, indeed, the organization screens and supervises those high-responsibility online volunteers -- just like
any nonprofit organization does.
No, volunteers are not free, not even so-called micro-volunteers. I've said it
before, and
before that and... well, you get the idea. And I guess I'll keep saying it until I stop hearing people say, "Volunteers are great because they're free!"
On a related note: last year, I
joined a Wikimedia task force - specifically, the
Community Health Task Force. Here are
my favorite recommendations. Note that one of them is
my own proposal regarding volunteer recognition for Wikimedia onlien volunteers.
09:03, 15 October 2010
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October 21
Teaching Your Staff the Art of Delegation to Volunteers
A presentation hosted by the
Nonprofit Network Southwest Washington
Vancouver, Washington
11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Involving volunteers in a variety of tasks so that they work with a variety of staff members not only makes volunteers essential to an organization. It also:
- shows that organization welcomes the public to participate in its activities, to observe, to comment, even to criticize.
- creates financial donors; volunteers are much more likely to become financial contributors if they see the excellent work of an organization firsthand and feel a part of it.
Otherwise, volunteers are
nice but not really
necessary -- and the same will hold true for the volunteer resources manager!
This workshop will give you the tools to get staff members at your organization creating assignments for volunteers, supporting volunteers in those assignments, and acknowledging the impact of volunteers in their work. We will review both overt and stealth strategies to get staff to delegate tasks to volunteers, and to ways for the volunteer manager to track who is doing what!
Want
me to speak at your organization? My schedule fills up quickly!
Contact me and let's discuss dates and topics! (note that I'm booked through January 2011)
10:26, 13 October 2010
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Quick: if you are on Facebook, log on RIGHT NOW, "like"
Richelle Carey HLN (she's on CNN) and find where she posted the link to this story,
Tight budgets lead to more civilians used for policing. RESPOND!
People are calling this CNN correspondent and posting to her Facebook page to say this kind of work "cannot be trusted with volunteers." One caller said, "What's next? *Volunteer* firefighters showing up at your home?"
Let's counter this negative image of volunteers RIGHT NOW!!! Don't wait one second! Go now!
Of course we don't want volunteers replacing paid workers only to save money. The volunteer management community has said again that that is wrong wrong wrong. An organization shouldn't involve volunteers "because then we don't have to pay staff!" But we MUST counter the negative comments about volunteers not being qualified, not being appropriate, not being capable of certain jobs!
By posting right now, you could influence what CNN says on the air today about volunteers! Don't delay!
Here are my two replies posted to the
Richelle Carey HLN page:
Volunteer firefighters DO meet "national standards." The caller who said they don't needs a lessen in the difference in a volunteer and a professional firefighter -- it's what they are PAID. One is paid, one is not. That's it. Training prog...rams do not distinguish between who is a volunteer and who is not. Volunteer firefighters in the USA provide high-quality, excellent service to their communities. Why are there paid firefighters? Because many communities cannot recruit enough people willing and able to be volunteer firefighters -- for instance, many people don't work where they live, and stations cannot recruit volunteers among the local work force that may live elsewhere, many employers won't release firefighters for calls, etc. Another caller said that maybe volunteers might be better in certain situations because it can help them become more connected to the community, and he is exactly right -- some jobs are actually BETTER done by volunteers!
Of course we don't want volunteers replacing paid workers only to save money. The volunteer management community has said again that that is wrong wrong wrong. An organization should NOT involve volunteers "because then we don't have to pay staff!" But these negative comments about volunteers not being qualified, not being appropriate, not being capable of certain jobs is also wrong wrong wrong!
20:45, 6 October 2010
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I had a great time last week presenting to the volunteer leadership of
Qwest Pioneers, the largest corporate-based volunteering group in the world (that's what they told me, anyway!). My topic:
trends in volunteerism and how to harness them.
A person during the
Qwest Pioneers presentation said, "10 years ago, we wouldn't have been ready to hear this." And I knew that all too well. This was an updated version of a workshop I co-presented back in the late 1990s to SeniorCorps - to
a very hostile audience, an audience that did NOT want to change. My
presentation has certainly been updated, but the overall message hasn't changed:
there are dire consequences for your organization if you do not acknowledge trends in volunteerism and try to harness them.
I already see the consequences at nonprofits who have refused to use the Internet to involve and support volunteers, for instance: their volunteering numbers are down, and their volunteer ranks are not diverse.
Online volunteering/virtual volunteering is a practice that is more than 30 years old, yet thousands of organizations in the USA refuse to think about it even in 2010!
Change is scary. But these
trends in volunteerism also present
incredible opportunities
- for organizations (more volunteers, more diverse volunteers, more satisfied volunteers, more community support, more transparency to the community),
- for volunteer managers (professional development, more recognition for your job, more staff involving volunteers),
- for volunteers themselves (more opportunities to help, more experiences that can help you in paid work, more hands-on activities as volunteers, a greater voice in the organizations you are supporting), and
- for those served by nonprofits, NGOs and public sector organizations that involve volunteers.
I can squeeze in one or two more presentations in 2010, but otherwise,
I'm booked for the rest of the year! And I'm already booking dates for 2011!
More about my classes, workshops and presentations -- book me now for 2011! Also see
my consulting services -- I can help your organization address these volunteerism trends!
09:32, 5 October 2010
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I blogged a while back about
rejecting a candidate or firing a paid or volunteer staff person because of his or her online activities, citing a few examples of such, and it generated a lot of debate on a few online discussion groups about when a person is being personal and when a person is being public online, boundaries, written policies, etc. I've actually been talking about this since 2006, as noted in
that earlier blog. Rejections and firings
are happening because of a person's online activities. I have to confess that, often, I've agreed with the dismissals, because the nonprofits could verbalize very well how this activity would interfere with a person's ability to carry out their duties effectively.
Still, many nonprofit staff members I've talked with struggle with the idea of penalizing someone because of personal activity online. And I get that: no volunteer -- or paid person, for that matter -- should be fired for personal online activity unless you can
clearly show how the online activity would interfere with a person's ability to carry out their duties effectively.
So - let's think about a very specific scenario. Let's pretend that
Andrew Shirvell isn't the Michigan Assistant Attorney General engaged in this online activity. Let's pretend he's your:
- volunteer web master
- volunteer communications director
- on your board
- volunteer in charge of leading the orientation for all new volunteers, or
- volunteer who comes once a week to stuff envelopes, file documents and input data into your database or manager of your charity shop
And he's engaged in
this online activity. Does his behavior matter to your nonprofit organization? Does it depend on the role he holds at your organization as a volunteer? Do you have a policy that you could point to as justification for whatever action you take?
Discuss here!
09:41, 24 September 2010
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All papers from the
National Council of Voluntary Organizations (NCVO) Researching the Voluntary Sector Conference 2010 are
now available online. Dave Kane of the NCVO research team offers a
personal view of the papers he most enjoyed, as does
Karl Wilding, Head of Research.
People who should check out these papers:
- Managers or directors of community engagement / volunteer involvement programs
- Heads of organizations or programs that involve volunteers
- Those who work in academic settings and teach or research regarding volunteerism or community engagement, and their students
- Volunteer management trainers
- Media/press people who write about community engagement / volunteer involvement
- Anyone who wants to understand the realities of community engagement / volunteer involvement
Most of these papers are focused on the United Kingdom, but even if you aren't in that region, you need to read some of these papers if you are a part of any of those bulleted groups.
Kudos to
NCVO for sharing these papers online, and for staff blogging about their views. Knowledge from conferences shouldn't be restricted to only those who can afford to attend. Ofcourse, I completely understand conferences not sharing absolutely everything -- then why attend the conference, unless it's an absolutely amazing networking experience? I so wish other nonprofit and NGO-related conferences would do this kind of thing! I've attended the NCVO conference, and it was terrific -- if I had funding, I would most definitely go again.
Also, kudos to
NCVO for working to bring academic researchers in philanthropy together with practitioners. We all have so much to share with each other -- it improves both of our work! If only folks from the corporate world who want to be involved with volunteer initiatives would adopt a similar tact.
09:06, 1 September 2010
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Volunteers are not free. Involving volunteers incurs a variety of costs for an organization. At minimum, volunteer involvement requires staff time to create assignments and support volunteers in those assignments. Training of volunteers may also be required, and this has costs in terms of staff time and materials. Volunteers may need to undergo a criminal background check, and this costs money. Volunteers may even be required to have uniforms.
Volunteering also creates costs for the volunteer, in terms of transportation and parking, and perhaps in other areas, such as child care.
Who pays for these costs?
The pros of an organization paying for all of these costs are that potential volunteers won't be excluded because they wouldn't be able to afford to participate if they had a lot of out-of-their-own-pocket expenses (paying for their own transportation, parking, uniform, training materials, criminal background check, paying for phone calls and texts they receive from you on their cell phones, etc.). This increases the likelihood of diversity in your volunteer ranks.
On the other hand, organizations often find that not charging volunteers for at least some of the costs associated in involving them (training materials, criminal background checks, etc.) leads to volunteers not valuing the organization, leading them to quit shortly after the organization has laid out the cash to involve them. Having volunteers pay some of these expenses has often lead to more committed volunteers who value the support they get from the organization and who stick around longer than just a few weeks.
But, again, if volunteers have substantial out-of-their-own-pocket expenses in order to participate, you will get only those volunteers who can afford to volunteer.
Is there a happy medium? Yes: it's okay to ask volunteers to cover some of the costs the organization incurs for involving volunteers, as long as you also create a way for those who could not afford such to still volunteer. In your volunteering orientation, note what the costs are for your organization to involve volunteers, and ask volunteers to consider donating to the organization to cover some of these costs - but make the donation absolutely, entirely optional, and do not distinguish in any way between those who donate and those who don't.
In addition, look for discounts at other organizations you could provide volunteers, to offset some of their costs in volunteering:
- Are there area companies that would be willing to donate discount cards or phone calling cards for you to distribute to volunteers?
- Could you negotiate reduced parking rates for your volunteers at a nearby parking lot?
- Would a local bookstore give your volunteers a discount for book purchases?
- Could you negotiate any special deals for your volunteers at electronics stores or phone stores?
- Could a local day care provide a discount regarding childcare?
- Could you negotiate a discount on classes at a nonprofit, community college or for-profit company, classes that could help volunteers in their career pursuits?
More
resources for volunteer management.
08:39, 26 August 2010
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In June 2010, I launched a new section on my web site designed for those who are not volunteer managers and are not professional nonprofit staff -- rather,
these new pages are for individuals, particularly young people, who want to do some good, or need community service hours, or want to fund a volunteering trip abroad, but aren't sure where to or how to get started.
There are now even more resources since that launch two months ago. Here's the complete list of resources:
The inspiration for these pages came from the community service section of YahooAnswers, where the same questions about volunteering, community service and fund raising events get asked over and over again. That message board has given me a lot of insight into what young people are thinking regarding community service, as well as how they use technology (they are NOT as savvy about tech as the media and various consultants would have you think).
By clicking on any of the ads on these pages, you help me raise funds to maintain my entire web site (web hosting, domain name ownership and, ofcourse, my time). Also, I'm not responsible for the advertising that appears on these pages (ads are Google's decision).
13:51, 25 August 2010
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Sometimes, volunteers get treated poorly. Sometimes, they even get exploited. Often, volunteers get taken for granted. And as a volunteer, as a person who frequently supports and manages volunteers, and as a trainer regarding volunteer management, I don't like that.
What does "poor" or "unfair" treatment of a volunteer look like? That's where a debate can break out. It's easy to define if the treatment goes against written policies: a volunteer who is being sexually harassed or personally insulted by a staff member, a volunteer or a client is most certainly being treated poorly, maybe even criminally. The organization's policies and procedures would explicitly state that such was unacceptable behavior and exactly what the organization's response should be when such a violation of written policies occur.
But what about the following scenarios that probably
don't violate your organization's policies and procedures, but are perceived by many to be
unfair treatment?:
- A volunteer is doing great work but gets replaced in an assignment by a board member's niece.
- A volunteer is excluded from meetings because the volunteer manager doesn't like the questions he or she asks.
- A volunteer is asked to perform tasks above and beyond what he or she agreed to, or what he or she feels prepared to do.
- A volunteer stops being scheduled for regular shifts because he or she frequently criticizes the changes the new volunteer manager is employing regarding volunteer recruitment and involvement.
- A long-term volunteer saves the most popular assignments for his or her friends, letting them know about such so that they can apply before other volunteers.
- A volunteer submits a written complaint about something regarding the organization. No response is ever made to the complaint, but the volunteer receives fewer and fewer invitations to participate in new volunteering activities or to work regular shifts.
- A volunteer is never thanked for his or her service.
- A volunteer manager learns while perusing the web that one of the long-term volunteers is an avowed racist. This volunteer has never expressed these views during assignments but, even so, the volunteer manager starts scaling back opportunities for this person to volunteer, particularly in roles interacting with clients or the public.
Are all of these situations where the volunteer could legitimately claim that he or she has been treated poorly or unfairly? There's no one answer to that question; I like throwing out various scenarios and watching the debates ensue. I'm tricky like that...
Do you think there should be a formal, required recourse established by the government that volunteers in the above scenarios should be able to pursue? I'm talking about scenarios where there has been no violation of written policy and nothing that's against the law, but where the volunteer feels he or she has been treated unfairly.
And if we create a formal recourse system for volunteers who feel they have been treated poorly, will the bureaucracy and threat of sanctions or bad PR discourage even more organizations from involving volunteers?
I've blogged on this subject before, I want volunteers to be protected from unfair treatment, but I also don't want them to become employees. There is no right to be a volunteer. An organization involves volunteers so long as such involvement explicitly benefits the mission of the organization. A volunteer's length of service or donor history shouldn't trump what the organization wants, needs and plans for. I don’t ever want any volunteer dismissed for arbitrary reasons, I don’t ever want any volunteer mistreated or exploited, and I want us all to work to make sure that never happens, but I also don’t want volunteers to become
entitlement volunteers.
All of this is on my mind per the
Volunteer Rights Inquiry happening now in the United Kingdom. In November 2009 the Volunteer Rights Inquiry was established by
Volunteering England as a response to a number of high profile cases of volunteers being poorly treated by volunteer-involving organizations. In December 2009 the Inquiry commenced a three-month evidence-gathering exercise that sought input from volunteers, volunteer-involving organizations, volunteer managers and many other stakeholders. Inquiry members have used this input to develop the
Volunteer Rights Inquiry Interim report. The Volunteer Rights Inquiry members are meeting again in October to consider the responses to the interim report and start preparing the final call to action before the end of 2010. To quote the interim report, "The goal should be to treat volunteers with the respect and esteem accorded to paid staff but without wrapping volunteering in, what some see, as the suffocating cloak of employment legislation."
Regarding the interim report: I really, really like how the comments from the stakeholders are used in the report to represent the various arguments. It shows that the Inquiry members are
really listening! I so wish organizations in the USA that claim to want input would put together their reports in a similar manner, to show that they, too, are really listening (because, frankly, final reports often
don't seem to at all reflect the input of stakeholders).
One of the suggestions I like from the report is creating
a written code of conduct regarding volunteers that organizations would be asked to endorse publicly and practice internally. It would not be legally binding. But it would allow volunteers to know up front what organizations have signed on, and would better define the parameters of what poor treatment of a volunteer looks like beyond what the organization's written policies and procedures may say. An organization that chooses not to sign on might see a drop in the number of people who volunteer with them. But could an organization be dismissed as a signatory for violations?
Your thoughts?
Regardless of what the UK decides, or if any other countries follow suit, your organization needs written:
- policies and procedures that includes a grievance procedure
- code of conduct
- statement of why the organization involves volunteers
And all of these should be easily available to volunteers. Why not put them on your web site, for
anyone to see? Being that transparent is a powerful statement to both potential and current volunteers.
And volunteers: remember that you have a voice right now, regardless of what the UK decides, or if any other countries follow suit:
- Violations of policies and procedures should be brought to the attention of the HR manager, the Executive Director, and perhaps, even the Board of Directors, in writing, with dates and full descriptions of incidents.
- Sexual harassment or criminal acts should be reported to the police and/or your state's human rights commission.
- You can blog about your experience as a volunteer, remembering that you need to stay fact-based and within the organization's written confidentiality policies, and that what you say online is FOREVER, and can be used by any person and any organization to judge you.
- You can leave the organization and volunteer elsewhere, and encourage other disgruntled volunteers to follow suit.
You do not have a right to volunteer for any particular organization, no matter how long you have volunteered there or how dear the cause is to you, but you all of the aforementioned acts
are within your rights.
Use this power wisely! Always have an answer to these questions when you are about to choose a course of action:
By doing the following, I hope the results will be that the organization will... that volunteers will... that I will be able to...
Your thoughts?
