Monthly Archives: June 2011

Social media policies for mission-based organizations

Social media policies. It’s a frequently-discussed topic on so many of the online discussion groups I follow. The main point of the participants in these discussions seems to be:

How do I keep our employees from saying something online that our organization could be sued for, that could lead to negative press coverage, or could make one of our donors angry?

I have to admit that I find most of the discussions about social media at nonprofits and other mission-based organizations annoying. I’m frustrated to see nonprofit organizations, NGOs, government agencies and other mission-based organizations much more focused on how to avoid upsetting anyone than on how to be bold in pursuit of their missions. Also, I’ve been hearing about this fear since around 1995 or so, and was appalled all those years ago to watch so many organizations wring their hands over this whole cyberspace thing while other organizations embraced it, ran with it and ended up doing amazing things for their clients and communities.

David Meerman Scott has been blogging recently about the conflict between legal staff and communicators when if comes to real-time media. Scott’s blog today links to his recent missives, as well as linking to three company’s staff guidelines to social media activities that he thinks are outstanding (I do too):

Also see this list of social media policies at six different companies by from BulletProof Blog – though many of these have WAY more legalease than I think is necessary – they come from a place of fear, and that’s never a good place to come from when talking about talking and working with the community.

Why don’t I panic more over what employees and volunteers might be doing online? Because I believe if an organization has a culture where every employee and every volunteer feels responsible for the organization’s reputation, and feels a part of that organization’s success or demise, where moral is high, internal communications are excellent and a sense of team is a way of working, not just a catch phrase for the annual report, that organization has nothing to fear about its staff’s online activities – if an online misstep happens (and it will), that organization will easily recover. For organizations that are oh-so-fearful of online activities: perhaps there’s something else you should be worrying about?

Also see:

Handling an Online Social Media Faux Paux (props to the American Red Cross!)

How to Handle Online Criticism

Evaluating Online Activities: Online Action Should Create & Support Offline Action

Using RSS for Media Monitoring

Social media: cutting both ways since the 1990s

Need a Social Media Policy? Maybe Yes, Maybe No.

Tags: policy, guideline, guidelines, staff, employee, employees, volunteer, volunteers, lawyer, lawyers, legal

Transcribe & caption!

Captioning a video, or offering a transcription of a video or podcast, should be a priority for your organization. Why?
    • Many people that don’t have time to watch that video or listen to that podcast DO have time to read the transcript.
    • Many people are in an environment that would not allow them to listen to a podcast or online video (their surroundings are too loud, they would disturb people around them, they can’t use headphones or ear buds for some reason, etc.).
    • Many people want to quote from a video or podcast in something they are writing (and if that’s online, that quote will often link back to the original broadcast).
    • A person may just need very specific information, and a text search makes that information oh-so-easy to find.
    • Some people prefer reading to listening or watching (I’m one of those people); they are much more likely to access your information in text form than a video or audio.
  • And, of course, so people with hearing impairments can access the information.
In short, you greatly increase the number of audience members for a video or podcast, reaching more potential donors, volunteers, clients and others, by captioning a video or offering a transcription of a video or podcast. At minimum,
  • Any video or audio training materials you have should be captioned and/or transcribed.
  • All PSAs you want to be distributed widely should be captioned and/or transcribed.
  • Videos and podcasts that are part of your service delivery should be captioned and/or transcribed.
Think you don’t have the resources to caption or transcribe a video or podcast? You do: volunteers. There are online volunteers who would love to transcribe your audios and videos. These volunteers may have speech recognition/voice recognition software that they can use to convert spoken words to text, or they may be willing to listen and type. Either way, you will want volunteers checking up on other volunteers’ transcriptions and captioning, to ensure information is rendered correctly. Keep such volunteer transcribing assignments small: you might have trouble finding a volunteer to transcribe a two-hour-long panel discussion, but it might be much easier to find someone to transcribe just a 10 minute excerpt. If a video or podcast is particularly long, you could divide the transcribing or captioning job up among several volunteers. You might even be able to find a volunteer who would happily lead up the entire project for your organization – leadership volunteering opportunities are highly sought by many people these days! Recruit these volunteers from among your existing volunteers and their networks, via your web site, via VolunteerMatch and AllforGood if you are in the USA, Idealist and whatever resources are available in your country, or, if you are in a developing country or your NGO or nonprofit is focused on such: the UN’s Online Volunteering service. December 21, 2017 update: I recently created a five-minute pitch video for the OpenAIR hackathon – the Accessibility Internet Rally – for Knowbility, a nonprofit based in Austin, Texas (I’m in Portland, Oregon). I also used the YouTube captioning tool for the first time ever – I couldn’t believe how easy it was! If I can figure it out, anyone can – including online volunteers you might recruit to caption all of the videos your nonprofit has on YouTube already.
cover of Virtual Volunteering book with hands raising up various Internet connected devices
A reminder yet again that The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook provides detailed advice on creating assignments for online volunteers and for working with online volunteers, including volunteers that are going to transcribe or correct the transcriptions of your videos or podcasts. The book also has detailed guidance for using the Internet to support and involve ALL volunteers, including volunteers that provide service onsite, for ensuring success in virtual volunteering, and for using the Internet to build awareness and support for all volunteering at your program. Tech tools come and go, but certain community engagement principles never change, and those principles are detailed in this comprehensive guide. You will not find a more detailed guide anywhere for working with online volunteers and using the Internet to support and involve all volunteers. It’s co-written by myself and Susan Ellis. Tags: volunteering, volunteers, community, engagement, volunteerism, volunteering, online, micro, microvolunteering, virtual

Volunteer Centers not involving volunteers?!?

Colleague Martin Cowling recently did a training with a group of volunteer centers (he’s being coy about which country he was in, but I have my suspicions…) and he asked how many of them utilize volunteers in their own operations.  

The majority of these volunteer centers did not not involve volunteers themselves.

As he says in his blog on this subject:

The reasons these guys had for not engaging volunteers in their own work were jaw dropping when you consider these were Volunteer Centres:

  • “the roles are too complex”
  • “we don’t have time to train volunteers”
  • “we know we should have volunteers”
  • “we have one volunteer”
  • “we have found volunteers to be unreliable

Martin concludes:

The very institutions charged with promoting volunteerism should be the ones who engage volunteers first.

For those of you in the USA of a certain age: remember how on Saturday Night Live, Prymaat Conehead would suddenly start saying, “Unacceptable! Unacceptable!” when he was really upset? That’s how I feel right now. I think the shape of my head alters as well as I hear about volunteer centers that don’t involve volunteers.

Why would anyone trust a volunteer center, or a nonprofit that runs an online database of volunteering opportunities, that does not involve volunteers themselves?!

If your organization promotes volunteerism, you had better have volunteers at your organization – short-term volunteers/micro-volunteers, leadership volunteers, and everything in between! And you had better note that involvement on your web site!

And I’ll go further:

If you are a volunteer manager, a volunteer resources manager, or anyone else responsible for recruiting and placing volunteers at your organization, you had better involve volunteers yourself in your own work, in all the ways you are wanting other staff to involve volunteers!

and

If you are a volunteer management/community engagement consultant, you had better volunteered yourself, worked with other volunteers, volunteers online, and otherwise engaged in volunteer management-related activities in at least the last six months!

How can you call yourself a credible volunteer center, a credible promoter of volunteerism, or a credible volunteer management trainer otherwise?!

Also see

UK Volunteering Tsar Doesn’t Have Time to Volunteer

Jayne Cravens: As a Volunteer

Tags: volunteering, volunteers, community, engagement, international, volunteerism, volunteering, training, trainer

TweetChat re: virtual teams on July 11

TechSoup will host a TweetChat on 11.July at 10am Pacific USA Time regarding working with virtual teams.

Also known as distributed teams, virtual teams have come together for a day, a week, many months or even years to work on a project together for a nonprofit, an NGO or other mission-based organization. Your organization may already be involving a virtual team now and not even know it:

  • a committee with members who discuss and plan online rather than at onsite meetings
  • a mix of volunteers and employees collaborating on the development of a new online tool
  • a group of volunteers around the world working together to develop an HIV education curriculum

I’m particularly interested in this topic, as I’m currently revising the Virtual Volunteering Guidebook – specifically, I’m revisiting yet again this week the chapter that addresses the subject of virtual teams, a subject that did not appear in detail in the original book. I have been compiling resources and case studies on the subject for quite a while now, and want to make sure the chapter that includes this subject addresses all the fundamental elements required for virtual team success, no matter what online tools you may use with such a team. Woe to the volunteer manager – or any nonprofit professional – who does not know how to work with virtual teams!

You can watch the TechSoup event on Twitter as it happens on July 11 (and even participate!) or look in to the archive of the chat later. Here’s more info from TechSoup on how to participate.

I have more details about live tweet events here on my web site, on this page about using micro-blogging, in case you are wondering what this will event will really look like.

Follow me on Twitter @jcravens42, and follow @TechSoup as well, so you will stay up-to-date about this and other events to help build the capacity of nonprofits, NGOs, libraries, and other organizations that involve community members to meet their goals.

Tags: volunteering, volunteers, community, engagement, international, volunteerism, volunteering, collaborative, collaboration, virtual, teams, staff, employees

PSU Volunteer Management courses have started!

Erin Barnhart has put together a “Volunteerism and Volunteer Management” course for Portland State University, and I’m thrilled to be teaching one of the modules! I’ll join her and Kathleen Joy of Oregon Volunteers to present a series of intensive classes focused on those who work with volunteers in any capacity – or those that want to.

This comprehensive course will cover topics ranging from core competencies and emerging trends and tools for building and sustaining a successful volunteer program, to understanding the broad-reaching impacts of volunteer service and effective volunteer management, to engaging individuals in innovative and accessible ways to serve in their local neighborhoods, via their computers and smartphones, and in communities across the globe.

Unlike a lot of other volunteer management courses, this course will full integrate online tools into all discussions (not just a module at the end), and will discuss the international volunteering scene.

This course is comprised of four all-day sessions: 9 am – 4:30 pm on four Wednesdays, June 22, 29, July 6 and July 13. It can be taken non-credit or for-credit. If you missed registering for this summer, contact Sharon Hasenjaeger at PSU Institute for Nonprofit Management, (503) 725-8221 or hasenjs@pdx.edu, to express interest in a future course. Grad students register for PA592 CRN 82727 through the PSU website. Noncredit students register thru the INPM office, using this noncredit registration form. Tuition is $495 for non-credit enrollment. Graduate credit is $945 plus $41 fee.

I love teaching. I try to give my workshops a lively, audience-oriented feel. I use case studies to illustrate points, focus on both what’s happening now and what is trending, encourage a lot of student participation, and develop activities that get class participants designing strategies they can use immediately. My goal in any training is to give participants a base on which to further build and improve long after a class is over. My schedule fills up very quickly. Contact me and let me know what kind of training you might have in mind!

 

 

People with disabilities & virtual volunteering

I said it back in the 1990s, and I’ll say it again: Online volunteering / virtual volunteering can allow for the greater participation of people who might find volunteering difficult or impossible because of a disability. This in turn allows organizations to benefit from the additional talent and resources of more volunteers, and allows agencies to further diversify their volunteer talent pool.

In addition, ensuring that your volunteering program – online or onsite – is accommodating for people with disabilities will end up making your program more accessible to everyone. For instance, if you make sure your online training videos have captioning, don’t be surprised when people who have no hearing problems at all thank you, since they can mute the video and watch it at work or in a public area without disturbing people around them.

People with disabilities volunteer for the same reasons as anyone else: they want to contribute their time and energy to improving the quality of life. They want challenging, rewarding, educational service projects that address needs of a community and provide them with outlets for their enthusiasm and talents.

I was reminded of this recently when a fantastic testimonial from Alena Roberts for the Matilda Ziegler Magazine for the Blind was recently reposted to Inclusive Planet about online volunteering / virtual volunteering.

Here are 11 people’s testimonials about how virtual volunteering allowed them to volunteer, despite their disabilities, compiled by the Virtual Volunteering Project, that remain as powerful as when they were first-published back in the late 1990s.

I told this story back in April 2009, but it’s a good time to repeat it now:

Back in the late 1990s, when I was directing the Virtual Volunteering Project, I recruited and involved online volunteers myself to support the Project, feeling that it would be inappropriate to offer advice to other organizations to involve online volunteers unless I was engaged in the practice myself. The only recruiting I did was via the Project’s web site, on a page that was purposely not easy to find; online volunteers were oh-so-easy to recruit even back then, and by making the page harder to find, I regularly received applications from candidates who I knew were actually reading my web site.

One day, an application came in from a guy I’ll call Arnie. It was clear from Arnie’s application that he was… different. His answers to questions on the application were child-like (though everything was spelled correctly), and didn’t at all sound like they were coming from a man in his 40s (he shared his age despite my not asking for it). Among other things, he said that what he wanted to do most as an online volunteer was to share images and messages from the Virgin Mary, a skill set that I didn’t really have a need for at that time… But I kept reading Arnie’s application and thinking, well, while I know this person is very likely mentally disabled based on his answers, he spells just fine and he’s REALLY enthusiastic. There’s really no reason to say no outright. I’ll put him through all of the regular online screening steps and give him a trial assignment and see what happens, just like I do with all volunteers.

Unlike most other online volunteering applicants, Arnie followed all of the directions on the online orientation immediately, to the letter, and within just a couple of hours rather than a couple of days. I don’t remember what the first assignment was that I gave him, but just as the directions in the online orientation stated, he wrote back (within probably an hour) and said that he didn’t feel he could do what was asked for, so could he please have a different assignment? I think the revised assignment I sent him was regarding a list of names of people who had given me their business cards at conferences, but back in the 1990s, many people didn’t put their email addresses and web site addresses on their cards. I asked him to use Google to find that information for me, if possible. The next day, the finished assignment was waiting for me, with profuse apologies for each person he couldn’t find online, and a request for a new assignment.

I slowly became a bit obsessed with trying to create assignments for Arnie. He could do only basic things online, like looking up information, and he needed explicit directions on how to do every task, but he was SO enthusiastic about it all. I started saving things for Arnie to do that I could have done myself in far less time than it would take him to do. For each assignment he always wrote back promptly if he thought an assignment was too difficult, or wrote back to say how happy he was at the assignment, how excited he was to do it, etc.

I think Arnie’s favorite assignment was when I asked him to visit 20 or so web sites that were supposed to be targeted at children; I was putting together a list of things online mentors and young people could do together online, and I wanted to know if these web sites were worthwhile. A paid consultant could not have provided the thorough, brutally honest assessments that Arnie did. Things like

I did not like this site at all, Miss Jayne. It was confusing! I did not know how to use it! It is a bad web site for this reason.

    • or

I liked this site very much, Miss Jayne. It was fun! I showed it to my mother. She thought it was fun too.

I was starting an online mentoring program at a local elementary school in Austin, and I invited all the online volunteers I had worked with to apply to be online mentors. Arnie was probably the first applicant. At first, my reaction was: he can’t do this. I have to tell him no. But then I kept thinking about it — *why* couldn’t Arnie talk online with a 10 year old? His tone would actually be perfect for a 10 year old. They would never know each other’s real name or be able to contact each other outside the web platform we would use for online exchanges, every message he sent would be screened, just like the other mentors. Why not let him go through the whole application process and see if he makes it? So, I did.

Among the screening required was two references who could attest to the candidate’s character and communications abilities. One of Arnie’s references was his doctor. When I called for the reference check, the doctor said, “Are you the Miss Jayne?! I’ve heard about you for a year now! Arnie lives to volunteer with you! It’s changed his life!”

I’m glad I was on the phone, so he couldn’t see me crying.

Arnie survived the screening process and was a wonderful participant in the program. His emails to his student were always perfect, full of questions and enthusiastic comments, written in short, simple sentences. The only thing I ever had to do was ask him to revise an email that had a religious reference in it, not as in “I went to church this weekend and it was fun,” which would have been fine, but as in “I hope you are praying to God every day!” Arnie quickly understood why that was inappropriate once I explained it to him, and it never happened again.

After more than a year of working together, Arnie wrote to say that he would need to take a break from volunteering, because he was getting “too full of worry” when he did assignments. I wrote him after a month saying that I hoped he was doing well, and he wrote back a lengthy, somewhat rambling apology for “letting you down.” I wrote him again to say that was NOT the case at all, wrote lots of encouragement and thank yous, etc. When I didn’t hear from him after a few months, I called his doctor, just to make sure he was okay. He was, but his doctor said he probably wouldn’t be using email anymore, that it had become too overwhelming for him. Sadly, I never heard from Arnie again.

What did I learn from all this?

I became a better volunteer manager for all volunteers because of Arnie. My descriptions of all tasks for volunteers became much more detailed and explicit. I better emphasized to volunteers that the time to drop out of an assignment was right at the start, and that there will be no hard feelings for doing so before the commitment has begun. I started reserving a diversity of tasks specifically for volunteers, and for my own list of tasks, I would always ask, could volunteers help me do any of this? I tried to identify a range of very simple starter assignments, so that new volunteers would not feel overwhelmed — or, if they did, they would know that online volunteering was not for them very early on. I look very much into what a volunteer can do, not what limitations a volunteer may have. I also learned that everyone, people with disabilities and otherwise, screen themselves when it comes to assignments, and it’s rare that someone will ask to volunteer for a task they are unqualified to do.

Since Arnie, I’ve worked with other volunteers with disabilities, though often, I haven’t been aware of such, since online volunteering often masks any disabilities a person may have. I can judge people online only by their abilities, rather than their appearance, if I stick to text-only communications.

When I’m working at a nonprofit organization, I involve volunteers not to save money, not to do what I can’t pay staff to do, but rather, to involve the community in the work of my organization, to create an army of advocates for our work, and to make my work more interesting with input from many more people. I’ll continue to strive to create inclusive programs, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because, in the end, it helps me be a better contributor.

2014 update:

vvbooklittleThe influence of this experience, and many others, as well as extensive research, can be found in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. This book, which I wrote with Susan J. Ellis, is our attempt to document all of the best practices of working with online volunteers, from the more than three decades that virtual volunteering has been happening. It’s available both in traditional print form and in digital version. If you read the book, I would so appreciate it if you could write and post a review of it on the Amazon and Barnes and Noble web sites (you can write the same review on both sites).

There’s also The Virtual Volunteering Wiki: a free resource featuring a curated list of news articles about virtual volunteering since 1996, an extensive list of examples of virtual volunteering activities, a list of myths about virtual volunteering, the history of virtual volunteering, a list of research and evaluations of virtual volunteering, a list of online mentoring programs, and links to web sites and lists of offline publications related to virtual volunteering in languages in other than English.

And there’s also our LinkedIn Group for the discussion of virtual volunteering.

Also see: Safety in virtual volunteering

Short-term tasks for tech volunteers

There are a variety of ways for nonprofits, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), schools, government agencies and other 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 short-term tech-related projects.

Back in 2005, myself and by members of TechSoup Global’s Volunteers and Technology online discussion group brainstormed a list of short-term projects for tech volunteers. I’ve added a lot to it over the years – and just updated the list yet again this week.

These one-time, short-term volunteering assignments might takes a few days, a couple of weeks or maybe a month to complete. But each has a definite start date and end date, shouldn’t go on longer than a month (maybe two) and does not require a volunteer to make an ongoing commitment to the organization – once an assignment is done, the volunteer can move on to another assignment, or stop volunteering with the organization altogether.

There are also many long-term, ongoing assignments for tech volunteers, of course, such as web design, web site management, being on-call for tech problems, backing up systems, producing live online events, etc. But before an organization involves volunteers in such high-commitment endeavors, the organization should consider creating a few short-term assignments, to get used to working with tech volunteers and to help staff identify the best candidates for longer-term assignments.

Tags: volunteering, volunteers, episodic, microvolunteer, microvolunteering, engagement, engage, community, outreach, staff, employees, civil society, technology, help, IT, ICT, ICTs

People not following-through on volunteering in disasters

The state of Queensland, Australia suffered from horrific floods in December 2010 and January 2011. Thousands of Australians expressed interest in volunteering, inundating volunteer centers and online message boards.

Recently, Volunteering Queensland offered this Submission to Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry, which said, in part:

QUEENSLAND’S peak volunteer organisation says the vast majority of people who registered to help clean up following the floods and cyclone Yasi backed off at the last minute.

Some people backed out because they realized this was a real commitment of time, and they couldn’t make that real commitment. Some dropped out because they could not donate a significant amount of time – an hour or two when you might have some time eventually is usually not enough for such a situation. Some backed out because they really were not prepared to volunteer (they hadn’t set up child care, time off from work, transportation, etc.).

Seasoned volunteer managers, of course, aren’t surprised. Even in a non-disaster situation, we have come to expect at least 50 percent of people who express interest in volunteering to drop out. That’s why many volunteer managers, including myself, insist on at least a bit of screening before a volunteer is placed into an assignment, so that drop outs happen in the screening process, not after the assignment is given and we’re counting on those volunteers.

Martin Cowling has done a great blog about this Queensland report, and I encourage you to head over to it, read it, read the comments (yes, I’ve commented there) and respond yourself.

Here is a resource I created following the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010, Volunteering To Help After Major Disasters, which I’ve regularly updated at least monthly every since, per the over-whelming number of posts to places like YahooAnswers by people who want to volunteer following a disaster (earthquake, hurricane, tornado, tropical storm, flood, tsunami, oil spill, zombies, etc.). It’s become one of the most popular pages on my web site, despite being posted as almost an after-thought and being focused on people that the majority of my web site is not focused on (it’s not even linked from my home page!).

Tags: volunteering, volunteers, relief, disaster, response, spontaneous, episodic, microvolunteer, microvolunteering. communications, public relations, engagement, engage, community, nonprofit, NGO, not-for-profit, government, outreach, staff, employees, civil society, floods, tornadoes

 

Helping left behind animals in Japan

I have been riveted by the Facebook status updates of Japan Earthquake Animal Rescue and Support (JEARS), whose volunteers are trying to help the many animals left behind following the earthquake and tsunami in Japan. Some of the animals are homeless or abandoned because their owners are now dead. Some are in this situation because their owners are not allowed to have them wherever they are living now. The stories of animals reunited with their families brings a tear every time. If you speak Japanese and can be entirely self-funded (taking care of your transportation and food and at least some accommodation), you would be welcomed onsite to help with JEARS. Otherwise, the best way you can help is with a financial donation.

JEARS is one of those organizations that gets Facebook, that understands you have to publish regularly with updates that help people understand you are doing great work — not just endless posts about the donations you need or something you are selling.

And on that note: animal shelters in tornado-stricken areas of the USA are facing dire straights. They need money, they need food donations (and donors need to bring it onsite to them – they CANNOT come get it), they need donations of washing machines, they need bedding, and they need people to adopt or foster abandoned dogs and cats. The shelters serving these areas are easy to find on Google.

Corporation for National and Community Service needs a makeover?

Paula Beugen was a part of the movement that lead to the National and Community Service Act of 1990 and the Corporation for National and Community Service. But she is now one of many that is not happy about where the Corporation is today:

In sharp contrast to the excitement that I felt when the Act of 1990 first got the ball rolling to create the Corporation and its programs, I now find myself greatly concerned with the Corporation’s lack of impact on volunteer infrastructure and volunteering. Today, the Corporation is struggling for survival – but does it need a serious makeover no matter what funding level Congress approves for it? 

Of particular concern to her – and to many others, including myself – is the recent emphasis the Corporation has placed on deploying AmeriCorps members as “mobilizers of community volunteers.” As Paula notes:

I have observed a dearth of positions for professional managers of volunteer programs in recent years at the same time the Corporation has been promoting and placing AmeriCorps members as volunteer coordinators. There is an important role for AmeriCorps volunteer coordinators to augment the work of volunteer resources managers within organizations but not to take their place.

Little has been done to educate policymakers that there is more to volunteer resources management than “coordinating” volunteers. This works great in the short run, but the long-term sustainability of results-driven volunteer programs requires substantive investment in volunteer resources management infrastructure… AmeriCorps members can be of enormous help to volunteer-involving organizations, but they cannot substitute for experienced volunteer resources leaders with ongoing commitment to best practices in the volunteer resources management profession.  

These quotes are from Paula’s guest turn for the Energize June Hot Topic. It is very much worth your time to read.

I’ve had my own complaints about the Corporation. I complained repeatedly when their “Reimaging Service” report equated volunteer management with human resources management, and became a drive to apply private sector human resources practices to nonprofit organizations: “there’s a lot of work to be done; let’s get people we don’t have to pay to do it!” They ultimately backed off saying this, though it’s obvious from their actions that they still think it. I hesitate to participate in their invitations to voluntarily consult, because not only will my concerns probably not be addressed, they might use my participation to say, “Look, see, this strategy is the result of a consultive process – and look at all these people who contributed to our final strategy!” with no mention of the criticisms I and others have brought up. (in international development, this is called being World Banked).

I hope you will blog about this issue as well. Online pressure is as vital as face-to-face, offline pressure to keep the Corporation on track!