Category Archives: Community Relations/Outreach

I’m back from Washington, DC!

A group of women, all wearing matching, colorful scarves, pose with Senator Jeff Merkley (D-Oregon).

During the first full week of February, I was in Washington, DC, as part of the advocacy efforts of Habitat for Humanity, training to talk to the staff of congressional representatives and then doing that actual talking! It was an amazing experience. Habitat branded its efforts #HabitatOnTheHill.

I’ve worked in communications related to causes since the mid-1980s, before I had graduated from university, and I’ve certainly done a lot of elevator speeches, usually while tabling for an organization that’s registering voters or trying to educate people about issues related to reproductive rights. But I’ve never talked directly to legislators and their staff to advocate for affordable housing. It was an invigorating, intense experience – these folks are all super busy and we had to make every second count. It also was easier for our group than others, since the legislators my group approached each support legislation and funding to improve the availability of affordable housing and believe everyone, especially those working full-time, should get a chance to buy a house.

In the photo, that’s the Oregon contingent with Senator Jeff Merkley, a staunch advocate for housing. I’m standing on the viewer’s far right, in my Habitat-blue dress.

Some things Habitat International did that other organizations could learn from:

  • They held two highly-informative webinars for participants, crash-courses in the specific legislation we needed to advocate for and in other preparations we needed to make before the trip.
  • They had well-established relationships with most legislators; therefore, when they contacted the offices of members of Congress to say we were coming, most representatives and senators cared we were coming and wanted to meet with us.
  • They gave us all those matching scarves. As a result, on Capitol Hill that day, it looked like Habitat representatives were EVERYWHERE. Representatives of some tribal groups that were also there to advocate for their issues told my group they would absolutely be doing something similar next year.
  • All participants had an app on their phone that provided us with the names of all speakers we heard from in the days prior to the actual advocacy day, that provided profiles of our legislators, and that provided us with regularly-updated information on our meetings with legislative staff, info that changed minute-to-minute the day of.
  • They fed us. Always feed your advocates.

If you are going to meet with city, county, state or federal officials about a cause, make sure you:

  • know what you are going to say. REHEARSE IT. And if you will be in a group, know who is going to say what, who is going to “open” the talk, etc,
  • know exactly what you want from them: the name of the legislation you want them to support, for instance.
  • have a one-pager about your cause or nonprofit to leave behind.
  • thank the officials both after the meetings, in writing, and via email every time you read that they have supported your cause in some way.
a hand is receiving money

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site or my YouTube videos and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.

Getting great photos for your nonprofit’s marketing needs takes planning.

a primitive figure, like a petroglyph, shots through a megaphone

I’ve been working at a local Habitat for Humanity affiliate for more than a year now. It’s been a challenging, enlightening, really fun experience.

I have said repeatedly over the years that working at a local nonprofit or in a local government initiative can be fantastic training to work internationally in humanitarian and development programs; it’s also true that working in humanitarian and development programs is great training for this kind of local work! For instance, because I’ve worked internationally, I already knew the importance of not engaging in poverty porn: not sharing photos that present clients as weak or desperate, not sharing photos that show only clients receiving charity, etc.

I’ve spent more than a year hyper-focused on creating a robust archive of a diversity of volunteers in action at our house builds, our home repair projects, our neighborhood cleanups and in our ReStore. Talking to our field staff about how to take and share photos and recruiting a volunteer specifically to come to events to take photos, as well as being at as many events myself as possible, have all been essential in creating this large archive. At this point, I could take a year off and still have more than enough photos of volunteers-in-action for all of our communications needs in 2024 (however, I will NOT be taking a year off).

In the next year, I’ll be hyper-focused on a different communications need: photos of clients. We do not have nearly enough! And I don’t want to have to over-rely on Habitat’s excellent compilation of photos from all across the USA that I could use; I don’t like using stock photos, because I prefer to have my own photo archive representing our own community (and you should too). It’s going to be a challenge: we don’t want to overburden our partner families with requests, we don’t want to make some very shy folks do anything that would make them uncomfortable, and many of our families have moved on to many other priorities, things far more important than a photo session with me. We have written the families and asked for family photos – like of everyone gathered around a Christmas tree, if they celebrate such, and we did end up with one great one!

What’s going to be required is more relationship-building on my part. I need to make sure the clients know me and trust me. For our home-buying partners, that’s easier, because the organization already has a long-term relationship with them. But for home repair clients and people living in neighborhoods where we have cleanup events. it’s shorter-term interactions, and a lot of homeowners are embarrassed to need such help. It’s going to take careful conversations and being there with staff they already trust to make this happen.

One thing I’m also going to do is to try to get a series of shots that show progress on our house builds: I’m going to take the “same” shot from the same place every month from the start to finish of a house build.

As I pursue more client photos in 2024, I want to remind you all of some things to keep in mind for your own photo-taking for your nonprofit or community endeavor (and I’m assuming you will be taking the photos with just a camera phone / smart phone):

  • Make sure all employees, consultants, clients and volunteers have signed a photo release, and you can lay your hands on that signed release easily. It’s best to have this release signed at the time they sign anything else with your organization, like an application or a contract. This allows you to take photos anywhere and everywhere without worrying if you have permission to do so.
  • But even though you have signed, written permission, be sure to announce to everyone your name and that you will be taking photos. Tell them the photos are for social media, for your website and for your publications, like your annual report. Tell people how they can request copies of any photos. Assure people that you are going to take respectful photos and always ensure anyone in a photo looks terrific.
  • If clients or volunteers say they do not want their photos shared on social media or in print, honor those requests. If you might have trouble remembering, ask them, when they see you taking a photo that they would be in, to hold up their hand, palm out. That way, when you go through the photos, you will get the reminder that that person did not want to have their photo taken, and you can edit them out of photos as needed, or not use certain photos.
  • Before the event where you are going to take photos, make a wish list of photos you want most: women using construction tools, a young person and an older person working on something together, volunteers gathered around a lead volunteer for the morning orientation, etc. That makes it easier to be on the lookout for those moments.
  • Take a photo at the start of the event, or whenever you remember, that will tell you where and when this event is. It might be a sign welcoming attendees or an information board or the sign on the venue or the front of a t-shirt created especially for the event. Your photos will automatically be dated by your phone camera, and when you go through them, and see the sign or information board, you will remember where the event was, who it involved, etc.
  • Yes, you MAY stage photos. You are not a journalist; you are a marketing person. Don’t hesitate to tell a group to turn to the camera and smile, or to hold up their hammers triumphantly!
  • Front-lighting illuminates a subject. Back-lighting can hide faces.
  • Photos can be easily cropped, especially if you are taking high-resolution photos. Don’t worry if you think a photo isn’t framed perfectly while you are taking it; cropping may do that later. Filters can also sometimes fix photos that are too dark.
  • Capture people in action as much as possible (especially volunteers).
  • Smiling faces are not absolutely necessary. If someone doesn’t smile when you say “smile”, that’s okay.
  • If you think a photo is especially unflattering to a person, don’t use it.
  • Avoid “butt” shots. These are the photos of someone who is bending over away from the photographer.
  • You can’t take “too many” photos. You can go through them later and weed out the unusable ones.
  • When you look through your photos, delete the ones that depict unsafe conditions (or put them aside and talk to the site supervisor about these incidents). For instance, at Habitat sites, volunteers under 18 may not use power tools or work above ground level, volunteers must wear safety goggles when operating power tools, tools should not be placed on ladders, hard hats should be worn at all times and, when on ladder, a person should maintain three points of contact and avoid leaning.
  • Use only first names when identifying people in photos on social media or in any print publication for the public, or say something that identifies the family but protects privacy, like, “the Hernandez Family.”
  • Google photo share area is AMAZING. If you have a gmail account, you have a Google photo archive. Just log into your gmail account and then go to photos.google.com and you will come to YOUR photo account. Don’t be shocked if you see photos there already; if you tie your apps on your phone to Google, this happens automatically. The problem is that you are using your own phone, and switching back and forth on a phone between a work Google account and a personal account is a pain. How I do it: the photos go to my personal account and then, on a laptop, I download the most recent, then upload them to my work account.

Note that I’m not the only photographer where I work: I ask everyone to take photos if they are at any event with volunteers or clients “in action.” They don’t take many, so I ask them to send such to a gmail account we have set up especially for photos; Google makes it super easy to transfer photos that are email attachments in that account over to the photo drive.

But be sure to have a backup of your photos elsewhere: on whatever backup system you use, on a separate Google account, and/or on a hard drive.

Also see these previous blogs which have links to sample policies and guidelines for taking photos of vulnerable people:

humanitarian stories & photos – use with caution

Poverty porn, survivor porn, inspiration porn

The opposite of poverty porn: erasing clients from storytelling

What I’ve learned working at Habitat for Humanity

Do you welcome people with your language?

a hand is receiving money

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site or my YouTube videos and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.

We’ve got to get better at addressing misconceptions about volunteerism.

graphic representing volunteers at work

I live in the Portland, Oregon area, and a few years ago, the area experienced record-setting heat. In response, various city and county governments set up cooling centers: spaces in libraries, churches and convention centers where people without air conditioning and people who are unsheltered could come, with their pets, to get relief from the dangerous heat. One county government tweeted out several requests for volunteers, including one that said volunteers were needed “desperately.” I decided to amplify the message by posting it to various online communities I’m a part of, including posting it on the subreddit for Portland, Oregon. I highlighted some points in particular from the web site where people were to express interest in volunteering:

Must be 18+, have compassion for all guests. Social service experience helpful.

Please keep in mind that emergency response operations may be very hectic keeping you quite busy for extended periods. You may also experience very slow uneventful periods of time. Such is the nature of emergency and disaster response. Please take time before your deployment to prepare for this working environment.

These are 9-hour shifts. These locations are open 24 HOURS.

I did alter the message to say cooling center volunteers were needed URGENTLY, rather than desperately, because I think desperation is never a good place to recruit volunteers from.

The message was upvoted more than any message I’ve ever posted to Reddit. But there was also significant backlash. The criticisms fell into three areas:

  • Why aren’t these positions paid? Why are these volunteer roles instead?
  • Why are the shifts 9 hours instead of 4?
  • Why didn’t the city plan better & start recruiting sooner?

It’s a shame those first two questions in particular weren’t answered by the recruiting agency in their messaging. As regular readers of my blog know, to not say why positions are volunteer rather than paid is always a big no-no. And saying “we don’t have the money to pay, so these are volunteer!” would not be the answer I am looking for (and probably not most of potential volunteers either).

As for the third comment, I don’t know that the city didn’t start recruiting sooner; I didn’t look on HandsOn Portland, VolunteerMatch and AllforGood, for instance, to see if they had started recruiting there. I don’t know that they didn’t have notices on their own web site sooner than what I saw on social media. So I hesitate to criticize them for how they have recruited in terms of when and where.

I did take issue with one comment that was made, and pushed back at it:

Way too much money and benefits expenses being expended on volunteer “coordinators”

I noted in my response that managers or coordinators of volunteers are some of the lowest paid people at any nonprofit or other agency, and rarely is their only role managing volunteers. I also said:

Volunteers aren’t free: someone has to recruit them, read the applications, interview them, screen them (often, background checks, reference checks and extensive interviews are required), supervise them (both to ensure their safety and client safety, and to make sure they’re doing what they are supposed to), support them (train them, answer questions on demand, etc), record their hours and their accomplishments, address problems, and report regularly to senior staff about what the volunteers are doing. It’s a tough job, made harder by people who think volunteers are free, think volunteer management is “Hey, we need volunteers, come on down!” and the work all magically happens, and balk at coordinators who ask for better training for themselves, software to manage volunteers, etc.

Nonprofits have GOT to do a better job of addressing misconceptions about volunteers and volunteer engagement. This is just yet another example of why.

Also see:

If you have benefited from any of my blogs or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.

Finding people, organizations & topics to follow on the Fediverse

Mastodon logo

Nonprofits, non-government organizations (NGOs), community groups, government agencies, libraries and other mission-based organizations, as well as consultants for such, should always be ready to explore a new way to connect with people. You don’t have to try out every tool, but when a certain number of colleagues or clients start talking about using something, it’s definitely time to have a look yourself. And right now, you should absolutely be exploring the Fediverse – Mastodon, specifically. I’ve said so why here.

Fedi.Tips posts hints and tips about Mastodon and the Fediverse, and I’ve found it quite helpful. This is from a recent post by FediTips on Mastodon:

There are many ways to discover interesting accounts on here. How many of these have you tried?

1. Follow hashtags
2. Join groups
3. Follow people, they share posts by others
4. Use FediFinder to discover Twitter people who are also on here
5. Browse directories
6. Follow curators
7. Browse trending posts & hashtags
8. Use StreetPass for Mastodon to discover website accounts on here
9. Hang out on Local & Federated timelines

More info on how to do all of these.

My own guidance about that first suggestion, about following hashtags: the way it’s supposed to work is that you do a search on a hashtag you want to follow, the posts that use those hashtags are supposed to come up, and then you click on the little figure with the plus sign in the upper right-hand corner to follow it. But when I did searches on terms I wanted to follow as hashtags, nothing came up. Finally, I just made a post that listed the hashtags I wanted to follow. And then after publishing I went to the post and, voilà, all my hashtags were now converted, with links – all I had to do was click on each and then click the follow button:

#volunteer
#volunteerism
#nonprofit
#NGO
#Tech4Good
#CommunityService
#a11y
#Inclusion
#MakeADifference
#history
#motorcycle
#travel
#hiking
#camping

Are you following any links on Mastodon that relate to your work or volunteering with nonprofits, government agencies, libraries or community groups? Which ones?

Personally, I’m enjoying Mastodon, just like I used to enjoy my personal Twitter account. But professionally – for connecting with colleagues, people working in similar fields, building a professional rep that leads to clients – so far, it’s been quite a dud: can’t find many people to follow, professionally-related topics aren’t happening. What about you?

Also see:

cover of Virtual Volunteering book with hands raising up various Internet connected devices

For detailed information about leveraging online tools to support and involve volunteers, whether they provide their service onsite at your organization, onsite elsewhere, or online, get yourself a copy of The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. Online platforms and social media channels come and go, but the recommendations here are timeless, and absolutely will work with social media platforms that have emerged since this book was published, like Mastodon and TikTok. You will not find a more detailed guide anywhere on this subject than than The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. It’s available both as a traditional print publication and as a digital book.

If you have benefited from any of my blogs or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.

What I’ve learned working at Habitat for Humanity

A photo of the author, Jayne Cravens, wearing a Habitat for Humanity plastic construction helmet with Habitat for Humanity on it.
Jayne Cravens

Since August 2022, I have been working the equivalent of two full days a week, sometimes a bit more, for a local affiliate of Habitat for Humanity International. I’ve been working in marketing and outreach, primarily social media and web site content, and also for three months, I helped onboard volunteers for home builds and home repairs, as well as looking at the volunteer onboarding, support and tracking processes at the Restore, Habitat’s thrift store, and making recommendations to make them better.

My primary goal in my job is to increase local awareness about this Habitat affiliate’s efforts to address affordable housing and about its efforts to help vulnerable homeowners with critical home repairs that allow them to stay in their homes. I also have a focus on increasing sales of the affiliate’s ReStore, which is a vital funding component for the local affiliate, as well as increasing awareness of the ReStore regarding its connection to Habitat for Humanity and as a recycle and reuse option. I would also like to see a LOT more diversity among Habitat’s volunteer engagement, and that’s going to require special, targeted efforts in messaging – putting a lot of my own recommendations to the test. I manage the Habitat affiliate’s web site and the local ReStore web site, and you can see examples of my online outreach via the affiliate’s Facebook and Instagram pages, the local ReStore Facebook and Instagram pages, and the affiliate’s Mastodon, Twitter and Reddit accounts. 

It’s been a fascinating, challenging experience. I’ve long been a fan of Habitat for Humanity’s model for engaging volunteers in home construction, as you know if you have attended my workshops related to volunteer engagement. Getting this behind-the-scenes look at all the various aspects of Habitat’s programming, which goes well beyond building structures, has been fantastic and inspiring. It’s also so wonderful to be in a small, frontline nonprofit, especially one serving a largely rural community: the affiliate serves a large, mostly rural area of less than 400 sq miles / 940 km2, much of it unincorporated and outside the Portland Metro Urban Growth Boundary (UGB), which bisects Washington County. The overall population of the area served by this affiliate is less than 50,000. The three argest cities in the service area have populations of about 26,000 people, about 13,400 people and about 3500 people, respectively. More than 10 percent of the population identifies as Hispanic or Latino.

In the time I have been at this Habitat for Humanity affiliate, here are some things I’ve learned – or relearned:

  • There’s nothing like testing your recommendations made as a consultant in real-world settings. It’s one thing to write a blog or a book or hold a training; it’s another to actually apply those strategies yourself. I’ve always been proud to be able to tie what I recommend in a workshop to what I’ve actually done.
  • Working with people in rural Oregon really isn’t that different from working with rural people in Afghanistan: people want a safe, stable place to live, most especially a place of their own, and in most cases, if you give them the opportunity to work for that, they’ll embrace it – and their neighbors will help. Political and economic obstacles in nonprofit work are shockingly similar across countries.
  • Some of the most important work you do as a communications manager is getting what people know in their heads into a form that can be read and referenced by others. Often, employees aren’t that aware of all their fellow employees are doing. When a key employee or volunteer leaves, and their work and knowledge isn’t documented, it can bring some work to a standstill. Plus, what is in people’s heads and what they experience in their work is fantastic for blogs and grant proposals.
  • The people with whom most customers interact should be regularly briefed on program activities, on upcoming events and on important dates. The cashiers of the ReStore regularly get questions about Habitat programming from customers, and since my office is right next to checkout, if the cashiers don’t know the answer, they will grab me to talk to the customers with questions, something I welcome. And they listen to what I say and sometimes comment later, “I didn’t know any of that.” Everyone is a spokesperson for your nonprofit, whether you like it or not. I’m now working to make sure they know how to answer our organization’s most frequently asked questions, and how to direct people who need detailed answers. I’m working to make sure they know they can use their smart phones to pull up our organization’s web site, right then and there, and read answers to customers with questions. Have a look at When some nonprofit employees & volunteers don’t really understand what the nonprofit is trying to address & why for more on what I suggest to ensure everyone is representing your nonprofit appropriately.
  • Just because you work for an agency with a well-known name does not mean people really know what it does (including some employees and board members!). So many people think Habitat for Humanity gives away houses – it doesn’t (it partners with families for affordable mortgages – the families DO make payments for the house). I didn’t know Habitat did critical home repairs for vulnerable home owners until I started working there.
  • Online tools aren’t enough to market an organization: executive directors and board members have to get out into the communities. You have to show up at the big events of other organizations. You have to present to city councils and county governments. You have to immediately respond to every call from the media – especially in this age of fewer and fewer newspapers, and fewer local radio stations and TV stations. You have to leverage banner placements over key streets and doorways, buy ads in newspapers (if you are lucky enough to still have a newspaper), put flyers up at grocery stores, and rely on other marketing tools many said would go away with the Internet. You have to be at farmer’s markets and the super popular food cart pod on a Friday night. And the opposite is true too: just going to onsite events and relying on traditional paper postal mail and onsite displays isn’t enough; you have to regularly use and update online tools.
  • People love social media posts that have photos of LOCAL PEOPLE in them. You can, therefore, never have enough photos of local volunteers and employees “in action.”
  • People also love social media that’s fun. And dinosaurs are terrific props.
  • Bureaucracy can be wonderful. Rules, regulations, protocols, official messaging – these are NOT automatically bad. Official policies and procedures MATTER because when they are based in reality, understood and followed, it keeps everyone on the same page and it prevents missteps. I loved that, at the United Nations, I could always find the policy, the manual, the official statement, that I could use to justify something I wanted to say or do. The same has been true of Habitat: their official policies regarding communications, safety and volunteer engagement have made my job easier! And what a joy to see Susan Ellis, my mentor and guru, quoted in Habitat’s official guidance for staff regarding volunteer engagement. It’s also been great not to have to agonize over how to phrase something – I can usually find exactly what I need in official Habitat materials, some public, some on our extensive national intranet/knowledge base.
  • People don’t like change. I’ve known this for years, and I’m relearning it yet again. And if I hear, “But that’s the way we’ve always done it” one more time…
  • There is a delicate, difficult balance in an organization that fights poverty hosting a gala event.
  • Contacting TV stations an hour away 48 hours before an event can sometimes get them to cover it during a slow news week. It’s always worth trying.
  • I’m not the only over-40 woman in my area that has so much professional experience I scare potential employers when I apply for jobs – and it’s amazing how many Generation Xers I’m now encountering on their third or fourth careers.
  • It’s still not easy to create group volunteering roles – things that three or more volunteers could do together, just once (though it’s usually 10 or more people). The agency could have three of these every month and not meet volunteer demand.
  • People are willing to travel outside of their area to volunteer for a day. As noted earlier, I’m in a county that’s half rural and half urban. The Habitat that serves the urban area can’t as easily accommodate groups of volunteers, or specialized volunteers, as we can, so we end up with volunteers from the opposite side of the county, often from groups of employees from very large employers – and that’s fine with us!
  • As I wrote on a blog in 2016 called “If no one is complaining, we don’t have to change how we do things”, “Often, when I do a little digging myself, talking to people that wanted to volunteer at the organization but didn’t, or to current members, or to former clients, and on and on, I find that, indeed, there is dissatisfaction among a few, maybe even more, but no one says anything to the organization itself… they don’t say anything about something they would like to see changed or improved because there is a culture within the program or the entire organization, that discourages complaints or suggestions.” No further comment.
  • Everyone that works with volunteers should have some training on how to work with volunteers. Period.
  • It’s so still oh-so-easy to recruit volunteers for online tasks and onsite, short-term roles. People are so, so hungry for those kinds of roles! I remain confused by people who struggle to recruit volunteers for short-term roles or online roles. I’ve put up three such assignments VolunteerMatch and had to take them down in just a few days because I had enough great volunteers to do them. I’ve recruited online volunteers to update our contact list of every community of faith and every nonprofit in the area, as well as to update our list of and contact information for every elected official that represents any part of our area. It’s not too late for you to get up-to-speed on virtual volunteering!
  • It’s really hard to recruit new volunteers for longer-term, ongoing roles, and people under 50 have zero interest in coming to a ReStore even twice a month to help in an ongoing role. And that’s not a criticism of these generations – I think they would volunteer if we built a relationship with these folks, if we enticed them with short-term gigs and gave them a really worthwhile experience.
  • Online sales requires a dedicated staff member who can spare the role several hours of every week – it can’t be done as a simple add-on to an existing role, something attended to just a few minutes a day.
  • Bicycling to work is awesome except when it’s icy outside. Just like in Germany! But it’s brutal in the increasingly over-headed summers we now get.

This experience has also affirmed my belief that, if you want to work abroad in humanitarian endeavors, you need deep experience working for nonprofits in your own community, as an employee, consultant or volunteer. And any Habitat for Humanity affiliate and its ReStore are great places to start.

If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help

Volunteering, or that meeting you are going to host, must sound enticing & compelling or people won’t care (our post-pandemic reality).

image of a panel discussion

People are going on vacations again. They are going to restaurants again. They are going camping in droves. They are even attending work-related conferences again. But they have not returned to many onsite activities they might have done before the COVID-19 pandemic, like attending community meetings and volunteering.

Why?

I surmise it’s because people got very used to being home and they really don’t want to be away from home except for something they really enjoy or something that’s exceptional, something that is compelling. There’s so much great stuff at home – streaming services, that new pizza oven you bought during COVID, your couch… so if a person is going to leave it, it better be for a fantastic reason.

Before the pandemic, a lot of people attended meetings without deeply thinking about why they really, really wanted to – but now, post-lockdowns, we’ve thought a lot more about our time and our priorities. Going to an event before or after work requires organizing child or pet care, driving to the event, finding a parking spot, etc. – and in return, you might be bored, or intimidated, or under-valued and feel like your time is wasted. Plus, there is a vast amount of fantastic shows on TV that promise a lot of compelling stories and fun – and frequently deliver on that promise. Volunteering and in-person meetings? Not so much.

Many of you had to learn to run effective, even fun, virtual meetings to keep your nonprofit supporters engaged. It took a lot of effort on your part to learn do that and to actually do it. You are going to have to put in that same effort to rethink your onsite events, including your volunteer engagement.

“People who became leaders during the pandemic haven’t learned how to create irresistible in-person meetings,” said Cynthia D’Amour, MBA, mentor and leadership strategist at People Power Unlimited, in this article How to Re-Engage Members in Chapter Events from Associations Now. The article is about how it is now essential to “design programs that have energy and take advantage of the face-to-face location.”

I can’t tell you just in one blog everything you can do to make onsite meetings and onsite volunteering more enticing and inviting. And what works for one group might not work for another. I also don’t want to sound gimmicky – there’s not a magical icebreaker or theme that will make a meeting exciting or compelling. This is something you all need to think about at length, and you are going to have to experiment at length.

Here are some general ideas to get you started on your journey to learn how to change your onsite meetings and onsite volunteering to bring people back:

What was the last really enjoyable community meeting or volunteering you experienced – even if it was before the pandemic? What made it enjoyable? Ask all of your staff this question, about what they have experienced, first hand. They are likely going to say things that you can’t manage: my favorite band played or we all got an incredible swag bag or we made and baked our own pizzas. But amid that are going to be some things you can consider:

  • there were free sodas in the break room.
  • the meetings always start and end on time and are really well-organized – my time is never wasted.
  • they served really good food.
  • the ideas we offered at the first meeting had been implemented the following month.
  • the manager is really welcoming and makes it clear she’s happy we’re there.

Also consider that many people have a profound fear of rejection. Some think that younger generations take statements far more personally than older generations, but maybe they just aren’t as willing as older generations to put up with personal insults or being neglected. Either way, you have to make sure you have deliberate, ongoing activities to make volunteers feel welcomed and valued. Are you encouraging their questions and responding promptly to their questions and concerns? Does all of your staff show know how you are listening to volunteers? Do you believe no complaints means everything is okay?

Finally, you don’t want volunteers asking themselves why am I putting myself through this? And they will if their time is wasted, if they feel intimidated or devalued, or if they see no purpose or result in their volunteering. Are you regularly addressing those concerns with volunteers even if you haven’t gotten an indication that volunteers are asking themselves that question?

So many of us in the volunteer management training world have been sounding the alarm for years that nonprofits and other organizations that involve volunteers MUST change their ways regarding volunteer onboarding recruitment, onboarding, engagement and value or they will risk all of their current volunteers dying out. The pandemic has created an urgency: if you aren’t addressing the new realities of volunteer engagement, your organization is doomed.

If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help

Also see:

The problem with volunteer matching platforms isn’t a software issue

I get a version of this message regularly from an IT or corporate person:

With today’s technology, it seems to me that it should be easier for both volunteers and nonprofits to find appropriate matches online.  

An illustraiton that is drawn like cave paintings - one image is of a figure holding a smartphone, the other is of a person at a computer.

Sigh. The problem is not DATA. It’s not a data issue. It’s not a tech issue. It’s not a software issue. The issue is that the vast majority of nonprofits, and staff charged with recruiting and involving volunteers, have no training in how to do so, and they start with volunteer recruitment when, in fact, that’s the LAST step.

Nonprofits, NGOs, community groups and other initiatives that want to involve volunteers – or that do currently – need to have training in:

  • How to create appropriate tasks and roles for volunteers.
  • How to create a variety of tasks and roles (short-term, long-term, for highly skilled, for low-skilled, for high responsibility roles, for micro/episodic volunteering, etc.)
  • How to create accessible tasks and roles (that welcome refugees, that welcome people with disabilities, etc.)
  • What screening is required for different roles in order for volunteering to be safe and in order for appropriate volunteers to be screened in and inappropriate volunteers to be screened out.
  • What support volunteers need in their roles.


That’s all of the many things that are needed BEFORE RECRUITMENT HAPPENS. And such training is getting harder and harder to find, instead of easier. And that doesn’t even get into all the other training that’s needed, like how to evaluate and report the effectiveness of volunteer engagement. Or other things that are needed, like policies and procedures, particularly around safety, and software to track volunteers time and impact, to schedule volunteers, etc. – most nonprofits can’t afford such (in fact, they can’t even afford the time to explore such).

Why is all that lacking? Because there’s no funding for it. Corporations and foundations refuse to fund “overhead”. That means they won’t fund training, they won’t fund the purchase of books or subscriptions to sites like Engage.

I could go on and on. And I do. And I have, many times, as the “also see” links below show. And I’ll keep doing it until funders, particularly, techie companies, “get it” – and are ready to pony up the funds needed to increase the number of people engaged in volunteering and to improve the engagement of volunteers.

Also see:

Should you leave Twitter & Facebook for the fediverse?

It’s a mouthful, but bear with me:

The non-profit, distributed, community-oriented fediverse might be something you need to check out and use, for your personal and professional activities – and maybe the nonprofits you work for.

More and more users are leaving Facebook and Twitter to join such communities because they are uncomfortable with the corporate policies and the owners of the companies. Some nonprofits feel that they have an ethical duty to NOT be associated with such.

Most folks are staying on Facebook and Twitter, but creating profiles on other platforms, including the fediverse, just in case they decide to change their social media patronage altogether.

The fediverse is similar to social media networks like Facebook or Twitter, but it’s not controlled by any one corporation. To you, the user, it will feel like any social media channel, but how it is set up and organized in the background is very different from for-profit platforms.

The fediverse is a network of social media servers that share one another’s content. If I set up my account on one server and you set up your account on another server, we can still see and repost each other’s content because the servers are part of a “federation.” To the user, it feels just like, say, Facebook – you see all the content of those you follow – you will have no idea they are signed up via a different server than you unless you really look for it.

The only challenge you will probably ever face as a user on a fediverse is when you sign in – you have to remember the address of your server. I do this the same way I track my passwords. But, again, otherwise, a fediverse feels just like any other social network.

The most famous example of a fediverse is Mastodon, which is a lot like Twitter. When you join Mastodon, you have to join via one of its servers. Most people join via the “social” server – it’s the first one you see when you go to the site to create an account. Each Mastodon server has its own policies and administrators. If you do not like a change in policies on the server you have joined, you can leave one for another without losing followers. Most servers follow the Mastodon Covenant, which requires a basic level of administrative service as well as active moderation against various forms of hate speech. But, honestly, as a user, you probably won’t ever have to deal with ANY of this.

An added bonus: “Mastodon’s robust REST APIs are based on ActivityPub, a W3C standard”. That means Mastodon has a commitment to accessibility!

This article in InfoWorld by Andrew C. Oliver offers the best argument I’ve seen for creating a Mastodon account and for thinking very seriously about the consequences of supporting Facebook, Twitter and Instagram with your content.

As for me: I am on Mastodon and am using it more and more. I still have an account I use for professional reasons on Twitter, a Facebook professional and a personal page, and a mostly-personal Instagram account. But I like having alternatives – especially Mastodon and Reddit (and I’m getting more and more benefits from Reddit – including lots of traffic for my blog and two consulting jobs). I haven’t deleted my personal Twitter account but I use it primarily to encourage people to follow me elsewhere (difficult to do, since the Twitter algorithms now seek out such content specifically to downgrade it and keep it from being viewed by most followers).

For the nonprofits I work for, including TechSoup: I do have profiles for them on Reddit, and was able to reclaim TechSoup’s Reddit group, and posting there has resulted in some traffic here on the TechSoup community. But I still haven’t put any of them on Mastodon – mostly because I know that, in the case of one of the nonprofits I work with, none of their clients or donors are on it. But that could change… and I need to be ready.

What about you and the nonprofits you help/work for? Are they exploring other social media platforms with an eye to not over-relying solely on just one channel? Remember: no social media platform is forever. Eventually, the one you love most will go the way of AOL communities, MySpace, Friendster…

Also see:

cover of Virtual Volunteering book with hands raising up various Internet connected devices

For detailed information about leveraging online tools to support and involve volunteers, whether they provide their service onsite at your organization, onsite elsewhere, or online, get yourself a copy of The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. Online platforms and social media channels come and go, but the recommendations here are timeless. You will not find a more detailed guide anywhere on this subject than than The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. It’s available both as a traditional print publication and as a digital book.

If you have benefited from any of my blogs or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.

The delicate, peculiar task of promoting a charity’s gala

A gala charity event is a sophisticated, upscale party hosted by a nonprofit. At a gala, guests dress up in formal clothes, enjoy what is supposed to be very good food, socialize and are entertained in some way. Gala guests pay a lot of money to attend and then are further solicited for donations or to bid on auction items, many of them high-end, with the money raised going to the nonprofit.

Most galas are considered successful if they break even financially – galas that raise large amounts of money after expenses are paid are quite rare. So why have galas if they don’t bring in much money? Because most board members and other supporters may want to socialize with each other and celebrate – they’ve sat through many meetings, they’ve shouldered a great deal of leadership responsibility, they’ve discussed and debated all year long, and now they want to have an enjoyable time. It’s a time to renew, reflect, and reward themselves for work well done. And it can also be an important social event in a community: this may be a chance for aspiring and current politicians to network and an opportunity for business owners to show they are interested in community affairs.

Gala events have been a mainstay of nonprofits for many generations. But galas have also always faced criticism from people who see them as inappropriate, especially for nonprofits focused on issues regarding poverty and inequity. And such criticism seems to be growing among younger people. As one article put it:

Why juxtapose calls to feed the hungry, house the homeless and cure cancer with champagne toasts and caviar hors d’oeuvres? As researchers who study charities, we understand why opulent bashes that raise money for good causes seem puzzling. These inherently contradictory events intended to help people in need double as vehicles for the rich and famous to show off their largesse.

Those feelings among at least some community members can make marketing a gala difficult – something I have been facing as I promote the annual gala for a small nonprofit focused on affordable housing and housing equity. I want to make sure I reach people beyond the board who might attend, but I also don’t want to do anything that reminds this nonprofit’s clients or thrift store patrons that we’re holding an “opulent bash” they probably can’t afford to attend.

Market a gala the wrong way and you could end up with not just a poorly attended event that costs money instead of earning it, but also a public relations problem.

The gala will happen, the board members and others attending will have a fun time and, hopefully, feel re-energized about their volunteering with the organization. We might even manage to introduce some new people to the organization. And we certainly hope to at least break even financially.

While galas may eventually be abandoned, for now, they still have an important role at many organizations, including the one I’m supporting. That’s undeniable.

That said, here are two comments about galas worth considering.

A gala is not major gift fundraising, nor does it really have anything to do with philanthropy… in rare cases, it provides enough net revenue to justify having one. A gala is almost 100% transactional in nature. In other words, it’s not about connecting a donor’s specific passions and interests with the need you’re addressing. To be honest, it’s creating an avenue for you to invite donors and their friends to, for one night, feel good about what you do.
That’s not Philanthropy.
Can it be useful for cultivating major donors? Yes, in some cases. Can it inspire some folks to become donors? Yes, in some cases. Is it possible to make more net revenue by doing a gala than by cultivating major donors? No.

From veritus group.com.

Use your galas as a chance to continue showcasing your work, but be mindful that they may not be the centerpiece of your fundraising strategy forever… Don’t let the changing landscape around events catch your organization off guard. Galas may not be going anywhere in the next few years, but they’re likely to lose importance as millennials take on a greater share of our donor bases. Now is the time to rethink your plan and get ready for those changing dynamics.
From Team Kat and Mouse.

Also see this article, Nonprofits turn to tech to court younger more diverse donors.

Are you also facing difficulties in promoting a gala? Do you face challenges in marketing at a nonprofit because of how certain activities could be, or are, negatively perceived?

And speaking of fundraising:

If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help

How nonprofits can leverage LinkedIn

It’s clunky, it needs a design update, it rarely gets referred to any more in articles about social media, but LinkedIn can be a valuable resource for nonprofits and other community groups and they should be using it regularly. Using even just the free features on LinkedIn will increase awareness about an organization’s work and it may lead to better board recruitment, more event attendance, more program participants and more donors, as well as greater awareness of progress among current supporters.

Here’s how your nonprofit or community program should be using the free features on LinkedIn:

  • Your organization should have a profile on the site and should ask all of its employees, former employees, board members and other volunteers to link to it in their list of job and volunteering roles. Your organization should also ask all of these people to regularly “like” the posts by the organization, if they feel comfortable doing so (but emphasize it is NOT a requirement).
  • Your organization should post public events to the LinkedIn events feature and then share these on the organizational profile.
  • Your organization should post updates to its organizational profile on LinkedIn – just like you do on Facebook, but perhaps with a more formal tone. Remember: LinkedIn is a web site for professionals to talk about their work and expertise, not for cat memes.
  • Your organization can ask employees, former employees, board members and other volunteers to share your organization’s LinkedIn status updates and to comment on such – but only if they feel comfortable doing so. Remind them that this is not a requirement and there will be no repercussions for not doing it (except for maybe your marketing manager!).

In addition, staff members can also join various LinkedIn groups and participate in such – but it’s their choice what they join and you should never ask them what groups they are on. But you can remind them that they should share info about your organization IF it’s on topic for whatever group they are on. These activities can further create awareness of the organization and a positive image.

You can also use the fee-based features on LinkedIn for paid roles. If you post a job, you ABSOLUTELY should reveal the salary in that posting. You can also use the job posting feature to post volunteering roles – I recommend using it for board member recruitment, but in such listings, making it clear that it’s an unpaid role, emphasizing the time requirements, and being explicit that not all applicants will be accepted.

I’ve been using LinkedIn on behalf of West Tuality Habitat for Humanity. I also used it some years ago to recruit board members for a cultural arts organization that funds nonprofits in the county where I live in Oregon. It has absolutely been worth the time investment – and most of the time, I’m just cutting and pasting info I’m already posting to Facebook or our web site – there’s been no need to create unique content. It takes seconds, not minutes, to keep info up-to-date on LinkedIn.

Is your nonprofit leveraging LinkedIn? How has it been working out for you?

Also see: