Tag Archives: micro volunteering

EU Aid Volunteers will include virtual volunteering

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It’s official! In February 2014, members of the European Parliament, by a margin of 600 to 30, endorsed the European Union Aid Volunteers (EUAV) initiative that will facilitate more than 18,000 EU citizens, NGO employees and third country nationals over 18 to take part in humanitarian work worldwide in the next seven years.

This article, New EU aid volunteers program to make a ‘concrete, positive difference, notes that, “from 2014-2020, the European Commission expects to facilitate the deployment of more than 3,950 EU citizens to disaster-affected countries. An additional 1,990 humanitarian apprenticeships will be offered within the European Union, and some 10,000 home-based ‘online volunteers’ will be responsible for tasks ranging from graphic design and translation to providing advice and support. It is also expected that more than 4,400 people from local organizations in non-EU, disaster-affected countries will also benefit from the chance to undertake training and job shadowing within European humanitarian organizations.”

This official press release from Brussels, EU Aid Volunteers: the initiative takes shape, provides more details about this initiative, envisaged by the Treaty of Lisbon that created the EU. “Trained volunteers will have a variety of options: from performing online tasks from home, through work at the offices of humanitarian organisation inside the European Union, to deployment to EU-funded humanitarian operations around the world.”

In fact, onsite, in-the-field placements for EU Aid Volunteers are already being recruited.

More info:

It’s been my pleasure to be a part of putting together the online volunteering strategy for the EU Aid Volunteers initiative. That means providing:

  • Background on virtual volunteering – what it means in the EU context, what best practices have long been established, etc.
  • Details on the infrastructure and capacity that will be needed by host organizations and online volunteers in order to participate, including policies and procedures and how to address issues around confidentiality and safety
  • Possibilities for how online volunteering in support of the EU Aid Volunteers initiative might look, in terms of applications, screening, assignment creation, volunteer matching and supporting
  • How to integrate returned volunteer alumni networks and peer-to-peer online mentoring into the scheme
  • How to evaluate the online volunteering component of the EU Aid Volunteers initiative
  • How the contributions of online volunteers might be recognized
  • Recruitment of online volunteers to support EU Aid Volunteers and volunteer sending organizations
  • How to address potential risks and challenges, like protection of personal data, protection of confidential data of organizations, fear of negative behavior online, lack of understanding of and support for volunteer management among some agencies, labour concerns that can arise with volunteer engagement, and what to call online volunteers that support the EU Aid Volunteer initiative.

What I’ve loved most about this assignment is that it combines BOTH my background in international aid and development and my background regarding volunteer engagement, particularly virtual volunteering. I don’t often get to combine them!

This is my second European-related project in the last 12 months. The other involved researching “Internet-mediated volunteering” in the EU, to map how prevalent it is and how it might be further cultivated, as well as its potential relation to employability & social inclusion. There’s more information bout that project at this wiki. The final research is not yet published, but I did write this blog about “What I learned from researching virtual volunteering in Europe.”

More about me and my work, and my consulting services, including subjects on which I train.

Research on USA volunteerism excludes virtual volunteering

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graphic by Jayne Cravens representing volunteersThe Bureau of Labor Statistics says that USA volunteerism rates declined by 1.1 percentage points to 25.4% in a year ending September 2013. BUT, the survey apparently had wording that left out virtual volunteering, which makes me question the validity of these numbers.

Here’s how BLS identified volunteering activities:

  • Coach, referee or supervise sports teams
  • Tutor or teach
  • Mentor youth
  • Be an usher, greeter, or minister
  • Collect, prepare, distribute or serve food
  • Collect, make or distribute clothing, crafts or good other than food
  • Fundraise or sell items to raise money
  • Provide counseling, medical care, fire/EMS or protective services
  • Provide professional or management assistance, including serving on a board or committee
  • Engage in music, performance, or other artistic activities
  • Engage in general labor, supply transportation to people

It’s 2014 and this is how BLS defines volunteering activities?! In these definitions, where do these typical virtual volunteering activities go?

  • Managing an online discussion group
  • Facilitating an online video chat/event
  • Translating a brochure from English to Spanish
  • researching subjects
  • creating web pages (designing the pages or writing the content)
  • editing or writing proposals, press releases, newsletter articles, video scripts, etc.
  • developing curricula
  • transcribing scanned documents
  • designing a database
  • monitoring the news to look for specific subjects
  • managing social media activities
  • tagging photos and files

Heck, where do volunteering activities like hackathons and wikipedia edit-a-thons go in BLS’s volunteering activity categories?!

How do we get the Bureau of Labor Statistics and others that research volunteering activities, like the Pew Research Center, to change their survey methods so that virtual volunteering activities and new forms of volunteering, like hackathons, get included in research about volunteering? Perhaps someone at each organization should buy, and read, The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook?

Also see this blog of suggestions for research about virtual volunteering, specifically.

Update March 29, 2018: Well done, Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), for redesigning its the General Social Survey (GSS) – which measures the official number of volunteers in Australia – to ALSO capture informal, online and spontaneous volunteering, not just traditional, face-to-face, onsite volunteering. More about the change here.

Meanwhile, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, at least as of 2015, has the same old categories that exclude modern forms of volunteering. Online volunteering, hackathons, edit-a-thons – those still don’t get counted.

Why did we call it the LAST guidebook?

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vvbooklittle

In hearing about The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, you may have noticed two things:

    • My co-author, Susan Ellis, and I don’t talk about the guidebook as a revision of The Virtual Volunteering Guidebook that we wrote back in the 1990s. That’s because this new book was written from the ground up – we didn’t merely update that previous guidebook. While I think most of what we wrote in that first book remains valid, in terms of still being helpful advice to work with online volunteers, this new book provides substantially more information and reflects just how integrated the Internet is in our lives now versus back in the 1990s.
    • That standout word in the title: Last.

What do we mean by this being  The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook?

What we don’t mean is that there will or should never be a further need to write or talk about the latest developments in engaging volunteers online.

What we do mean is that, from this moment on, we hope that talk about virtual volunteering won’t be segregated to a separate book or separate chapter at the end of a book about volunteer management. Our dream is that this is a turning point regarding talk and training about volunteer engagement, and

  • any book about volunteer management, whether it’s a book about basic principals in general, group volunteering, episodic volunteering, skills-based volunteering, teen volunteering, whatever, has advice about using the Internet to support and involve volunteers integrated throughout the material. For instance, episodic volunteering, online, is called micro volunteering, yet workshops and other resources regarding episodic volunteering rarely talk about it – we hope that exclusion stops NOW.
  • any workshop about some aspect of volunteer management, whether it’s about the fundamentals of volunteer management, recruitment, risk management, adults working with children, whatever, fully integrates advice about using the Internet as a part of those activities.

In short, NO MORE SEGREGATION OF INTERNET-MEDIATED VOLUNTEERING. Virtual volunteering should not be an “add on” – not only in a book or training about volunteer engagement, but also, not in any volunteer engagement scheme at any organization. In fact, our dream is that we no longer hear about onsite volunteers as one group and online volunteers as another, separate group – how about we talk about volunteers, period?

Involving volunteers online is a practice that’s more than 35 years old. There are at least several thousand organizations using the Internet to support and involve volunteers. Actually, Susan and I believe virtual volunteering has, in some way, shape or form, been adopted by a majority of nonprofits and NGOs, whether they know it or not – we base this on the research that’s been done by others, our own research, and our observations in our extensive work with nonprofits. It’s even reflected in this discussion group regarding virtual volunteering on LinkedIn. And it’s based on this reality that we’re calling for full integration of virtual volunteering into any book or training about any aspect of volunteering.

Order information for The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook.

Also see our virtual volunteering wiki. Whereas the guidebook is written in a timeless manner as much as possible, focusing on suggested practices that the authors believe do not change, for the most part, this wiki will continually evolve as tracking and networking tech tools change, as new research is conducted, and as substantial news about virtual volunteering is announced.

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).

Virtual Volunteering discussion group on LinkedIn

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Susan Ellis and I have created a LinkedIn Group for the discussion of virtual volunteering.

We’re hoping this will be a place where organizations that are involving online volunteers can get very specific with questions and advice about their virtual volunteering experiences: sharing what tools they use to work with volunteers online, asking questions about a particular issue they are having in working with volunteers online, getting advice on how to recruit a diversity of online volunteers, and on and on.

This group isn’t a place for basic questions like, “How do I introduce online volunteering to my organization” and others that are detailed extensively in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, though if you would like to expand on that or another practice that is detailed in the book via this group, such comments would be welcomed!

The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook is available for purchase as a paperback and an ebook. There is also a virtual volunteering wiki in association with the book.

Feb. 12, 2014 Addendum

What I do NOT want to do is to discourage discussions on places like UKVPMs, OZVPM, and other discussion groups for volunteer management, about using online and networking tools (like SMS/text messaging) to support and involve volunteers – the practice that most of us refer to as virtual volunteering.

I had been opposed to the idea of creating an online group just for these discussions, because I do not want these discussions to be taken out of any online group devoted to volunteer management. If you have read even just the beginning of The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, you know that we chose that name in part because we DON’T want any more books about virtual volunteering, no more add-on chapters about it made to books about volunteer management, no more “virtual volunteering” as an add-on or after thought – but, rather, that using online and networking tools is integrated into all discussions about recruiting, supporting, managing, recognizing and involving volunteers, period.

With all that said, we did see a need for a global discussion about online and networking tools to work with volunteers, where discussions could be focused on any country or region. So we did start this LinkedIn Group for the discussion of virtual volunteering. I’m doing my best for it not to devolve into a “how do I involve online volunteers” discussion – we’re looking for more high-level discussions, like:

  • What online tools do you use to communicate with volunteers? Just email, or do you use an online discussion group platform? And how do you like it?
  • If you use Skype or other video conferencing to communicate with volunteers, individually or as a group, what advice do you have for others that might want to use it?
  • What’s the most popular activity at your organization for someone to do from a home, work or otherwise offsite computer or device?
  • How did you alter your volunteer policies to include Internet-related activities/communications?

So, if you use email, any other Internet tool, or even text messaging from a phone, to interact with your volunteers, or you create tasks that volunteers can do from home or work computers or other devices, I hope you will join the LinkedIn group and join in the discussions!

Me with The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook

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It’s real! Not virtual! Me with The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook.

Amazing to hold YEARS of research and writing in my hands at last!

The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook is now available for purchase as a paperback and an ebook , published by Energize, Inc. 

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). You don’t have to buy the book in those places to review it there (and I hope you will order it from me directly instead). 

Now available: The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook!

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vvbooklittleThe Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook is now available for purchase as a paperback and an ebook, published by Energize, Inc. 

The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook reflects all that has changed — and remained the same — since the first book was published online more than 10 years ago. Again co-authored with Susan Ellis and published by Energize, Inc., The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook still includes the basics for getting started with involving and supporting volunteers online, but it goes much farther, offering detailed information to help organizations that are already engaged in virtual volunteering with improving and expanding their programs. It also offers more international perspectives. The first book was focused on people who had never heard of virtual volunteering; this revised book still serves as the most comprehensive introduction to the subject available, but provides much more in-depth information and guidance for organizations already engaging online volunteers, who want to improve or expand their virtual volunteering activities.

New and advanced information includes:

  • More detailed advice on virtual volunteering assignment, including one-time “Byte-Sized” tasks (micro-volunteering), longer-term, higher-responsibilities and virtual team assignments.
  • A thorough look at various practices for screening and matching volunteers to assignments, with an eye to getting the most capable volunteers into your volunteering ranks and preventing incomplete assignments or burdensome management tasks
  • How to make online volunteer roles accessible and diverse
  • More details about how to work successfully with online volunteers, so that they are successful, your organization benefits and volunteer managers aren’t overwhelmed
  • Balancing safety with program goals
  • Respecting privacy of both the organization and online volunteers themselves
  • Online mentoring
  • Blogging by, for and about volunteers
  • Online activism
  • Spontaneous online volunteers
  • Live online events with volunteers
  • The future of virtual volunteering and how to start planning for oncoming trends

There’s also a new chapter just for online volunteers themselves, which organizations can also use in creating their own materials for online volunteers.

I’ve worked hard over the years to make this book worth the purchase price, and to be a resource you can turn to any time for support in your engagement with volunteers online.

In conjunction with the revised guidebook is the Virtual Volunteering Wiki, a free online resource and collaborative space for sharing resources regarding virtual volunteering. We are seeking a partner university or college that could recruit an intern from among students studying in its post-graduate program to keep this wiki updated.

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).

Online volunteers, social media, disaster response & the Philippines

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United Nations OCHA and the Digital Humanitarian Network are looking for online volunteers to help in geo-tagging twitter messages and images to support relief efforts in the Philippines. Find out more and sign up here, at the UN Volunteers Online Volunteering web site.

Also, other online volunteers across the world are building the digital infrastructure for the organization’s Typhoon Haiyan relief efforts: since Saturday, more than 400 volunteers have made nearly three quarters of a million additions to OpenStreetMap (OSM), regarding areas in and around the Philippines. Those additions reflect the land before the storm, but they will help Red Cross workers and volunteers make critical decisions after it about where to send food, water, and supplies (OSM aims to be a complete map of the world, free to use and editable by all. Created in 2004, it now has over a million users). The Red Cross is using the data. More at this article from the Atlantic.

And, hurrah, the first shipment of Facebook “likes” have arrived in the Philippines (article in German – and is a better criticism of slacktivism or slackavism than anything else).

Virtual Student Foreign Service & eInternship program

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The USA State Department has launched the Virtual Student Foreign Service (VSFS) program. On the site, employees and contractors post “challenges” (online tasks that need to be done), and student volunteer are invited to complete any they want to. Most tasks are designed for students to complete in two minutes to two hours. No clearance is required to post “challenges,” according to the website. Anyone with a State.gov or USAID.gov email address can sign up and post any short “challenge” that does not require a security clearance or any special permissions to complete. Any student with a .edu email address can sign up to volunteer on the microtasks.

The microvolunteering initiative grew out of VSFS’s eInternship program — administered by the Bureau of Information Resource Management’s Office of eDiplomacy — which selects qualified undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate students to partner with U.S. diplomatic posts overseas while the students work remotely on digital-based diplomacy projects.

While any U.S. student can volunteer to do short tasks through the micro volunteering platform, students must go through an application process to be selected for an eInternship. eInterns complete longer projects as part of their nine-month program. Applications for the 2013-2014 school year eInternships opened July 2 on USAJobs.gov, and VSFS will continue to accept submissions through July 20. Prospective applicants indicate projects they’re interested in and the selected eInterns complete projects assigned by Foreign Service Officers. Selected students intern online for 5 to 10 hours per week through the fall and spring semesters. These students complete all assignments from their college or university campuses; eInterns don’t travel abroad or to the State Department.

Nice to see the State Department providing this opportunity – as the United Nations has been providing this opportunity for more than a decade via its online volunteering service!