Code of Conduct & Guidelines for
Coyote Helps Volunteers
Note: Coyote Helps does not yet exist as a
nonprofit. All of the information on this web site is PROPOSED.
Please see the home page for more information about this idea
for a nonprofit.
Of course, there's no need at all to volunteer officially via Coyote
Helps to make the Internet a kinder place: you can follow the
suggestions for volunteers entirely on your own, without signing up
to do so through this nonprofit. However, note that you would be
doing this as an independent individual in no way affiliated with
our organization.
But if you want to engage in these activities as a Coyote Helps
volunteer, the information on this page is what you are agreeing to.
This page provides our Code of Conduct, which everyone associated
with our nonprofit is expected to follow.
Note that all roles with Coyote Helps are volunteer roles and,
therefore, are unpaid roles.
Benefits for volunteers.
As an official Coyote Helps volunteer, you will be eligible for:
- training in moderation and facilitation responsibilities on
online communities.
- training in effective online outreach for cause-based
initiatives and civic engagement.
- a letter from Coyote Helps leadership affirming your number of
volunteer hours and a description of your volunteering
activities, which you can use as you like/need, including for
graduation requirements, court-ordered community service and
scholarship applications. However, please note that you first need to make sure with
a probation officer, representative of the court or the
person at your high school in charge of required volunteering if these hours will be
acceptable.
Confidentiality
All identifying information provided to Coyote Helps as a part of
your volunteering, such as your real name, your residential address
and your birth date, will be kept confidential by the leadership of
Coyote Helps and will never be made publicly available. Information
will not be maintained on any cloud-based system except with regard
to how you have submitted it (for instance, as an attachment via
email - we cannot control how email providers do and dont protect
data).
All conversations between Coyote Helps leadership and volunteers are
private and proprietary. No communications should be shared beyond
people who are cc'd on a communications.
Culture of safety & respect.
- All Coyote Helps volunteers should strive to treat each other
and those they encounter through their volunteering with
respect.
- Please strive to maintain a courteous and polite tone in all
forms of communication as a Coyote Helps volunteer, including
when disagreeing.
- Harassment or bullying by Coyote Helps volunteers will not be
tolerated. Please report such behavior immediately to Coyote
Helps leadership.
- Do not use offensive or sexually suggestive physical/verbal
language from an online account associate with your activities
as a Coyote Helps volunteer.
- Do not send inappropriate messages, imagery, and/or visuals to
any other Coyote Helps volunteer nor from an account associated
with your volunteering. Unacceptable behavior includes but is
not limited to, asking for personal photos, commenting on
appearances, etc.
- Please do not consume alcohol or drugs while performing
volunteering tasks or reporting.
Anyone may contact any member of Coyote Helps leadership, or all
members of the board, to express concerns, report incidents, and
engage in additional communication.
Violation of these or other policies in this guidance notes can be
grounds for dismissal as as Coyote Helps volunteer.
Prohibited activities by volunteers.
Unless the volunteer has received direction by Coyote Helps
leadership, no volunteer should:
- Contact any other company or organization with regarding to
any activity related to volunteering with Coyote Helps,
regarding pursuit of a partnership, regarding recruiting more
volunteers or regarding donations of any kind.
- Pay or donate any money or item to any company or organization
as a part of their volunteering with Coyote Helps.
- Ask for the contact information of any other volunteer,
without the express permission of Coyote Helps leadership.
- Set up a face-to-face, onsite meeting, phone call or video
call with any other volunteer, without the express permission of
Coyote Helps leadership.
Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in your
volunteering role.
Any text you submit to Coyote Helps or that you post to any Internet
platform as a part of your volunteering via Coyote Helps must be
authored by you, not by any AI agent, or it must be a quote or
phrasing for which you cite the source. Please do not ever use AI to
author any information you intent to post to an online platform.
Please do not rely on AI to research any subject. AI is notoriously
unreliable and inaccurate. Appropriate citations include:
- Newspaper articles (with the name of the newspaper, the
headine, the date and the URL).
- Academic articles (with the name of the article, the headine,
the date and the URL).
- Blogs written by experts, not AI (with the name of the blog,
the headine, the date, the URL and the author's name).
Acceptable uses of AI as a part of your volunteering with
CoyoteHelps:
- Spell check.
- Editing something you have authored yourself, for correct
grammar and spelling.
Before you rely on the content of a web site, particularly if you
are going to cite it or use it to make a decision - like a "top 10
best software for whatever" site, make sure that page is authored by
a human. In fact, write the author and ask them how they made this
list and if any part of it was paid for by a company mentioned in
the list or article and if any part of the content creation involved
AI-generated content beyond correction of spelling and grammar. If
they won't answer, that alone should tell you about the author's
credibility.
Right of refusal & dismissal
The leadership of Coyote Helps reserves the right to dismiss any
volunteer for violation of this code.
The leadership of Coyote Helps reserves the right to decline a
request from someone to volunteer for any reason, as well as to
dismiss a volunteer without cause. Such a declination or dismissal
will be in writing from Coyote Helps leadership.
Any person has the right to decline a volunteering assignment from
Coyote Helps. Volunteers are asked to submit declarations in writing
of a pause in their volunteering with Coyote Helps, or an end to
their volunteering, to Coyote Helps leadership.
Applying to volunteer via Coyote Helps
If you wish to be
an official volunteer, you will be eligible for:
- using the time you
spend doing these tasks towards court-ordered or
school-required community service.
- a letter from Coyote Helps affirming your number of volunteer
hours and a description of your volunteering activities, which
you can use as you like/need, including for graduation
requirements, court-ordered community service and scholarship
applications.
- training from Coyote Helps on how to appropriately and
effectively manage online communities and engage in online
outreach.
- training in cause-based online outreach and marketing.
The first thing to do if you might be interested in volunteering
is to read through our Code
of Conduct / Volunteer guidelines. If you feel these are too
many rules to follow and too much to read, then volunteering
officially through Coyote Helps isn't for you.