FAQs
About the Virtual Volunteering Project
involves online volunteers
by Jayne Cravens, Project Manager, Dec. 1996 - Feb. 2001
This information was last updated on April 3, 2000
With a lot of initial preparation, developing online volunteer opportunities and working with volunteers online quickly became relatively easy for me. The key was employing basic volunteer management practices, and that has kept managing volunteers, online or offline, from ever seeming burdensome or more trouble than it's worth.
Initially, I followed the VV Project's own guidelines for recruiting and involving volunteers for online assignments. These guidelines have proven so successful, in fact, that I don't actively try to recruit volunteers anymore, except for very specific types of assignments (such as helping with our filemaker pro database). The Project has a core group of 50 to 65 online volunteers at all times, ready to take on assignments; most wander onto the site by searching for online volunteering opportunities via their favorite search engine, and somehow find our very buried volunteer application (more on that later).
Reading all that I do, you may think I spend a large amount of time working with online volunteers. I don't. I spend 10% or less of my time each month doing all of the steps I've outlined here.
For easier reading, this narrative has been divided into separate Web pages:
- Developing assignments
- Screening and Evaluating Volunteers
- Keeping Track
- Staying In-Touch & Online Safety
- Recruiting Volunteers
I hope you find this narrative about my own experience helpful. I am always interested in hearing about your own experience managing online volunteers as well, either in narrative form (sent to me via e-mail, or via our online survey.
Our Index of Organizations Involving Online Volunteers offers a profile of more than 100 organizations and how they are involving volunteers virtually, the systems they use to recruit, evaluate and manage online volunteers, and visions for future virtual volunteering activities.