Monthly Archives: January 2019

Paying thousands to volunteer abroad & ignoring same opportunities at home

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Late last year, I did an all-day training for a state fish and wildlife department – a government agency – about how to better engage volunteers: how to better design tasks for a variety of volunteers, to better support volunteers, to better track what they are doing and to recruit – not just recruiting volunteers to get tasks done, but also to recruit in order to reach a variety of communities and people. The people I taught were a mix of biologists and long-time volunteer leaders who had never had training in volunteer management.

(read more about my consulting services and training work)

Before doing this type of intensive, specialized training, I do a lot of research to look at what similar organizations might be doing, trends that the client might want to consider, etc. One of the things that struck me as I was researching state fish and wildlife departments all over the USA was how many activities these agencies have for volunteers that people will pay thousands to go do in another country: building and repairing fish and wildlife habitats, counting wildlife, reporting on habitat conditions and more.

I thought about how this is true of so many other agencies as well: there are nonprofits and government programs all over the USA that will help people learn English, that help refugees navigate their new homes, that help people better understand the risks associated with HIV/AIDS, that help people who have lost their home, that help impoverished women with maternal health and infant care, and on and on – yet, people are willing to pay thousands of dollars for voluntourism experiences that make them feel like they are helping refugees, helping children, helping people at risk, etc., rather than participating in these programs just around the corner – or, at least, in their own country.

I don’t like voluntourism, where people pay money to go to another country and feel like they are helping people or the environment in just a few weeks, and I blog about my distaste frequently. So many – not all, but so many – are scams: a supposed wildlife sanctuary captures wild animals and puts them into enclosures and then sells voluntourism experiences, bringing in foreigners to “help.” A supposed orphanage is full of children who have parents, but the parents are paid to keep their children in the “orphanage” so that foreigners will pay large sums of money to come from overseas and “help.” The organizations take anyone who can pay – they don’t need anyone with actual skills or expertise because, supposedly, no one locally can do this “work”, so they must bring in anyone from abroad with “a good heart.” Sure, there are some worthwhile organizations for short-term volunteering abroad – and I list them on this free resource on my web site. But most are, to me, loathsome.

But I also am puzzled as to why so many nonprofits and government agencies in the USA – and other countries – do such a lousy job of talking about their volunteering opportunities. When I told the state agency I was training that people pay thousands of dollars to go do in, say, Kenya, many of the same volunteering tasks that this state agency struggles to find volunteering activities for, they were stunned. But it’s true!

Have a look at some of those shiny, heart-warming voluntourism sites. I’m not going to link to them here, but trust me, they are easy to find on Google or Bing. Look at photos on their sites, the language they use – look how much fun they make volunteering sound, or how they make volunteering sound like a challenge worthy of traveling thousands of miles for – and paying top dollar to experience. Now look at your organization’s web site: how does your agency talk about volunteers and the activities they do? Don’t oversell your program, but do recognize that any activity that allows volunteers to be outside, to be very physical, or to interact with clients are highly desired by many people. What you may see as just more work to do they may see as an opportunity to make a real difference in a cause they care about deeply.

Here’s more of my advice on volunteer recruitment:

And here’s more of my blogs regarding voluntourism and Westerners going to help abroad:

My voluntourism-related & ethics-related blogs (and how I define scam)

Read more about my consulting services and training work.

review of latest data on volunteering in the USA

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The Corporation for National Service has released its annual report on volunteering in the USA. And, once again, the way they present the data, and the old-fashioned view of volunteering, has disappointed me greatly.

How was the data gathered? I can’t find anything on the web site to tell me. How many people were interviewed? Or how many organizations provided data regarding their volunteers? Where is a report I can read, to get more in-depth info, not just graphics and summary paragraphs? I spent a lot of time on the web site and searching on Google and cannot find this information anywhere.

Once again, the Corporation is focused on a dollar value for measuring the impact of volunteering: “Over the past 15 years, Americans volunteered 120 billion hours, estimated to be worth $2.8 trillion” and in the year for this report, volunteers gave $167 billion in economic value. That’s right – volunteers mean you can eliminate paid staff! And also contributes to the mistaken belief that volunteers are free (they aren’t).

The Corporation summary of the report breaks down volunteering activities in these categories:

  • Fundraise or sell items to raise money
  • Collect, prepare, distribute, or serve food
  • Collect, make or distribute clothing, crafts, or goods other than food.
  • Mentor youth
  • Tutor or teach
  • Engage in general labor; supply transportation for people
  • Provide professional or management assistance including serving on a board or committee
  • Usher, greeter, or minister
  • Engage in music, performance, or other artistic activities
  • Coach, referee, or supervise sports teams
  • Provide general office services
  • Provide counseling, medical care, fire/EMS, or protective services
  • Other types of volunteer activity

Sigh… so, where do these common volunteering activities go?

  • Participating in hackathons and wikipedia edit-a-thons? What if I’m not doing anything at the computer – I’m walking around serving drinks?
  • Supporting artistic activities but not actually supplying them? Would a theater usher be under the “usher” category or hear?
  • Volunteering to register voters go?

And what about this range of typical virtual volunteering activities go?

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

And, as always: where is the information about the resources it takes to engage volunteers? It takes money and time – yet the report never says a word about this. Volunteers do not magically happen.

I have all the same complaints about CNCS and its report on volunteerism that I had in 2014, so I won’t repeat myself here. But please, CNCS, read it. Drag yourself into the 21st Century and let’s get the data we truly need to help politicans and the general public understand and value volunteerism.

#GoVolunteer

Also see:

Volunteering to help national public lands cleanup after shutdown

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Updated February 1, 2019, at the bottom of the blog entry:

The House and Senate have passed a bill to reopen the government until February 15, and the President is expected to sign it – it may be signed by the time this blog is published.

The impact of the shut down on US public lands – national parks, national forests, national monuments and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) land – is still being assessed, but we already know, per numerous press reports and social media reports by visitors, that it’s been bad: trash, graffiti, plant destruction, trail destruction and more.

Official groups that volunteer on US public lands have all been somewhat or entirely inactive as well during the shutdown because they are under the auspices of official partnerships with federal offices, and their liaisons have all been out during the shutdown. Many have been making plans during the shutdown on what to do immediately when the shutdown ends, and many will be starting activities ASAP to address the damage that’s been done to national public lands.

If you want to help volunteer in the next two weeks in particular to address the damage on US public lands during the shutdown, look for “Friends of…” groups that support specific national parks, national forests, etc. You can find these using Google, Bing and Facebook. Check their social media accounts for updates on what their immediate volunteering activities will be and apply to volunteer via their web sites. If they don’t have a way to fill out an application on their web site, email them and ask how you can become a part of their efforts.

These groups do not provide transportation to the public lands they support, nor do they provide accommodations – that means if, say, you want to help at the Grand Canyon, you have to get yourself to the Grand Canyon, find and pay for a hotel or motel room somewhere, etc., all paid for by you. If you decide you want to join in on these volunteering efforts, you need to be prepared to be self-funded and get to wherever the group wants you to be on your own.

You also need to apply to become an official volunteer with any volunteering group you want to help – don’t just show up at the gates of a national park, national forest, etc., and say, “Here I am!” These groups have information on their web sites on how they do this. You may want to apply to volunteer with more than one group – I have no idea if they are getting lots of applications or very few, nor any idea if you will get a quick response, or any response at all.

These groups could all be shut down again on Feb. 15, if no more permanent legislation is passed.

Also, remember that these groups need help year-round – when there’s not a shutdown happening. Many would welcome your support running their gift shops (which raise money for their efforts), building and restoring trails, leading groups and more.

Update: I curated tweets sent by various people and organizations about #volunteers helping on public lands – national parks, forests, monuments, BLM land, etc. – during the 2018-2019 US Federal government #shutdown. The tweets have a lot of links to news articles. I’ve posted this list of curated tweets to Wakelet.

One of the social messages that went viral during this shutdown was a video of a group of spontaneous, unaffiliated community volunteers being told they had to stop cleaning up in the Shiloh National Military Park in Tennessee. Again: official groups that volunteer on US public lands had to be inactive during the shutdown because they are under the auspices of official partnerships with federal offices, and their liaisons were all out during the shutdown. The park worker or law enforcement person or whoever it is in the video did a very poor job of trying to say this in explaining why the people had to stop trying to clean up the park, and his explanation left these community members confused and angry. What he should have said was this:

Thank you. I know you all really care about this park and it’s bothering you to see trash and other debris laying around. These are public lands, your lands, and of course, you feel like you want to clean them up. However, even when the government isn’t shut down, even when there is staff in the parks, people cannot just show up at the park and “volunteer” here. We don’t allow people to spontaneously volunteer, without any formal affiliation with our park, because of liability risks and because of the risk, however small, that unsupervised volunteers will do damage. I so appreciate what you are doing, but park policy says you need to stop. Here is the name of the person you can call the day after the shutdown stops so that your group can volunteer.

Of course, if you’ve watched the video, based on the logic used by the worker, all those unaffiliated volunteers had to do was say, “Oh, we’re not volunteers. I’m an individual citizen enjoying the park and this is how I choose to enjoy it.”  They might have gotten away with it.

Sadly, there have been cases where even “official” volunteers on public lands have caused damage. For instance, 30 miles of dirt trails and primitive roads in Deschutes National Forest in Oregon were deliberately wrecked in 2014 by unsupervised volunteers who were supposed to be doing necessary, environmentally-appropriate trail maintenance. They caused more than $200,000 in damage.

Also see:

Free guide updated: Basic Fundraising for Small NGOs/Civil Society in the Developing World

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I’ve updated Basic Fundraising for Small NGOs/Civil Society in the Developing World for the first time in four years. I swore I wouldn’t anymore, and even said so on my web site… it’s quite the beast of a project, given that it’s entirely unfunded work. And I’ve been updating it since 2004.

But the continued pleas on sites like Quora from small NGOs in Asia and Africa, including very specific questions about crowdsourcing, a topic not covered in the 2015 version of the document, prompted me to spend oh-so-many hours updating it.

The PDF book is now 41 pages long and is available to download, for free, from my web site. It includes chapters on:

  • Fundraising: Some Things You Should NEVER Do
  • Networking & Establishing Credibility
  • Guidelines for Integrity, Transparency & Accountability
  • Using Social Media to Build Credibility
  • Absolute Essential Preparations To Solicit Donations
  • Finding Donors & Making Contact
  • Proposal Writing
  • Ethical Principles in Fundraising
  • Crowdfunding & Online Donations
  • Beware of Fundraising Scams
  • Financial Sustainability Action Planning
  • Individuals Raising Money in Another Country for Your NGO

The work of small community-based organizations (CBOs)/civil society organizations (CSOs)/non- governmental organizations (NGOs) in developing countries, collectively, is vital to millions of people. There is no group or institution doing more important work than CBOs / CSOs & NGOs. They represent local people and local decision-making. They often are the only group representing minority voices and the interests of those most-marginalized in a community. I call them mission- based organizations: they are organizations that exist, primarily, to fulfill a mission. They have a mission-statement that is supposed to guide all of their activities – in contrast to a business, which exists to make profits.

Financial support for their vital work, however, is hard to come by, and staff at these organizations, whether paid or unpaid (volunteer), have, usually, never had training in how to raise funds, what different funding streams can look like (individual donors, foundation grants, corporate grants, fees-for-service, government contracts-for- service, etc.), or how to maintain an accounting of funds.

I can’t solve this challenge with a book, but I hope I can give these NGOs the most basic information they need to secure funding. I hope it also helps consultants who are trying to help these small NGOs in developing countries.

Will I update it again? Not any time soon, barring the correction of some egregious mistakes, and maybe not at all. I need money too, folks. I need to devote my energy to projects that pay me. Please read more about my consulting services and let me know if you might like to work together!

vvbooklittleA resource that isn’t free but is very much worth your investment – at least I think so – is The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. The book, which I co-wrote with Susan Ellis, extensive, detailed suggestions and specifics about using the Internet to support and involve volunteers: virtual volunteering. It includes task and role development, suggestions on support and supervision of online volunteers, guidelines for evaluating virtual volunteering activities, suggestions for risk management, online safety, ensuring client and volunteer confidentiality and setting boundaries for relationships in virtual volunteering, and much more. The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook is available both as a traditional printed book and as a digital book.

Also see:

Why your public meetings are so sparsely attended

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You represent a nonprofit. Or a local government citizens committee or board. Or an activist group.

You have a monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly or yearly meeting, open to the public. You want your members or the public to attend.

But meeting attendance is poor. Why?

I’ll tell you why! It’s one, or more, or ALL of these reasons:

  • You don’t make it crystal clear why the meetings happen. Why are you having this meeting? What happens at this meeting? Will I sit and hear a lecture? Will I watch a video? Will I have to offer an opinion or participate in some group exercise or vote? Can I just listen and observe? Why do you want me there? What will the meeting be like? All of these questions should be explicitly answered on your web site, in your email newsletter, on your Facebook event page, and in any other ways that you communicate about the meeting. This is the number one reason few people are coming to your meeting.
  • You put the information for the meeting in just ONE place. That one place could be your newsletter. That one place could be your web site. That one place could be a Facebook event page. Worst of all, that one place could be a PDF file somebody has to download as an attachment from email or from a web site (a lot of people don’t even bother opening a PDF). The information needs to be in multiple places. Does your city have a web site of community events and, if so, have you sent them this meeting information? What about the nearest public library? What about to civic organizations, business associations, neighborhood groups and cultural groups?
  • The meeting information isn’t updated on your web site. It’s 2019, but your web site is still talking about 2018. The upcoming meeting is in February, but your web site is still talking about December. The outdated information makes someone wonder if the meetings are still happening, even if your web site said that your group meets on the second Thursday of every month.
  • Your web site just says your group meets on the second Thursday of every month – or whatever. And that might be true, but it’s not enough to prove that this meeting really happens. Photos from the last meeting, or the minutes from the last meeting, or the focus or agenda for the next two meetings, with the actual meeting dates included, would affirm that, yes, these meetings really happen.
  • There’s no information about parking. Is free parking nearby?
  • People can’t get to your meeting by public transport easily. There’s a bus, but it only goes by every half hour, and there’s only one other bus it connects to – in a city of more than 50 buses. That means, to get to you and your hour-long meeting, most people would have to take mass transit around four hours round trip.
  • You don’t provide child care. And you probably don’t want a bored child – or more than one bored child – at your very important meeting.
  • Your meeting is at a time when I can’t attend. You didn’t survey membership or potential members and find out when the best time is for them to meet. Or you don’t offer meetings at different times – maybe every other month’s meeting could be in the evening instead of the afternoon.

There is no excuse for not addressing those first five bullets. None. Start with those. You may find that you need to ask people to RSVP for meetings and then text them a reminder, to better ensure they will attend. You may find you need to post reminders to social media as well. You may even need to look into broadcasting the meetings online, so that those who can’t attend in person can view the meeting online, perhaps even participate online as well (ask questions, vote, etc.).

If, after doing at least these first five bullets, your meetings are still poorly attended, then it’s time to sit down and call 10, 20, even 30 people you really want to attend these meetings and ask them why they can’t, or won’t, attend and if these reasons can be addressed.

Also see:

Proliferation of SmartPhones leads to proliferation of rape videos

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I have talked with women who help manage or even just use community tech centers all over the world – in Egypt, Afghanistan, Jordan and various countries in Africa – and very often, they have told me something that they never put into a program report for UNDP or whomever was funding the center: that the men and boys coming to the center used the computers to view porn more than any other subject.

This story from the BBC has brought this memory back to me. Here’s an excerpt:

…even as it becomes easier to access pornography thanks to cheap data and smartphones, there is concern that this isn’t being accompanied by any meaningful understanding of sex and relationships. Local boys in the village freely admitted to the BBC that they watched videos of molestation and rape. One 16-year-old said he had seen more than 25 such videos, adding that his friends often shared them on their smartphones.

Sunita Krishnan, the founder of Prajwala, an organisation in the southern city of Hyderabad that deals with issues of sexual violence and trafficking says these violent videos reinforce the old belief that a woman’s choice is insignificant and she has no agency.

This earlier story from BBC about the kidnapping, rape and murder of a child talks about some of the reasons for the attitude in the country about women.

India is not alone when it comes to high rates of incidence of rape. But many believe patriarchy and a skewed sex ratio may be making matters worse. There is public apathy as well: the rights and security of women never become election issues.

This story for INews by Divya Arya gives more background:

India has seen an internet revolution of a different kind in the past few years. Low-cost smartphones, cheap data and popular social media apps have enabled vast rural parts of the country to stream videos like never before. Pornhub, widely reported to be the world’s largest porn website, claims that India is now the third largest consumer of its content in the world after the United States and United Kingdom. The majority of its content in India is accessed using mobiles.

For many young Indian men, their introduction to sex is the first time they watch porn. India does have an Adolescent Education Program but implementation remains a challenge and girls and boys rarely mix with each other in smaller cities and villages. As I started travelling and talking to young men about this for a new BBC World Service documentary airing as part of the 100 Women season, the impact of watching porn in the absence of real interaction with women became clear. It was not only leading to objectification of women in their mind, but also re-enforcing the entitlement men have traditionally felt on women’s life decisions. In marriage, motherhood and desire to work, women remain secondary citizens…

Multiple men confirmed to me that videos of molestation, and professionally shot violent pornographic content, both were the most searched content online in cities as well as more rural areas. As more violent content became available, watching simple sex stopped being the preference for many. These men confided about wanting to replicate what they saw online and some of them explained that it did affect their personal relationships adversely.

Clicked on a link within the original story about a related story and it opened with a situation that sounded all too familiar to me:

On his many trips to Internet cafes in the bustling central Indian city of Indore, lawyer Kamlesh Vaswani discovered what he calls the “epidemic” of pornography.

“I would go to download important Supreme Court judgments, and pornographic adverts would pop up instead. And when I looked around, I saw rows of children surfing porn openly without a care in the world,” 

There are calls for bans on porn but there are fears this will lead to banning sites regarding sexual health, even breast cancer.

Here’s an hour-long documentary from BBC’s 100 Women series about the proliferation of online porn in India via smartphones.

I’m glad to see the discussions about what to do about the massive increase in the use of smartphones and social media leading to widespread myth-spreading and all of the consequences of that – but what about this very real issues of these online tools being used to promote and encourage violence against women?

Also see:

Signs that a nonprofit idea is doomed – a blog inspired by the words of Anthony Bourdain

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In honor of Anthony Bourdain, whose loss I still mourn, I read Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly for the first time. It’s a fantastic read – I highly recommend it. There’s a short section where he lists all of the wrong reasons to start a restaurant and a list of signs that a restaurant is in trouble, followed by a long narrative of his personal experiences at such failing restaurants. It got me thinking about what I’ve always considered the obvious signs of a nonprofit that’s in trouble and the wrong reasons to start a nonprofit, based on my what I’ve seen and experienced.

So I’ve spent several days thinking about it and making a list. Here it is:

The vanity project. This can be everything from I’ve always wanted to run a nonprofit, so I’m going to start one to my little precious snowflake got turned down from volunteering with a group he wanted to help so we’ve started a nonprofit in his name. These projects are all about the founder – the web site and any media articles are about the person who started the organization, how wonderful they are, or cute, or admirable – not about the clients served, the difference actually made. Many nonprofits are started by a dynamic someone with a particular vision, and I’m not at all saying that’s bad – it’s been my honor to work for some amazing visionaries. In fact, such a champion is often essential to a nonprofit getting off the ground. But when a nonprofit is mostly about the person who started it, you can bet that nonprofit isn’t going to be around long.

We have passion, not a business plan! A group of people feel passionately about trees. Or fish. Or homeless dogs. Or live theater. That’s terrific. That passionate group of people is essential for a nonprofit to be launched successfully and attract donors. But what’s also essential is an old-fashioned, text-to-paper business plan. What actual activities do you want to do in your first year and how much do you estimate that’s going to cost? How are you going to staff those activities? How are you going to ensure the safety of participants? How are you going to evaluate whether you’ve done what you said you would do and ensured you haven’t actually made things worse? What kind of facilities do you need to make all this happen? And you have to have at least a general plan for your first three years where you try to answer these questions as well.

We have a great idea that’s NEVER been done before! Yes, it has. In fact, there is a probably project like the one you are proposing already in your city or county, or online. You are so in love with your idea that you just cannot believe no one has thought about it before. So you announce it, launch it, and then are shocked when asked, “How is your project different from such-and-such?” Sure, you might get a lot of initial press over your “brand new” idea, from reporters who also didn’t do their homework and don’t know this initiative already exists somewhere. But those other established initiatives have an advantage over you: they were here before you, they learned from a litany of mistakes and misdirections you don’t know about, and they know how to avoid those now. They will be here when your idea isn’t so hot and new anymore and you go back to grad school. Here’s a better pitch: We have a great idea for something this community needs, and here is our extensive proof that it’s needed and how it’s different from other projects, along with why we can do this!

Our board of directors doesn’t give money, just ideas! Your board is fiscally responsible for this organization. The executive director reports to the board, who evaluates his or her performance. The board should know how to do that. Boards that don’t know how to do that are shocked when the executive director resigns and, whoops, the bank account is empty! The board should have a set amount of money they need to raise or give every year to the organization in order to keep their seat on that board. Also, how can your nonprofit ask for money unless your board members are showing leadership in donating themselves? If you just want their ideas, put them on an advisory board. If your board of directors isn’t providing a good percentage of your operational funds, either out of their own pockets or via their network of associates, your nonprofit isn’t going to last long.

Our first step: a high-profile fundraising event! So many nonprofits start with trying to find a celebrity to endorse their idea or trying to organize a big concert or even an entire music festival to launch their initiative. The organizers think that all you have to do is get your heart-wrenching letter or energetic pitch in front of some big movie star or music celebrity and, poof, that person is going to be calling you to say, “I have to be a part of this! How can I help?!” It doesn’t work that way. The landscape is littered with failed fundraising concerts – and even lawsuits that resulted from such. One of the parts of Loretta Lynn’s autobiography that doesn’t make it into the film based on that book is one of her early attempts at organizing a fundraising concert for a cause that she cared about – it was a disaster because organizers – people with a lot of great intentions – didn’t have a business plan or a budget. Money was lost, hearts were broken, reputations harmed. See also: NetAid.

Our main message is: give us money! I am not going to follow you on Twitter or Facebook or anywhere else if all your nonprofit is going to do is hit me up for a donation. Show me photos of your volunteers in action, of your happy box office staff taking reservations for your next show, of actors acting in your current show, of someone happily adopting a dog from your shelter, of your staff getting ready for your next farmer’s market, of your executive director talking to the Rotary Club or, if its appropriate, of your clients. Tell me success stories, tell me stories of the challenges your clients face, tell me something funny… don’t just tell me, or beg me, to donate!

We have an angel! It’s not just Broadway producers that dream of a wealthy person that falls in love with an idea and is willing to put up major bucks to fund it – a lot of people that start nonprofits dream of it as well. And like most Broadway producers that want to rely on such, they get their heart broken. But sometimes it DOES work out, and a nonprofit gets the attention of that wealthy someone who gives half, or even the bulk, of the money needed for the first year of operations. Or maybe its a foundation. Hurrah for you! But here’s a spoiler alert: that gift will disappear some day. Maybe not next year. Maybe not the year after that. But it will happen: the angel will get other interests, or die. A nonprofit or NGO that is not constantly cultivating a diversity of funding streams – other foundations, lots of individual donors, fees for service, contracts for service, etc. – is, sooner or later, going away.

GIve us money or volunteer with us or we’ll have to close! Then maybe you should close. Because if this is what it’s come to, it means that, even if you get the money you need to stay open this month, you will be making the same desperate plea next month.

That’s my list. What do you think are the signs of a nonprofit or non-governmental organization (NGO) doomed from the start? Share in the comments.

Also see:

Online volunteers help with database of fugitive slave ads

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The Freedom on the Move (FOTM) public database project at Cornell University is a major digital database effort to bring together North American fugitive slave advertisements in newspapers from regional, state, and other collections – and online volunteers will be invited to add data tags to the screened entries and to transcribe the ads. This online public engagement by FOTM will allow database users to examine spatial patterns and compare trends over time.

“Ironically, in trying to retrieve their property — the people they claimed as things — enslavers left us mounds of evidence about the humanity of the people they bought and sold,” said Dr. Mary Niall Mitchell, professor of early American history at the University of New Orleans and one of the three lead historians on FOTM.

Mitchell explained. “At what time of year were enslaved people most likely to run? What places did they frequent? What skills did they have? How many could read and write? Or were likely to ‘pass’ for white, or claim to be free? What did they wear? Where were they suspected to be hiding and with whom? Under what circumstances did women run away?”

FOTM received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) digital humanities grants.

Here is an excellent article on about the database, from which I took Dr. Mitchell’s quotes.

Anyway, I gave it a try. I transcribed one ad. I would have liked to have done more, but I kept getting an error message on final submission, so I wasn’t sure if my attempt was even received. I’m wondering if I’m going to receive any sort of update or email from the project, if there is going to be any effort to keep me in the loop about the project and encourage me to transcribe more ads, if there will be any effort to survey me about my experience, or if there will be any solicitations for funding.

I’m also still thinking about that young woman I read about, who had fled someone in South Carolina and was suspected of being harbored by her enslaved mother somewhere… she’s a real person to me now. I hope she was never captured. I hope she got away. I hope she got to reach some dreams. I hope she was happy. Are other volunteers similarly connecting with the information the are transcribing on a human level?

vvbooklittleA shame organizers aren’t calling this a virtual volunteering initiative – because it is! Instead, they use the term “crowdsourcing.” It’s also a micro-volunteering initiative. I hope at least the organizers of this initiative will consider reading The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. The book, which I co-wrote with Susan Ellis, has lots of detailed suggestions and specifics about virtual volunteering, including task and role development, suggestions on support and supervision of online volunteers, guidelines for evaluating virtual volunteering activities, suggestions for risk management, online safety, ensuring client and volunteer confidentiality and setting boundaries for relationships in virtual volunteering, and much more. The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook is available both as a traditional printed book and as a digital book.

Tearing down women who dare to lead

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The next time you see a glowing article about or an interview with a woman who has started her own initiative or nonprofit in the town or neighborhood where she lives, or who is running for office, or who is leading a fight against some polluter or oppressor in her area, no matter what country it’s happening in, consider what this woman is probably dealing with that isn’t talked about in the article: vicious, constant personal attacks and criticisms.

In a blog I wrote a year ago, called Barriers to women’s leadership we don’t talk about, I wrote about women in other countries who pay a hefty price in their attempts to be ambitious at work and exert any kind of leadership, particularly via gossip but also per constant insults and criticisms from other women. And I noted that those barriers happen right here in the USA to women who try to lead in some way, small or large.

Women are continually, regularly discouraged from thinking of themselves as powerful or ambitious or worthy of leading in any efforts, no matter how large or small. When women try to lead – whether on a project or even just regarding a topic during a discussion- the reaction can be discouraging or even ugly. The reactions come from colleagues, from the community, even from those they try to serve. Even from family members.

Women who try to lead are often subjected to insults and attacks designed specifically to prey on personal fears and insecurities. I’ve certainly it experienced myself. Newly-elected congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is experiencing it to a degree that would make most people wither – any Internet search of her name will illustrate it. 

Right here in the small town in Oregon where I live, a few years ago, a young woman decided to create a participatory project that she hoped would build community cohesion, something the population was struggling with. She planned carefully, encouraged and welcomed participation, shared decision-making and made it completely transparent, and personally reached out and guided participants in the project, all while making sure her vision was always at the forefront – it was about that vision, not about her. The project flourished: more and more people participated and her vision was being realized: more and more people became aware of local government meetings and action (and how to participate in such), new resources from the county public health office, road conditions, and even new restaurant openings. Rumors were quickly squashed. Neighbors were helping each other – neighbors who might never have met otherwise. Involvement in her project grew to a number that was more than 25% of the population, and it included me – I was skeptical at first, but quickly bought into her efforts. A newspaper wrote a story about her efforts. At a debate for candidates running for local office, two candidates talked about her project in their remarks and how it was so important to the community and they wanted to better leverage it.

But some people didn’t like her success. A small minority of participants provided constant public and private criticism of how she moderated and facilitated activities and how she reinforced the goals of the project, and rarely was the criticism constructive. People who violated the project’s policies – policies that are in writing and about which regular reminders are sent – were angry when they were gently reprimanded, even if that reprimand happened well behind the scenes, discreetly. They were furious when their actions, in violation of the written policies, lead them to being blocked from further participation. The founder received personal insults via direct message and text, like the one posted next to this paragraph (it’s one of the milder ones, actually). At least one person created a fake account on Facebook and posted outrageous messages, trying to make people think it was the group founder. At least three rival projects were launched by disgruntled former participants  – all failed after just a few weeks or months. But that tiny, vocal, persistent minority and their constant insults and attacks finally did her in: after four years, she resigned her role as project owner and manager, not because she thought the project needed fresh leadership, not because there were people who had demonstrated that they were ready to take over, but because, emotionally, she just couldn’t take the belittling and abusive comments anymore. It will now be up to the remaining volunteers to keep the project going. And maybe the project will continue. But what I’m worried about is that she’s probably going to continue to be targeted for comments by people in any endeavor she undertakes in this small town because she DARED to lead.

For anyone who offers advice for women who want to be leaders that is focused on smoothing out presentation style and being more gentle or diplomatic, I say, quite frankly: bollocks. Being overly concerned by one’s image with everyone or even the most vocal group of critics, however large or small, diminishes that person’s mental and emotional resources needed for leadership. People who are distracted about how everyone else perceives them – or even a vocal minority – are less clear about their goals and less capable of reaching them. And make no mistake: women are targeted by this kind of criticism far, far more than men.

I hate most of the articles I have ever read on women’s leadership. One I did not hate is Women Rising: The Unseen Barriers by Herminia Ibarra, Robin J. Ely and Deborah M. Kolb. A version of the article was published in the September 2013 issue of Harvard Business Review. And I loved this quote from the article in particular:

Integrating leadership into one’s core identity is particularly challenging for women, who must establish credibility in a culture that is deeply conflicted about whether, when, and how they should exercise authority. 

The reality is that effective leaders must have the confidence, and maybe even arrogance, to take initiative and action despite insults and criticisms. They have to know when a criticism is something to be considered, something to be used for improvement, and when it’s meant solely to be spiteful, to undermine and derail efforts and to personally attack someone and undermine their confidence. Effective leaders must be firmly anchored in their purpose. They need to always keep their cause, mission, project, objective, key message, whatever it is, as the first and foremost priority in all they do, and remember that everything they do needs to be true to that cause or message – a cause or message bigger than themselves. Absolutely, leaders need to listen to and consider comments and criticism about their performance – but they also need to know when to ignore insults. They need to know when they are hearing constructive criticism and when something is being said or done solely to tear someone down. And that can be difficult for even the best leaders.

When men are firmly anchored in their purpose, they are admired as confident. When women do this – well, we all know what is said about women who do this. But maybe instead of telling women to alter their behaviors if they want to be leaders, we need to start calling out the double standards in how we describe and respond to women leaders.

Updated April 15, 2021: A comic strip demonstrates the challenges women face online. It’s developed by Kenya ICT Action Network (KICTANet). In a story of three differently aged, differently shaped and differently employed women, we see what violence can look like online, how the seemingly harmless can actually contribute to it, and what we can all do to prevent it and to create a safer space for women online.

Also see:

Humanitarians explain their jobs – badly

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I thought it would be fun to start the New Year off with some humor.

A currently popular meme circulating says:

Explain your job badly.

A Facebook group that I’m a part of, for humanitarian workers, started a thread around the meme and I found the answers hilarious.  So, to kick off 2019, here are my favorite responses, sometimes with explanations or commentary by me in parenthesis jus to make sure you get the joke.

Aid & Development Workers explain their jobs… badly:

Conflict bad, peace good.

Making bad better.

Saving the world one report at a time.

I align little figures on power points. Also, I give detailed input on the banner for pointless events. Once in a while I sit up and suggest we publish brochures.

Angering doctors, engineers, government workers and others by making them explain their work.

Saving lives. After I’ve finished the paperwork.

Ensuring measurable results.

I try to communicate to people who don’t know how to communicate why better communication will be of help to them

Pretending to change the rules by following them.

Attending *all* the life-saving meetings.

I ask adults to play games and write on colourful cards explaining to me things I just told them. (this also works for consultants teaching volunteer management)

Fitting 200 pages report titled “Climate change and its effects from last century to nowadays in developing countries” into a 2 page folded brochure, obviously including infographics and pictures

a friend did it for me once “So basically you give soap to rapists and murderers in prisons?” (ICRC Detention Delegate).

I help sex workers and gay men get drugs. (HIV/AIDS public health worker)

Trying to convince local administration that the governor / mayor / prefet home is not the best location for a handpump.

I tell people things they don’t want to hear.

Assisting 80 y.o. receive their first passport (statelessness reduction and prevention).

Parting money from fools – and handing the cash to other fools.

Glorified travel agent arranging travel for old white men whom I babysit and train on how to talk to people.

In response to the responses to someone saying they are a “Cash Adviser” – “No, it’s nothing to do with finance; no, I’m not a cashier; no, I’m not an accountant”, and, occasionally when you say Oxfam, “No, I don’t work in a shop.” (note – humanitarian agencies provide cash assistance in crisis response, giving cash directly to local people so that local markets can quickly be rebuilt, so recipients can prioritize their needs, and because cash can be faster and cheaper to deliver than goods)

Reinforcing systemically weak capacity using antiquated, broken and ineffective systems and doing so with systemic capacity gaps yet expecting and reporting positive outcomes.

Cleaning up after global leaders who sell weapons in one hand and give aid with the other and governments who care more about their pockets than their citizens.

To be fair I think those last two explain humanitarian work quite well.

Would managers of volunteers dare to do this exercise? I challenge you… 

More nonprofit / NGO  humor blogs:

What it is like to be a consultant

If nonprofits were brutally honest with funders