Monthly Archives: May 2019

Justifying a position as “volunteer” instead of “paid staff”

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From February 2001 through much of February 2005, I worked at the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) program, managing the UN’s Online Volunteering service (formerly NetAid) and the United Nations Information Technology Service (UNITeS), an initiative created by then Secretary General Kofi Annan. UNITeS promoted the importance of engaging volunteers in information and communications technologies for development (ICT4D) activities and supported volunteers engaged in ICT4D initiatives. The UNITeS staff worked from the premise that a key to getting communities, government, civil society and individuals in developing countries to leverage computers and the Internet so that they benefit from their use was to involve volunteers in introducing the tech, building people’s capacity to use it, supporting digital literacy, etc.

UNV places and supports thousands of highly-skilled people throughout the world to undertake a variety of highly-skilled work: HIV education, providing medical care, managing schools, training teachers, managing a government office’s communications, being apart of Ebola response, and on and on. When a placement would get approved for a UN volunteer to work on a project that related somehow to computers or the Internet, there was a program manager for a particular region who would come to my office, per my association with the UNITeS initaitive, hand me the Terms of Reference for the volunteer placement and say, “UNI-Tize this.”

What she meant was this: add in required skills and responsibilities that justify this being done by someone under a UN Volunteers contract, rather than another type of UN contract that would require the payment of more money to the person that fills the position and the designation of that person as a consultant or staff member.

I’ve long believed that any organization that recruits volunteers, for whatever reason, must have a written statement that explains explicitly why that organization reserves certain tasks / assignments / roles for volunteers. The thousands of experts that are recruited and placed by UNV all over the world, working at a variety of agencies (mostly UNDP), in a variety of areas, are called UN Volunteers, or UNVs, but often, there’s not much to show that they are volunteers, especially given the generous financial compensation UNVs receive. The vision of UNV – as well as other volunteer-sending organizations like Peace Corps and VSO – is that the people that are volunteers through their programs are NOT necessarily people who are career humanitarians; rather, the volunteers are professionals willing to give up six months to two years of their jobs/careers and the compensation that would come with such and, instead, work as a part of a humanitarian endeavor. But I’m sorry to say that, for many agencies, involving people under UNV contracts is a way to save money, as such contracts are far, far cheaper than hiring someone as an employee or consultant outright.

When that UNV program manager gave me those TOS to “uni-tize,” I went through and added responsibilities regarding

  • building the capacities of local counterparts regarding whatever it was he or she was doing, with an eye to this UNV position becoming unnecessary as local people take over. I treated every UNV placement that was “Uni-Tized” as one that would eventually be taken over by a full-time, paid local person NOT under a UNV contract, and for that to happen, local capacity had to be built.
  • creating at least one, local event that could help build the skills of community members regarding some aspect of computer and Internet use: where to find information about current market prices for agricultural products, where to find reliable maternal health information, how to evaluate the credibility of online information, etc. In this case, “Uni-Tize” meant to evangelize regarding ICTs for various development activities (ICT4D).
  • suggestions to involve local volunteers in their work in some way, reaching out to students at nearby universities, or at home on leave from university, to help them gain experience that would help in their future careers. In this case, “Uni-Tize” meant to get local volunteers invested in the work of UNVs in some way.
  • suggestions to make particular efforts to reach out to women, girls, religious and ethnic minorities and people with disabilities in any of the above aforementioned activities, to take all of the tasks beyond merely getting tasks done.

I have to admit I loved looking up from my desk and seeing her standing there with a printout of a Terms of Reference in her hand, or getting an email from her for help to “Uni-Tize” an assignment. It was always challenging to really think about what would make the assignment worthy of the word volunteer. To me, my additions made those UNV placements fully justified in using the word “volunteer” to describe their work, to show that this was more than just a job that had a UNV contract.

I’ve said it before, I say it again: create a mission statement for your organization’s volunteer engagement that explicitly says WHY your organization or department involves volunteers. Such a statement will guide employees in how they think about volunteers and guide current volunteers in thinking about their role at the organization. It will help your organization avoid the reputation for being just a low-cost staffing solution – something no volunteer really wants to be a part of. Here’s more about my philosophy regarding justifying volunteer engagement and making certain roles volunteer instead of paid.

If you have benefited from this blog 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.

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Nonprofits addressing homelessness or addiction urgently need to improve their public education

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Myths abound about people who are homeless and people who have addiction issues in the USA – and probably other countries too. I see the myths stated as fact on online communities, in posts to social media and in online comments on news articles. What I’m NOT seeing are rebuttals of these myths by local nonprofits and professionals that are trying to provide services for people who are homeless or people who have addiction issues. I can’t find rebuttals for these myths on the web sites of the MOST local organizations addressing these issues – I can find them on a Google search, for a national audience (rather than a city or county audience), but only with a lot of digging. And representatives from organizations addressing issues around homelessness or people with addiction issues don’t make any attempt to enter online conversations and counter the myths.

Because so many nonprofits addressing homelessness and addiction issues are not making it a priority to educate the public – and that includes the press and politicians – about why people are homeless, about what services are available to people who are homeless or have addiction issues, about gaps in availability of service, etc., people are not voting for taxes necessary to fund government services to address either of these issues and many people that could donate are not donating to nonprofits trying to address either of these issues. In addition, the growing hostility by many towards people who are homeless or people experiencing addiction issues is deeply disturbing: I’m seeing and hearing more and more comments about how law enforcement shouldn’t carry NARCAN or EVZIO and shouldn’t offer any assistance to someone overdosing, how people should engage in vigilantism to remove people who are homeless from their towns and neighborhoods, how people who are homeless or have addiction issues should be imprisoned, and worse.

National statistics and facts that should be on any web site by an organization addressing homelessness (these come from Move for Hunger, the National Alliance to End Homelessness and the National Low Income Housing Coalition – and probably others that Move for Hunger didn’t credit) include:

  • The chronically homeless make up only 15% of the entire homeless population on a given day.
  • On any given night, nearly 20% of the homeless population had serious mental illness or conditions related to chronic substance abuse.
  • According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a family with a full-time worker making minimum wage could not afford Fair Market rent for a two-bedroom apartment anywhere in the U.S.
  • A renter earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour would need to work 90 hours per week to afford a one-bedroom rental home at the Fair Market Rent and 112 hours per week to afford a two-bedroom.
  • A lack of employment opportunities, combined with a decline in public assistance leaves low-income families just an illness or accident away from being put out on the streets.
  • Many survivors of domestic violence become homeless when leaving an abusive relationship.
  • While families, children, and youth are all affected, most of the people who experience homelessness are single adults.
  • Chronic homelessness is the term given to individuals that experience long-term or repeated bouts of homelessness. The chronically homeless are often the public face of the issue, however, they make up only 15% of the entire homeless population on a given day.
  • Nearly 48,000 or 8.5% of all homeless persons are veterans
  • On a given night, nearly 20% of the homeless population had serious mental illness or conditions related to chronic substance abuse.

This article, Why Are People Homeless?, is published by the National Coalition for the Homeless (July 2009) and offers citations for each fact stated.

Are these stats true for your community? Maybe – but you should have information that adapts this data for your own community and reflects the reality where you are. Perhaps a higher rate of your homeless population are veterans. Perhaps a greater number of your community’s homeless population are teens.

Here are the myths that nonprofits, academic researchers and professionals MUST rebut – on their own web sites, on online communities, on social media, in talks with the community, in meetings with politicians and police and on and on – about people who are homeless and people who have addiction issues.

Myth: People who are homeless have addiction issues, and people who have addiction issues are homeless. If you are an organization that helps the homeless, you need to have information on your web site that clearly shows not everyone who is homeless has addiction issues, and for those that do have such, WHY they have such issues. You need to reiterate this information your social media channels regularly and make sure all of your staff and volunteers understand this as well. Organizations that address issues regarding addiction need to have information on their web site noting that people with addiction issues come from all economic levels, all zip codes, all types of families.

Myth: There are plenty of services for people who are homeless or people who have addiction issues – those peple just won’t seek help. I have heard, anecdotally, that every nonprofit in my community where I live that has programs to help people attain affordable housing has a waiting list of years, and that residential facilities to treat addiction have waiting lists of months, and that if a person doesn’t have health insurance, they have no options for addiction treatment other than maybe some AA meetings – but there’s no web site I can point you to that says any of these things for my community.

Myth: People are homeless because they are lazy or don’t manage their money properly. If they would work and not spend money on things like iPhones, they would have enough money to have housing. Every organization that works to assist the homeless should have a web page that lists the myriad of reasons individuals and families become homeless and the myriad of reasons that affordable housing is out-of-reach for so many, including people with full-time jobs or working more than one job, more than 40 hours a week. You need to reiterate this information your social media channels regularly and make sure all of your staff and volunteers understand this as well.

Myth: People who have addiction issues are weak. They’ve made poor choices and they refuse to make the right ones. They lack will power. All they have to do is make the decision to stop using. Addiction is recognized by the medical communities – doctors, nurses and medical researchers – as a medical condition and a crisis health situation. An addict craves his or her drug because her body is craving it, and many will go through extreme flu-like symptoms for days without taking that drug because they are addicted – given the choice between feeling good or shaking uncontrollably and throwing up for hours, most of us are going to choose to feel good, and for an addict, that choice involves abusing the substance to which they are addicted. Drugs change the brain in ways that make quitting hard, even for those who want to. What Is drug addiction? What happens to the brain when a person takes drugs that can turn them into an addict? Why do some people become addicted to drugs while others don’t? The National Institute on Drug Abuse has an excellent web site with fact-based information answering these questions clearly and succinctly. The information in no way absolves someone with abuse or addiction issues from personal responsibilities or the choices they make or the crimes they may commit, but it does offer realistic information on how to effectively prevent and address addiction (and prevention and treatment is complex and long term). The brain changes related to addiction can be treated and reversed through therapy, medication, exercise and other treatments. And also note: many people enter drug treatment involuntarily (court-ordered, or given a dire choice by their families: go to treatment or leave our home).

Myth: The people who are homeless in our community aren’t from our community – they are from INSERT THE NAME OF A BIG CITY OR ANOTHER STATE. I have heard, anecdotally, that the homeless people here in the community where I live in Oregon are from this city or county, that most of them graduated from the local high school and/or have or had parents that lived here. But this statement cannot be found on the web site of any organization that serves the homeless in my community. The information needs to be there as well as regularly shared on social media.

Myth: People choose to be homeless. They want to be homeless. Debunking other myths proves this myth untrue, for the most part. In addition, some homeless people may choose to sleep outside rather than in a shelter because they fear being assaulted in the shelter, they fear having to leave their pets or possessions outside, or they are addicted and may not take their drugs or alcohol into a shelter. You may hear someone say, “I chose to live on the streets. I prefer to be FREE.” Saying this gives the person a feeling of empowerment, a feeling of self-worth. They also may have mental health issues and are not completely rational. A whole range of different issues come into play when talking about teens who are homeless.

Myth: The way nonprofits want society to treat homeless people and people with addiction issues require us to not be upset about things like people using my front yard as a bathroom, needles in the park, people breaking into my car and taking anything left unlocked on my property, etc. No one has the legal or ethical right to threaten you, your family or your property. No one has a right to steal from you. No one has the legal right to leave trash or human waste on your property or in any public space. Efforts to educate about people who are homeless or people who are addicted are not about telling anyone they must accept destructive, unsanitary or illegal behavior. Efforts to educate are about encouraging actions that will effectively address homelessness and addiction and about discouraging actions and attitudes that may make problems worse, may endanger someone or may be violations of the law.

Myth: Services to help people that are homeless will encourage people to want to be homeless. Services to help people that have addiction issues will encourage people to keep using drugs and alcohol. Again, you may hear someone say, “I chose to live on the streets” but it’s rarely true, and given the opportunity to have a safe, private, simple residence, the vast majority of homeless people will take that opportunity. For someone who is homeless, every day is a struggle for survival. Many people who are homeless are chronically sleep-deprived because there is no safe place for them to get a full sleep cycle: they sleep an hour on a bus or train line, then another hour in a library, then another hour somewhere else, and so on. Homeless people are targets for theft and rape, so they have to stay awake to ward off an assault. They don’t have access to a bathroom with they need it most or to a shower or bath regularly. They have nowhere to store essential documents – birth certificate, social security card, certification of military service, contact information for family, etc. – and therefore often lose these documents, and don’t have the resources to get them replaced, which further deprives them of resources needed for survival. They cannot sit in one place for very long – either the weather, a security guard or police will move them along. Most services for homeless people aren’t just providing charity, giving people toiletries or a meal or one night to sleep somewhere; they connect homeless people with resources and assistance to get them into more permanent housing. And while there are some approaches to treating people addicted to drugs that include providing a clean, safe space to use their drug of choice so that they do not overdose and are not using in public spaces (libraries, parks, bathrooms, public transport, etc.), there is no evidence that this creates more drug users or in any way discourages someone from seeking help with addiction.

Here are some good examples of web sites and online material debunk myths about homelessness or addiction in their respective communities:

Debunking the Myths of Homelessness, a resource about Santa Clara County, California (San Jose, Santa Clara, Sunnyvale, Cupertino – Silicon Valley)

FAQs and Myths, by the Coalition for the Homeless, with New York City-specific information

Myths and Questions About Homelessness, from the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, with Canada-specific information

Exploring Myths about Drug Abuse, By Alan I. Leshner, Ph.D., Director, National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health – rebuts myths like “Drug addiction is voluntary behavior” and “You have to want drug treatment for it to be effective.”

Myths About Drug Abuse and Addiction, from the Indian Health Service, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services – rebuts myths like “People can’t force someone into treatment; if treatment is forced, it will fail.”

If the local nonprofits that serve the city and county where I live had fact-based rebuttals for these myths on their web site, and localized the information, people could share them, over and over and over, on their social media accounts, and refer people to them when they hear these myths at civic meetings, meetings of communities of faith, family dinners, etc. That information would, in turn, help change peoples minds about who is homeless, who is addicted to drugs and alcohol, what the most urgent needs of people who are homeless are, what works to address homelessness, what works to address addiction, etc.

But we can’t share such information, because the information isn’t there. And so, hostilities against homeless people and people with addiction issues grows and grows, and donations stay flat or even shrink.

It took me two hours to compile the aforementioned information. I reject any excuses an organization would offer for not doing this themselves.

By all means, if you want to share this blog to encourage nonprofits in your area to do a better job of communication, please do so. If you want to share this blog in a grant proposal to get more funding for your outreach efforts, please do so. But if you are a nonprofit organization that addresses homelessness or people who have an addiction and you also don’t want to start from scratch and develop your own information for your own web site, please do NOT link to this blog from your web site as a way to fulfill your education efforts – instead, I would prefer you cut and paste content from this blog and put it on your own web site – you don’t even have to credit me – but then make it a priority in the coming weeks to localize the information, with local statistics from your own organization and government agencies like your county health and human services, profiles of clients, links to local news articles that relate to these subjects, and more. There are volunteers that would LOVE to help you find the information you need – all you have to do is recruit them – local colleges and universities are a great place to start (faculty teaching health, social work or public administration topics would be an excellent source for recruiting students to do this).

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If you have benefited from this blog 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.

Easy way to get a video made & posted re: your org

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You don’t have a video on YouTube, with a link on your own web site, that talks about how great your nonprofit is? Or a video that shows what volunteering is like at your organization or celebrating volunteers at your program? SHAME ON YOU! In this era of smart phones, there’s no excuses for not having such a video – or more than one!

Here’s how you can get such a video produced and online QUICKLY, with the help of volunteers.

First: make sure every volunteer, employee and consultant at your organization has signed a photo and video release form – examples of these are easy to find online. You want to have signed permission from all of your staff, always, to take video of photos of them and use them in promotional materials. It’s a good idea to require that any person sign these on their very first day of working at your organization. If you haven’t been doing this, then print several copies out and have volunteers sign them when they sign in for their next shift, when they attend an event, etc., and keep track of everyone who has and hasn’t signed. You will also need to have releases on hand for members of the public or clients to sign if you film them at your facilities. If anyone refuses to sign – and that is their right – you may not film them.

From among your current and previous volunteers, or through whatever volunteer recruitment tools you use (like VolunteerMatch, AllforGood, posts to your web site, posts to Facebook or other social media, etc.), recruit volunteers who will pair up during volunteering activities: one volunteer will do the actual task, as usual (this should be one of your veteran volunteers) and one will record the volunteer for a few moments doing the task with his or her smartphone (always landscape – hold the phone sideways!). Sound isn’t important. Each volunteer should try to get at least a full 60 seconds of footage.

So, for instance, at a nonprofit animal shelter, if you paired up volunteers, you would have raw video footage from various smart phones (they can all be different kinds) of:

  • a volunteer staffing the front desk and interacting with clients
  • volunteers interacting with animals
  • volunteers dealing with inventory
  • volunteers pouring dog food or cat food
  • a volunteer taking photos of new animals for your web site
  • etc.

Recruit a video editing volunteer who will gather all of the videos together in one place online, a place where staff at your organization can always access the raw footage in case this volunteer is unable to complete the task. For instance, all volunteers could be asked to upload their footage to a YouTube account set up specifically for this project, and for footage to be uploaded so that it is not public. If they don’t know how to upload footage, they could get guidance from someone at your organization the next time they are onsite at your organization.

Where to recruit a video editing volunteer? From your current volunteers (and have them ask their family members), previous volunteers, via a post on your web site which you link to from an announcement on your social media channels, via a video production class at the nearest high school, college or university, via employees at a large company where they have an in-house marketing staff, etc. What about asking the faculty of such a class to turn your video needs into a class assignment, with different teams of students each producing a video based on raw footage and then your voting on which you think is the best? Be sure to write a full description of what the volunteer video editor’s duties are, that you will include in all recruitment materials so expectations are clear.

This video editing volunteer will be charged with:

  • editing bits and pieces of the raw video into a 2 or 3 minute video
  • adding in copyright-free music (easy to find such via archive.org)
  • adding in titles and captions that say whatever it is you want to say about your organization and how great it is, perhaps also about why your volunteers are so wonderful and essential

The video editor presents the first draft of his or her work to appropriate staff and, once staff approves, up it goes onto your organization’s YouTube channel.

You could do something similar regarding interviewing clients to talk about how they have benefitted from your services, or talking to volunteers about why they enjoy volunteering, or talking to donors about why they donate money. For videos where people will be interviewed and sound during recordings IS important, recruit your video recording volunteers from a video production class at the nearest high school, college or university, via employees at a large company where they have an in-house marketing staff, etc. Be sure to write a full description of what the volunteer video recorder’s duties are, that you will include in all recruitment materials so expectations are clear. What about asking the faculty of such a class to turn your video needs into a class assignment? And, again, this person or team should put all of the raw video footage in one place online, a place where staff at your organization can always access the raw footage in case this volunteer is unable to complete the task.

For any video where words will be spoken, you will need to recruit a volunteer who will caption the video on YouTube. I have recruited online volunteers to do this for my short video projects for nonprofits via VolunteerMatch – recruitment of such a volunteer has always taken less than three days! Here’s more about recruiting volunteers to caption videos.

There is no excuse whatsoever for NOT having such videos about your organization’s work! And video editing is shockingly easy: I do it myself, self-taught, on my ancient Macintosh computer. Here’s a video I put together for Knowbility, a nonprofit in Austin, Texas, showcasing nonprofits it was working with in its OpenAIR program. I had video footage from various organizations, all remote to me (hundreds, even thousands, of miles from me) – none of the video was what I had shot myself. I also had some slides of information as visuals. I spliced it all together using the free video-editing tool that was on my ancient Mac, then laid in some music – something I’d never, ever done before – using copyright-free music I found on archive.org, and finally transcribing using the free captioning tool on YouTube. My video is not going to win any awards: my transitions between videos and “moments” arent’ very good – but I had just one day to do it, and the video was VERY effective at the event at which it was shown. Imagine what a volunteer who DOES have some video editing experience, with several days, could do for YOUR organization!

If you have benefited from this blog 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.

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Rethinking ethics of volunteering abroad medical missions

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I am a HUGE fan of m NPR’s Goats & Soda program. This is an excerpt from a recent article:

In 1969, volunteer teams of doctors and nurses from a U.S. charity called Interplast began flying to poor countries to do reconstructive surgery. They operated on children with cleft lips, cleft palates or burn scars so thick their limbs were immobilized. It sounded like a great idea. The team members donated their time, paid for their travel and lodging and sometimes their supplies, and got to do good…

Today, missions are sponsored by churches, universities and charities. There are for-profit missions as well that collect fees from volunteers, mostly students. A 2016 estimate put the annual cost of getting doctors and other health care workers to sites around the world at $3.7 billion, paid for by donors or health personnel themselves.

But today there’s some real soul-searching going on about this kind of fly-in. At conferences and in academic papers, health professionals are asking: Is this really the most effective way to provide health care to the developing world?

This article from NPR’s Goats & Soda program explores the ethics of this volunteering abroad practice. There are growing concerns about what happens when these volunteers leave, and there’s a lot of concern that the care they’re providing may not be culturally appropriate or even wanted by the people on the ground. Sociologist Judith Lasker, author of the 2016 book Hoping to Help, worked with the Catholic Health Association on a study that showed that about half the money spent on medical missions goes for travel costs for the teams. “It doesn’t seem like a very cost-effective strategy,” she says. After she told a local health provider in Haiti the cost of the airfare for bringing in a single American doctor, the Haitian said to Lasker, “Imagine how many antibiotics that could buy.”

Please read the article before commenting!

And if you are not following NPR’s Goats & Soda on Social media, you really, really need to be. I follow @GoadsandSoda on Twitter. It’s terrific for people that work in humanitarian interventions or development abroad, or want to understand them – but it’s also good for anyone involved in nonprofit work in their own countries to read. There are a lot of issues that bring up that are local to any charitable activity locally – not just internationally.

Update: This September 2019 article from the American Medical Association explores ethical implications of international medical volunteering, such as scope of practice, continuity of care, and erosion of local health systems, and offers a personal perspective from a related field.

If you have benefited from this blog 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.

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Does Your Org’s Practices Reflect Its Own Mission?

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I recently joined the board of a brand new nonprofit. I am helping with the content of its first ever web site. I decided to look at the web sites of some other similar organizations to get some ideas.

I found nonprofit associations that have classes on how to prepare an annual report – but they don’t have any of their annual reports posted on their web site. I found foundations that demand copies of the latest 990 from nonprofit applicants, but they don’t have their 990s on Guidestar. I found a nonprofit that has its board of directors listed on its web site, and always has, but has a different board listed on their 990s for those same years on Guidestar.

Why aren’t these organizations walking their talk, doing what they want other organizations to be doing?

And then there is the nonprofit organization that I consider famous, that you have probably heard of. Were I to say its name, which I’m not, and its name would probably bring to mind images of innovation, of bucking the status quo, of direct confrontation, and lots and lots of action. You would think of it as an organization that doesn’t recognize any tradition or rule as absolute. You would think of it as an agency embraces new ideas and experimentation, and works in a flexible, pro-active manner, putting its mission goals before bureaucratic ones. So imagine my astonishment when talking with this organization to receive such a hostile reaction to the idea of employee telecommuting / cloud commuting. The human resources manager sounded as though she couldn’t breathe at the thought of such a radical idea, and once she did find her words, said that this organization’s HR policy absolutely forbids any such practice. When I suggested that it would be a good idea to modernize that policy, another staffer jumped in, reminding me that doing something so “substantial” as changing a policy takes “a lot of time” and “much reflection” and “a great deal of research about legal issues.”

Here’s an organization that prides itself on not playing by the rules, and even sometimes asks its volunteers to violate the law in pursuit of its goals – no kidding! But revise its human resources policies to allow employee telecommuting? Why, that’s crazy talk!

There’s another organization you probably would not have heard of, but you would be familiar with its work: trying to address conditions and practices that lead to global climate change. But while this agency is writing guidelines, holding conferences and lobbying corporations and governments, the overwhelming majority of its staff, even those who live less than half a mile from the organization, are driving to work, despite the outstanding mass transit system available in its city. The organization has no policies regarding recycling its own office waste, and there’s no emphasis on any energy-saving practices within its offices.

Can you imagine if the press, or a group working counter to this organization, identified these practices and detailed them publicly, and the enormous public relations fallout that would occur?

These are real-life examples of organizations promoting practices or an image that isn’t actually reflected in their practices or culture, of organizations not truly “walking their talk.” And there’s more:

  • there are organizations that say they have a commitment to fighting for human rights and inclusion that have web sites and online resources (apps, videos, etc.) that aren’t accessible for people with disabilities – and they balk at the idea of making that commitment to digital inclusion
  • organizations that encourage corporations to allow their employees to volunteer on company time, while not allowing their own employees to do so.
  • organizations that advocate for feminism and women’s rights, but have antiquated dress codes and business practices regarding women that work and volunteer for them.
  • companies holding seminars on innovation and efficiency in the workplace who have antiquated computers, software and other devices that inhibit their staff productivity.
  • initiatives that tout the importance of local control of local activities, local decision-making,  but ignore the feedback of clients, volunteers and frontline staff, even imposing requirements of them with no discussion from them.

Take a look at your organization, particularly your mission statement, and ask yourself, “Is what we promote to others being practiced by ourselves?” Look at the behavior you encourage or talk about in your programs – do you exude that behavior yourself, as an organization? Survey your staff and volunteers, allowing them to anonymously provide feedback on where they see disconnect in the organization’s mission and the organization’s own internal practices.

Not only will you avoid a public relations nightmare, your own practices will become marketing tools for your organization’s mission.

If you have benefited from this blog 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.

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A History of Americans as Volunteers – a book you need

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My long-time colleague and friend, Susan Ellis, along with Katherine Campbell, wrote the book on volunteerism in the USA – literally. It’s called By the People: A History of Americans as Volunteers. The latest and last version is the New Century Edition (2005) and it’s available for purchase from Energize.

I remain stunned that this book isn’t cited at least once in most academic papers regarding volunteerism. It certainly should at least be referenced in any course at a USA college or university regarding volunteerism. It should be cited throughout Wikipedia articles on anything related to volunteerism or community service as well, and cited in any article that dares to try to talk about the history of volunteer firefighting in the USA.

The book does a fantastic job of showing how volunteers helped to form some of the largest organizations in the USA today, from Goodwill to the YWCA to the American Red Cross to the Sierra Club – efforts often lead by women – and how volunteers have played such an important role in establishing the American character, one that relishes community-driven, independent and do-it-yourself driven efforts to address community needs and concerns. The book provides repeated examples of how volunteers seized a social issue in the USA, amplified it and pushed for it to be addressed, from the abolition of slavery to the health of soldiers to the civil rights movement and so many things before and after. I love how the role of women in leading volunteering efforts is repeatedly cited, not regulated to one chapter but permeating the book in example after example.

The parts of the book about volunteer firefighting history are particularly enlightening. The book notes that, in the early days of volunteer firefighting in the USA, in the 1800s and 1900s, “Because of the danger involved, being a volunteer fireman carried social status. Rivalry was strong among the volunteers, and street fights frequently erupted as companies battled to reach fires first.” The fights sometimes lasted for days! The authors quote A History of the People of the United States by John Bach McMaster, who said of the firefighter fights, “Of all causes of disorder they were the worst. Around their houses hung gangs of loafers, ‘runners’ who, when an alarm was run, ran with the engines and took part in the fight almost certain to occur.” These mob scenes ultimately brought an end to voluntary firefighting in the major cities in the USA, though volunteer fire brigades in urban settings came back during times of war.

It would be interesting to see if a revision of the book would have addressed the approach of the volunteer firefighting union in the USA, which actively discourages volunteer firefighting in a push for professionalization of all roles, or the rise in anti-volunteering movements – but, sadly, Susan passed away earlier this year, so the book will not be revised.

Virtual volunteering started as soon as the Internet began, in the 1970s, and the 2005 edition of By the People: A History of Americans as Volunteers mentions virtual volunteering at least five times – it’s an example of just how in-tune Susan was with emerging trends in volunteerism (while now, in 2019, there are still some researchers and consultants who will try to say virtual volunteering is “new”). There’s also good mention of the International Year of Volunteers in 2001, a global campaign that was one of the most popular designations by the United Nations in its history of such “Year of” declarations.

I do have some criticisms. For instance, I’m shocked that the authors don’t go much more into the role that volunteers played in forcing the US Government in the 1980s to address the AIDS crisis, to elevate discussions about HIV, and to meet the needs of people with HIV/AIDS. The unique mobilization of volunteers in these causes is worthy of an entire book itself, and certainly worthy of more than a small mention in this book. 

Also, there is nothing about American Indians before their time being forced on reservations, except their violence towards whites. There are documented examples of volunteer aid from American Indians to early White settlers and these are worthy of note.

And then there are some jaw-dropping statements. One is that “Not until well into the twentieth century did most Americans have the leisure and subsequent need and desire for the arts.” In fact, most Americans – and most people – have always had a need and desire for the arts and made time for such! The music and theater of the 1800s throughout the USA still influence the music, theater and folklore of today!

Two others statements in the book are, I’m sorry to say, worthy of outright condemnation.

On page 116 is this: “One unique aspect of the Civil War was that hardly any women were raped during the open hostilities… Then came Reconstruction, and with it the influx of the corrupt northern profiteers who riles up the freed slave and changed the South into a crime-ridden area. For the first time, women were not safe from rape…” It’s a paragraph I have read and re-read and just cannot fathom how anyone outside of a delusional Southerner who longs for the myth of the Confederacy would think it’s true. The sexual violence against black women alone during the time of the Civil War should have prevented these sentences from ever being written by these authors. Any suspicions that this assertion of “hardly any women were raped” during the Civil War was confirmed by the research of Kim Murphy, and though her book did not come out until 2014, her research didn’t, I remain dumbfounded that anyone thought otherwise. Maureen Stutzman’s article “Rape in the American Civil War: Race, Class, and Gender in the Case of Harriet McKinley and Perry Pierson,” which appeared in a 2009 issue of the University of Albany’s journal “Transcending Silence,” also offers perspectives on the truth about sexual violence in that period. In addition, Reconstruction, once Ulyss S Grant assumed office, brought black Americans incredible opportunity and liberty, allowing them to become property owners, business owners and office holders in numbers never imagined. Reconstruction did not make the South a “crime-ridden area.”

The other statement is this, on page 117: “In the beginning, the Klan’s concern as a volunteer group was to control crime, not to punish people with unpopular political views.” In fact, from its founding, the Klan was a terrorist organization that sought to restore white supremacy by threats and violence, including murder, against black and white Republicans. This is indisputable! The 1871 Congressional Hearings on the founding and early activities of the Ku Klux Klan, with their heart-wrenching first-hand testimonies of people who were terrorized by the Klan, accurately and thoroughly document the immediate and widespread terrorism by what was then a new organization. Only someone who believed the outrageous narrative of Birth of Nation would ever assert otherwise. I’m going to assume that the authors’ viewpoints on these issues GREATLY, VASTLY evolved since they wrote these words and they would never make such assertions in their later careers – based on my relationship with one of the authors and her dedication to human rights, I just cannot imagine otherwise. 

But even with these jaw-droppingly inappropriate statements, By the People: A History of Americans as Volunteers is a book anyone who writes about volunteering needs to reference. I refer to it regularly. It is a treasure-trove of information. 

Also see: