This article from International Center for Journalists is focused on journalists and editors working with journalists and other contributors remotely, but much of its advice is applicable for nonprofits working with remote staff and remote volunteers (virtual volunteering) – or working with staff you see face-to-face but you need to work with online as well. The article is written by the project manager of Chicas Poderosas, a community of women in media spread across 18 countries in Latin America. 

For instance, when brainstorming a story or a project with your team, she uses remote visual boards like Jamboard. “Jamboard has virtual post it notes, and allows your team to simultaneously create text boxes, write comments and even draw.” Has anyone else used it? What do you think of it?

To keep track of the individual activities in the chart, she uses Trello. Each task is its own card, which can be assigned to a team member, and can include deadlines and alerts. Trello has integrations with other tools such as Google Drive. “In our Chicas Poderosas weekly calls, we update the Trello board, checking up on what each Chica did, and we create and take ownership of new tasks for the next week.” 

She also has good, not-techtool-specific advice like: 

The best tool is not the latest, or the most complex and automated. The best tool is always the one that is more natural for your team, the project and any other involved stakeholders.

If you do find a new tool that you want to implement, always take the time to schedule on-boarding sessions so that your team can practice using it, ask questions and share their challenges. 

Do you use any of the tools she mentions? Do you have other ideas?

And if you want to explore how to involve and support volunteers, whether those volunteers are around the corner or around the world, check out my book with Susan Ellis, The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. The book is the result of more than 20 years of research and experience regarding virtual volunteering, including online micro volunteering, crowdsourcing, digital volunteering, online mentoring and all the various manifestations of online service. It’s packed with examples from a variety of organizations and details on how virtual volunteering works, how challenges are overcome, and how success is measured. It includes

• Detailed advice on virtual volunteering assignment, including one-time “Byte-Sized” tasks (micro-volunteering / microtasks), longer-term, higher-responsibility roles and virtual team assignments.
• A thorough look at various practices for screening and matching volunteers to assignments, with an eye to getting the most capable volunteers into your volunteering ranks and preventing incomplete assignments or burdensome management tasks
• How to make online volunteer roles accessible and welcoming for a variety, diversity of people

Susan and I wrote The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook in such a way that it would be timeless – as timeless as a book about using computers, laptops, smart phones and other networked devices could be. It is USA-centric but it offers a lot of international perspectives as well.

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

If you read the book, I would so appreciate it if you could write and post a review of it on the Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Good Reads web sites (you can write the same review on all three sites).