Before March of 2020, for the 10 years previous to that month, it was hard for me to find nonprofits who were NOT engaging volunteers online in some way. Thousands of nonprofits have been immersed in virtual volunteering for decades – as I keep saying over and over, virtual volunteering is NOT new, it’s NO LONGER innovative, and it’s an established, proven, effective form of volunteer engagement, whether just to support staff or to also be a part of service delivery.

Yet, as home quarantines and social distancing required by the coronavirus pandemic quickly took hold worldwide, many nonprofits, NGOs, charities and other mission-based programs that had drug their feet for years regarding using the Internet to support and engage with volunteers found themselves having to rapidly pivot into the world of virtual volunteering. One of those hold outs was in tech-savvy Austin, Texas, where a representative from the United Way of Austin said “We did not have virtual volunteering. Everything we did before coronavirus was all in-person,” in this article “4 Nonprofits Show How to Adapt Volunteer Programs in the Coronavirus Era.” in the Chronicle of Philanthropy.*

Now, and for months to come, these organizations that did not have virtual volunteering components are having to play catchup. I profile a few at the news section of the Virtual Volunteering Wiki and in updates to the Reddit community focused on volunteering. And this rapid pivot has some nonprofit leaders that have only now introduced virtual volunteering elements to their program wondering what they will keep and what they will leave behind when the pandemic recedes in terms of online service delivery – it is no surprise to me at all that so many virtual volunteering measures that have only recently been deployed are proving to be valuable tools worth keeping.

James Taylor is the CEO of the John H. Boner Community Center in Indianapolis. The center runs several social-service programs, such as providing recreational facilities and opportunities for youths and affordable housing. In that same Chronicle of Philanthropy article, Taylor says his organization will consider keeping their online application forms for volunteers developed since the pandemic and is open to using videoconferencing more in the future. “Volunteers used to come to us and we’d figure out how to plug them in. This is the first time we’ve actually gone out and have recruited volunteers,” said Taylor. “There’s no reason why those things can’t continue.”

In that article, another nonprofit representative said that, instead of their traditional onsite volunteer recognition event, two volunteers have shared testimonials on the nonprofit’s social-media outlets telling of their experiences.

And all I can think is: great, it really is a shame you weren’t doing this all along, but please keep doing this. Virtual volunteering is going to allow you to include people you were previously excluding as volunteers. Virtual volunteering is going to bring diversity to your volunteer corps. Virtual volunteering is going to allow you to be not-as-limited by the restrictions of time and space. No one is saying to replace all of your volunteer roles and activities with online versions, but there is NO REASON you shouldn’t always have online roles right alongside those onsite roles. In fact, don’t be surprised if your onsite volunteers end up ALSO being your online volunteers.

For more advice on working with remote volunteers, or using the Internet to support and involve volunteers, check out The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. Tools come and go – but certain community engagement principles never change. You will not find a more detailed guide anywhere for working with online volunteers and using the Internet to support and involve all volunteers – even after home quarantines are over and volunteers start coming back onsite to your workspace. It’s available both as a traditional paperback and as an online book. It’s co-written by myself and Susan Ellis.

* True story: back in the late 1990s, when I was directing the Virtual Volunteering Project at the University of Texas at Austin, I could not get anyone from the United Way in Austin to meet with me in my more than four years there. I got to meet a couple of staff members at an onsite seminar by Susan Ellis, who insisted they allow me to co-present with her. And at that meeting, one of the staff members asked for my advice: the United Way had chosen not to have a web site at first, so one of their volunteers had built one anyway. Now, they wanted possession of the web site and the URL, and the volunteer, who had worked on the site for years, was balking. I had hoped that more than 20 years later, things MIGHT have changed…