Monthly Archives: July 2020

You do not need to meet via video conference with every potential volunteer

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Most virtual volunteering assignments are text-based or designed-based: translating text from one language to another, transcribing podcasts, captioning videos, managing an online discussion group, designing a database, designing a graphic, and on and on. And one of the reasons I have really loved virtual volunteering is that, when it’s also limited to text-based communications with volunteers, potential volunteers can’t be judged regarding how they look or sound. Instead, volunteers in virtual volunteering, at least until recently, are judged by the quality of the character they show through their words and work. I don’t like to think of myself as prejudiced, but I have often wondered if I have been reluctant to involve a volunteer onsite because of unconscious bias on my part upon meeting a volunteer candidate face-to-face.

Virtual volunteering encounters in previous years have hidden the weight, ethnicity, hair color, age, accents, and other physical traits of online volunteers from the person onboarding that volunteer, and vice versa. But now, video conferencing is all the rage, and many programs are requiring that volunteer applicants participate in a live online meeting before they can volunteer online. As Susan Ellis and I note in our book, The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook:

Today’s preference to actually see and hear each other online is a double-edged sword: it can make electronic communication more personal and personable, but it can also inject offline prejudices evoked by how someone looks.

As a result of this rush to online video, are online volunteering candidates being turned away from programs because of possible but unacknowledged biases on the part of the manager of volunteers or whoever is initially screening applicants?

Are people that want to volunteer online hesitating to apply because they do not like how they look on video, don’t feel confident regarding their speaking voice or presentation skills, or are uncomfortable with welcoming someone “into” their home, even virtually?

Do people that would be interested in volunteering with you online on a text-based assignment decide not to apply because their Internet access isn’t fast enough for live video conferencing?

Are there people that would be interested in volunteering with you online that aren’t in your same time zone or who work or have home care duties that prevent them from being available at all the times you want to have a live video chat?

Think carefully before you make a meeting by video with potential volunteers mandatory. Is such a video meeting really necessary for the assignment the volunteer will do? Absolutely, certain tasks and roles require you to know if the volunteer is well-spoken, understands how to present themselves in a reputable, credible, clear manner, etc. But if it’s not required, per the role the volunteer is applying for, then consider how to balance your need for something personal with the volunteer’s desire for privacy. Consider how freeing it can be for a volunteer to be judged by the excellent web site they build for you rather than the physical disability people see immediately upon meeting them (not that people with disabilities EVER want to hide!). Consider how good it can feel for a person who is uncomfortable with his or her weight to be valued because of the excellent moderation skills and dynamic personality they show on your online community (again, not that any person, regardless of their weight, should EVER want to hide!).

vvbooklittle

For a lot more about screening and orienting online volunteers, as well as designing tasks, providing support for volunteers using online tools, evaluating virtual volunteering, designing an online mentoring program and much more, check out The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, available for purchase as a traditional print book or as a digital book. The book is an oh-so-much-cheaper way to get intense consulting regarding every aspect virtual volunteering, including more high-impact digital engagement schemes, than to hire me. You will not find a more detailed guide anywhere for working with online volunteers and using the Internet to support and involve all volunteers. It’s available both as a traditional paperback and as an online book. I also think it would be a great resource for anyone doing research regarding virtual volunteering as well.

Also see:

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. 

Schools & Courts: you need to accept historical transcription online projects as community service

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Projects abound where online volunteers transcribe scanned documents for universities, nonprofits and government archives. By doing this, the documents become more searchable for researchers and more accessible to everyone. Through these programs, online volunteers are helping to amplify and preserve the stories of escaped enslaved people, the thoughts of and to people like Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, people who attended political meetings held at the state and national levels in the 1800s to free enslaved people or gain women the vote, and on and on. It can be a surprisingly intimate experience for the volunteer, one that benefits many thousands of people for years – for generations – to come.

I’ve done this myself as an online volunteer, and it was quite an emotional experience for me, transcribing newspaper ads seeking people who had escaped enslavement in the 1800s in the USA, part of the Freedom on the Move (FOTM) project. I have a list of every online transcription project for online volunteers that I know about at this resource on finding virtual volunteering roles and activities.

These historical transcription projects are wonderful virtual volunteering experiences, but most schools and courts will not accept this volunteering for required community service because they have a piece of paper that must be signed by someone from the project affirming that the volunteer did the service.

YA’LL NEED TO CHANGE.

These historical transcription projects are PERFECT for both students seeking community service hours required for graduation and for people who are ordered by the courts to do so.

Using suggestions already in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook: Fully Integrating Online Service Into Volunteer Involvement and a previous blog on supervising online volunteers in court-ordered settings as guidance, here’s how high schools and courts could verify community service hours via online historical transcription projects:

  • Require the volunteer to keep track of service hours on a Google Doc spreadsheet that that person gives you access to for viewing, so you can check-in at any time to see if they have updated it. It should have the name of the project or organization, a web address for more info, the date and time of volunteering service provided by the volunteer, the hours or minutes spent, and a summary of what the volunteer did (“transcribed a letter by George Washington to Alexander Hamilton from June 1775.”). Check into that spreadsheet weekly or every other week to see if it’s been updated.
  • Require that the volunteer take a photo on their smartphone every time they start transcribing a new document and every time they finish, and that they upload this photo to a private Flickr account album (Flickr is free), one that only the user (the volunteer) and you can see. You can spot check the time and date stamps on photos to see if the data corresponds to the aforementioned spreadsheet data (just spot check – you don’t have to do them all).
  • Require the volunteer take a screenshot of each document they are going to transcribe, and each transcription they complete, and to upload these screenshots to the aforementioned Flickr account album. This provides more documentation for confirming if a person did the assignment.
  • Require the volunteer take a selfie of himself or herself at the computer, about to do the work and then again at the completion, and upload these screenshots to the aforementioned Flickr account private album that only you and that volunteer can see. This provides more documentation for confirming if a person did the assignment.

Give the volunteer one to two hours of credit for service hours JUST for setting up and maintaining the Google Doc and the Flickr account correctly.

Could a volunteer fake all this? Yes, and it would take that volunteer about as many hours to create the fake documents, screenshots and summaries as it would for them to do the ACTUAL volunteering and record-keeping – meaning they would still have had to do all this time to fulfill community service hours, even if they didn’t end up doing what they said they were doing.

Could someone else do all of this service for the person? Yes: a parent, a sibling, a friend, or someone the person pays could do all of this. And this happens in onsite, in-person volunteering. People also frequently show up to volunteer at a beach clean up as community service, sign in, go sit in their cars and smoke or listen to music, then come back at the end and get their paperwork signed off that they did the hours. It’s the chance every program takes in not supervising people doing community service every moment. While Lindsay Lohan probably had her assistance do her online court-ordered community service, I don’t think most people do.

Doesn’t this create a lot of followup by the assigning body? Yes. For schools, keeping track of this is a GREAT assignment for an online volunteer, or group of online volunteers. For courts: sorry, but you all have never done well in this department with onsite, face-to-face folks – I’ve seen the forged paperwork first-hand for nonprofits that don’t exist or for nonprofits that have never seen or heard of the person that supposedly did the service. Let this be your opportunity to up your game in terms of confirming court-ordered community service completion.

cover of Virtual Volunteering book with hands raising up various Internet connected devices

There’s also my book, co-written with Susan Ellis which goes into a great deal of detail on supervising and supporting online volunteers, and how to track their progress: The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook: Fully Integrating Online Service Into Volunteer Involvement. In this time of a global pandemic, as well as this time where every program should be looking at how to be more inclusive and accommodating for working parents, people with home care requirements (for children for parents, for other relatives, etc.), people with transportation issues and people with disabilities, every program that relates to people completing community service for a graduation requirement or a court requirement should read this book.

Here are all of my blogs about some aspect of court-ordered community service.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site or my YouTube videos 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. 

How Wikipedia’s volunteers became the web’s best weapon against misinformation

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Interesting article from Fast Company that offers insights on the quality of service volunteers – unpaid staff – can provide:

While places like Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter struggle to fend off a barrage of false content, with their scattershot mix of policies, fact-checkers, and algorithms, one of the web’s most robust weapons against misinformation is an archaic-looking website written by anyone with an internet connection, and moderated by a largely anonymous crew of volunteers…

Wikipedia is not immune from the manipulation that spreads elsewhere online, but it has proven to be a largely dependable resource—not only for the topics you’d find in an old leather-bound encyclopedia, but also for news and controversial current events, too. Twenty years after it sputtered onto the web, it’s now a de facto pillar in our fact-checking infrastructure. Its pages often top Google search and feed the knowledge panels that appear at the top of those results. Big Tech’s own efforts to stop misinformation also rely upon Wikipedia: YouTube viewers searching for videos about the moon landing conspiracy may see links to Wikipedia pages debunking those theories, while Facebook has experimented with showing users links to the encyclopedia when they view posts from dubious websites…

Wikipedia’s lessons in protecting the truth are only growing more valuable.

But all is not well at Wikipedia among the volunteers:

As many of the site’s own editors readily admit in dozens of forums, the community is plagued by problems with diversity and harassment. It’s thought that only about 20% of the editing community is female, and only about 18% of Wikipedia’s biographical articles are about women. The bias and blind spots that can result from those workplace issues are harmful to an encyclopedia that’s meant to be for everyone. Localization is also a concern given Wikipedia’s goal to make knowledge available to the whole world: The encyclopedia currently exists in 299 languages, but the English version still far outpaces the others, comprising 12% of the project’s total articles.

The community has also struggled to retain new blood. Editors often accuse each other of bias, and some argue that its political pages exhibit a center-left bent, though recent research suggests that the community’s devotion to its editorial policies washes that out over time. Less-experienced editors can also be turned off by aggressive veterans who spout Wikipedia’s sometimes arcane rules to make their case, especially around the encyclopedia’s more controversial political pages.

The article’s author took a crack at editing, using WikiLoop Battlefield, a community-built website which lets anyone review a random recent Wikipedia edit for possible vandalism or misinformation. After using it to correct and entry, a few days later, a message popped up on the author’s Wikipedia user page.

“Congratulations,” it read. “You have been recognized as the weekly champion of counter-vandalism of WikiLoop Battlefield.”

For a moment I felt like a hero.

I wonder how many volunteers can say an organization they support made them feel that way.

And for those of you interested in editing Wikipedia – this Wikipedia Cheat Sheet is essential.

Thoughts on new UN paper re: Volunteering Practices in the 21st Century

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Two decades after the International Year of Volunteering 2001, the United Nations General Assembly requested the United Nations Volunteers program and the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) to organize a Global Technical Meeting on “Reimagining Volunteering for the 2030 Agenda” in July 2020 as a milestone in the Plan of Action to Integrate Volunteering into the 2030 Agenda. A resulting associated paper, “Volunteering Practices in the Twenty-First Century,” revisits the 1999/2000 background paper “Volunteering and Social Development“. The new paper is available in Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.

I love the paper! Author Chris Millora, UNESCO Chair in Adult Literacy and Learning for Social Transformation at the University of East Anglia, United Kingdom, has done what I have begged volunteer management trainers and researchers to do since 2014: for the most part, HE DOESN’T SEPARATE ONLINE VOLUNTEERING FROM ONSITE VOLUNTEERING. Yes, the paper acknowledges that volunteering can happen onsite or online, but otherwise, people are just volunteers – not in the sense of merely but in the sense of solely. Virtual volunteering is completely incorporated into how volunteering is presented in Millora’s paper, rather than being talked about as something completely separate. For instance, in reviewing what the paper calls “the five categories of volunteering,” – Mutual aid or self-help, Philanthropy or service to others, Participation, Advocacy and Leisure, two examples are presented to illustrate “volunteer activities include various combinations and intensities of these elements,” and both of the examples include virtual volunteering elements – but neither example separates online volunteers as somehow completely different than traditional onsite volunteering (page 17). When this paper says

Volunteering is relevant throughout people’s lives and people may take part in multiple aspects at different times. Volunteering is both a means and an end to achieving, challenging, disrupting and even shaping development outcomes.

It means ALL volunteering – onsite, online, microtasks/episodic, high-impact, and on and on.

Remember why Susan Ellis and I called our book The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook? What we didn’t mean is that there will or should never be a further need to write or talk about the latest developments in engaging volunteers online. What we do mean is that we hope that talk about virtual volunteering stops being segregated to a separate book or separate chapter at the end of a book or report about volunteer management or volunteerism, that volunteers are just VOLUNTEERS, no matter where they do their service. Millora’s paper does that!

In the paper from 20 years ago, Volunteering and social development, by Justin Davis Smith, virtual volunteering is hinted at but never named. The only reference is when the paper notes that communication technology tools “open up new opportunities for voluntary activity” and “the spread of global information technology opens up new opportunities for home-based involvement in volunteering for groups, such as disabled people, who were previously excluded from participation” – both are references to virtual volunteering but without ever saying the term. It was so disappointing, because, at the time of this paper’s creation, the Virtual Volunteering Project had existed for three years and had already documented a few hundred programs engaging thousands of online volunteers, and the NetAid web site had been launched in September 1999 and involved UN Volunteers and UNDP. It’s so strange that none of this is mentioned. Very glad that the new paper is spot on in putting virtual volunteering in its rightful place within talk of volunteerism and its importance to the world.

As I have said over and over, virtual volunteering is more than 35 years old, it’s not new, it can no longer be considered innovative, and online volunteers don’t think of themselves online volunteers – they think of themselves as volunteers. There will still be presentations and trainings and books on different ways volunteers provide service and different aspects of volunteering engagement – group volunteering, micro-task/micro-volunteering/episodic volunteering, youth volunteering, accessibility, diversity, and, yes, virtual volunteering. And that’s how it should be. But in talks about volunteering and volunteerism, it’s so overdue to stop segregating virtual volunteering from onsite, traditional volunteering. Chris Millora gets it. Others?

Also see my video submission regarding the Global Technical Meeting on Reimagining Volunteering for the 2030 Agenda (it’s very short).

If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, 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. 

Delivering arts programming online & helping arts nonprofits survive COVID-19

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Let’s get right to this list of resources for nonprofit theaters, dance groups, music groups and other performance groups regarding program delivery and community engagement during COVID-19 (a curated list):

How Theater Companies are Innovating During the COVID-19 crisis

Dance Magazine checks in with three artistic directors to see how they’re handling life in the age of coronavirus. Apr 09, 2020

Coronavirus pushes L.A. dance companies toward the inevitable: Going virtual

Gibney Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center COVID-19 RESOURCE LIST

Theatre community rallies, adapts during COVID-19 pandemic

COVID-19 Theatre Resources from the SETC

Resources for Choral Leaders/Managers During the Pandemic

Genuine engagement through Zoom calls: a post on the TechSoup community from someone who says she “learned a lot about hosting fun and effective video sessions, including music circles with up to 100 participants from up to seven countries.”

21 simple things to do while your programs are on hold during COVID-19 quarantines   

Your nonprofit is still relevant during COVID19 – SHOW HOW 

What we will need for live theatre to continue: a call to political action

Update: Arts Groups Hold Pittsburgh’s First Virtual, Collective Fundraiser.

Update: Washington Ballet “virtual” gala spreads COVID-19 among artists and volunteers.

Update: Example of a virtual art therapy session.

if you have additional online resources that can help nonprofit theaters, dance groups, music groups and other performance groups regarding program delivery and community engagement during COVID-19, please comment below.

Why do I care? Theatre and live music performances have been a hugely important part of my life for as long as I can remember. They were my joy in grade school and my sanctuary on more occasions I could list. I believe the arts, including non-performance, like museums, play a fundamentally-important role in a community’s health.

I got my start in nonprofit management via nonprofit theatre organizations. I wrote my master’s degree thesis on the non-artistic elements necessary for theatre, dance and music to be used as a tool for public health and other community development initiatives. Months ago, I had written a blog about how arts organizations – performing arts centers, theaters, museums – have always been masters of customer relations and data management, how masterful the best of them, no matter how small, are at customer relations and customer loyalty, and turning event attendees into long term financial supporters. I consider my early professional experience at places like the Capitol Arts Center in Bowling Green, Kentucky, Hartford Stage in Connecticut and the Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts to have been pivotal in building my skilIs in data management, project management, customer relations and so much more, skills I’ve applied in every job I have ever had, including international development work in Afghanistan – yes, really. It was a blog meant to celebrate arts organizations for having oh-so-much to teach other nonprofits – and government programs and for-profit companies as well. I kept delaying the publishing of that blog. First by a week, then two weeks, then a few weeks, because things came up that seemed more urgent. I figured that I would publish it right after I got back from my epic Baja, California, Mexico motorcycle adventure.

Well, when I got back from that epic adventure, I returned to a country being ravaged by Covid-19, an inbox full of emails asking me urgently for my consulting rates regarding virtual volunteering, and GoogleAlerts filled with news of newly-launched virtual volunteering schemes (many done with no regard to safety). So that blog got pushed farther and farther on the publishing calendar.

And now, I read the draft, and I want to cry. Because live theater, live dance, onsite museum tours, live music… none of that is happening. And none of that may happen for the rest of 2020. And many nonprofits that produce these events and exhibits aren’t going to survive the year. I have so many friends that still worked in the arts in some way, or some aspect of event management, and their jobs are gone.

Sports will come back. People will watch sports on TV even with no audiences. But the arts… can they survive this? I enjoy watching filmed versions of stage productions, but so many people loathe it, and it’s true: it’s no substitute at all for seeing a performance live. Maybe I’m comfortable with viewing televised productions because, growing up in a small town In Henderson, Kentucky, things like Great Performances on PBS were my only way of seeing Broadway shows or the opera. I go back to that grateful persona, starving for access when I watch Frankenstein presented by the UK’s National Theatre Live, or the Donmar Warehouse all-female production of Julius Caesar directed Phyllida Lloyd and shown on Great Performances. So often, such televised productions of stage shows are all I have access to – and that’s true for so many others.

But I long to sit in a dark hall and watch people act on a stage. Or to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with others while hearing amazing live music. Or wander through an art museum, not thinking about being two meters away from each other person. And it looks like none of us can do that safely for the rest of 2020. And maybe through 2021. And maybe longer. And the nonprofits, and even for-profit companies, that have brought us these experiences, may not survive. And that sends me into an emotional tailspin.

And not one national political leader is talking about what to do about this.

If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, 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.