Monthly Archives: December 2020

Reflections on Virtual Volunteering in 2020 (& My Most Popular Blogs for the Year)

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When the end of a year approaches, I look over my visitor statistics for my blog and my web pages to see which of my resources were the most popular in the last 12 months. It helps me to know what topics resonated in that year – it’s always something different – and what promotion is most effective. It’s something your nonprofit or government agency should do as well, regarding your online resources (your web site, your blogs, etc.). It’s not just looking at numbers – it’s looking at when pages launched, what people clicked on to get to a resource, etc.

As is true every year, my blogs that got the most traffic are the ones that other people amplified, posting about them on their own social media channels, or referring to them in workshops they did, so if that’s you, THANK YOU. I hope my sharing of others’ material on my social media accounts was also helpful to colleagues and many people I admire as well.

In 2019, I wrote about communications, community relations and ethics in nonprofits far more than volunteer engagement. I had intended to do the same in 2020 – it’s not that I want to downplay volunteer engagement, or not to explore it anymore, but I find those other subjects just as interesting, maybe more, and I work professionally in those fields even more than I do regarding volunteer management. Plus, I just wasn’t sure what else there was to say about virtual volunteering, a subject I have researched and talked about since the mid-1990s.

But then came the novel coronavirus and the massive pivot by thousands of organizations for the first time to virtual volunteering – and suddenly, I was reviving lots of my previous work, filling lots of orders for my book on virtual volunteering, trying to keep up with requests to lead trainings and producing a lot of videos on YouTube to bring everyone up-to-speed about the history and basics of virtual volunteering.

I promote my blog, web site and videos through my Twitter account, my Facebook account, my LinkedIn account, some Subreddits, and some LinkedIn groups. I’m a one-person shop and create and promote these resources entirely on my own – and it’s getting harder and harder to get my voice out there amid a growing sea of competition for attention. Even in the area of virtual volunteering, lots of new “experts” have emerged (please remember that, to be an expert, someone should have experience engaging volunteers online and being an online volunteer themselves).

As I say each year, the blog visitor numbers are great – but the emails and comments on resources are what really keep me going, so please keep them coming!

What did I write that got people’s attention in 2020? Here’s (almost) all of my top 11 blogs for 2020:

How to Immediately Introduce Virtual Volunteering at Your Program: roles & activities a nonprofit, charity or other program could launch immediately to involve online volunteers.

Free training in virtual volunteering (involving & supporting volunteers using online tools): a list of my videos on virtual volunteering in 2020.

Ethics of Paying to Volunteer Online.

Systemic Exclusion in Volunteer Engagement and More: systemic racism in volunteer engagement.

Why qualified people get passed over for jobs.

Saying “no” to recruiting volunteers for certain tasks.

Three resources for your COVID-19-related volunteering.

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

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

I also had a look at my most popular web pages. Some were quite a surprise. These aren’t in the exact order of popularity:

But the two big news items regarding virtual volunteering for 2020 aren’t necessarily reflected in these stats:

  1. I’ve now identified more than 100 research and academic articles on virtual volunteering (the announcement got shared and retweeted a LOT) and
  2. virtual volunteering becoming a necessity because of the novel coronavirus, surging in popularity and being embraced by organizations that have shunned it for decades.

Over the years, and until this year, I’ve made and appeared in many videos about working with online volunteers for nonprofits I’ve been working or volunteering with, but just one about virtual volunteering that wasn’t on behalf of someone else, back in 2012. By contrast, this year, 2020, I’ve made seven videos for my own channel, including a 36-minute introduction to virtual volunteering. In fact, I made 11 additional, private videos for a consultancy I did regarding a user experience related to online volunteering. You can see all my free trainings on my YouTube channel.

It’s been exhausting to say, over and over in 2020: virtual volunteering is not new, it’s more than 35 years old. I’ve said it in my book. I’ve said it on the Virtual Volunteering Wiki. I’ve said it in a video. I’m exhausted from saying it. What I haven’t said is that I’m stunned that so many people from both the nonprofit and corporate world seem to have never heard of involving volunteers remotely, of using the Internet to engage volunteers, a WIDESPREAD, popular practice that’s more than 35 years old. It’s been disheartening to see just how many nonprofits, foundations and corporate social responsibility programs have kept themselves in the dark about virtual volunteering for decades – and I say kept themselves in the dark, because I know just how much, how often, the practice has been talked about in publications, at conferences and in presentations by nonprofits. It has taken a lot of effort on the part of these folks to ignore this well-established practice over the years. I hope that, at last, that has changed.

I’ve also had a very traumatic, challenging time professionally, one that I’m not ready to talk openly about yet. But I will say: please ask colleagues – co-workers, staff at partner organizations, volunteers you work with, etc. – how they are doing. Ask them what challenges they are facing. And ask about safety issues – bluntly ask, “Are you feeling safe in your work? Are you feeling safe online?” Be prepared to eventually hear, “No, I’m not okay. I don’t feel safe. And here’s what I’m facing…” And for anyone you know who isn’t feeling safe online, I have this page of resources regarding online harassment, defamation & libel. 

And thank you to everyone who has supported me this year – I learned this year just how many people have my back. My gratitude to you knows no bounds.

May you have a safe, prosperous, healthy transition into 2021.

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

A reminder yet again that The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook provides detailed advice on creating assignments for online volunteers, for working with online volunteers, for using the Internet to support and involve ALL volunteers, including volunteers that provide service onsite, for ensuring success in virtual volunteering, and for using the Internet to build awareness and support for all volunteering at your program. Tech tools come and go, but certain community engagement principles never change, and those principles are detailed in this comprehensive guide. 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.

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. 

Cultivating Online Civility

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When I began writing about online culture, back in the late 1990s, misinformation was at a minimum and easy to identify, and hateful trolls were oh-so-quickly banned from the online communities they tried to disrupt.

Now, hate and misinformation rage online, and not just among strangers – neighbors are raging against each other on local online communities.

Back in the 1990s, in promoting virtual volunteering – using the Internet to support and involve volunteers – people who were new to the Internet (yes, there used to be such people) would ask lots of questions about what it is like to work with people remotely, rather than onsite, in-person. I created a section of the Virtual Volunteering Project web site, and then my own web site, specifically to talk about online culture, about the different ways people expressed themselves online and how to appreciate those differences, and how to quickly ramp up your skills for working with others online. I linked to some netiquette guidelines, but didn’t put much emphasis at all on online civility, dealing with trolls or addressing misinformation.

My, how times have changed…

A recent Wall Street Journal investigation revealed that Facebook was aware of its Facebook groups feature’s polarizing tendencies as early as 2016, and the Facebook groups feature continues to serve as a vector for lies, especially regarding COVID-19, as this Wired article, Facebook Groups Are Destroying America, notes:

Facebook users have been seeing more content from “friends and family” and less from brands and media outlets… Dynamics in groups often mirror those of peer-to-peer messaging apps: People share, spread, and receive information directly to and from their closest contacts, whom they typically see as reliable sources. To make things easier for those looking to stoke political division, groups provide a menu of potential targets organized by issue and even location; bad actors can create fake profiles or personas tailored to the interests of the audiences they intend to infiltrate. This allows them to seed their own content in a group and also to repurpose its content for use on other platforms... Related memes and links to fringe right-wing websites have been shared millions of times on Facebook in the past few months. Users coordinating their activities across networks of groups and pages managed by a small handful of people boost these narratives. At least nine coordinated pages and two groups—with more than 3 million likes and 71,000 members, respectively—are set up to drive traffic to five “news” websites that promote right-wing clickbait and conspiracy theories. In May, those five websites published more than 50 posts promoting Obamagate, which were then shared in the linked pro-Trump groups and pages. The revolving door of disinformation continues to spin.

And that doesn’t even begin to address the problems with dedicated trolls – people who target others online with insults and harassment in an effort to drive the person offline.

I now have a curated list of resources on online civility, and I continue to update my long list of recommendations on how to address online misinformation, which I’ve been maintaining for more than two decades. I also now have a web page of resources regarding online harassment, defamation & libel, and I regularly share on the TechSoup Online Community about how women worldwide are the frequent targets of harassing trolls who dedicate their time to silencing those voices. I never dreamed back in the 1990s things would be so overwhelmingly negative now and these would be the highly critical issues that they are. But, here we are.

Can online civility be restored? Is it possible to challenge misinformation and destructive speech in the strongest, most deliberate of terms without being accused of hate speech yourself? Can there be rules for online civility that don’t stifle much-needed debate? I hope these curated resources can help answer those questions – but, honestly, based on what I’ve experienced myself this year, I’m deeply skeptical. Perhaps I need to create a list of resources on “Learning to live and thrive in a world with hateful, hate-filled people.”

Also see:

Also, the Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook: Fully Integrating Online Service Into Volunteer Involvement can help you better work with people online – specifically volunteers. These can be volunteers in short-term, “microvolunteering” tasks or longer-term, more high-responsibility roles. These can be volunteers who do some or most of their service onsite, at your organization or volunteers who do most or all of their service remotely, rarely or ever onsite and in-person with you. This is the most comprehensive resource anywhere on working with online volunteers, and on using the Internet to support ALL volunteers, including those you might not think of as “online” volunteers.

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. 

Contributing to online communities can help you professionally

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I see lots of young people online who are wondering how to build up their skills and résumés in this time of COVID-19, or to explore careers with so many onsite experiences closed to them. I want to remind them all (they all read my blog, right?) that volunteering to help with an online community is a great way to get experience, to build your skills, to build your knowledge, to build your portfolio and to network for jobs.

Don’t believe me? I’ve been helping with online communities since 1993 or so, mostly as a volunteer. And those experiences have played a substantial part in both getting professional positions and getting experience that’s helped me in my offline work.

The first online community I participated in was the soc.org.nonprofit USENET newsgroup. It was created in June 1994 and gatewayed to the email-based mailing list USNONPROFIT-L. The community was for the discussion of nonprofit management and program issues. I found it soon after it was created and, after a couple of years of participating, because I was such a prolific contributor, I got asked to co-moderate it, as a volunteer, and I did so for several years. My participation there, and some onsite volunteering and collaboration, lead me to being offered a paid position: to direct the Virtual Volunteering Project.

In the late 1990s, I participated in three other online communities, all on YahooGroups: CyberVPM, UKVPMs, and OZVPM, all focused on managers of volunteers. It was because of my participation in those three communities, talking about the VV Project and virtual volunteering in general, that I got noticed by a United Nations agency in charge of the online volunteering portion of NetAid, and ended up directing what became the UN’s Online Volunteering Service. I also have lifelong colleagues and friends because of my volunteer participation in those three communities specifically.

In 2001 or so, while living in Germany and working for the UN Volunteers program, I started participating in the then newly-launched TechSoup online community. You can see an early version of that community on the Internet Wayback machine. I was a very active volunteer contributor and ended up getting asked to be a volunteer moderator, helping to introduce topics, answer questions and delete spam, and to lead a couple of online events. And years later, in 2009, after volunteering on and off, I got a part-time contracting gig helping with the community and some online events. I’ve done that off and on ever since (including now!).

Around that same time, someone set up an online community for people working in international aid and development work. I joined that community and, once again, I was a prolific contributor, as a volunteer, and eventually got asked to be a volunteer board member of the newly-formed nonprofit that got set up to support the community. The Aid Workers Network lasted for just a few years, but I got asked about that experience regularly in job interviews, and there are two people that remain my professional colleagues to this day.

On Reddit, I’ve been the volunteer moderator for the volunteer community, the community service subreddit, and the inclusion subreddit, for a few years now – and I got a short, well-paid consulting gig earlier this year because of my activities on the volunteer subreddit specifically.

So, that’s my story on how volunteering to contribute, moderate, facilitate and lead online communities has helped me professionally. It could help you, too:

  • Look for Reddit communities that represent what you want to do professionally or as a volunteer. Read a lot before you contribute, and always read as much as you yourself post. When you feel ready, post helpful, on-topic questions, advice and comments. Follow the rules. If you do this regularly, don’t be surprised if you end up getting asked to be a moderator. Even if you aren’t asked to be a moderator, if you think your contributions show your expertise, workstyle and character, consider including a link to your Reddit profile on your résumé.
  • If you use computers or your smart phone as a part of your volunteering or professional work with nonprofits, NGOs, charities, community groups, advocacy groups, libraries, religious groups, etc., and you want to share your experience and help others that might be trying to do so, consider joining the TechSoup online community and contributing to the subjects there, like Databases and Software (including apps), Web Building, Digital Engagement, Hardware, Servers & Networks, Security, Privacy & Safety, Tech in Disasters, Tech Planning and Policies or Tech4Good, Tech Making a Difference, Tech in Society.
  • Use Google, Bing or Duck Duck Go, and on Facebook, to find online communities hosted on other platforms that relate to what you want to do, whether its humanitarian work, nonprofit theater management, rescuing wildlife, logistics after disasters, whatever. As always, read a lot before you contribute, and always read as much as you post. Post helpful, on-topic questions, advice and comments and follow the rules. You might get asked to be a moderator, but regardless, you’ll create an online profile potential employers might find quite interesting.

And if your nonprofit, NGO, charity, library, etc. has an online community, the contributors to that community are volunteers, even if you don’t call them such, even if you also call them clients or community members instead. If they are asking questions, offering comments and advice, introducing discussions on your community, even debating (but are staying on topic) and you aren’t paying them, they are online volunteers, they are contributing their time and talents, and you are engaged in virtual volunteering.

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

For detailed advice on creating assignments for online volunteers, for working with online volunteers, for using the Internet to support and involve ALL volunteers (including those providing service onsite), and for ensuring success in virtual volunteering, check out The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. 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. It’s co-written by myself and Susan Ellis. If your organization wants to better engage the people who contribute to your online communities – and, yes, those are online volunteers – this book can help.

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. 

Apps4Good should be based in reality, not be tech fluff

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I sent out this tweet thread December 3 from my Twitter account:

Listened to a podcast by someone wanting to develop an app to address a particular community need. He has no stats regarding the need, no research showing his approach is what partner agencies or potential clients want. Just talked about #app4good he’ll develop. (1/5) #CSR

This project leader has no experience regarding this particular community need. None. It’s another case of someone from the corporate world deciding that he knows what nonprofits or at-risk community members need, with no data or research to back that up. (2/5)

Looked at the web site. It’s very slick, uses all the buzzwords. You have to really read (which most folks won’t) to realize every project is in development, that no people with actual expertise in this issue are involved in this supposed nonprofit effort. (3/5)

It’s great that folks from the corporate / business / tech world want to help with community issues. Your involvement is vital. But just as you have to do your homework before developing an app for consumers, you have to do research before you develop an #app4good. #CSR (4/5)

Years of experience in the tech sector doesn’t prepare app creators for addressing homelessness, hunger or street harassment, or navigating mass transit, or working in emergencies. You must talk in-depth with the experts: nonprofits & their clients. (5/5)

I’ve written a LOT about how folks from the corporate world, from executive directors to app developers, don’t talk to nonprofits before they develop tech tools for their clients. Here’s more:

And then there is this brilliant tweet from World Bank Water, an initiative of the World Bank:

To paraphrase a comment I wrote in a previous blog, it’s wonderful to see so many tech4good / apps4good / hacks4good initiatives anywhere in the world, but I see way too much attention being spent on their launch, on their promise, and not nearly enough researching if this is really what clients or the community wants, let alone evaluating their impact and sustainability after launch. And if we don’t focus on those things, then they are just tech fluff.