Monthly Archives: April 2023

UN Volunteer requirements – but with no guidance?

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I’ve been reviewing open positions in developing countries from United Nations Volunteers. It’s something I do when I want to do a bit of dreaming about maybe going overseas again… and also to see what’s up with my former employer. Recently, I noticed that many of postings have a standard set of additional requirements, no matter what the role is (IT manager, sanitation communications, microenterprise development, etc.).

I smiled when I saw the requirements, because I was one of the first people, if not the first person, to develop these type of additional requirements on UNV terms of reference (TORs): back when I was working as a part of the UNV UNITeS initiative, focused on promoting volunteer engagement in ICT4D initiatives, there was a program manager for a particular region who would come to my office, hand me the TOR 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. When that UNV program manager gave me the TOR 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.

Here we are all these years later, and here are the requirements UNV now puts on many UN Volunteer TOR. If you’ve read the aforementioned, they will sound familiar. However, for each of these requirements, I have some questions that I really hope UNV answers for candidates it chooses for these roles:

UN Volunteers are required to:

• Strengthen their knowledge and understanding of the concept of volunteerism by reading relevant UNV and external publications and take active part in UNV activities (for instance in events that mark International Volunteer Day).

Seems fairly straightforward. Requires a volunteer to volunteer UNV on social media and read that social media regularly, read web updates, etc.

• Be acquainted with and build on traditional and/or local forms of volunteerism in the host country.

And HOW does one become acquainted with local volunteerism in the host country, let alone build on it? Most people aren’t acquainted with local volunteerism in their OWN country. UNV did away with the World Volunteerism Web, so there’s no online source now to do this. And what does “build on it” mean? Are UN Volunteers supposed to involve volunteers in their work? Or are they supposed to promote volunteerism, as a concept, in general? What does that look like for an IT manager or a microenterprise developer? I could write an entire manual on just this subject, because I’ve done it – and it’s NOT an easy thing to do.

• Reflect on the type and quality of voluntary action that they are undertaking, including participation in ongoing reflection activities.

UN Volunteers aren’t undertaking voluntary action; UN Volunteers are under a contract called “UN Volunteers”, but they aren’t really volunteers. UNVs receive an excellent stipend. International volunteers receive a stipend that’s equal to the regular pay for local government workers. The pay is enough for housing, food and local transportation – some “stipends” are enough to support a small family.

• Contribute articles/write-ups on field experiences and submit them for UNV publications/websites, newsletters, press releases, etc.

Reasonable requirement.

• Assist with the UNV Buddy Programme for newly arrived UN Volunteers.

Link to the UNV Buddy Programme? What is it? How does it work?

• Promote capacity development activities and transfer of skills to national personnel during the assignment.

Excellent requirement. Building local capacity is at the heart of international UN Volunteer engagement. But where’s the guidance on how to do that? I felt like I was pretty good at it when managing communications activities in Afghanistan and Ukraine – where I worked for UNDP but was not a UN Volunteer – but I’ve seen other UN workers who never made this a priority, or weren’t very good at it and needed a LOT of guidance.

• Promote or advise local groups in the use of online volunteering or encourage relevant local individuals and organizations to use the UNV Online Volunteering service whenever technically possible.

It’s really great to see this as a requirement – but where is the UNV guidance on how to develop online roles, how to support online volunteers, how to evaluate online engagement, etc.? It’s not on the UNV web site – UNV reduced, then shut down the online volunteering service a few years ago, and before that, removed support for those that wanted to involve online volunteers (I archived what I created for UNV about online volunteer engagement here). Or what about giving volunteers copies of The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook and helping make them experts in virtual volunteering?

Would love to see UNV’s responses to these questions… but I doubt that will ever come.

Also see:

Make volunteering transformative, not about # of hours.

Resources from my time at United Nations Volunteers.

The United Nations Information Technology Service (UNITeS).

United Nations Volunteers says, when it comes to onsite & online, “They are ALL volunteers”.

Misconceptions re: VSO, UNV & Peace Corps.

New UN Initiative seeks “Information Volunteers”.

United Nations site for people with disabilities is inaccessible.

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

I’m thrilled with UNV’s 2015 State of the World’s Volunteerism Report – Transforming Governance.

History & Evaluation of UNV’s Early Years

Initial feedback on UNV plan to integrate volunteerism in development.

A blend of international & local volunteers can “decolonize” humanitarian development.

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.

Should you leave Twitter & Facebook for the fediverse?

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It’s a mouthful, but bear with me:

The non-profit, distributed, community-oriented fediverse might be something you need to check out and use, for your personal and professional activities – and maybe the nonprofits you work for.

More and more users are leaving Facebook and Twitter to join such communities because they are uncomfortable with the corporate policies and the owners of the companies. Some nonprofits feel that they have an ethical duty to NOT be associated with such.

Most folks are staying on Facebook and Twitter, but creating profiles on other platforms, including the fediverse, just in case they decide to change their social media patronage altogether.

The fediverse is similar to social media networks like Facebook or Twitter, but it’s not controlled by any one corporation. To you, the user, it will feel like any social media channel, but how it is set up and organized in the background is very different from for-profit platforms.

The fediverse is a network of social media servers that share one another’s content. If I set up my account on one server and you set up your account on another server, we can still see and repost each other’s content because the servers are part of a “federation.” To the user, it feels just like, say, Facebook – you see all the content of those you follow – you will have no idea they are signed up via a different server than you unless you really look for it.

The only challenge you will probably ever face as a user on a fediverse is when you sign in – you have to remember the address of your server. I do this the same way I track my passwords. But, again, otherwise, a fediverse feels just like any other social network.

The most famous example of a fediverse is Mastodon, which is a lot like Twitter. When you join Mastodon, you have to join via one of its servers. Most people join via the “social” server – it’s the first one you see when you go to the site to create an account. Each Mastodon server has its own policies and administrators. If you do not like a change in policies on the server you have joined, you can leave one for another without losing followers. Most servers follow the Mastodon Covenant, which requires a basic level of administrative service as well as active moderation against various forms of hate speech. But, honestly, as a user, you probably won’t ever have to deal with ANY of this.

An added bonus: “Mastodon’s robust REST APIs are based on ActivityPub, a W3C standard”. That means Mastodon has a commitment to accessibility!

This article in InfoWorld by Andrew C. Oliver offers the best argument I’ve seen for creating a Mastodon account and for thinking very seriously about the consequences of supporting Facebook, Twitter and Instagram with your content.

As for me: I am on Mastodon and am using it more and more. I still have an account I use for professional reasons on Twitter, a Facebook professional and a personal page, and a mostly-personal Instagram account. But I like having alternatives – especially Mastodon and Reddit (and I’m getting more and more benefits from Reddit – including lots of traffic for my blog and two consulting jobs). I haven’t deleted my personal Twitter account but I use it primarily to encourage people to follow me elsewhere (difficult to do, since the Twitter algorithms now seek out such content specifically to downgrade it and keep it from being viewed by most followers).

For the nonprofits I work for, including TechSoup: I do have profiles for them on Reddit, and was able to reclaim TechSoup’s Reddit group, and posting there has resulted in some traffic here on the TechSoup community. But I still haven’t put any of them on Mastodon – mostly because I know that, in the case of one of the nonprofits I work with, none of their clients or donors are on it. But that could change… and I need to be ready.

What about you and the nonprofits you help/work for? Are they exploring other social media platforms with an eye to not over-relying solely on just one channel? Remember: no social media platform is forever. Eventually, the one you love most will go the way of AOL communities, MySpace, Friendster…

Also see:

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

For detailed information about leveraging online tools to support and involve volunteers, whether they provide their service onsite at your organization, onsite elsewhere, or online, get yourself a copy of The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. Online platforms and social media channels come and go, but the recommendations here are timeless. You will not find a more detailed guide anywhere on this subject than than The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. It’s available both as a traditional print publication and as a digital book.

If you have benefited from any of my 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.

The delicate, peculiar task of promoting a charity’s gala

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A gala charity event is a sophisticated, upscale party hosted by a nonprofit. At a gala, guests dress up in formal clothes, enjoy what is supposed to be very good food, socialize and are entertained in some way. Gala guests pay a lot of money to attend and then are further solicited for donations or to bid on auction items, many of them high-end, with the money raised going to the nonprofit.

Most galas are considered successful if they break even financially – galas that raise large amounts of money after expenses are paid are quite rare. So why have galas if they don’t bring in much money? Because most board members and other supporters may want to socialize with each other and celebrate – they’ve sat through many meetings, they’ve shouldered a great deal of leadership responsibility, they’ve discussed and debated all year long, and now they want to have an enjoyable time. It’s a time to renew, reflect, and reward themselves for work well done. And it can also be an important social event in a community: this may be a chance for aspiring and current politicians to network and an opportunity for business owners to show they are interested in community affairs.

Gala events have been a mainstay of nonprofits for many generations. But galas have also always faced criticism from people who see them as inappropriate, especially for nonprofits focused on issues regarding poverty and inequity. And such criticism seems to be growing among younger people. As one article put it:

Why juxtapose calls to feed the hungry, house the homeless and cure cancer with champagne toasts and caviar hors d’oeuvres? As researchers who study charities, we understand why opulent bashes that raise money for good causes seem puzzling. These inherently contradictory events intended to help people in need double as vehicles for the rich and famous to show off their largesse.

Those feelings among at least some community members can make marketing a gala difficult – something I have been facing as I promote the annual gala for a small nonprofit focused on affordable housing and housing equity. I want to make sure I reach people beyond the board who might attend, but I also don’t want to do anything that reminds this nonprofit’s clients or thrift store patrons that we’re holding an “opulent bash” they probably can’t afford to attend.

Market a gala the wrong way and you could end up with not just a poorly attended event that costs money instead of earning it, but also a public relations problem.

The gala will happen, the board members and others attending will have a fun time and, hopefully, feel re-energized about their volunteering with the organization. We might even manage to introduce some new people to the organization. And we certainly hope to at least break even financially.

While galas may eventually be abandoned, for now, they still have an important role at many organizations, including the one I’m supporting. That’s undeniable.

That said, here are two comments about galas worth considering.

A gala is not major gift fundraising, nor does it really have anything to do with philanthropy… in rare cases, it provides enough net revenue to justify having one. A gala is almost 100% transactional in nature. In other words, it’s not about connecting a donor’s specific passions and interests with the need you’re addressing. To be honest, it’s creating an avenue for you to invite donors and their friends to, for one night, feel good about what you do.
That’s not Philanthropy.
Can it be useful for cultivating major donors? Yes, in some cases. Can it inspire some folks to become donors? Yes, in some cases. Is it possible to make more net revenue by doing a gala than by cultivating major donors? No.
From veritus group.com.

Use your galas as a chance to continue showcasing your work, but be mindful that they may not be the centerpiece of your fundraising strategy forever… Don’t let the changing landscape around events catch your organization off guard. Galas may not be going anywhere in the next few years, but they’re likely to lose importance as millennials take on a greater share of our donor bases. Now is the time to rethink your plan and get ready for those changing dynamics.
From Team Kat and Mouse.

Also see this article, Nonprofits turn to tech to court younger more diverse donors.

Are you also facing difficulties in promoting a gala? Do you face challenges in marketing at a nonprofit because of how certain activities could be, or are, negatively perceived?

And speaking of fundraising:

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. 

How nonprofits can leverage LinkedIn

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It’s clunky, it needs a design update, it rarely gets referred to any more in articles about social media, but LinkedIn can be a valuable resource for nonprofits and other community groups and they should be using it regularly. Using even just the free features on LinkedIn will increase awareness about an organization’s work and it may lead to better board recruitment, more event attendance, more program participants and more donors, as well as greater awareness of progress among current supporters.

Here’s how your nonprofit or community program should be using the free features on LinkedIn:

  • Your organization should have a profile on the site and should ask all of its employees, former employees, board members and other volunteers to link to it in their list of job and volunteering roles. Your organization should also ask all of these people to regularly “like” the posts by the organization, if they feel comfortable doing so (but emphasize it is NOT a requirement).
  • Your organization should post public events to the LinkedIn events feature and then share these on the organizational profile.
  • Your organization should post updates to its organizational profile on LinkedIn – just like you do on Facebook, but perhaps with a more formal tone. Remember: LinkedIn is a web site for professionals to talk about their work and expertise, not for cat memes.
  • Your organization can ask employees, former employees, board members and other volunteers to share your organization’s LinkedIn status updates and to comment on such – but only if they feel comfortable doing so. Remind them that this is not a requirement and there will be no repercussions for not doing it (except for maybe your marketing manager!).

In addition, staff members can also join various LinkedIn groups and participate in such – but it’s their choice what they join and you should never ask them what groups they are on. But you can remind them that they should share info about your organization IF it’s on topic for whatever group they are on. These activities can further create awareness of the organization and a positive image.

You can also use the fee-based features on LinkedIn for paid roles. If you post a job, you ABSOLUTELY should reveal the salary in that posting. You can also use the job posting feature to post volunteering roles – I recommend using it for board member recruitment, but in such listings, making it clear that it’s an unpaid role, emphasizing the time requirements, and being explicit that not all applicants will be accepted.

I’ve been using LinkedIn on behalf of West Tuality Habitat for Humanity. I also used it some years ago to recruit board members for a cultural arts organization that funds nonprofits in the county where I live in Oregon. It has absolutely been worth the time investment – and most of the time, I’m just cutting and pasting info I’m already posting to Facebook or our web site – there’s been no need to create unique content. It takes seconds, not minutes, to keep info up-to-date on LinkedIn.

Is your nonprofit leveraging LinkedIn? How has it been working out for you?

Also see: