Jayne Cravens is an internationally-recognized trainer, researcher and consultant. Her work is focused on communications, volunteer involvement, community engagement, and management for nonprofits, NGOs, and government initiatives. She is a pioneer regarding the research, promotion and practice of virtual volunteering, including virtual teams, microvolunteering and crowdsourcing, and she is a veteran manager of various local and international initiatives. Jayne became active online in 1993, and she created one of the first web sites focused on helping to build the capacity of nonprofits to use the Internet. She has been interviewed for and quoted in articles in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press, as well as for reports by CNN, Deutsche Well, the BBC, and various local radio stations, TV stations and blogs. Resources from her web site, coyotecommunications.com, are frequently cited in reports and articles by a variety of organizations, online and in-print. Women's empowerment and women's full access to employment and education options remains a cross-cutting theme in all of her work. Jayne received her BA in Journalism from Western Kentucky University and her Master's degree in Development Management from Open University in the U.K. A native of Kentucky, she has worked for the United Nations, lived in Germany and Afghanistan, and visited more than 30 countries, many of them by motorcycle. She is currently based near Portland, Oregon in the USA.
The Washington Postpublished an editorial on Monday by Katherine Turk, an associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the author of. The headline and subhead:
Volunteering and generosity are no substitutes for government programs.
Conservatives have weaponized Americans’ desire to help to attack the social safety net.
…as we honor these selfless acts, we should also recall National Volunteering Week’s dark origins story, when president Richard Nixon distorted benevolence to serve the least generous of goals. This history makes it clear that volunteering cannot stand in for government provided support…
…(President) Nixon, a Republican, set out to change the conversation about what the government owed to citizens when he became president in 1969. In particular, he sought to shrink Aid to Families With Dependent Children (often called simply “welfare”), the program that paid modest sums to low-income families. He also wanted to fulfill his campaign promise to be a president of “law and order” by redirecting War on Poverty funds into expanding incarceration and more aggressive policing in urban communities of color.
To lay the groundwork for these changes, Nixon took up his predecessors’ focus on volunteerism, and warped it. Many Americans needed assistance, Nixon claimed, but their generous fellow citizens could meet those needs. Volunteer programs should replace government-funded and run services… Nixon outlined an ambitious vision in which teens tutored youths; business leaders mentored aspiring entrepreneurs; housewives cooked for elderly neighbors, and those elderly served as foster grandparents. Most anyone could be recruited to aid another person free.
This praise for volunteerism helped erode the notion that basic sustenance was a right — something for which Americans shouldn’t have to rely upon the vagaries of charity.
I strongly encourage you to read the entire editorial. As for me, I love volunteer engagement, I love volunteerism – and I absolutely agree with this editorial.
I won’t repeat myself – I have blogged about this so many times. I’ll let those past blogs speak for me:
A coalition of nonprofits in my hometown in Kentucky asked me to put together a two-hour webinar on risk management in social media. And I did. I delivered it in early November 2020.
When I put together a new training on a subject I’ve not trained on before, I do a lot of research on the subject, to make sure my recommendations are timely and accurate. While I can base a lot of my trainings and blogs on my own experiences, I want to see what others are saying and doing as well.
For instance, for this workshop, I researched who “owns” a person’s online activities – when is a social media account the property of an individual and when is it the property of their workplace? The answer is different now than it was back in the 1990s when I directed The Virtual Volunteering Project. When are you speaking online such that it could bring your employer or program where you volunteer into disrepute – and can you be fired for that – and when is it your personal, individual opinion that your employer cannot take into consideration regarding your employment or volunteering? There have been a fair number of controversies about this over the years, and I was surprised at what I found.
I also researched people being fired for social media posts on their own, personal social media accounts and found that, often, those accounts were NOT public. How common is it? It’s very common. Here’s a sampling of what I found:
A Virginia car company fired an employee in 2014 for posting what it considered “racist and other inappropriate posts,” noting in its apology that the company “does not condone nor does it tolerate racism, bigotry or any other expression of prejudice or discrimination against anyone of any race, gender or religion.”
Justine Sacco, the PR executive fired in 2013 over her racist and inappropriate tweets (there was more than one) just before she boarded a plane.
Anthony David Weiner, who represented New York’s 9th congressional district from January 1999 until June 2011, winning seven terms as a Democrat and never receiving less than 60% of the vote – and then resigned from Congress in June 2011 after he sent a sexually suggestive photo to a woman via Twitter and it was publicized.
Employees, consultants and volunteers being fired, or having their contracts not renewed, because of posts they made to social media that disparaged certain groups or advocated violence, even via their own, personal, not public social media accounts, is something I’ve been paying attention to since 2011, via this thread on the TechSoup online community forum.
It’s not a black or white issue regarding firing someone for social media posts: while employers can and do fire employees over social media issues, there are also instances where it would potentially be illegal to do so and employees have been reinstated or been awarded financial compensation. This article from 2018 does the best job, IMO, of explaining when you may, and may not, fire someone for a social media post. This 2020 article from the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) is also excellent.
But I really didn’t want to get bogged down in my training on whether or not someone should be fired regarding a social media post, not only because I’m not a lawyer, but because I don’t think that’s what’s needed in such a training for nonprofits, libraries, etc. Instead, I focused on how to prevent or, at least, reduce the likelihood of such posts from happening at all and what to do when they do happen, from a PR perspective in terms of response.
The reality is that the most common problems nonprofits, charities, NGOs, schools and other mission-based programs will face from social media use by employees won’t relate to a lawsuit – they will relate to public reaction to something posted or “liked” or followed by an employee, consultant, volunteer or client from the program. And I believe the program’s body of work and body of social media posts, as well as that organization’s relationship with the community, are the greatest counter to negative fallout from a social media mistake or from one staff person who turns out to have a deeply-ceded prejudice that could affect their work with others.
I had a four-pronged approach to suggest to the audience about risk management in using social media:
You want to create and promote a culture that better discourages, even prevents, social media missteps.
You want to create and promote written policies that better discourage and prevent social media missteps.
You need to talk to employees, consultants and volunteers frankly about social media use, because conversations reinforce to staff that they need to be thoughtful about what they are posting and “liking” or following online, at all times, even when they are “off the clock.”
You want to have a strategy for how you will respond to when an employee or volunteer violates your social media policies and/or makes statements or likes or follows something online, even “off the clock”, that bring your organization or program into disrepute.
I spent a LOT of time emphasizing how to prevent inappropriate social media posts by employees, consultants and volunteers from happening in the first place and what to do to now so that it will mitigate damage when an inappropriate social media post surfaces. I think the most important strategy for a nonprofit, charity, government program, etc. on both of these points is establishing and reinforcing an agency’s culture regarding being a welcoming place, onsite and online, for all people, regardless of their age, race, gender identification, citizenship or residency status, disabilities, religion (or lack there of) or sexual preference.
You need to say, bluntly, in writing, in interviews, in new employee and new volunteer orientations, etc., that you are an organization that recognizes deep-ceded historic inequities and systematic racism in society, including the local community, and that your program is committed to evaluating its activities through the lense of equity and social justice and inclusion.
The more you emphasize this culture, the more some candidates for employment or volunteering will screen themselves out of your organization – someone who cherishes the activity of insulting and demeaning others or denies social inequities or who follows people who promote prejudice and conspiracy theories is not going to want to volunteer nor work with you otherwise if you are so upfront about your agency’s commitments.
Social media is worthwhile and even necessary for a nonprofit, NGO, charity, school, government agency or any mission-based program to use. You harm your organization or program and exclude vast numbers of donors, volunteers, clients and other supporters by not using it.
Agencies can’t come from a place of fear in using social media. If they do, they’ll never realize the wonderful potential of social media to connect with audiences.
Programs must realize that there is no way to prevent any bad thing from ever happening via something an employee, consultant or volunteer says or writes or likes or follows online, and that they cannot completely control employee, consultant and volunteer behavior, online and off.
An agency should engage in activities regularly that emphasize its values to employees, consultants and volunteers.
An agency should have written policies regarding confidentiality (not just online), privacy (not just online), and the program’s official online and print communications.
An agency should have written suggestions & other communications regarding “using common sense” online.
Employees, consultants, volunteers & maybe clients need training in social media.
There are ways to effectively address social media messages or other activities by employees, consultants and volunteers that reflect poorly on your agency or even bring it into disrepute.
Would you like for me to do a training for your organization? Here’s more about my online trainings / webinars. I can create, and have created, trainings on a variety of subjects, and trainings on communications tools and techniques for nonprofits, particularly small nonprofits, are my favorite. My trainings are based on practice and real-world experience: I am a manager of volunteers and a volunteer myself, I have a great deal of experience in communications for nonprofits and international aid agencies, and I continually keep up-to-date on what various programs, large and small, are doing with regard to community engagement.
If you are looking for training on virtual volunteering, I highly recommend you first view this series of online videos I prepared that, in around one hour, will give you a clear understanding of virtual volunteering and how you can pursue it at your organization.
Couple viewing these free videos with purchasing and reading my book, The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, and you will have all that you need for launching or expanding a robust virtual volunteering scheme at your nonprofit, charity, school, etc. 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. And it’s far, far cheaper than hiring me as a consultant or trainer regarding virtual volunteering – though you can still do that, particularly if it’s regarding some specific aspect of virtual volunteering, let setting up an online mentoring program.
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.
If you write anything online, whether it’s blog or a comment on Facebook or even a caption on an online photo, you could become a target for online harassment – insulting posts on social media that call you out by name, insulting comments in reply to your posts on social media and blogs and online communities, down votes on communities that allow such, text messages that criticize you, your work, your family, etc.
The only way to avoid it? Never do anything online at all, ever. And that’s unrealistic.
Women, in particular, are targets of abuse online, and this misogyny in digital spaces, because it is very personal in nature, can lead to women feeling degraded, terrified, even somehow to blame for daring to take up space online. This targeted hate against women impacts the inclusiveness of the online public sphere through the chilling effect it creates for women’s public participation. — from “Articulating a Feminist Response to Online Hate Speech: First Steps“, from Bot Populi, October 9, 2020.
If your organization has a marketing director that publishes anything online at all, or a social media manager, or an online discussion / forum manager, etc., senior management needs to be aware that the people in these roles are very likely getting anger thrown their way, at best, and perhaps even demeaning or harassing comments.
What should you do?
Regularly ask anyone who interacts with the public online (as well as offline) how they are, in a way that lets them know that YOU know that hostility might be thrown their way. “How are you?” isn’t enough. Ask bluntly, “Is everything okay online? I’d like to know if you are getting any insulting or harassing remarks. I know that often happens and I want you to know I’m here to support you.”
Direct staff members to screen capture any message directed at them personally that they feel is disparaging, insulting, harassing or threatening. Don’t wait until you hear about hostility online – send an official memo reminding staff of this.
If the person or people targeting your staff are violating a social media or community platform’s terms of service, direct your staff person to report them to that company. You or others on your staff should report as well.
Tell your staff person they have to right to block or ban anyone who is harassing them online from your organization’s online communities and other online spaces. You may want the staff person to discuss this ban or block with a senior staff person and to document the action in some way (when, who and why).
Your comments and questions to the person that is experiencing the “haters” online that can be helpful:
Tell me what’s happening.
Wow, this is really awful. What an annoying/horrible/disturbing thing to be happening.
Are you scared? What can we do to help you feel safe?
I hope you know we are here for you, we care about you and I want you to tell me any fears you have or challenges you are having.
Should we ask our staff and even our volunteers to go to such-and-such platform and upvote your posts, to counter the down-voting that has been happening?Do you need staff and volunteers to comment positively on your posts for a while, to counter the negativity and show that you aren’t alone?
Do you need to take a break from online activities for a while?
Do you have ideas on what you think we should do?
Comments and questions that are NOT helpful:
If you are going to be online, this is how it is. There’s no way to prevent it.
You need to come up with a way to prevent this in the future.
I’m going to take over our social media channel and online community (do this only after asking the person if this is what they think would be a good idea, because your taking over/stepping in can be seen by others as a sign that the person is lacking the abilities or temperament for the role).
Silence
I have been the target of online harassment and trolling. In 2020 and this year, it’s escalated to a point such that I have had to seek legal counsel. I’ve been online since the early 1990s and have never experienced hate and abuse online at these levels until last year. If someone like me, who posts about benign subjects like volunteer engagement and nonprofit public relations and tech use in nonprofits, can become the target of online trolls, any nonprofit social media manager can as well. They need your support to help counter that hate.
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.
Below is a question and answer from an interview with by Paul Salopek on the post-pandemic world, and I think its message is something every person that wants to volunteer abroad, or any person that wants to be a humanitarian worker abroad, needs to reflect on:
How can storytellers, who are often used to traveling and seeking stories out in the field, adapt to the new reality and continue telling the stories while staying at home?
I’ve always suggested to journalism students that it’s easy to jet off to some war and make your name covering such dramatic material. It’s actually the most unimaginative, even lazy, way to success. And I say this as a former war reporter. It’s much harder—but far more impressive, in my opinion—to document the same human drama at home. On your city block. In your house. If you tell me that the spiritual, existential dread of a lonesome woman or man in a middle-class suburb is somehow less interesting or “authentic” than a refugee’s woes, I’ll tell you that you are in danger of producing shallow cartoons, not original, impactful work. Take the lockdown as a challenge. Dig deeper into the warzone of your own heart.
A thousand times this! I feel exactly the same way about people that say they want to volunteer abroad but have not done locally whatever it is they want to do in another country: it’s an unimaginative, lazy way of thinking about helping others and making a difference. It is far, far more impressive to engage in meaningful local volunteering opportunities helping educate people with HIV, helping immigrants and refugees, helping unsheltered people, helping foster kids, helping people access the critical services they need, helping to educate people about their rights, introducing arts or sports or outdoor recreation to people in your own community. If you tell me helping abroad is somehow more “authentic” than helping in your own community – or even another community in your own country – I’ll tell you the same thing: you are in danger of producing shallow cartoons, not original, impactful work. In fact, I’ll tell you you’re in danger of promoting a colonialist, even racist, view of the world.
I’m not at all opposed to wanting to work or volunteer abroad. But I am opposed to looking at it as something primarily to help yourself, to give you some spiritual experience, some experience that is completely different than issues in your own country, and something that is more genuine, more lofty than doing the same work locally.
When I moved back to the USA after living and working abroad for eight years, I decided I was going to try to do locally what I had done abroad. It has not been easy: I am looked at with much more suspicion here in Oregon than in communities in Afghanistan, Egypt or Ukraine. In those places, I had the label as “from the United Nations” and “foreign expert.” Here, I’m an outsider who can’t possibly think of the issues faced in local communities in Oregon as worthwhile or exciting as the other places I’ve been. When I go to local government meetings, volunteer at political candidate forums, apply to join a citizens’ advisory group, apply to volunteer with a nonprofit or even apply for a job, people will ask questions with an incredulous tone, like “But why do you want to be in Oregon instead of one of those really exciting places?” and “Why do you want to work here at this government office instead of abroad for some exciting international agency?” Never mind that the work is almost exactly the same. Yes, really, it’s oh-so-similar: researching local conflicts and grudges, understanding local history, attending local events, being respectful of local culture, being careful with word choices in order to stay neutral, filling out lots of forms, writing lots of reports, producing lots of slides for presentations, finding informal acts and conversation points that can build trust (being aware of weddings, births, graduations and other family events, sharing meals, etc.), knowing my neighbors and their complexities and navigating such as necessary (that house is a place for people who have to stay sober, this man has an extensive gun collection, that woman gets angry about dogs peeing on her lawn, this house gets a lot of visits by the police), and so forth.
There’s a nonprofit in the town where I live now that engages in work with local immigrants that is exactly the same as work an initiative I worked in as part of a government-UN partnership abroad: they train women in creating and managing their own small businesses and micro enterprises, most regarding agriculture. And the executive director of this nonprofit was incredulous when I told her how similar her work was to what I’d been a part of in Afghanistan: the approach, the challenges, the conflicts, and on and on.
And local experiences are SO valuable in work abroad: I watched other foreign co-workers feeling uncomfortable in deeply-religious Islamic communities where there were prayers before government meetings, while I recalled my hometown in Kentucky where prayers are said before just about any gathering or meeting (including a presentation I was doing regarding social media management). And my familiarity with professional wrestling has proven valuable everywhere from work with inner-city kids in Washington, DC to talking to security guards in Egypt.
This isn’t to say you shouldn’t want to go abroad. Traveling abroad is an extraordinary experience. Let’s remember that Mr. Salopek is traveling right now, despite the pandemic – he’s not in his home country, telling local stories: he’s been traveling for more than seven years on an unprecedented transcontinental 21,000-mile odyssey along the migration route of early humans. And I am writing as someone that’s been to more than 35 countries and as someone who has worked abroad in humanitarian work, and I cannot deny that it wasn’t an adventure and, at times, as mental and spiritual high. Nor can I deny that I am dreaming of getting a new stamp in my passport.
And like me, Mr. Salopek is a man of privilege – it’s nice to be able to say “Stop over-planning your life so much,” but it also has to be acknowledged that most people in the world don’t have the luxury of living the life that Mr. Salopek does, and that a white man crossing a country’s border gets very different treatment than a black man. A white man working at a foreign itinerant farm laborer is going to be treated differently than a woman of any ethnicity.
But with all that acknowledged, I believe, fervently, that you have to have done locally whatever it is you want to do internationally if you truly want to be “authentic.”
Your thoughts? Let’s hear them in the comments below.
If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into developing material, researching information, preparing articles, updating pages, etc., here is how you can help.
I am regularly reading posts and getting emails from unvaccinated young people who want to “get away” from the lockdowns in their own country by volunteering abroad. And these people are stunned that I respond with my very strongly-worded assertion that this is a horrific, selfish idea.
If you are being told by health authorities in your own country that you shouldn’t be gathering with others because it’s not safe, why do you think you should be allowed / approved of to go abroad?
When you’re fully vaccinated for #COVID19, you can start doing some things again, like gathering indoors w/ other fully vaccinated people. Still protect yourself & others in public places – wear a mask, stay at least 6ft apart, & avoid crowds. More: https://bit.ly/3btJaFU.
The CDC’s guidance here goes for volunteering abroad too.
For people who want to volunteer abroad now: please, please note that there is a global pandemic happening right now. As of the end of March 2021, around three million people were counted as having died from diseases associated with the novel coronavirus (2019-nCoV), primarily COVID19, and not only is that death toll probably a gross underestimation, it also doesn’t count the many more who have died because they could not get the medical care they needed because of how many resources have had to be diverted to treating COVID-19. In addition, there is no number regarding how many people have been permanently disabled from the disease.
Travel by non-vaccinated people spreads the disease, and spreads the variants of the disease to new areas. In short, travel by non-vaccinated people kills people. And that includes people traveling abroad to “volunteer” because, you know, lockdowns are such a bummer.
The Peace Corps is NOT sending volunteers abroad right now, both because it wants to keep volunteers safe and because it wants to keep communities abroad safe. There is no ethical, credible volunteer hosting or volunteer sending organization that is mobilizing foreign volunteers and sending them abroad for any roles except for critically-needed services, like medical care or public health education, such as through UN Volunteers.
If you are eying a company that says it is sending volunteers abroad right now to rescue turtles or build water wells or lead English classes, that company is unscrupulous and reckless and just wants your money.
And if I’m looking at candidates for a job and I see on a CV that someone went abroad with one of these companies during a global pandemic, I’m going to put that candidate aside, because no way would I consider someone so reckless for a workplace I’m in charge of.
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.
When it comes to talking about volunteer engagement, I am just not at all about bunnies and fluff and warm fuzzies and hugs. I don’t like talking about volunteers as nice but, rather, as necessary, for a whole range of reasons that have nothing to do with money. I think talking about volunteers in terms of warm fuzzies devalues both what volunteers do and what the nonprofits and other programs they support do.
I also cringe over the idea of entitlement regarding volunteers: those people who believe that their desire to do a certain kind of volunteering should be all they need to get to do that volunteering, regardless of what people actually need.
I admit it: I’m not very kind in response to such people. Especially lately.
There are statements and attitudes about volunteering that make my blood boil. They contribute to volunteer engagement not being taken seriously and not being financially supported, and in some cases, to a patriarchal, colonialist view of volunteering, and excuse for volunteers for having that view.
Here are some of those statements that send me over the edge:
Volunteering is great, but it’s not serious, like a job. Volunteers can never do something as well as someone that’s paid to do that thing. they can never be experts.
People can volunteer whenever they might have some time and solve homelessness, create economic opportunities leading to equity, stop climate change, and solve other serious social and environmental issues. Volunteering is something you do when you don’t really have anything else to do or when you feel like doing it.
I feel like I would be good at counseling people, because I do it with friends / at my bartending job, so I should get to counsel people as a volunteer, but I don’t want to have to go through a bunch of training.
I like animals, so I should get to volunteer with wildlife, like elephants and baby orphaned tigers.
My company’s employees want to work with kids, so the local school should let us host a pizza party for the sixth graders this Friday, from noon to 1.
People in poor communities wish people with really “good hearts” from other places will come to their communities and do things local people would like to do themselves: build schools, care for orphaned children, build wells, care for wildlife, etc. And those people in those poor communities want to give these foreign volunteers free housing and these people are so grateful that these volunteers come there, even for just a week or two.
Volunteers are cost-free.
I read comments like these all the time on Quora and Reddit. Here’s a perfect example of such. I’ve edited for brevity (the original post is much longer):
I am curious if working for nonprofits or volunteering can become be lucrative at all. I wish I could just live off tips or donations from people that I’ve made their lives better.
I spend a lot of time just talking to people about their problems. Genuinely listening and focusing on them, trying to guide or nurture towards where they are looking to grow, or nudge them towards solutions that are just out of reach. I spend a few minutes a day just answering posts in FB vent groups or lonely people. Just generally check in with people and see how I can make their day better.
I always liked the sense of freedom from volunteering. Especially in a situation where you can work as much or as little as you want. Come in whenever, or on a loose schedule, etc.
Is there low pressure, humanistic jobs, volunteer work, or non profit work that would support a minimalist lifestyle but provide enough to not stagnate? I’m not afraid of labor, but would want to do it on my own terms.
The privilege in this post… the vanity… the stereotypes about not just volunteering but about the help people in crisis need, that it’s all something you can do whenever you might feel like it, and just do it, ’cause, you know, you have a good heart and you really “get” people… yes, my blood is boiling.
While I absolutely believe volunteering can be fun, that it can be informal, and that it can be episodic (one-time event, no further obligation), I also believe volunteering should be something that has some sort of actual impact for the organization, that it should serve the organization and its mission primirarily, and that it shouldn’t be mainly about giving a volunteer a feel-good “look, I helped!” experience. While I believe volunteers can have great ideas about what volunteers should do – virtual volunteering has been driven mostly by volunteers, in fact – I also believe that the final say regarding volunteer engagement is always what the organization and its clients need.
I also believe volunteering, even for just a few hours, is a real commitment, because the issues addressed by volunteer are real, sometimes even urgent, issues. Come in whenever you might feel like it? I would fire volunteers for that. It’s profoundly disrespectful to the causes nonprofits attempt to address.
The work of nonprofits is serious. That work addresses homelessness, it helps the environment, it helps people experiencing domestic violence, it helps communities with a range of quality of life issues, it helps people recover from disasters and on and on. It is not for “whenever I might feel like it because, you know, freedom!” Volunteering is not for the cavalier. It’s not for photos for your Instagram page.
My advice to the person I quoted above? Maybe doing some episodic volunteering, like cleaning up a beach – but, you know, only if you might maybe feel like it.
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.
Wow. The Ellis Archive has released a bunch of volunteer management books for FREE. These are books that Susan Ellis sold for years through her company, Energize, Inc.
If you don’t know: Susan was the world’s expert on the effective management of volunteers, and her company, Energize, was the world’s largest publisher of books on volunteer management. I was her disciple when it came to volunteer management, one of many. And she was the first promoters of virtual volunteering. We wrote The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook together (it’s not free, however).
If you are a person that works with volunteers, or wants to, all of these books are worth your time to read (don’t just download them!)
Beyond Police Checks, by Linda Graff (this book is THE book regarding safety in programs involving volunteers. I don’t think any program should involve volunteers with children or the general public without reading this book. It’s life-changing).
Building Staff Volunteer Relations, by Ivan H. Scheier (Mr. Scheier was the first person who compiled information about the management of volunteers in any kind of meaningful, substantial way – Susan constantly promoted his work, which never lost its relevance).
Funded by the Susan J. Ellis Foundation, the Ellis Archive primarily consists of digitized documents from Susan J. Ellis‘ personal resource library. The Ellis Archive is searchable by title, source, year, author, and keyword topic. Special tags also exist for Research, Non-US/International, and AVA history items.Items in the archive are organized into 32 keyword topics, with some cross-referencing. These topics also represent a broad range of mission-focused areas, such as the arts, criminal justice, social services, the environment, healthcare, government, education, etc. Most content originates from 1970 through 2004. However, there are seminal works dated as early as 1947, and a few documents as recent as 2010. Also included are numerous items from the private libraries of two pioneer volunteer leaders – Harriet Naylor and Ivan Scheier, prodigious writers and highly respected mentors to Susan. Much of Scheier’s work was originally digitized by Regis University and now continues to be accessible as part of this Archive. In addition, the Minnesota Office of Volunteer Services Resource Library gave a few of its publications to Susan when that office closed in 2002; these publications are now a part of this Archive. The Archive also includes historical items documenting some of the history of the Association for Volunteer Administration (AVA).
A colleague of mine in another country wants to improve her report writing and writing for the web. She works in a government water & sanitation project. English is not her first language. She has a number of audiences she must write for, via various reports, briefing papers, project reports and the web: donors (mostly foreign governments), other government offices in her own country, the media in her own country and residents of her country, especially those her office is trying to help.
I think resources on plain language are the best guidance for writers anywhere. I use my journalism training and experience, which was steeped in plain language, to write reports, and at UN offices, I got a tremendous amount of great feedback from colleagues about my reports, along the lines of “Wow, I could understand this!”
Here are the free online resources I’m recommending to my colleague. Note that some of these resources link to even more resources:
Communicate Health, a health education and communication firm specializing in improving health literacy through user-centered design, research, and content development. Resources promote usability and accessibility of public health materials.
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.
I keep seeing this comment in blogs and articles and tweets:
“Will virtual volunteering continue after the pandemic is over?”
Of course, it will. Just as virtual volunteering was happening BEFORE the pandemic, at THOUSANDS of organizations. Why in the world wouldn’t it continue?
Altogether, these videos cover developing initial online roles and activities for volunteers, how to rapidly engage online volunteers, how to expand virtual volunteering, how to adjust policies, how to address safety and confidentiality, the importance of keeping a human touch in interactions, addressing the most common questions and resistance to virtual volunteering and much, much more. You have my permission to show them at any conference or workshop or class you might be doing regarding virtual volunteering.
For some more advanced topics regarding virtual volunteering:
If your program wants to better use online tools to support all of your volunteers, including those providing service onsite, or if your program wants to create a robust virtual volunteering scheme, such as an online mentoring program or online volunteer engagement as skills-building or other extension of your mission , check out the Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook: Fully Integrating Online Service Into Volunteer Involvement. The book can help you fully explore the reality of remote volunteer engagement, in terms of policy and procedures, to ensure success. This book was helpful long before the global pandemic spurred so many organizations to, at last, embrace virtual volunteering. 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 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.
By contrast, the current administration, headed by President Joe Biden, has designated $1 billion in the Fiscal Year 2021 Reconciliation Bill, known as the American Rescue Plan, for the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS). The investment will help to stabilize existing national service programs, increase the benefits for those who serve, and deploy additional full and part-time members to support their communities’ response to COVID-19.
Since the coronavirus outbreak, members of AmeriCorps and AmeriCorps Seniors have acted quickly and creatively to address gaps in services and persistent inequities that have only been worsened by the pandemic… The additional funding provides a triple bottom line: the opportunity to engage more Americans in pandemic relief efforts, such as helping schools safely reopen and tackling the growing hunger crisis; an important accelerator for increasing equity in national service; and a proven pathway help prepare young people prepare for future jobs, particularly for populations hardest hit by the pandemic.
Make no mistake: this funding from Congress, lead by the President is, in part, because of vocal activism by nonprofits and others to their US Representatives and Senators. It’s long overdue for nonprofits to speak out on these and so many other issues. You ARE allowed to do this if you have nonprofit status!
FYI, Voices for National Service was founded in 2003 and is a coalition of national service programs, state service commissions and individual champions, who work to ensure Americans of all ages and backgrounds have the opportunity to serve and volunteer in their community.
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.
