Author Archives: jcravens

About jcravens

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.

How to do a fundraising, volunteer recruitment or other video on the cheap for your nonprofit.

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a primitive image, like a cave painting, of a figure holding a smart phone under a sun.

The staff at nonprofits, no matter its size, no matter its focus, need at least one short video that succinctly explains their programs and their impact, or a video that shows how the organization engages volunteers. They may also need a video that helps onboard program participants or explains safety measures.

Your small nonprofit with just a handful of staff – maybe just a few employees, maybe just one employee, maybe all volunteers (unpaid staff) – may think it cannot make such a video, because it can’t afford a professional videographer. In fact, you can, and with just the tech assets you have.

Making a short video for your nonprofit with just the tech you have.
This resource on my web site takes you step-by-step in how to identify the hardware and software you have right now, via your smart phones and laptops and operating systems, and how you can leverage that very basic technology, as well as the photos you may already have on hand, to create videos you need, from videos of clients explaining the impact of your programs to short videos for Facebook and Instagram reels, Tik Tok, and whatever else shows up as the fun new social media.

If you want to see the video I made for the Habitat affiliate I work for now, the video I made on the cheap, it’s linked off the aforementioned page, but here’s the link to the video as well.

This is the first tech-focused resources I’ve created on my web site in YEARS. It’s nice to get back to the subject that inspired my web site back in 1996.

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. 

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My time as moderator on one of the most popular subreddits is at an end.

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Reddit Logo

For many years, I’ve moderated one of the most popular online communities on Reddit. Such communities are called subreddits, and the very popular subreddit I moderated for many years (but not the only one) is r/volunteer. The description, which has a character limit, reads:

Share volunteering experiences or attempts to volunteer (unpaid work for a CAUSE, like helping foster kids). Share vol opportunities for others or a paid or unpaid role for a manager of vols, or a resource for such. Ask questions or for advice on recruiting, engaging & supporting vols, or about policies or safety for vols & those they serve. Discuss volunteerism ethics. 

The description also notes: This sub is a highly moderated.

I’ve been a moderator and facilitator of online communities and discussion boards in association with events since the 1990s. My first gig was on the soc.org.nonprofit newsgroup (remember USENET?). I’ve done these moderating and facilitating gigs mostly as a volunteer (unpaid). Why? Because I enjoy networking with others in my professional areas, from volunteer engagement to humanitarian response to nonprofit management to communications for development and on and on. I’ve been a part of even more online communities as just a member – asking questions, answering questions, debating, and lurking. Online communities have always been what I loved most about the Internet, far more than the World Wide Web or any streaming service. Participation in online communities has landed me short-term paid gigs and full-time paid jobs, including with the United Nations. Participation has also given me some wonderful learning experiences and terrific professional colleagues.

I’m VERY proud of my many years moderating and facilitating the volunteer subreddit in particular. It has taken several hours a week to moderate and facilitate the group. It’s a group that has always been very popular on Reddit, but once I took over, membership exploded, and it got even more popular. It also had more on-topic posts, more on-topic comments and more viewers. What did I do so that the subreddit got more members, more viewers and much higher quality content?

One thing I noticed early on was a complete lack of quality control regarding posts on the subreddit. Misinformation about volunteering was everywhere, as were posts from very dodgy groups wanting foreign volunteers to pay a great deal of money to “help” in some developing country somewhere, and “nonprofits” that would give a person a letter, in exchange for a “donation,” saying they had completed online community service for the court. There were people recruiting volunteers but offering no information on who was behind the initiative, something I feel strongly puts people at risk for harm. There were also people asking for volunteers to engage in initiatives that many groups were begging people NOT to do, like create holiday cards for people in assisted living or children in hospitals. There were teens with no experience wanting to create mental health crisis lines – which could, of course, put more teens at risk and lead to teens being harmed. And on and on.

There were also frequently asked questions that were easily answered: how do I volunteer? How do I volunteer to explore a career? How do I volunteer to help animals? How do I volunteer to make me look good for a scholarship? Etc.

My goal in becoming the moderator of the group – and I was the only one, no one else wanted the role – was to get rules in place, get quality content posted regularly that addressed the FAQs, and counter all the misinformation.

Since I began moderating the group so many years ago, it has taken hours of my time every week:

  • reading every post,
  • writing and rewriting and rewriting the group rules as the group and the content evolves,
  • always giving a reason for deleting a post or comment,
  • welcoming someone who reposts because they’ve rewritten their message so that it fits the rules, complimenting good content,
  • creating meaningful content tags to that content is easier to find,
  • creating automated rules (such as requiring that the word “volunteer” appear somewhere in every post and comment),
  • addressing FAQs with detailed responses (and that sometimes means pointing people to previous responses),
  • regularly posting what I hope will be thread starters,
  • promptly banning trolls, people who won’t follow the rules, those trying to sell community service, etc.
  • trying to answer the many questions and comments that come in via modmail.
  • posting links to questions and comments to other social media, trying to get more people to respond with quality content or to raise awareness about an issue that I thought more volunteer management experts and consultants and volunteerism-focused organizations should know about.

I’ve always tried to be strategic and thoughtful in the writing and re-writing of every group rule, of every group structure, even of using the automod function. I created standard content tags for the group that I shadow tested for weeks, going back through years of posts and thinking, “which tag would this have if tags had been a thing then?” I never made a group change impulsively and I can justify every post deletion and every ban.

I think it speaks volumes that there are so many other subreddits that are focused on volunteering but have few or no rules regarding transparency, safety programs when vulnerable populations are involved, no prohibitions anywhere near what r/volunteer had – and those subreddits have never taken off. And I even linked to them on r/volunteer, so that people knew, if they didn’t like the rules, there were plenty of other places on reddit that had the “anything goes” vibe they claimed to be looking for.

I loved the experience of moderating r/volunteer in that I’ve gotten to help people volunteer and I think I’ve finally gotten through in a big way regarding why trying to be a volunteer can be so hard (because most organizations have zero volunteer management training, don’t have a person dedicated to volunteer engagement, and can’t get funding for such because foundations and corporations refuse to fund “overhead”). I’ve also really enjoyed seeing for myself just how much people under 40 really, REALLY want to give back to their communities and do good in the world. It’s why, when networking with volunteer management professionals elsewhere, I’ve been able to say, with confidence, that claims that “no one wants to volunteer” are not true. So much of my interactions on the subreddit have affirmed everything I’ve said for years about how to recruit volunteers and engage them effectively. The vindication has been wonderful.

But moderating has also meant a LOT of abuse and personal, nasty insults. I have kept those private from the members of the subreddit, because I see no reason to amplify that hate. I’m not talking about people who are criticizing my points of view; I’m talking about people who say vile things, things meant to terrify. I’ve also regularly been threatened with the filing of lawsuits (such has never been filed, BTW). Two different angry people called me at home – a consequence of me being transparent on Reddit about who I am, rather than hiding behind a cyber pseudonym.

But just as bad, and maybe worse, are the people who parachute in to the group for a few days and demand my credentials and demand that I prove I really am an expert regarding volunteer engagement; these are requests from people who won’t share their own credentials and are unaware that there were any global standards regarding volunteer management, unaware that there are global gatherings on the subject, etc.

Those constant demands for me to prove I am an expert, and the repeated “Why aren’t you doing it THIS way?” messages from people who rarely provide meaningful content has finally gotten too much.

And so, my time moderating the volunteer subreddit is at an end. Not ending how I wanted it to – I kept trying to recruit new moderators, so I could just be a regular member, but no one ever even tried to meet the criteria. But I’m done – as moderator and member.

I’ll stay as moderator, for now, on other subreddits – you can see all of them here. And active on even more. And I’ve reproduced Reddit4Good on my own Reddit page, and will keep that updated – no where else. If you ever see that list anywhere else, remember: I created it.

And one last note: I’ll always be frustrated with all of the volunteer management researchers and consultants out there, all of the leaders of volunteer management associations, all the volunteerism-promoting organizations like Points of Light and the Corporation for National Service, who would not even read the volunteer subreddit, let alone participate in it. For those consultants, researchers, nonprofits and associations to ignore what is probably the largest community focused on volunteerism is shameful.

Also see:

Is your nonprofit ready for an influx of SNAP recipients needing 80 hours of volunteering each month?

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graphic representing volunteers at work

Effective November 1, veterans, the homeless, recent foster care youth and adults ages 54-64 in the USA are no longer exempt from work requirements to receive food benefits for themselves and their families through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). This is a result of the “big, beautiful bill.”  

People in these groups are now going to have to work for pay or volunteer with a credible nonprofit for 80 hours a month in order to receive their SNAP benefits (once they start being funded again). 

It’s likely many USA nonprofits are going to see an increase in requests to volunteer as a result. One of the challenges is that you are going to get people who show up on Monday of the last week of the month and say, “I need to get 80 hours of volunteering this week.” That’s impossible.

Nonprofits: make sure you have information on your web site that notes your LIMITS on volunteering in terms of hours per week. How far in advance does a person need to apply with you to arrange 80 hours of volunteering in a month? And make sure staff know how to diplomatically, compassionately, respond to people desperate for volunteering hours that simply cannot be done in the amount of time requested at your nonprofit.

But please also think about ways you can accommodate at least a few people needing up to 80 hours of volunteering over an entire month.

You should talk to staff about this potential influx of volunteers and what it means for them in terms of supervising volunteers, filling out paperwork, etc.

These folks are going to be people who urgently need these hours and are completely stressed out about it. They need compassion, even if you can’t accommodate them – and especially if you can.

A great idea I heard from the Habitat ReStore in Beaverton, Oregon: put up a white board that says, “Tasks for the Day” and have staff write things that need to be done. A volunteer writes his or her name next to the task they are going to do, and then they go do it. Then they come back to the board when they are done and mark it “done” and move on to the next task.

Of course, the challenge is that staff have to come up with tasks. And be available to provide guidance for those tasks.

I have guidance on how to create tasks for volunteers – as well as ongoing roles for volunteers.

One more thing: if your nonprofit DOES accommodate people required to do community service, whether because of SNAP or the courts or classroom requirements, track how many volunteers you are involving as a result of these programs and find a way to define how much it is COSTING your organization to engage and support these volunteers. And make sure that cost is reported to your board, to your local elected officials and to your donors. Make sure they know that volunteers are never, ever cost free.

Read more about these SNAP requirements from the Kentucky Lantern and from the USDA.

Update Dec. 1, 2025, from CNN.

Why the Verboort Sausage & Kraut Festival is successful as a fundraiser & community event & what you can learn from it

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Verboort is an unincorporated community in Washington County, Oregon. It has less than 500 residents. It also has a very large Catholic Church and an adjacent, small Catholic School.

Back in 1934, the church and school started the Verboort Sausage and Sauerkraut Festival, with proceeds going for the upkeep of the school. It was small and attended by residents, families, and some people from surrounding villages.

Now, the one-day festival attracts about 10,000 people a year. The line for purchasing bulk sausage and sauerkraut starts forming four or five hours before sunrise. The cars that want to pick up ready-made dinners line up five hours before serving begins. The venue where dinner is served (rather than take aways) is continually packed from the moment it opens until it closes in the evening.

I’m just back, rain-soaked from standing in line for a take away meal, and covered in mud from the trek to and from the car parked in a farm field. And I’ve been wondering why this fundraising event is so amazingly successful.

Here’s what I think makes it successful year after year, even during COVID:

  • They’ve kept the festival simple in terms of what it serves. It’s pretty much the exact same meals, every year (pork sausages, sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, green beans, apple sauce, coleslaw, a roll and a piece of pie). No variation. They have the formula down – really hearty comfort food you want to eat in November – and they stick with it.
  • The food is incredible. I have never had mass-prepared meals that are this scrumptious. The sauerkraut is to die for – which is why they also sell it by the tub the day of.
  • The community was founded by six Dutch Catholic families, and the festival plays up the Dutch connection HUGELY. Actually, they get a little mixed up and play German Oktoberfest music too, but most people don’t know. The point is, this isn’t like any other festival anywhere else in Oregon. It makes it more than food – it’s an experience.
  • They grew slowly. What started off as maybe 100 people coming to a community feed has slowly blossomed. They didn’t immediately try to do something beyond their resources. People who enjoyed it returned – and told their friends. Then they started putting a sign out on the highway in farmer’s fields. Simple sign, name of the festival, “First Saturday in November.” SO easy to remember. Now, they will have TV crews come out to see the kraut-making process – and the local TV news always comes.
  • They know how to manage the crowd. This is a TINY town with ONE paved street going through it (not kidding). Yet, unless you are in line for a ready-to-take-away meal, you will rarely be in a traffic jam. You get directed to parking and you park quickly, no fuss, no muss. And that’s because…
  • Most of the festival is staffed by volunteers, and plenty of them. They are directing traffic, they are helping people park, they are taking orders, they are helping people find the right line, they are putting the meal trays together, etc. Some are students of the school, some are parents, some are residents, some are church parishioners from Verboort, some are parishioners from elsewhere, and some are people that just love this event and love being a part of it. SO MANY VOLUNTEERS.
  • I really cannot emphasize enough how well organized this event is. The volunteers are juggling orders and food and parking and cars like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s a well oiled machine.
  • Altogether, it feels like something you just have to go to if you live here. It feels like an event, a happening. It feels unique. You go even in crap weather. And I’m not Catholic and I don’t eat pork, but there I am, every year (the secret is that you park in the farm field and bring a wagon or a lot of bags, and you stand in line for the ready made meals – you can be there just 60 minutes before it opens and get all the food you want).

People come from Portland and Salem to this.

And many know it’s a fundraiser, but don’t know for what! I’ve done some informal polling, and people will say they like to support it because it’s a fundraiser, and when I ask for what, they’ll say, “for some school or something?” All that is important to them is that, in addition to the good food and unique experience they are supporting a “good cause” – even if they don’t know what it is.

There is a lot that smaller fundraising events could learn from this festival.

Also see:

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. 

Social networks continue to lose their influence & that hurts nonprofits. What to do?

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With so many newspapers and local radio stations long disappeared, with so many TV stations serving only an urban population an hour’s drive away, I’ve long come to rely hugely on a variety of online tools to promote whatever nonprofit I’m working for. That shouldn’t be a problem, according to so many media stories that tell us that everyone is online in one way or another, and that all young people are whatever the Social Media Platform Flavor of the Month is, right? I should have no problem getting my information out about events, volunteering, helping the community and more, because we’re all so networked.

But, in fact, it’s never been harder for me undertake public relations and marketing to reach a diversity of people, especially local people in the region where I live.

Once I start working with someone in their mid 40s or younger, or on the oh-so-rare occasion I talk with a teenager, I will, inevitably, ask, “Are you on any social media with your friends, like Instagram? Which platforms?” And most of the time, the answer is that they are not on whatever platform that’s the hot new thing; they might look at videos on TikTok, but their interactions with friends are on messaging apps, like WhatsApp or Signal. Or they do old-fashioned text messaging. I don’t even bother asking if they are on Facebook – they aren’t. Many listen to Spotify, but they pay for a subscription specifically so that they never hear any advertisements.

I’ll also ask “How do you get news?” And the answer is usually that they don’t. They listen to podcasts and gets LOTS of opinions. Lots and lots of opinions. But they don’t listen nor read actual news.

They don’t know if the high school has a soccer team or not, even if they went there as a student, let alone if that team won a state championship. They don’t know what production the local community theater is mounting because they didn’t even know there was a community theater. They don’t know that there’s a Habitat for Humanity affiliate in the area and they could volunteer there. They don’t know if the nearest firehouse is staffed by career people or volunteers or a mix of both. They don’t know who the mayor is. They don’t know about the giant data center being built in that field over there.

And how would they know any of this local information without a local newspaper, a local radio station, even a local podcast, or if they aren’t following a variety of local organizations on social media?

Back in the late 1980s, I worked at a theater that had tremendous success with advertising shows by paying to put a notice in the pay stub envelopes of some of the largest employers – but with most people doing direct deposit, that’s no longer an option. Putting a notice in a newsletter that they city sends with a utility bill is still a good option in some places to reach some people, but most young people sign up for paperless billing.

I live in a community that has no local TV and no local radio. It has two struggling semi-print newspapers which people under 50 here have never heard of. How do I reach these folks about events, volunteering opportunities, and legislative issues they need to know about and care about?

Direct mail, via traditional post? That’s an expense far out of reach for most small nonprofits.

I’ve noticed a LOT of businesses are back to using great big banners and other signage outside their properties to let people know about events and special deals. The town where I live has two places in town where it strings a banner over the street to announce various events, that everyone entering may notice. If your nonprofit can afford it, consider doing the same. Be sure to keep the messaging simple: people are going to see it as they glance up or over while driving, and have just a few seconds for the message to get through.

I wrote about this trend two years ago in this blog, Social media is losing its influence for nonprofits – what to do? In that blog, I suggested that cities revisit the community bulletin board model of the 1990s, which flourished in places like Cupertino. I believe those models could still work if they had essential information on them – not just when the next city council meeting is, but also where to find a role-playing game meetup, or a basketball pickup game.

I also think every city needs to think about creating a podcast. If starting a community radio is out of reach, then why not a daily or weekly or bi-weekly 30 minute podcast? Use it to:

  • List upcoming nonprofit and community events that week.
  • List events at the local high school that week (games, performances, fairs).
  • List events at the local senior center.
  • Remind people of important deadlines (for registering to vote, for submitting a ballot).
  • Remind people of local government meetings.
  • List obituaries.

Does your local high school have a speech team or drama club, or does your nearest college or university have a drama club or political studies? Recruit from those students to record the information. Sell a sponsorship for each broadcast to a local business. The most popular podcast platforms are Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube, and any online search will provide you with a plethora of guides on how to get your podcast on those channels.

If you are leveraging young people to produce the podcast, you’ve already got a built-in group of marketers who will share the podcast with friends on whatever app they are using these days. You need to also market the podcast in your usual ways: social media posts, web site announcement, flyer in your lobby, press release to media outlets, etc.

And don’t be surprised if podcast success leads to serious discussions about starting a local community radio station…

Also see:

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. 

The Undeniable Value of the Human Touch

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HAL from 2001 a space odyssey

I love that AI can see or find patterns. The advancements that can mean for everything from space exploration to medical treatment to analysis of ancient art are glorious to think about. I also love that AI can apply grammar and spelling rules to things I’ve written.

This is from the 2025 Human Development Report from the United Nations Development Programme:

AI-powered identification of bird species can enable users to better identify them in the future. The increased ability to identify species can, in turn, improve AI’s performance by directly contributing geolocated observations and uploading labelled sounds and images.

I love all of this.

However…

Have you ever seen a movie that you were assured by a trusted film critic was horrible and, in fact, it turned out you loved it? Or the opposite: he said it was wonderful and you loathed it?

Have you ever been told by a few people that someone you haven’t met yet through work or in your neighborhood was boring and not really worth hanging out with, but you did finally meet them and you thought they were hilarious and fun to be with?

Have you ever read a summary of a long report or a book, but then you read the report and you came to a very different conclusion than the summary?

Those scenarios are why I don’t trust AI for decision-making or for all things related to customer service and most client interactions. Those scenarios are why I want to keep interacting with clients and the community myself.

Whether I’m the director of a project or directing communications for a project, one of the first things I like to do is take some time to answer questions that come in via phone or email. It never turns out quite like it’s been portrayed to me, especially by an over-worked, under-trained administrative assistant or an executive director who has a million other priorities. Nothing teaches me more quickly what’s been working and what has not. Sure, I might come up with canned responses to frequently asked questions, but if that response doesn’t answer the person’s inquiry, I want to know about it.

And then there is the idea of care and support: for clients, for volunteers, for the community. Care is about awareness, concern and looking after something. Providing clear, easy-to-access and easy-to understand information for an audience is a part of caring about that audience, but it’s not all of it, because quality, sincere care – the kind that keeps clients coming back, that keeps volunteers engaged and keeps donors supporting the organization – is emotional and relational. When I listen to certain staff members talk on the phone with the clients of one of the nonprofits where I work, I know that AI is no substitute for those interactions – and that if we stuck those folks on an automated phone system or chatbot, we’d not only let them down, we would lose them.

I also would never trust AI to author most social media posts, nor answer most messages that come in via social media or an online group: I would never cede the incredible knowledge that comes from interacting with people, with actual humans, to AI.

I can’t imagine taking away one of the best ways ever to gather knowledge and build skills: interacting with people MYSELF.

I wrote about this back in 2017, in fact: No app can substitute for actually talking with people. The Tech Bros must really loathe talking to actual humans.

Also see:

My highlights from the 2025 Human Development Report from UNDP (the theme is artificial intelligence).

Nonprofits, don’t cede creativity or curiosity or customer relations to AI, & keep your use of AI ethical

Artificial Intelligence – friend or foe for nonprofits?

schedule social media posts? use with caution

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. 

Subreddits for Good Revisited

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Reddit Logo

Reddit was founded in 2005 is a community platform categorized around different interests. As of January 2025, Reddit had over 500 million people registered as users. 110.4 million daily active users and 416.4 million weekly active users, 44% of US Redditors were aged 18 to 29 years old and around 2 in 3 Reddit users were male. Redditors tend to be significantly younger than other online communities like Facebook, with less than 3% of users being 65 or over. 

These community members use the platform for highly targeted content, via whatever community, or subreddit, they subscribe to. And that, together with the demographics of the platform, are why I find Reddit so valuable for outreach: I can reach a group that’s hard for me to reach otherwise (people under 35, as well as young men) and I can target specific groups, like just the users that live in the town where I live (because there’s a subreddit for that), women that ride motorcycles.

If you have struggled to connect with young, male audiences regarding your nonprofit’s work, or if you want to get a handle on what young people say regarding nonprofits, volunteering, civic engagement, etc., Reddit is a great place to get to know.

Reddit has not only given me amazing insights into how young adults think about volunteering. It has also:

  • Helped a nonprofit I support FINALLY land a group of volunteers from a very, very large and well known company in our area that we had been trying to reach for a couple of years, with no success. I posted info about a one-day volunteering event on a subreddit for a large city near us and one of the employees stuck it on the employee intranet and, boom, we got volunteers from that corporation at long, long last – and later, a donation of $5,000.
  • I’ve been hired twice by another very large, well-known company for consulting work because of my activities on Reddit – on r/volunteer in particular.

Of course, your mileage may vary…

I hear a lot of people say they have no idea where to get started on Reddit. If you work for nonprofits, here’s what I recommend:

Look at my Reddit profile and see what subreddits I’m a part of and what I’ve been posting (you can also follow me on Reddit).

Then look at Reddit4Good, a massive list of Reddit communities that relate somehow to doing good. It has a list of:

  • Subreddits focused on areas related to nonprofit work, like biology, agriculture, etc.
  • Subreddits for formally established programs (CASA, AmeriCorps, Red Cross, Peace Corps, Habitat for Humanity, etc.).
  • Regional-based subreddits focused on volunteering (the UK, Brazil, Oregon, etc.).

ONE BIG CAUTION: change your settings so that you do not get a notification every time a new post or comment is made to any of the subreddits you join. Trust me on this – you do not want that many notifications in your life.

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. 

Volunteer engagement is the pursuit of building empathy & many find that idea dangerous.

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Two primitively drawn figures, inspired by petroglyphs. One holds an umbrella to protect them both.

According to the online dictionary on my computer, empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

I have long believed that one of the biggest benefits in volunteer engagement, for the volunteer, for the host organization and for the community – indeed, for all of humanity – is the cultivation of empathy.

There are many benefits to both host organizations and volunteers when it comes to volunteer engagement. And usually when empathy is discussed regarding volunteerism, it’s focused just on the idea of well-off people learning more about the experiences of not-so-well-off-people. But for many years, I have been promoting the idea of volunteerism as community building, as a way to cultivate community cohesion and greater understanding among different groups, and as a way to address the growing gaps between different groups. Here are some of my blogs on the subject over the years:

Volunteer engagement could help address negativity that rose in recent years, January 2023.

Can volunteerism repair a nation?, January 2021.

Volunteer Engagement as a way to build community cohesion, April 2019.

the growing youth & loneliness crisis (& lack of empathy crisis) – could volunteer engagement help?, February 2019.

What Did I Think of the Habitat for Humanity Global Village Program?, June 2025.

In addition, I’ve also been fascinated by the study of compassion regarding how it impacts individual mental health and community cohesion. It’s terrific to find out that science shows that compassion isn’t just nice – it’s necessary:

The Oxford Handbook of Compassion Science, June 2017.

greater good – online, March 2014.

So you can imagine my horror to realize that one of the foundations of volunteerism, one of the primary reasons it is worth supporting and worth promoting – the cultivation of empathy – is under attack, primarily by people that support the Republican party:

“I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage.” These are the words of Charlie Kirk, who was murdered a few weeks ago.

“We’ve got civilizational suicidal empathy going on,” says Elon Musk. “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit…. they’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response.” Elon Musk.

Idaho-based Chrisitan pastor Joe Rigney has written a book called The Sin of Empathy and claims empathy is “the greatest rhetorical tool of manipulation in the 21st century”.

Extremist Gad Saad wrote a book called Suicidal Empathy which you see in the earlier mention as inspiring Elon Musk and which the author says highlights “the inability to implement optimal decisions when our emotional system is tricked into an orgiastic hyperactive form of empathy, deployed on the wrong targets.”

NPR did a terrific piece, “How empathy came to be seen as a weakness in conservative circles,” back in March 2025 and it’s worth a listen.

And I bring all of this up because nonprofits, NGOs, government programs, community organizations, schools, communities of faith and all those that engage volunteers and promote volunteerism NEED TO BE ON GUARD. If you think volunteerism is such a fantastic, pure, universally-loved idea that could never be the target of a political movement, you are wrong – and your lack of preparation will hurt your organization and your community.

This isn’t the first time volunteerism has been under attack by political movements. I started writing about Initiatives opposed to some or all volunteering (unpaid work) back in the late 1990s. I felt like I could reason with both sides of the political spectrum regarding their opposition to volunteer engagement, which in some respects were based in very real fears. But a war on empathy? That is going to be MUCH harder to win.

Are you preparing to argue for the value of empathy? Or are you, instead, rushing to remove the word from your web site, the way you did regarding diversity, equity and inclusion?

Also see:

Prepare now to leverage International Year of Volunteers for Sustainable Development 2026

URGENT: if your USA-based program involves volunteers, you need to create a budget NOW & fight for it when budget cuts are discussed.

Volunteering: not a black & white subject.

Your Nonprofit CAN Resist. Here’s how.

Your nonprofit WILL be targeted with misinformation and you needed to prepare. 

Your social media should focus on volunteering as much as possible.

Told ya. & I’m still telling you.

Could your nonprofit be the target of an ICE raid? Are you prepared?

Could your organization be deceived by GOTCHA media?

Growing misconceptions about the role of nonprofits in the USA.

Mission-Based Groups Need Use the Web to Show Accountability

Governments cracking down on nonprofits & NGOs.

Work & volunteering advice: don’t leave it all on the field every time

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I attended a fantastic workshop on video editing several weeks ago. One of the things the instructor said has haunted me – and not just regarding video editing. He said that you need to NOT fall in love with whatever video you are making. Instead, you have to make the video, do work you can be proud of, post it, and then MOVE ON. But do NOT pour your heart into it and offer it up with the highest of hopes that all of your hard work and artistry is going to be popular or even acknowledged – because more than likely, you will get just a couple of “likes”, if you’re lucky. That’s it.

I pour my heart into my professional work. I do most projects as though I am doing them as a model for others. I relish in anyone acknowledging that they see my determination and skills in my work. In fact, I live for it. And my heart gets broken repeatedly.

Leaving it all on the field or court after every game is something that man fans and sports commentators admire, but it’s not a healthy approach to every day work and volunteering. I’m not sure I’ve experienced any benefits at all from just how much love and care I’ve poured into my work over the years – or even in the work I do now.

A few years ago, hungry to make some community connections and really missing any sorts of arts in my life outside of movies, I decided to apply for a citizens’ advisory group for a local government body regarding the arts. The role was simple: review applications from area arts organizations, very very small groups, entirely amateur, choose who gets what tiny sum of money, and attend a celebration at the end of the year where performing arts grants recipients perform. Perfect! I would get introduced to a big array of various dance, theater, music and fine arts groups and partake in their work. There would probably also be snacks.

I really enjoyed the first year, especially the grants celebration! Yes, there WERE snacks – and some beautiful performances.

I was shocked when one of the members asked me to be the chair for the next year. She said all the longer-term folks had done it already and I was “fresh” and I’d seen how it works, how much fun it was. So, yeah, okay! I said yes. COVID was in full swing, but we were having meetings online, and they were working WAY better than our face-to-face stuff, so I was quite happy to take on this volunteer leadership role.

At the very first meeting I ran came the bombshell, which the person who talked me into serving as chair swears she did NOT know was coming: our little advisory committee was losing its administrative support from the local government, and we had to form an independent 501 (c)(3) in 12 weeks if we were to continue.

I worked 20 hours a week for six months, identifying priorities, keeping track of who was doing what, scheduling meetings, opening a bank account, researching and drafting by-laws, drafting the web site content and then designing the simple site, working with our new fiscal agent, reading over the government requirements, researching grants management software, designing Google forms and spreadsheets for the data generated, and running meetings. I poured my heart into it.

One member of the committee didn’t like how I was doing things and would question every sentence, every detail, every suggestion, all of which came from hours and hours of research – but never offer to take over any task and work on it outside of meeting time. During one particularly horrible meeting, he insulted me during a long speech about how he didn’t like something I had drafted and, at last, I stopped him. I don’t want to get into details, but before the entire group, I calmly but FIRMLY told him he was going to stop that immediately, that his language and accusations were beyond inappropriate, and I wouldn’t continue for one more minute. He backed down. After that meeting, like so many other meetings, I sat at my computer and wept. Yes, I cried. At least two members wrote me to say they were so, so sorry at what I had just experienced. But they didn’t speak up at this or any other meeting.

The whole experience was grueling, degrading and soul-crusing. And I didn’t feel any sort of passion or love for this. Why did I stick with it? Because I have this ridiculous sense of duty and honor and pride when I take on a role: I’m going to see it to an appropriate conclusion and do my absolute best every moment and THEN walk away. Heaven forbid I inconvenience anyone, just because I’m being repeatedly insulted and overworked! At least I’ll have the knowledge that I did what I could and did my best!

Insert eyeroll here.

I wish I’d said, “F*ck ’em.” Because all but maybe one person on that committee, and no one in the government, saw the hours I was spending on what was supposed to be a simple community volunteering job, and that I was doing absolutely all that was necessary, in RECORD time, to see that this committee would get to continue its work and that small arts groups in my area would continue to receive a bit of funding each year.

I told the other members I would not be continuing on the committee once my term was up. I recruited six more board members, all under 45 – something the board said it wanted, since others were resigning at the end of the term as well and a need for younger minds was very much needed. I interviewed them and onboarded them, trying to give them as much support as I got when I first joined. I chaired my last meeting, introducing the new members, and then I walked away.

There was no real thank you and no acknowledgement that I’d undertaken a part-time job, for no pay, for much of the year to preserve funding for small nonprofits and to create a model that would allow the committee to get back to reviewing grant applications, awarding money and celebrating at the end of it all. In fact, what I felt mostly from the others was hostility at how demanding and pushy I’d been – something that was absolutely required to get all this done.

I kept all those emails and drafts and files from this experience. I went back and looked at them this week. The work takes up more storage on my computer than any one consulting job I’ve ever done.

I threw most of it away at last.

This is just one of MANY examples I could offer regarding having my heart broken because I wanted to do the BEST job possible. In fact, I’m doing this again now, professionally, for my one and only client, and I’m realizing that I need to stop. I need to scale back. I’ll always do work that I can be proud of and that a client and employer deserves. But do they deserve my absolute, tireless BEST, every time? Not for this pay.

I know that I am one of the best people out there for small nonprofits regarding leveraging social media, for crisis communications, for general public relations and marketing, and for donor cultivation, let alone volunteer engagement. But there comes a time when you have to say, “I’ll do just this much, and then stop. Because I’m not getting my heart broken at work anymore and the pay certainly is NOT worth it.”

Life’s too short. Time to play some piano.

Also see:

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Resources re: labor laws and volunteering – UPDATED

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graphic representing volunteers at work

This blog replaces my blog from 2017 on the subject.

Labor laws regarding volunteering vary from country to country. For instance, in the USA, creating a written role description or memorandum of understanding with a volunteer, ensuring there is an agreement on what is expected of a volunteer, is normal and entirely legal, but in the United Kingdom, such written agreements can make the volunteer a paid employee and due for financial compensation.

How should your organization determine who is a volunteer, unpaid, and who should be paid for the hours they work at your organization, no matter what country you are in? What does the law say? And what other laws apply to volunteers – and which don’t?

There are resources on the US Department of Labor web site regarding volunteerism that can help any nonprofit or charity, in any country, think about both why it involves volunteers and how it should talk about the value of volunteerism, as well as the qualities of a well-run volunteering program. Although these are USA-centric and cite USA law, much of what these documents propose regarding volunteer engagement is based in ethics as much as law.

Unfortunately, since 2017, DOL has made resources regarding volunteer engagement MUCH harder to find – and deleted some resources altogether, despite no changes in the law with regard to volunteers.

If I’ve been able to find the deleted DOL page I had on my 2017 blog on archive.org, I’ve linked to that instead below. If a DOL or other URL stops working, cut and paste it into archive.org and you should be able to find an old copy. Using old information is better, IMO, than not having any information at all. But please do not rely solely on this blog nor the links for legal guidance: you need a LAWYER to read over your policies and procedures, and to address any concerns or legal challenges you may face regarding volunteer engagement. I am NOT a lawyer and you should NOT rely on this advice solely if you have questions about labor laws and volunteers.

Most important is probably this DOL resource: Fact Sheet #14A: Non-Profit Organizations and the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which notes that volunteers serve on a part-time basis and do not displace regular employed workers or perform work that would otherwise be performed by regular employees. In addition, paid employees of a non-profit organization cannot volunteer to provide the same type of services to their non-profit organization that they are employed to provide.

Employees volunteering outside of their jobs, at the direction of their employer, is further explored in this response from the DOL, which talks about nurses being asked to volunteer their time, unpaid, to participate in community service activities, such as taking blood pressure at a health fair, teaching child care classes to expectant parents, participating in “career day” at a local school, helping the Red Cross, or helping with the hospital picnic. Other activities in question involve employee attendance at patient care conferences, task force meetings, and committee meetings on their days off or outside regular working hours.

There’s also this detailed response by DOL staff to someone in 2006 asking if the time employees spend on volunteer activities outside their employer’s worksite or on activities outside their regular work are compensable working time. For instance, “Does the employer have a duty to compensate non-exempt employees for the time they spend volunteering on a Habitat for Humanity project outside of normal working hours?” Any corporation that organizes volunteering activities for its employees needs to read this document carefully.

This isn’t from DOL, but Employee or Volunteer: What’s the Difference? from the Nonprofit Risk Management Center (NRMC), is excellent, as are these resources: Is Your Volunteer Really an Employee? The Answer Might Surprise You [Part 1] and Is Your Volunteer Really an Employee? The Answer Might Surprise You [Part 2]. These are from a law firm and are interpretations of DOL guidance.

Also see:

Fact Sheet #71: Internship Programs Under The Fair Labor Standards Act

Whether an incentive based pay plan at a company, which includes civic and charitable volunteer activities, complies with the minimum wage and overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA).

Again, all of these are USA-centric but, again, the advice is terrific for other countries as well. Of course, you should still check to see what your country’s laws are regarding volunteers, including interns or anyone to whom you aren’t paying at least a legal minimum wage.

In addition, there’s also this Safety and Health Checklist for Voluntary and Community-Based Organizations Engaged in Disaster Recovery Demolition and Construction Activities. This detailed document emphasizes the importance of such organizations promoting the health and safety of their work teams, including volunteers, and provides a checklist outlining some of the hazards frequently encountered during disaster response and recovery operations and what the organization should have in place to support and protect volunteers, including what training volunteer work teams should have. This checklist is great no matter what country you are in.

Fact Sheet #72: Employment & Wages Under Federal Law During Natural Disasters & Recovery also talks about volunteers.

What are the conditions of coverage for Peace Corps volunteers and volunteer leaders injured while serving outside the United States? is guidance issued by DOL that’s worth a read.

You can find a lot more information about US laws that govern volunteers and volunteer engagement at both the OSHA and the Department of Labor web sites by using their search function regarding the word volunteering. But be ready to wade through a huge amount of results, most of which don’t involve volunteers.

Having a mission statement for your organization’s volunteer engagement can protect you from over-zealous staff members, consultants and corporate funders who want to push for volunteers to replace paid staff and save money, or to increase volunteer engagement in areas of the nonprofits work that would be inappropriate. It also could help protect you against lawsuits from volunteers who feel they were merely unpaid workers. The US Department of Labor (DOL) and US Federal Courts want to see that the work of volunteers is distinctly different from the duties of the organization’s employees – and their guidelines on how they make the determination regarding who is a volunteer and who should be paid are good guidelines for volunteering other countries as well. To determine whether an individual is truly volunteering, the DOL and US Federal Courts look to:

  • The nature of the entity receiving the volunteer services
  • The character of the volunteer services (activities) themselves
  • The amount of control the employer or engaging organization exerts over the volunteer
  • Compensation or benefits provided to the volunteer, or that the individual expects
  • Whether the volunteer work displaces paid work by regular employees

You can read more from the DOL here on this archived page.

Learn more about how to talk about the value of 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.