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.

Me with The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook

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It’s real! Not virtual! Me with The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook.

Amazing to hold YEARS of research and writing in my hands at last!

The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook is now available for purchase as a paperback and an ebook , published by Energize, Inc. 

If you read the book, I would so appreciate it if you could write and post a review of it on the Amazon and Barnes and Noble web sites (you can write the same review on both sites). You don’t have to buy the book in those places to review it there (and I hope you will order it from me directly instead). 

Should the NFL involve volunteers for the Super Bowl?

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Taking a break from promoting The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook to talk volunteers and the Super Bowl (for those outside the USA, that’s the National Football League’s championship game).

In a story by the New York Times, Alfred Kelly, the chief executive of the New York-New Jersey Super Bowl Host Committee, estimated that 9,000 people would serve as volunteers in the days leading to the Super Bowl . That is far fewer than the 20,000 who were initially contemplated. Those numbers are down because the NFL opted to hire temporary paid workers for positions in which volunteers had typically been used. The decision was an apparent response to a class-action suit against Major League Baseball in the USA, which did not pay volunteers at the All-Star FanFest in July 2013.

It took me a LONG time to find out what volunteers actually *do* for this billion-dollar nonprofit with millionaire staff. From what I can tell, volunteers are at sites like airports, hotels and various transportation hubs days before the game to direct city visitors to whatever they need – transportation, bathrooms, etc.  And if that’s the case then – hold on to your hats – I’m fine with those roles being filled by volunteers. Why? Because, in those situations, I think these roles are best filled by volunteers – people who aren’t there for any financial gain, who want to be seen as volunteers, specifically, in doing these tasks: I’m here because I want to be here, because I love football and love my city, and I want to make you feel welcomed. But if volunteers are asked to do anything else – selling anything, cleaning anything, moving or hauling things, etc. – I have a HUGE problem with having these roles filled by unpaid staff, because I don’t see why volunteers would be best of those roles other than the NFL getting out of not paying people.

Even if the NFL wasn’t, officially, a nonprofit organization (which, by the way, I find that outrageous, IRS!), I would feel this way about its volunteer-involvement. Why? Because if I truly believe that some activities are best staffed by volunteers, NEVER as a money-saving activity but, rather, because unpaid people are best in that roles, I have to believe it for every sector.

Back in the summer of 2010, I attended an event by Triumph motorcycles in the city where I was living at the time (Canby, Oregon). The company had brought about 20 motorcycles you could sign up to ride, on group rides, every 30 minutes. The Triumph truck traveled all over the USA to bring these events to cities all over, and these Triumph events were staffed primarily by VOLUNTEERS. Because volunteers are “free”? Nope (volunteers are never free!). It was because an event attendee talking to a volunteer — someone who owns at least one of the motorcycles in the line up, and owned at least one other probably at some point, who can speak passionately about the product, who wants you to get to have the experience they have been having, and who won’t get any commission from a sale and doesn’t rely on this activity for their financial livelihood — is in such contrast to talking to a salesperson or paid staff person. The few paid staff there stayed in the background, there to fill in blanks and maybe to make a sale, but volunteers were the official spokespeople. It gave the event a total no-sales-pressure feel from a customer point of view – it was just a day to enjoy Triumph motorcycles.

I’ve never forgotten that experience. And it’s one of the reasons why I’m not ready to condemn the NFL’s involvement of volunteers. At least not until I can see what exactly it is that they do.

UPDATE: an article from The Star Ledger about what NFL Super Bowl volunteers did in 2014. Note – 1500 ambassadors were paid. Did those paid folks do the SAME work as the volunteers, or something more/different?

And now, back to promoting The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook.

Also see:

Have you ever changed your mind?.

Learning, learning everywhere, a blog about where I find new marketing and volunteer engagement ideas (spoiler alert: it’s not at conferences or workshops)

accessibility, diversity & virtual volunteering

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One of the many things I’m proud of in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, is that it features an entire chapter on accessibility and diversity.

That chapter, and the entire book, provide detailed advice regarding:

  • the benefits of having online volunteers representing a variety of socio-economic levels, neighborhoods, ages, cultures and other demographics
  • the benefits of accommodating a diversity of volunteers (an accommodation you make for one particular group often ends up benefiting ALL volunteers)
  • how to use language in such a way as to accommodate and welcome a variety of volunteers 
  • how to adapt online tools to accommodate different online volunteers, including those that may have physical disabilities
  • how to accommodate online volunteers with learning and emotional disabilities
  • how to recruit for diversity; and
  • how to track progress regarding diversity among online volunteer ranks.

The chapter on accessibility and diversity is referenced throughout The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook , because Susan and I did not want anyone thinking it was a chapter to take or leave.

I became an advocate for accessibility and diversity in volunteering and in computer and Internet use in October 1994 when I attended the annual meeting of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility at UC San Diego. There was a panel discussion called “The Meanings of Access,” and remarks during that talk, particularly by Deborah Kaplan, then of the World Institute on Disability, changed my life forever. I came to a realization of two things I’d never had before: accessibility is a human right, and accessibility brings me in contact with awesome people I would never meet or work with otherwise. I became an advocate right then and there.

In 1997, I got funding from the Mitsubishi Electric America Foundation for the Virtual Volunteering Project to explore how to make online volunteering as accessible as possible, and that same year, blew my mouth off at a conference in Austin, Texas about how disappointed I was that the panelists I’d just listened to, talking about the digital divide, never once mentioned people with disabilities, resulting in one of the greatest personal and professional relationships of my life, with Sharron Rush, who was also in the audience and later formed Knowbility, a nonprofit that promotes accessibility in technology tools and technology careers.

In 2008, I read “InVolving LGBT Volunteers,” published by The Consortium of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered voluntary and community organisations, based in London, the United Kingdom, and that solidified my understanding that making accessibility and diversity a priority in any program is about benefits for everyone in that program, not just people with disabilities or people who are from minority or under-represented groups. This publication is referenced in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, and remains one I return to frequently when preparing lectures or workshops about volunteer recruitment.

I have tried to put into practice all that I’ve heard about regarding virtual volunteering, including accommodations for a variety of people as volunteers and recruiting specifically to create a diverse volunteer pool. I won’t say I’m always successful, and I won’t say trying the methods we promote in the book is always easy, but I will say that it’s made my work experience oh-so-much richer and interesting, and it’s always been worth trying.

The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook is now available for purchase as a paperback and an ebook. 

Now available: The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook!

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vvbooklittleThe Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook is now available for purchase as a paperback and an ebook, published by Energize, Inc. 

The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook reflects all that has changed — and remained the same — since the first book was published online more than 10 years ago. Again co-authored with Susan Ellis and published by Energize, Inc., The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook still includes the basics for getting started with involving and supporting volunteers online, but it goes much farther, offering detailed information to help organizations that are already engaged in virtual volunteering with improving and expanding their programs. It also offers more international perspectives. The first book was focused on people who had never heard of virtual volunteering; this revised book still serves as the most comprehensive introduction to the subject available, but provides much more in-depth information and guidance for organizations already engaging online volunteers, who want to improve or expand their virtual volunteering activities.

New and advanced information includes:

  • More detailed advice on virtual volunteering assignment, including one-time “Byte-Sized” tasks (micro-volunteering), longer-term, higher-responsibilities and virtual team assignments.
  • A thorough look at various practices for screening and matching volunteers to assignments, with an eye to getting the most capable volunteers into your volunteering ranks and preventing incomplete assignments or burdensome management tasks
  • How to make online volunteer roles accessible and diverse
  • More details about how to work successfully with online volunteers, so that they are successful, your organization benefits and volunteer managers aren’t overwhelmed
  • Balancing safety with program goals
  • Respecting privacy of both the organization and online volunteers themselves
  • Online mentoring
  • Blogging by, for and about volunteers
  • Online activism
  • Spontaneous online volunteers
  • Live online events with volunteers
  • The future of virtual volunteering and how to start planning for oncoming trends

There’s also a new chapter just for online volunteers themselves, which organizations can also use in creating their own materials for online volunteers.

I’ve worked hard over the years to make this book worth the purchase price, and to be a resource you can turn to any time for support in your engagement with volunteers online.

In conjunction with the revised guidebook is the Virtual Volunteering Wiki, a free online resource and collaborative space for sharing resources regarding virtual volunteering. We are seeking a partner university or college that could recruit an intern from among students studying in its post-graduate program to keep this wiki updated.

If you read the book, I would so appreciate it if you could write and post a review of it on the Amazon and Barnes and Noble web sites (you can write the same review on both sites).

How Our Minds Mislead Us

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I discourage those that are screening volunteers from going with their “gut.” I like to remind them that everyone in the Penn State/Second Mile scandal went with their gut instead of following good policy and procedures. I’ve also brought up times when I hesitated to involve a volunteer because of a gut feeling, then decided I needed to go with real observations and fact, and ended up involving WONDERFUL volunteers that I almost passed on because I realized I had some prejudices that I needed to work on.

This recent blog from Brain Pickings, which notes various scientific studies that have shown that intuition is “sometimes helpful but often misleading.” It focuses on a new book by John Brockman: Thinking: The New Science of Decision-Making, Problem-Solving, and Prediction. In the book, Nobel-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman notes:

“There is no sharp line between intuition and perception. … Perception is predictive. . . . If you want to understand intuition, it is very useful to understand perception, because so many of the rules that apply to perception apply as well to intuitive thinking. Intuitive thinking is quite different from perception. Intuitive thinking has language. Intuitive thinking has a lot of word knowledge organized in different ways more than mere perception. But some very basic characteristics [of] perception are extended almost directly to intuitive thinking.”

The essays and lectures in this book don’t discount intuition altogether; what this book, and others, are trying to show is that intuition is more feeling than fact, and that always trusting your intuition can have dire consequences – just as always ignoring it would.

I would love to read this book. I often find these kinds of books so much more helpful in working with volunteers than other books that focus on management, even volunteer management.

Also see:

Volunteer managers: you are NOT psychic!

Why I liked an anti-crowdsourcing Facebook page

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On Facebook, I’ve just liked “Crowdsourcing Sucks,” which I originally found on Twitter under crowdsource666. Its motto: “Crowdsourcing, the scourge of the graphic design industry.”

How can a person such as myself that has been an evangelist for virtual volunteering, including crowdsourcing, since the 1990s, like this person or organization or whatever it is?

Because I do see his/her/their point.

I don’t trust a nonprofit organization that doesn’t involve volunteers in some way – but I also don’t trust an organization that talks about volunteers in terms of hourly monetary values of service given, as this says, “We involve volunteers because we don’t have to pay them! Look at the money we saved in not having to hire someone to do this work!” There is far greater value of volunteer involvement than that.

So, rock on crowdsource666.

Also see:

Traditional volunteering is now EXTREME volunteering

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I laughed out loud at this!

The rise of ‘extreme’ volunteering, by Nesta, a registered charity in the United Kingdom.

Yes, now traditional volunteering is rebranded as EXTREME VOLUNTEERING. The author talks about the revolutionary idea of… ready?… ready?…. volunteers helping patients in hospitals! Or taking a year off to volunteer!

Sigh… okay, if you want to rebrand these traditional forms of volunteering, that require longer-term commitment and put volunteers in direct contact with clients, as EXTREME VOLUNTEERING, fine.

I laughed because, after being told over the last three years again and again that what people really wanted micro volunteering – short-term, no commitment, just a few minutes of helping here and there whenever they might maybe find a little time – and me pushing back and saying, no, what people really want are real connections, deeper connections, through volunteering, even leadership roles that require longer commitment, and that kind of volunteering is what organizations want as well, it’s nice to read that, at last, the “buzz” is changing and recognizing reality!

The reality is this: different people want different kinds of volunteering. Some want micro volunteering. Some want long-term volunteering. Some want volunteering they can do by themselves. Some want volunteering that brings them in contact with staff. Some want volunteering that brings them in contact with clients. Some want a group volunteering experience. And organizations that need and want volunteers may or may not be able to accommodate all these varieties of volunteering – it depends on their mission, their priorities, their staffing, their expertise and their funding.

Also see:

Me in Europe in Fall 2014

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Happy New Year! (and Happy birthday, Elvis!)

I’ll be in Germany in the Fall of 2014 for a visit of a few weeks. I’ll make a trip to Barcelona, Spain as well for a long weekend in that time. I’m not sure if this will be in September or October.

I would love to combine my trip with presenting or consulting! I’m willing to go wherever German wings or any discount airline flies from Cologne (Köln) or Frankfurt Am Rhein, or wherever I can take a train in 5 hours or less, provided your organization covers airfare/train fare and accommodations. That means I’m willing to travel just about anywhere in Europe: England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Turkey, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, the Czech Republic, Slovenia, Slovakia, Bulgaria – and more!

I will do an onsite consultation or presentation pro bono, provided your organization covers all travel and accommodation expenses! 

Right now, my dates are flexible; if an organization really wants me to come in October then that’s when I would come to Germany.  My flexibility will change, however, around April 2014, when I have to make a decision about my dates.

More about me.

More about my consulting services.

More about my training areas.

Interested? Email me at jc @ coyotecommunications.com with what you have in mind.

Questions for programs sending volunteers to developing countries

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For a research project I’m working on with various EU-based NGOs through February 2014 or so, I’m gathering info on three related areas:

  • Volunteer-to-volunteer support online. How organizations that send volunteers to developing countries do, or do NOT, support these volunteers to interact with each other, or returned volunteers / alumni, online. I’m looking for strategies, procedures and policies, as well as assessments, formal or informal, about what’s working and what’s not.
  • Alumni networks. How these organizations set up and manage their alumni programs for returned volunteers – or if they don’t, why not, and if they don’t, would they be interested in such. Again, I’m looking for strategies, procedures and policies, as well as assessments, formal or informal, about what’s working and what’s not. For instance, there is a long-established alumni network for returned Peace Corps members, National Peace Corps Association, that is independently run from the actual Peace Corps program.
  • Online volunteering support. How these organizations support connections between volunteers currently serving in the field and online volunteers that have the expertise these volunteers to support them in their work – or if they don’t, if volunteers are engaging with such online volunteers on their own. For instance, Cuso International has a formal program, E-Connect, an e-volunteering pilot program that “welcomes new and returning volunteers to work with our in-country program partners remotely.” By contrast, the UNV program encourages currently-serving UN Volunteers to use its Online Volunteering service to recruit online volunteers to support them in their field work, but does not have a formal program to track or support this specific engagement.

It’s a challenging project because: 

  • So many organizations do not track these activities at their own organizations. For instance, when I worked at the United Nations Volunteers program from 2001-2005, I knew of program officers, each with a responsibility for a particular country or region, that had set up YahooGroups for the UN Volunteers they worked with in a specific region – yet, if you asked senior staff if online communities existed for currently-serving UN Volunteers, for peer-to-peer support, they would say no, because these activities weren’t well-communicated.
  • Language. If I say, “Do you have an online community that allows your volunteers to support each other?”, many staff will say no. But if I say, “Are you a part of any GoogleGroups or YahooGroups or Facebook Groups?” they will say yes, and if you ask “What are the groups”, you will find out that, indeed, such groups are for currently-serving volunteers and/or volunteer alumni.
  • No one person knows it all. There’s rarely one person at the organization that knows all of the online activities or alumni activities in which different staff is engaged. If you talk to one staff person at an organization, they may give you entirely different answers to your questions about online communities and alumni associations than another staff person.
  • A lot of online peer-to-peer support of volunteers in the field may not happen through an online community specifically for volunteers but, rather, through a subject-based online community for anyone, volunteer or paid, full-time employee / consultant, such as those engaged in evaluation activities using ALNAP’s Humanitarian Evaluation Community of Practice, or those engaged in water and sanitation programs.

That said, if you have info for me,  please email me at  jc@OINKMOOcoyotecommunications.com (remove OINKMOO from the email address).

A new “cyber” volunteering platform for small NGOs

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The Cibervoluntarios Foundation is looking “to develop a cybervolunteering platform, made for little organizations worldwide.” They have a fundraising campaign at GlobalGiving to raise money for the platform, which includes a link to an 11-page document that provides a bit more information. Neither volunteers nor host organizations would be charged to use the platform.

I’ve tweeted the organization to find out how this proposed platform will be different from the United Nations’ existing Online Volunteering service, the world’s largest virtual volunteering platform for NGOs to recruit online volunteers. They tweeted back that cyber volunteering is different than online volunteering – but didn’t say how. I don’t yet see a difference. Cyber volunteering, in English, has been used since the 1990s as another word for virtual volunteering. 

Not that I don’t think  there’s room for new approaches to online volunteering – but given the over-abundance of platforms allowing organizations to recruit traditional volunteers, and how that has made it harder to recruit volunteers, not easier, I would hate to see the same thing happen with virtual volunteering.

According to the web site, “Cibervoluntarios” are:

agentes de cambio social que contribuyen, de forma desinteresada, a fomentar el uso y conocimiento de herramientas tecnológicas entre la población con menores oportunidades de acceso y/o formación… los Cibervoluntarios usan la tecnología desde una perspectiva social y contribuyen a eliminar brechas sociales mediante la sensibilización, información y formación de forma presencial, online y a medida para satisfacer las necesidades de cada persona o colectivo social con el que trabajamos. Los cibervoluntarios dan conocer las posibilidades que ofrece el uso de las Nuevas Tecnologías de una forma útil, sencilla, bien a través de la red, bien en persona, de tú a tú, mediante cursos, charlas, conferencias, talleres, eventos, seminarios, entre otros.

My translation:

social change agents who contribute selflessly to promote the use of technological tools and knowledge among people with fewer opportunities to access and / or training… Cibervoluntarios use technology from a social perspective and help eliminate social gaps through advocacy, information and training in person, online and customized to meet the needs of each person or social group with which we work. The Cybervolunteer knows the possibilities offered by the use of new technologies in a useful, simple, either through the network, either in person, face to face, through courses, lectures, conferences, workshops, events, seminars, among others.

So, perhaps for this organization, cibervoluntarios or cyber volunteers are what are called, in English, circuit riders or ICT volunteers – volunteers that help both individuals as well as staff at nonprofits regarding using computer and Internet-related tools, and such volunteers can be both onsite and online. Examples of this would include all volunteers that help teach people computer skills at initiatives like Austin FreeNet (Austin, Texas), FreeGeek (Portland, Oregon), EmpowerUp (Southwest Washington state, Vancouver area), and World Computer Exchange – and even PeaceCorps and VSO. HandsOn also has several IT volunteer tech initiatives, which they brand as skilled-based volunteer engagement:

HandsOn Tech Pittsburgh, Pennsylvannia. Follow on Twitter at @HandsOnTechPGH,
HandsOn Tech Atlanta, Georgia. Follow on Twitter at @HandsOnTechATL
HandsOn Tech Boston, Massachusetts. Follow on Twitter at @HandsOnTechBOS
HandsOn Tech Chicago, Illinois. Follow on Twitter at @HandsOnTechChi
HandsOn Tech New York City, New York. Follow on Twitter at @NYCHandsOnTech
HandsOn Tech Detroit, Michigan. Follow on Twitter at @HandsOnTechDET

One of the first such ICT volunteering initiatives was through what was called CompuMentor, now TechSoup (that part of TechSoup’s programming has moved entirely online, via the TechSoup forum, and the nonprofit still publishes Working with Technical Volunteers: A Manual for NPOs free online). The United Nations Information Technology Service (UNITeS) tried to track all of these various ICT volunteering initiatives globally once upon a time – UNITeS both supported volunteers applying ICTs for development (ICT4D) and promoted volunteerism as a fundamental element of successful ICT4D initiatives. UNITeS was launched in 2000 by then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and was hosted by the United Nations Volunteers programme.

If the Cibervoluntarios organization is looking to develop an online matching service for IT volunteers or circuit riders, where volunteers would provide service onsite and or online to individuals and nonprofits, it might work – though I’d prefer to see this type of volunteering incorporated into the plethora of volunteer matching sites worldwide, or even just in Europe – or even just in Spain! I hope they will look over the UNITeS web site and TechSoup manual for tech volunteers, and provide lots of similar resources for both IT volunteers and the nonprofits that need them. And the organization is welcomed to translate and adapt my resources related to this subject for their web site, as long as I get credit somewhere:

  • Finding a Computer/Network Consultant (volunteer or paid)
    What can mission-based organizations do to recruit the “right” consultant for “tech” related issues, one that will not make them feel out-of-the-loop or out-of-control when it comes to tech-related discussions?
  • Short-term Assignments for Tech Volunteers
    A list of short-term projects for “tech” volunteers — assignments that might takes days, weeks or just a couple of months to complete.
  • One(-ish) Day “Tech” Activities for Volunteers
    This page provides advice on how to put together a one-day event, or just-a-few-days-of activity, for a group of tech volunteers onsite, working together, for a nonprofit, non-governmental organization (NGO), community-focused government program, school or other mission-based organization – or association of such.