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.

Virtual Volunteering discussion group on LinkedIn

Leave a reply

Susan Ellis and I have created a LinkedIn Group for the discussion of virtual volunteering.

We’re hoping this will be a place where organizations that are involving online volunteers can get very specific with questions and advice about their virtual volunteering experiences: sharing what tools they use to work with volunteers online, asking questions about a particular issue they are having in working with volunteers online, getting advice on how to recruit a diversity of online volunteers, and on and on.

This group isn’t a place for basic questions like, “How do I introduce online volunteering to my organization” and others that are detailed extensively in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, though if you would like to expand on that or another practice that is detailed in the book via this group, such comments would be welcomed!

The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook is available for purchase as a paperback and an ebook. There is also a virtual volunteering wiki in association with the book.

Feb. 12, 2014 Addendum

What I do NOT want to do is to discourage discussions on places like UKVPMs, OZVPM, and other discussion groups for volunteer management, about using online and networking tools (like SMS/text messaging) to support and involve volunteers – the practice that most of us refer to as virtual volunteering.

I had been opposed to the idea of creating an online group just for these discussions, because I do not want these discussions to be taken out of any online group devoted to volunteer management. If you have read even just the beginning of The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, you know that we chose that name in part because we DON’T want any more books about virtual volunteering, no more add-on chapters about it made to books about volunteer management, no more “virtual volunteering” as an add-on or after thought – but, rather, that using online and networking tools is integrated into all discussions about recruiting, supporting, managing, recognizing and involving volunteers, period.

With all that said, we did see a need for a global discussion about online and networking tools to work with volunteers, where discussions could be focused on any country or region. So we did start this LinkedIn Group for the discussion of virtual volunteering. I’m doing my best for it not to devolve into a “how do I involve online volunteers” discussion – we’re looking for more high-level discussions, like:

  • What online tools do you use to communicate with volunteers? Just email, or do you use an online discussion group platform? And how do you like it?
  • If you use Skype or other video conferencing to communicate with volunteers, individually or as a group, what advice do you have for others that might want to use it?
  • What’s the most popular activity at your organization for someone to do from a home, work or otherwise offsite computer or device?
  • How did you alter your volunteer policies to include Internet-related activities/communications?

So, if you use email, any other Internet tool, or even text messaging from a phone, to interact with your volunteers, or you create tasks that volunteers can do from home or work computers or other devices, I hope you will join the LinkedIn group and join in the discussions!

What to do with old/vintage software.

3 Replies

Welcome to one of the most popular blogs I have ever written. It’s popularity is because of the subject, right there in the title: people want to know what to do with old and vintage software, as much as they want to know what to do with old hardware, and this blog that you are reading now is what comes up when they look online.

But the original contents of this blog were published in February 2014. That was a thousand years ago, in terms of tech.

I’ve kept the original text of the blog here – you can get to it if you scroll down. But note that it is woefully out of date, and most of the links don’t work anymore.

Here are two things to add to the original blog:

Goodwill or a Habitat ReStore MIGHT take your software IF the store has a tech section and IF the person that accepts donations at that store sees a value in the software. Go to the store yourself and look for a section selling tech, and if there isn’t one, they are probably NOT going to take it.

If there is no market for the software, check with your local government’s environmental or waste management office to see if they have a way of disposing of the disks or books in an environmentally-responsible manner.

Below is the original blog, published 9 February 2014.

I’m betting you have a shelf or drawer full of old software that won’t work on your computer – and hasn’t for YEARS. You’ve got disks, you’ve got books, but it’s all completely unusable, and has been a long time. What are your options for out-of-date software that will no longer work on any computer or device you have because of a change/upgrade in operating systems, other than throwing it away? And do user agreements mean you have to just throw it away?

First, let me say that this blog is not a legal document and I’m not offering you legal advice. I’m presenting you research I’ve done and what it means to me. If you are that worried about being sued by a company for reselling software, you should stop reading now – and destroy the software before throwing it away, period.

There is NOT an ultimate legal agreement regarding reselling software. There’s not even agreement from software companies about reselling software. For instance, Adobe says “if you upgrade from Adobe Acrobat 6 to Acrobat 7, you cannot sell Acrobat 6 to someone else. If you purchase a new license, rather than upgrade your old software, you are permitted to transfer your old license. That is, as long as you did not purchase the original license with a volume licensing arrangement.” But in the case of Vernor v. Autodesk, the courts said that because Autodesk had said, explicitly, that old software had to be destroyed – that Vernor never owned it, merely licensed it – he was not allowed to resell it. One wonders if Vernor had thrown the software into the trash, and someone had retrieved it and started using it, rather than Vernor trying to sell it on eBay, if Autodesk could have sued Vernor for not truly destroying the software.

So, before you sell old software

  • Search for legal cases concerning that software on Google or Bing. If you see a case where the manufacturer of that software has sued a reseller, destroy the software and then throw the software away.
  • Make CERTAIN it is truly vintage, as in version you have is NOT available for purchase from the original software manufacturer, is no longer supported by the company, and is NOT available from BestBuy or other resellers; also, that it does not work with the current Mac or Windows operating systems.

Once you’ve met that benchmark:

  • Look to see if the version you have is being sold on eBay or Craigslist. If it is being sold by others, you will probably be safe doing it as well.
  • Put all the original disks and books together. Old software is of more use when the original documentation is available.
  • If there is detailed information online about this vintage software, such as on Wikipedia or a tribute page, link to it on any online information you post, and be detailed about what the software will work on – and what it will NOT work on – in terms of hardware and operating systems.
  • Try eBay and Craigslist for reselling.
  • I’m uncertain about using social media for this – I’d hate for you to attract attention for an overzealous lawyer who doesn’t understand that what you are selling is no longer supported by the company and no longer works on modern hardware or operating systems.
  • If you want to donate the software, try Craigslist, your social media accounts, any freecycle-type online forum or group in your community, and clubs for vintage computers. Note if you are willing to mail the software and pay those postage costs yourself. ook to see if there are nonprofits in your area that accept donations of old software, like FreeGeek in Portland, Oregon. Goodwill might take it. World Computer Exchange might take it.
  • Take your items to a local swap meet and hope for the best.
  • Look for a working vintage computer that the software would work on, buy it and set it up in your house with your vintage software as a conversation piece or a play thing.

This web page, EMS Old Software Exchange, says it buys and sells “the world’s largest selection of old/used/out-of-print software for the PC and other microcomputers.” But I can’t tell if it’s still in operation. And note that it has info on how to find out if your user agreement forbids you reselling a particular software tool.

Here’s the wikipedia entry for abandonware.

Also see: Shout out to nonprofit efforts to refurbish computers.

Also see my page on how I use my lime green clam shell iBook, bought in 2000. It also has advice on using these old Apple laptops that I’ve found from various sources online. Unfortunately, as of 2013, I can no longer get online with this device.

What’s your advice for selling or donating used, old software? And have you ever looked for older versions of software for a vintage computer that you use?

This article is the second most popular entry on my blog. 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, paying for this web site to be hosted, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.

Enhancing Inclusion of Women & Girls In Information Society

Leave a reply

Found this via Zunia: one of my favorite leads for publications and studies about issues relating to women’s empowerment in development countries and under-served areas:

Doubling Digital Opportunities: Enhancing the Inclusion of Women & Girls In the Information Society

This Report studies the role that ICTs and the Internet can play in advancing gender equality agendas, including equal access to new technologies by women and girls. It examines the central question of how access to the Internet and ICTs can help redress some of the inequalities women and girls face in their everyday lives, and whether inequalities in access to the Internet, and the types of content available online, are in fact reinforcing social attitudes towards women. Issues in fact extend far beyond basic access, including the availability of relevant content and the participation of women in public policy-making processes. The Report explores measures of inequality in access to ICTs, the importance of ICTs in educating and shaping the aspirations and hopes of the next generation of women and girls, and the implications of lack of access to ICTs by girls and women.

Also see: Women’s Access to Public Internet Centers in Transitional and Developing Countries (my resource)

Me with The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook

Leave a reply

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?

Leave a reply

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

Leave a reply

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!

Leave a reply

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

Leave a reply

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

Leave a reply

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

Leave a reply

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: