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.

New report NOT by me re: microvolunteering

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At long last, someone that is not me has conducted a fact-based, non-hype review of micro volunteering, and not just from the volunteers’ point of view, but from the volunteer-involving organizations point of view as well. Hurrah!

Published by the Institute for Volunteering Research and the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO), the report, The value of giving a little time Understanding the potential of micro-volunteering, is focused on United Kingdom-based efforts, but is applicable to other countries regarding what micro volunteering really looks like, and what it takes for it to be successful.

Do I agree with everything in the report? No. For instance, the writers don’t believe micro volunteering is episodic volunteering; I’m adamant that it is. The writers include offline activities within their definition of micro volunteering, something that is a very new way of thinking. But every researcher has to define the parameters of their study, and I respect how they’ve chosen to define the practice, even if I don’t agree with it 100%.

And is it micro volunteering, microvolunteering, or micro-volunteering? I just do whatever spell check tells me…

That said, it’s a good report and worth your time to read, particularly if you are skeptical of the idea of micro volunteering. My favorite part was part 6, “What are the challenges of micro- volunteering?” It’s the part of the report that breaks new ground, because (1) it admits that there ARE real challenges to creating micro tasks and involving volunteers in those tasks, something people promoting micro volunteering to date have been reluctant to admit, and (2) it offers a detailed list of those real challenges, and a start on how they might be addressed.

I have managed probably hundreds of online volunteers in micro volunteering projects – though it didn’t have a snazzy name for most of the years I did so. In September 2013, I blogged at TechSoup about what it’s like to manage its micro volunteering initiative, Donate Your Brain, pointing out just how much time and effort it takes to look for micro volunteering opportunities in relation to the TechSoup community forum. I’d like to see others that are creating micro volunteering tasks and supporting the volunteers in them do this as well: talk about what it REALLY takes!

I have to say that Table 3 in the report, “Are organisations experiencing the benefits of micro-volunteering?”, made me laugh out loud – it reads oh-so-much like the benefits of virtual volunteering for organizations that was written back in the 1990s!

Here’s more of my own recommendations regarding micro volunteering. And in January 2014, The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook will be published, and it includes practical guidelines on how to create micro tasks for volunteers, and how to support volunteers in those tasks. But more information, and voices, are needed! We need more, real research that answers these questions, in detail:

  • What does successful micro volunteering look like for an organization? I don’t mean just a list of tasks; how do they measure success? What measurable impact does engaging with volunteers in micro tasks look like, for the organization and those it serves?
  • How much time and other investment, in detail, is required by the organization to create successful micro volunteering that makes the investment of time and effort by the organization worth it?

Let’s hope that national institutes that study community engagement, as well as traditional volunteer centers, will, at last, embrace micro volunteering (and all virtual volunteering, for that matter) and start including it in their studies, workshops, publications and trainings.

With all that said, and as much as I really do like this report, the reality is that not every organization is going to be able to create micro tasks for micro volunteering. Just as not every organization can, or should, create opportunities for family volunteers, or other group volunteers. Not every task can be altered so that any volunteer can do it. Not every task can be done by episodic volunteers – sometimes, the best person for a task or role is a long-term volunteer who can give a substantial amount of time every month. Different tasks require different kinds of staffing. And all volunteering, including micro volunteering, takes real time – let’s NOT say it’s perfect for people that don’t have time to volunteer, because it DOES take real time, even if it’s just a few minutes.

The challenge isn’t creating micro tasks for volunteers; the much greater challenge is supporting those charged with supporting volunteers at organizations large and small with the resources they need to create all of these different avenues for volunteer engagement. Are you ready to fund and equip your manager of volunteers with the resources he or she needs to make this a reality?

Online volunteers, social media, disaster response & the Philippines

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United Nations OCHA and the Digital Humanitarian Network are looking for online volunteers to help in geo-tagging twitter messages and images to support relief efforts in the Philippines. Find out more and sign up here, at the UN Volunteers Online Volunteering web site.

Also, other online volunteers across the world are building the digital infrastructure for the organization’s Typhoon Haiyan relief efforts: since Saturday, more than 400 volunteers have made nearly three quarters of a million additions to OpenStreetMap (OSM), regarding areas in and around the Philippines. Those additions reflect the land before the storm, but they will help Red Cross workers and volunteers make critical decisions after it about where to send food, water, and supplies (OSM aims to be a complete map of the world, free to use and editable by all. Created in 2004, it now has over a million users). The Red Cross is using the data. More at this article from the Atlantic.

And, hurrah, the first shipment of Facebook “likes” have arrived in the Philippines (article in German – and is a better criticism of slacktivism or slackavism than anything else).

mobile devices, mobile apps, texting & volunteers

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A recent blog post by VolunteerMatch on 5 Ways to Use Your Mobile Device for Your Volunteer Program, which has some good, basic advice as well as some comments regarding how to send a text to multiple people at once, reminded me of how often that this topic has come up on the TechSoup community forum in some shape or form.

So I have done my best to compile these previous TechSoup threads here:

mobile time tracking – for volunteers to track service hours?

What mobile apps do you promote to clients, volunteers, supporters, staff?

Mobile apps: what do managers of volunteers *want*

anyone using these mobile apps as part of their work?

Sending text messages to 50 non-smart phones

FrontlineSMS – FOSS management for text messages

Texting from a computer

Planning for handheld tech

Handheld Computer Tech in Community Service/Volunteering/Advocacy

Feel free to comment on any of these threads over on TechSoup with additional questions, experiences or comments!

The question I get asked again & again

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I often feel that most letters to Dear Abby and other advice columnists can be summed up thusly:

There is this thing I need to do or say, because I’m suffering per the behavior of someone else, but I don’t want to address it because it’s going to make me uncomfortable to say or do what I need to say or do, it’s going to make other people uncomfortable, and the people I’m speaking about/to may end up not liking me, have their feelings hurt, etc. So how can I do or say this thing that I really need to do in such a way that no one will be angry, I won’t be uncomfortable, everyone will listen, all is well afterwards with no resentment or hostility, and I get the change in behavior I need?

And I realized over the course of the four presentations I did in the last two weeks that most questions asked by managers of volunteers can be summed up thusly as well.

Two of my most popular blogs are about how managers of volunteers are under pressure to always please volunteers  and The volunteer as bully = the toxic volunteer. Both of these blogs reflect the aversion of managers of volunteers to conflict, complaints and uncomfortable conversations.

This aversion comes from a misplaced notion that managers of volunteers must be:

  • always nice
  • never confrontational
  • always welcoming of all volunteers no matter what those volunteers might say or how they may act
  • make everyone happy at all times

How do we change that expectation of managers of volunteers – both from others and by ourselves?

Also see this oh-so-popular blog, the Volunteer Manager Fight Club.

No complaints means success?

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Back in April 2010, I published the following blog. It became one of my most popular entries. Later that year, my blog home moved – and then, just two years later, it moved again. I managed to recover this via archive.org, and am republishing it here on what I hope will be my blog home for a long, long time:

——-

During my workshops in Australia last month, I asked managers of volunteers how their executive leadership at their organizations define success regarding volunteer involvement. And one of the answers really disturbed me:

“It’s successful if no one complains.”

The person who made this statement didn’t think this was a good measure of volunteer involvement at her organization; she was acknowledging a reality at her organization, but did not like it. And at least two other people said similar things about their organizations — that senior management did not want to hear about any problems with volunteers and, if they did, it meant the volunteer manager wasn’t doing her (or his) job.

It means that just one volunteer complaint — including complaints about being reprimanded for not following policy —  would result in senior leadership displeasure with the volunteer manager. One person said that her supervisor, in regards to complaints by a long-time volunteer who did not want to follow policy, “I just don’t want to hear it. Make her happy.”

I heard this theme a few times, in fact: that senior management was more displeased about getting a complaint from a volunteer than they were that the volunteer had violated a policy and been given a verbal or written reprimand.

If you are facing this, confront it head on:

  • Consider meeting one-on-one with the senior leader who thinks this way, to discuss why a complaint from a volunteer isn’t a sign of a failure in the program, why it’s often necessary to do something that upsets a volunteer (just as it’s sometimes necessary to do something that upsets an employee), etc. Talk about the consequences of not addressing problems with volunteers. Even if you walk away thinking you haven’t changed his or her mind, you’ve at least planted a seed of doubt in the senior manager’s mind about his or her thinking about volunteer management.
  • While volunteer management is not exactly the same as HR management, volunteer management does involve HR management, and reprimanding volunteers because of policy violations is an example of that. Meet with the HR manager to make sure your policies and procedures — and enforcement — are in line with each other, and that he or she endorse your practices at a staff meeting or a meeting with senior management.
  • Consider conducting a brief workshop for staff (over lunch is a great time) about how and why volunteers may be disciplined, why following policies and procedures is vitally important for the organization’s credibility and for staff and volunteer safety, the consequences of not addressing policy violations, how complaints from volunteers are handled, etc.
  • Include information about problems you face as the volunteer manager in your regular reporting and how you systematically, dispassionately address such.

And on a related note, here is my interview with OzVPM Director Andy Fryar, talking about the trainings in Australia last month.

Also see

The volunteer as bully = the toxic volunteer.

With Volunteers, See No Evil?

Freaking out over Facebook privacy?

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Facebook announced this month that it is removing the privacy feature that lets Facebook users hide from the social network’s search bar. That means that, if you use your real name on Facebook, anyone can find you. It doesn’t mean anyone can “friend” you, or see what you have posted to Facebook, if you have your privacy set to “friends only.”

A lot of people are freaking out over this. I’m not. Facebook doesn’t belong to me; it belongs to a for-profit company. The goal of that company is to make money. Facebook makes money two ways: by selling advertising and by selling information about you – information that you have voluntarily, freely, willingly, inputted into the system. I’ve known that from day one. I’ve known that about every online system I’ve used. Maybe it comes from being trained as a journalist – when I write something online, I think of it as publishing.

Short of deleting your Facebook account altogether, what can you do to protect your information on Facebook from being accessed by people and companies you do NOT want to see it?

  • Use your privacy settings to make your Facebook posts viewable only by friends, or at most, friends of friends. And remember that you can always do a “custom” setting, where a post is viewed only by specific people you choose – or NOT viewable by certain people of your choosing.
  • Every time you post, make sure, next to the “post” button, the option says just “friends.” If it doesn’t, change it!
  • Alter your name so that it isn’t exactly your name. Add an extra “s” somewhere. Or three “a”s where just one should appear. Or a Q as your middle initial. That can help confuse companies that are sold your information by Facebook regarding who you really are.
  • Create an email address to use only with Facebook. Yahoo or Gmail are but two options you could use. Change this under your “about” page (under contact info). Never, ever use this email for anything but Facebook. That’s another thing that will confuse computer programs trying to match your data with other information online.
  • Take your birthday off of Facebook. I know – it’s so much fun getting all those birthday wishes from your friends! But your birthday is precious information that should never be inputted into a social media database – it can be used for identity theft. You can still post “It’s my birthday!” in a status update if you want those birthday wishes!
  • Do not use Facebook to sign into ANYTHING other than Facebook! When you create an account on some web site, and it asks if you want to sign in with Facebook, DO NOT DO IT.
  • Don’t acknowledge all of your family connections through Facebook’s “relationship” feature. For instance, many credit card and bank accounts ask you for your mother’s maiden name, and if you have linked to your maternal grandmother on Facebook via the “relationship” feature, I can figure out what that is. You can still talk about and to your grandmother on Facebook – just take it out of the Facebook “about” database (a database that Facebook SELLS).
  • You could create two Facebook accounts – one that is the public, professional you, where you post things you wouldn’t mind anyone seeing and knowing, where you “friend” co-workers and classmates, etc., and one that is the wacky, snarky, political, outrageous you, where you “friend” only your close friends and family. That’s a violation of Facebook’s user policy, and if they catch it, they will make you delete one of these accounts. To avoid detection: make the names at least slightly different, do NOT use the “relationship” feature exactly the same way on both, don’t input the same hometown and employment information, and don’t friend the same people on these accounts.

If you are one of the people that has freaked out over Facebook’s announcement, it’s time for you to sit down and really think about how you use online social media. Who is the “online” you? You have control of that – so what’s going to be your strategy for the online you?

Also see: Why You SHOULD Separate Your Personal Life & Professional Life Online

Volunteer groups leading to financial donation/sponsorships?

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I’ve had an incredibly busy three weeks, preparing for, and then delivering, four trainings – two in Kentucky and two in Portland. Topics ranged from communications for small nonprofits (More Donors, More Volunteers and More Awareness: Doing It All With Better Outreach) in my home town of Henderson, Kentucky (more than 70 people attending – INCLUDING MY MOTHER) to a panel discussion regarding building relationships with current and potential even partners, part of the Arts Festival Conference 2013 in Louisville – which I was invited to partly because of this article I wrote in 2003 regarding finding sponsors (scroll down on the page to find it) and two all-day, intensive workshops on volunteer engagement essentials for AmeriCorps members serving in Oregon, hosted by Oregon Volunteers.

But I’m blogging today in particular about the presentation in Louisville, which was organized by ZAPP® / Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF).

There was an audible gasp from the audience when I suggested that a great way to build a relationship with potential sponsors  is to create volunteering opportunities for the employees of the company that festival organizers are targeting as a potential sponsor. People came up afterwards to ask, “Really?!”

Really.

There are many companies that are hungry to do something for communities and nonprofits beyond just buying a table at an event or having their name above the title of the event (“Acme Anvils Presents…”). Tell a company that 10, or 50 or even 100 employees could be involved in a one-day, just-show-up volunteering event and that company may very well ask you where to send the sponsorship check! And it seems to me that arts festivals present a terrific opportunity for this: event set up volunteers, tear-down volunteers, runners during the event, weather monitors, amateur photographers, tweeters and more.

True, Creating One-Time, Short-Term Group Volunteering Activities is not easy. But it’s an idea worth exploring if your event or program is in need of donors / sponsors.

How do I know? Because I’ve worked at a Fortune 500 company, directing its philanthropic activities, and I talk regularly with people who work at companies in the marketing or HR departments and do similar work. They love it when nonprofits don’t just come to them and say, “We need money – please give us some.” They like to hear about why the event or organization is important to the entire community, the real difference it makes, and how they can have a deeper connection than just a sponsorship check. They are being asked by employees for group volunteering events, and many companies see such events as ways:

  • to build employee cohesion
  • to allow people from different departments to work together in ways they never could in the work place
  • to allow employees to show talents and leadership abilities that haven’t been noticed in the work place
  • to give employees something fun to do

I also advised attendees to build a relationship with potential sponsors before ever asking for money: the first time they hear from you should NOT be when you ask for a sponsorship. Let them know about your events, let them know about your volunteering activities and invite them to participate, invite them to an open house – just meet to say “Hi, here’s what we do and wanted you to know. Tell us about YOU!”

I also talked at length about how arts festivals add incredible value to a community. Think about what people are looking for in a place to live: good schools, safe places, and LOTS TO DO, like farmer’s markets and festivals of any kind. Arts festivals – and arts activities of any kind (dance companies, live theatre productions, museums) add tremendous value to a community. Employers want to attract fantastic employees, and they OFTEN talk about community characteristics, including arts-related events and programs, to entice candidates to move or stay. So in making a pitch to a sponsor, talk about your organization’s value to the community – are you bringing a benefit to that company’s employees? THEN SAY SO.

Also see:

Creating One-Time, Short-Term Group Volunteering Activities
Details on not just what groups of volunteers can do in a two-hour, half-day or all-day event, but also just how much an organization or program will need to do to prepare a site for group volunteering. It’s an expensive, time-consuming endeavor – are you ready? Is it worth it?

Short-term Assignments for Tech Volunteers
There are a variety of ways for mission-based organizations to involve volunteers to help with short-term projects relating to computers and the Internet, and short-term assignments are what are sought after most by potential “tech” volunteers. But there is a disconnect: most organizations have trouble identifying such short-term projects. This is 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
Volunteers are getting together for intense, one-day events, or events of just a few days, to build web pages, to write code, to edit Wikipedia pages, and more. These are gatherings of onsite volunteers, where everyone is in one location, together, to do an online-related project in one day, or a few days. It’s a form of episodic volunteering, because volunteers don’t have to make an ongoing commitment – they can come to the event, contribute their services, and then leave and never volunteer again. Because computers are involved, these events are sometimes called hackathons, even if coding isn’t involved. 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.

Article by me from 2003 re: Finding Sponsors (scroll down on the page to find it)

Don’t Just Ask for Money!
Something much more should happen if someone clicks on your web site’s “Help Us” link than a message that asks only for money.

Subscribe to these Twitter lists – or recommend additions

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I maintain several public Twitter lists – lists of people and organizations that regularly tweet about subjects of interest to me. My lists are public, so that others can subscribe to such, or pick out which accounts they want to follow.

Four lists that I would love to get additions for:

Tech4Good ICT4D – a list of people and organizations that regularly tweet regarding computers and the Internet used to help people, communities and the environment. A lot of this list was built following the tags #tech4good #nptech, apps for good, etc.

Volunteerism non-English – a list of non-English Tweeters re: volunteerism, volunteers, etc. I’m particularly interested in sites tweeting volunteerism-related info in Spanish or French.

Public Health – A list of government agencies, nonprofits, NGOs and others tweeting about public health initiatives.

CSR – Corporations that tweet about their philanthropic and social responsibility activities, and people and organizations that tweet regarding corporate social responsibility.

Follow me on Twitter: @jcravens42

It’s World Tourism Day!

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Today, September 27, is World Tourism Day, a United Nations-designated day to talk about tourism and its impact on tourists, people in host countries, the environment and various economies.

Each year, the day has a theme, such as tourism’s contribution to the preservation of cultural heritage and to peace and mutual understanding, tourism for international understanding, peace and cooperation, tourism for (economic and social) development, or tourism as a driving force for poverty alleviation, job creation and social harmony.

The 2013 theme for World Tourism Day is Tourism and Water: Protecting Our Common Future,  “to raise awareness of tourism’s role in water access and shine a spotlight on the sector’s contribution to a more sustainable water future.” Events associated with this day highlight “tourism’s role in water access and shines a spotlight on the actions currently being taken by the sector in order to contribute to a more sustainable water future, as well as the challenges ahead.”

Also see my web page of links to information on the positive effects of sustainable development and alternative tourism and ways to cultivate efforts that support tourism as a part of sustainable development efforts. This is something that has been of interest to me for several years, and something I continually research on my own, as my time allows.

Microvolunteering: beyond the hype

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The buzz about microvolunteering continues – but, IMO, this form of virtual volunteering is still being talked about it terms of hype, rather than practicalities and concrete benefits. It’s being talked about by bloggers and consultants more than organizations creating microvolunteering activities. The vast majority of blogs and articles about microvolunteering are focused entirely on supposed benefits for volunteers, with not even anecdotal information to support assertions (not even testimonials from online volunteers, for instance, about why they undertook such activities, what exactly they did, etc.), and often without providing actual examples of what online volunteers do in microvolunteering activities, or details on how organizations benefit in such a way that the return on investment is clear. An example: this article from the Institute for Volunteering Research: “Micro-volunteering: doing some good through smartphones?“, about users of the Orange’s Do Some Good smartphone App.

Having promoted this form of online volunteering since 1997 – back when I gave it the not-at-all catchy name of byte-sized volunteering – having created such assignments for volunteers and, even now, managing a microvolunteering initiative, I offer the following:

My experience managing the Donate Your Brain initiatives for TechSoup. In this blog, I try to show just how much work it takes to provide meaningful microvolunteering opportunities. This isn’t a blog to discourage organizations from creating online microtasks for volunteers, but it is insight from a manager of volunteers point of view – and I would love to see many more such testimonials from the people that are actually creating these assignments and supervising the contributions made by volunteers.

A very long list of examples of microvolunteering really looks like. You won’t find a longer list anywhere of what microvolunteering assignments can look like. This web page also provides lots of advice on how to create such assignments and make the program worth doing.

For you researchers out there: it would be so refreshing if, instead of only focusing on the motivations of volunteers to engage in microvolunteering, you did some research on the organizations that involve volunteers in microvolunteering assignments:

  • What ultimately prompts them to start creating these assignments?
  • What type of microvolunteering assignments are the most common to start with at an organization?
  • What type of microvolunteering assignments are the most common across organizations?
  • Do most organizations start with a formal microvolunteering program – using that name, getting approval from senior staff to engage volunteers in this way, having a web page and blog announcing such, having an official launch of such activities, etc. – or do they just start offering such assignments without fanfare, even without calling them “microvolunteering”?
  • Do most organizations have just one person, or multiple people, creating microvolunteering activities and supervising volunteers?
  • What percentage of volunteers engaged in microvolunteering became longer-term volunteers, or became financial donors?
  • If an organization’s engagement of volunteers through microvolunteering went away tomorrow, what would be the impact?

And, yes, microvolunteering is talked about in the upcoming Virtual Volunteering Guidebook – just like it was in the last one back in 1999, but this time, we use the snazzy new name.