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.

EU agencies exploiting interns?

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Here we go again.

I blog about the exploitation of unpaid interns a lot – most recently just a few days ago when a US Federal judge has ruled that against the company that made the movie “The Black Swan” for not paying interns.

Now the spotlight is on various EU offices and their involvement of interns:

The European Commission offers some 1,400 sought-after five-month traineeships a year with a 1,074 euros monthly salary that is top tier… Yet the pay is well below the Belgian minimum wage requirement of 1,500 euros per month. Many other advertised positions offer monthly stipends of a few hundred euros and sometimes nothing at all.

Traineeships are supposed to provide training, but the line between that and actual employment is often blurred.

EU agencies, you have two choices:

  • pay trainees at least minimum wage and limit an intern to no more than four months in any internship at any organization, or,
  • create a mission (and a mission statement) for your volunteer (unpaid staff) involvement and live it: state explicitly why your organization reserves certain tasks / assignments / roles for volunteers (unpaid staff, including unpaid interns), to guide employees and volunteers in how they think about volunteers, to guide current volunteers in thinking about their role and value at the organization, and to show potential volunteers the kind of culture they can expect at your organization regarding volunteers. A commitment by the EU to involve volunteers would be a wonderful thing – allowing EU citizens to take on tasks and see first hand how an agency works that is meant to serve them, creating a sense of both ownership by citizens as well as a sense of transparency about the agency.

Either way, these internships, paid or unpaid, should be structured so that they provide real, meaningful learning experiences – that’s what makes them internships, regardless of pay.

And you best do it soon, because otherwise, EU interns may use the dollar/Euro value of volunteer hours that UN Volunteers, IFRC, ILO & others are promoting to sue you for back pay.

My previous blogs on this subject:

Note that the links within these blogs may not work, as I moved all of my blogs from Posterous to WordPress a few months ago, and it broke all of the internal links. Also, some web pages on other organization’s sites have moved since I linked to such, and I either don’t know or haven’t been able to find a new location for the material.

Campaign to End the Overhead Myth

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Guidestar CEO, Jacob Harold, published a letter condemning the use of administrative expenses as a measure of nonprofit performance. You can read the entire message at www.overheadmyth.com.

The letter was co-signed by Art Taylor, president and CEO of BBB Wise Giving Alliance, and Ken Berger, president and CEO of Charity Navigator—making it the first time the three leading nonprofit information providers joined together to share the same message: the percentage of a charity’s expenses that go to administrative costs, the “overhead” ratio, is not appropriate to consider when determining if the nonprofit is effective or efficient.

You can get involved!

For nonprofits: visit www.overheadmyth.com to print the letter, and include it in your postal mailing to supporters. Include a summary and link on your web site, your blog, on your Facebook page, on Twitter, and in any email newsletters.

Publicly commit to ending the focus on overhead by signing the pledge at www.overheadmyth.com.

Spread the word about the Overhead Myth campaign to your own networks online. Guidestar has created a communications and social media tool kit with turn-key content that you’re welcome to use: www.overheadmyth.com/press. But don’t just send out canned messages – say why you are particularly interested in this campaign.

Get your supporters, including volunteers, involved. Encourage them to share info about the campaign via their social media networks, and to blog about it, as well.

Nonprofits: Share your data and information with Guidestar. “We need nonprofit leaders to provide more public information about their missions, programs, and results so we can move past the overhead ratio once and for all. Our GuideStar Exchange program allows nonprofits to share data with stakeholders for free!”

And here’s the freaky part: I whined about the misplaced focus on overhead costs at nonprofits just a few hours ago on TechSoup.

This is an issue that’s very near and dear to me.

Also see: Survival Strategies for Nonprofits , a guide for nonprofits facing critical budget shortfalls.

When to NOT pay interns, redux

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A US Federal judge has ruled that against the company that made the movie “The Black Swan” for not paying interns.

In the ruling, U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III said the film’s producers should have paid the two interns because they did the same work as regular employees, provided value to the company and performed low-level tasks that didn’t require any specialized training. In ruling for the interns, the judge followed a six-part test outlined by the Labor Department for determining whether an internship can be unpaid. Under the test, the internship must be similar to an educational environment, run primarily for the benefit of the intern as opposed to the employer, and the intern’s work should not replace that of regular employees.

“Undoubtedly Mr. Glatt and Mr. Footman received some benefits from their internships, such as resume listings, job references and an understanding of how a production office works,” Pauley wrote. “But those benefits were incidental to working in the office like any other employees and were not the result of internships intentionally structured to benefit them.”

I tried to warn you! I did! I tried to warn you in my blog When to NOT pay interns and my other blog Are Interns Exploited?.

Note that this was NOT a matter of the organization being volunteered for being a for-profit. That this was a company, a business, rather than a nonprofit, NGO or charity, was NOT the problem for the judge. The problem was the nature of the work these unpaid interns (these VOLUNTEERS) were doing and the reason these tasks were done by volunteers (to save the organization money!).

Nonprofits, NGOs, charities: WAKE UP. This kind of lawsuit could happen to you. Especially if you keep harping on the dollar/Euro value of volunteer hours, the way UN Volunteers, IFRC, ILO & others are encouraging you to do.

Here’s a better idea: create a mission (and a mission statement) for your volunteer involvement and live it! State explicitly why your organization reserves certain assignments for volunteers, to guide employees and volunteers in how they think about volunteers, to guide current volunteers in thinking about their role and value at the organization, and to show potential volunteers the kind of culture they can expect at your organization regarding volunteers. It will also help to prevent exploitation – or perceptions of such – regarding your involvement of volunteers. Let it be an answer to this question: “Why do volunteers do these tasks rather than paid people” but without the answer, “Because we can’t afford to pay people to do this work.”

My previous blogs on this subject:

Note that the links within these blogs may not work, as I moved all of my blogs from Posterous to WordPress a few months ago, and it broke all of the internal links. Also, some web pages on other organization’s sites have moved since I linked to such, and I either don’t know or haven’t been able to find a new location for the material.

Finding out how many orgs are involving online volunteers

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A followup to my last blog, where I whined that so many organizations charged with measuring volunteering in a region or country refuse to ask any questions related to virtual volunteering.

As I’ve said many times: when I do workshops on virtual volunteering, and describe all the different aspects of what online volunteering looks like, including microvolunteering, someone always raises a hand or comes up to me afterwards to say, “My organization has online volunteers and I didn’t even know it!” or “I’m an online volunteer and I didn’t know it!”

If you ask organizations, “Do you have virtual volunteering / microvolunteering at your organization?” most will say “No.” But if you ask the question differently, the answer is often “Yes!”

How would YOU ask the question of organizations to find out if they were engaging volunteers online?

Here’s one idea:

In the last 12 months, did any volunteers helping your organization work in whole or in-part offsite on behalf of your organization, and use their own computers, smart phones, notebooks (Internet-enabled devices) from their home, work or elsewhere offsite, to provide updates on their volunteering, or the results of their volunteering?

What is your idea for ONE question? Please post it in the comments.

Challenges to getting answers:

  • There’s rarely just one person at an organization involving volunteers; often, several employees or key volunteers are involving volunteers, but there may not be one person tracking all of this involvement. So if you ask this question of just one person at the organization, you might not get an accurate answer.
  • The word volunteer is contested. People will say, “Oh, we don’t have volunteers. We have pro bono consultants, we have unpaid interns, we have executives online, we have board members, but we do not have volunteers.” That means someone who is advising your HR manager regarding the latest legislation that might affect hiring or your overworked marketing person regarding social media, and offering this advice unpaid, from the comfort of his or her  home or office or a coffee shop, won’t be counted as an online volunteer – even though they are. In fact, I talked to the manager of an online tutoring program who brought together students and what she called “subject matter experts” (SMES) together online for school assignments, but because it never dawned on her that the SMES were volunteers (unpaid, donating their service to a cause they believed in), she had no idea she was managing a volunteer program, let alone a virtual volunteering program.

This is not easy. I’ve been researching virtual volunteering since 1996 and, geesh, it’s still not easy! When does it get easier?!

Volunteerism research should include virtual volunteering!

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The NCVO UK Civil Society Almanac , published by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations (NCVO), maps the the size and scope of the voluntary sector in the United Kingdom.

The Independent Sector does the same for the USA, as well as promoting the oh-so-dreadful dollar value of volunteer time (which does so much to reinforce the idea that volunteers are a great way to save money and replace paid staff). The Volunteering and Civic Life in America report from the Corporation for National and Community Service and the National Conference on Citizenship also provides stats on volunteering in the USA.

You can find statistics online for volunteerism in Australia.

Through these and other research organizations, you can find out about how many organizations are involving volunteers, or the demographics of volunteers in certain countries.

But here’s what you can’t find out:

  • how many organizations are using the Internet to recruit, screen and/or support volunteers
  • how many people are using the Internet as a part of their volunteering service
  • the demographics of people using the Internet as a part of their volunteering service
  • etc.

Why? Because, even in 2013, these organizations and other researchers are STILL not asking these questions as a part of their studies / data collection regarding volunteering.

Virtual volunteering – including microvolunteering – has been practiced as long as there has been an Internet – making it a practice more than 30 years old. The Virtual Volunteering Project did the first research regarding virtual volunteering in the last 1990s. References to using the Internet as a part of volunteering service are now common place in trainings, books and articles. Yet… these research organizations continue to ignore online tools as a part of volunteering.

I am regularly asked for data regarding online volunteering – how many organizations are engaging people online, who is volunteering online, etc. And I cannot answer those questions with hard data because, since the expiration of the Virtual Volunteering Project, there is no one collecting the data!

And it’s worth noting: back in 2012, myself and Rob Jackson drafted and circulated a survey regarding software used to manage volunteer information. The purpose of the survey was to gather some basic data that might help organizations that involve volunteers to make better-informed decisions when choosing software, and to help software designers to understand the needs of those organizations. We published the results of the survey here (in PDF). But we learned some things that had nothing to do with software.

We asked a lot of questions that didn’t related directly to software, like about how many volunteers these organizations managed, as well as what volunteers did. We expected the percentage of volunteers that worked onsite to be huge. We were very surprised, and pleased, to find, instead, that so many organizations that responded to our survey involved volunteers that:

  • worked offsite, with no direct supervision by staff
  • worked directly with clients
  • worked directly with the general public
  • worked online from their home, work, school or other offsite computer or handheld device
    (virtual volunteering, including microvolunteering)
  • engaged in on-off activities, like a beach cleanup – otherwise known as episodic volunteering

You can see the breakdown for yourself here.

Wouldn’t it be great if NCVO, the Independent Sector, CNCS, the Points of Light Foundation, universities, and anyone researching anything to do with volunteering anywhere would start asking questions related to online tools? Wouldn’t it be great if finally, in 2013, they finally understood that virtual volunteering is an established, widespread practice and is worthy of inclusion in all discussions and research about volunteering?

I guess I’ll keep dreaming. Or move to Canada. Because, OF COURSE, the Canada report on volunteering in that country includes statistics on virtual volunteering.

Why I’m not outraged at the IRS

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Each year, the IRS reviews as many as 60,000 applications from groups that want to be classified as tax-exempt.

501(c)(4) tax-exempt status is a different nonprofit category than organizations like homeless shelters, arts groups, animal groups, etc. The (c)(4) status allows advocacy groups to avoid federal taxes, just like 501(c)(3) orgs, but the status doesn’t render donations to the groups tax deductible. The primary focus of their efforts must be promoting social welfare – and that can include lobbying and advocating for issues and legislation, but not outright political-campaign activity. Also, these groups do not have to disclose the identities of their donors unless they are under investigation.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s January 2010 “Citizens United” ruling lead to a torrent of new 501(c)4 groups: the number of applications sent to the IRS by those seeking 501(c)4 status rose to 3,400 in 2012 from 1,500 in 2010. MOST of these applications were from conservative groups. And many of these organizations flout the law in terms of not being involved in political-campaign activity – if you saw the whole process where Stephen Colbert oh-so-easily formed his own 501(c)(4) organization, you know what I mean.

So what was the “extra scrutiny” by the IRS? Good luck trying to find out specifics beyond the phrase “extra scrutiny” again and again. It took me an hour on Internet searches to find out enough to make this list of what the “extra scrutiny” was:

  • more details on what “social welfare” activities the organizations were undertaking
  • speakers they had hosted in meetings
  • fliers to promote events
  • list of volunteers
  • roles/works of volunteers
  • lists of members
  • list of donors
  • positions on political issues the organization was advocating

Some groups have claimed they were asked who was commenting on the group’s Facebook page, but I can’t find any confirmation of this claim.

Of course, this “extra scrutiny” is a fraction of what many of these same people outraged at the IRS were demanding regarding the now defunct nonprofit group ACORN. It’s the same scrutiny these conservatives were screaming about wanting for arts organizations back in the 1990s, in their attempt to eliminate all government funding for arts organizations. And probably most importantly: no organization was prevented from engaging in the activities it wanted to, not even those with pending status. None. Zilch.

This scrutiny is not only what I have been asked for in every nonprofit and government-related job I have held in the last 15 years (yes, I have been asked by a government agency to provide a list of paid staff and volunteers – they wanted to see if our arts organization was involving “enough” volunteers”); these are details I have long encouraged nonprofits to provide on their web sites, to show transparency and credibility.

So, I’ll be by usual blunt self: any nonprofit organization, no matter what their designation, that can’t easily provide details on its programs – who, what, where, when – as well as information the number and role of volunteers and information on any activities that might be considered political advocacy, shouldn’t be a nonprofit. And if that organization is a political group, it should have to provide a public list of all financial donors. Period.

But, no, I’m not going to provide a list of volunteers. Their roles and accomplishments, yes, but not a list of volunteers.

In fact, let’s get rid of (c)(4) nonprofits status altogether. You want to form an organization that engages in political activities? Form a PAC. 

My sources:

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/israel-related-groups-also-pointed-to-irs-scrutiny-91298.html#ixzz2TSsJpVJ1

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/14/us-usa-tax-irs-idUSBRE94B08I20130514

http://www.southcarolinaradionetwork.com/2013/05/15/at-least-2-sc-tea-party-groups-say-they-were-singled-out-by-irs/

http://www.coyotecommunications.com/outreach/scrutiny.html

http://www.salon.com/2013/05/14/when_the_irs_targeted_liberals/singleton/

Say yes to filling out that online profile

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I help manage the TechSoup Community Forum, for employees, volunteers and consultants that work at or with nonprofit organizations, libraries, NGOs and other mission-based organizations. The focus is to discuss challenges, advice and questions regarding their computer, Internet and other network-tech use.

Before I reply to a question or respond to any post, I usually click on the person’s TechSoup community profile (here’s my profile). And most of the time, the person’s profile is blank. That’s frustrating for me, not just on TechSoup’s forum, but on any online forum I’m a part of. Who is this person that’s posted a question or comment? What kind of nonprofit do they represent – what’s its mission or how big is it? Why should I adhere to the person’s advice? All of these are questions that get answered with a profile.

I look at profiles on almost any online discussion group I’m on at some point – that includes YahooGroups, GoogleGroups, Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, or any other platform. I look at a profile usually because someone has posted a really helpful post, and I want to know who the person is behind that excellent information, particularly what kind of organization they represent. I also always look at a person’s profile before responding to them on any group if I’m about to disagree with them – it’s a way for me to know a bit more about where they are coming from, so I can craft my response carefully and appropriately.

I also have looked at profiles because someone has said something that has made me realize that I might work in a similar field, or be in the same geographic area – and that’s lead to some great off-list conversations, lunch, coffee, even professional collaborations. In fact, my profile has played a role in some of the paid work I’ve gotten (people see some of my responses, click on my profile, read more about me, maybe click on the link to my web site to learn more about my credentials, and, boom, gig offer).

I treat online conversations like face-to-face meetings; I’d never get up in a group of people and espouse all sorts of opinions or professional advice, but not say who I am, what org I represent, etc. Not unless it was a group where all attendees are *supposed* to be anonymous (like many self-help groups). My profile is my name tag, where I can say as much or as little as I want. Imagine going to a panel discussion on a particular topic, and not having any information on the people in front of the room speaking – no organization name, no summary of the person’s background, etc. – that’s what it’s like, to me, when people talk on online groups but don’t fill out their profiles.

For me, a profile with even just a bit of info – a real name, a name of an organization or a link to a web site or LinkedIn profile – equals credibility. I’m going to take that person much more seriously when he or she offers up advice or questions, because I know at least a bit about who that person is.

TechSoup has advice that takes people step-by-step in filling out their TechSoup community profile.

A lot of people want to stay anonymous in online communities, even those groups focused on their professional, public work (IT, human resources management, social work, arts marketing, aid and development work, community garden management, etc.) because:

  • Their employer (or the organization they volunteer for) would frown on such participation, even if it contributes greatly to employees’ professional development, because they see it as a waste of time.
  • Their employer is afraid of a breach of confidentiality or the airing of dirty laundry (but that same employer probably doesn’t blink at an employee going to a conference, even presenting at a conference).
  • They want to ask questions and offer advice freely, without worrying about any on-the-record association with their employer (or where they are volunteering).
  • Even if they wrote in very general terms, if they were discussion a problem in the workplace or with a client, it would be easy to know what organization they worked for just based on the kind of nonprofit they have said they represent and the city in which they are located.
  • They work somewhere that is a highly-desired workplace, and know that if they provide their real name and/or the name of their employer, they will be inundated with inquiries by job seekers.

If any of those apply to you, you should still fill out your online profile, providing enough information so people know you are for real and credible, but not enough information to be identified. It’s NOT difficult! You could just say:

I work at a nonprofit organization based in Kentucky, focused on helping the elderly. I’m in charge of IT.

I volunteer at a Red Cross chapter west of the Mississippi. 

I am a social worker at a very well-known, large nonprofit in the USA.

No name for you or the organization, and not even a specific city name – yet, each of these profile statements give community members a sense of the kind of work you do, and helps us to better understand the advice you offer or questions you ask on an online community.

The discussion about why to fill out an online profile – or not – is happening over on TechSoup. Post there or here in the comments.

Free online courses for relief & development workers

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Last Mile Learning provides free, contextualized learning resources to professionals working in the development and relief sectors. Last Mile Learning is an initiative of LINGOs, a non-profit organization that promotes sustainable global development by building the capacity of the people delivering programs around the world. The Last Mile Learning facilitator resources are free and open source.

Each course in the Last Mile Learning includes a set of curricular materials that can be used by facilitators to lead face-to-face workshops or facilitated on-line training events (in both blended asynchronous or blended synchronous formats).

Courses relate to:

People Management
Project Management
Coaching Projects in the Development Sector
Harassment Prevention Project Identification and Design
Selection Interviewing Project Set Up
Delegation Project Planning
Performance Management Project Implentation
Managing through Meaningful Conversations Project Monitoring, Evaluation and Control
End of Project Transition

I’m quite excited about this initiative and these materials. I haven’t checked the materials out fully, but I’ve worked with LINGOS and know it’s a credible organization.

If you complete a course:

  • blog about it
  • share that you did so on your CV and LinkedIn profile
  • share it on your social networks (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
  • make sure your employer knows, if you think they would want to know that you are engaged in professional development activities

Spontaneous “online volunteers” after disasters

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When a big news story or disaster strikes, the result can be hundreds, even thousands, of people contacting organizations to offer help, including potential online volunteers. It could be a natural disaster, an act of violence, or a particular issue suddenly becoming the hot item on the news. A nonprofit organization, NGO, school, or other organization could suddenly be swamped with emails and phone calls from people who want to help in some way online.

Of course it’s appropriate for your organization to encourage these spontaneous online volunteering candidates to make an emergency financial donation to the organization — and be explicit about exactly what this money will be used for. But in addition, you should think about ways these spontaneous online volunteering candidates could engage in other activities to benefit your organization in a crisis situation:

  • Put up a page on your web site specifically for these people thanking them for wanting to help in this time of crisis or intense attention. Outline on that page all of the ways they can help your organization both as donors and online volunteers. Direct them to other organizations if there are ways to volunteer at these organizations in some way.
  • Encourage these spontaneous online volunteering candidates to subscribe to your email newsletter, your blog, your FaceBook account and/or your Twitter feed, wherever you are posting photos online, etc., to stay up-to-date on what your organization is doing to address whatever issue or circumstance is occurring.
  • Encourage them to repost your messages to their own blogs, their own status updates on online social networking sites, etc., to educate their friends and colleagues about what is happening. Direct them to where to find information about the online volunteering activities you have available.
  • Encourage them to write you if they see misinformation online about your organization and its work in this crisis situation.
  • Set up a YahooGroup or GoogleGroup only for these potential online volunteers, and tell them online volunteering opportunities will be announced on this group as soon as they become available. You could use the group to brainstorm with these potential online volunteers what activities they could undertake for your organization.

Some things these spontaneous online volunteers could do regarding this crisis or immediate high-profit situation:

  • Translate some of your existing web site material, flyers, blogs, Facebook status updates or new information into another language
  • Translate texts or blog comments coming into your organization from another language into English, so you can read and respond to such.
  • Monitor media reports and bring certain articles or information to your immediate attention.
  • Monitor online communities and blogs and bring certain information, and even misinformation, to your immediate attention (more on how to deal with misinformation).
  • Research what other organizations are doing that your organization might need to urgently know about, such as projects that are mapping eyewitness/on-the-ground reports of critical needs. For instance, following the Haiti Earthquake, OpenStreetMap created a crisis mapping project, mobilizing highly skilled online volunteers to layer up-to-the-minute data, such as the location of new field hospitals and downed bridges, onto post-quake satellite imagery. This data was made freely available by for-profit companies including GeoEye and DigitalGlobe. The digital cartography — informed by everything from Tweets to eyewitness reports — helped aid workers speed food, water and medicine to where it was needed most.
  • Create a smart phone application that is urgently needed. CrisisCamp mobilized hundreds of online and onsite volunteers in Washington, DC; London, England; Mountain View, California; and elsewhere to build and refine a variety of tech tools needed after the Earthquake in Haiti, including a basic Creole-English dictionary for the iPhone to help aid.

These are not just nice things for online volunteers to do in a crisis; they are critical services. Depending on the mission of your organization, you might want to consider including how to deal with spontaneous online volunteering candidates in your crisis communications plans.

The above information is from the revised Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, which will be published later in 2013.

From just a bulletin board to a DISCUSSION

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Too many online discussion groups are really just online bulletin boards: a place to put up some information, but not discuss it. If that’s all you want from your online group – a place to disseminate information one way, from messenger to audience – that’s fine. But if you want more… what does “more” look like? And how do you get to “more”?

bulletin board / announcement board content:

  • announcements about events, policies, reports, new staff appointments, etc.
  • reminders about policies, events, reports, etc.
  • most content generated by 1 – 5 people; most staff & volunteers in the program don’t generate content (and may not even read it)
  • content is available elsewhere/is not unique to the forum
 discussion forum content

  • people responding to comments and reminders
  • people asking questions
  • people inviting discussion or debate about specific topics
  • content generated by a variety of people, including staff members of the programs tied to the discussion forum
  • there is content that is not available anywhere else, meaning the forum is essential, not just a repeat of announcements from newsletters, etc.
  • unique content is essential; forum members need it for their work
bulletin board / announcement board method:

  • ad hoc, as events happen, policies and reports are created/updated, etc.
 discussion forum method:

  • questions are regularly introduced, in a strategic manner, particularly when questions and discussions aren’t happening organically
  • specific people are contacted and asked to respond to a question, announcement, debate, etc.
  • discussion forum is highlighted (not just mentioned) during webinars, onsite workshops, onsite events, and attendees are invited to continue discussion on a specific place on the forum.
  • specific, current threads in the discussion forum are highlighted in meetings, newsletters, reports, etc.

Share your thoughts! And please see the wiki at http://knowledgenetworks.wikispaces.com/ for advice on how to make a transition from an announcement/bulletin board to a discussion forum.