Category Archives: About Jayne

Grumpy Jayne

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I’m grumpy.

I need a vacation.

What’s making me grumpy these days?

Here’s a partial list:

Conferences that want to charge presenters to attend. Never mind that the presenters are a significant reason why most people attend the conference.

Corporations and for-profit businesses that want advice from me by email or phone about a new product they want to launch – but they don’t want to pay me.

Digital inclusion efforts that don’t talk about web and app accessibility.

Any inclusion efforts that don’t talk about web and app accessibility.

Digital divide initiatives that don’t talk about web and app accessibility.

Popularity contests disguised as “crowdsourcing.” You know: crowdsource who should get a special volunteering award! Such an award isn’t based on merit – it’s based on how well someone or an organization can market itself.

Crowdsourcing efforts actually being about harvesting email addresses / subscribers for something. Example: crowdsource answers to questions from nonprofits on our platform! But register first! (and be added to our newsletter where we will endlessly pitch our products to you) 

Organizations, especially schools, complaining that they don’t have enough volunteers, but then making it impossible to find information about how to volunteer, and what opportunities are available on their web site, etc.

Firefighters complaining that they don’t have enough volunteers, but having a lousy web site regarding volunteer information, refusing to use social media beyond “We posted to Facebook once last year!”, refusing to recruit in any ways that are different than “this is how we’ve always done it,” and targeting their recruitment measures to only those who might want to become career firefighters (volunteering is only a stepping stone).

People who say, upon hearing that their website isn’t accessible for people with disabilities, “Well, I don’t think we have that many people with disabilities trying to access our web site.”

Corporations and government officials who whine about nonprofits not being innovative or risk taking, but then balk at funding overhead costs, including staff training, computer technology, Internet access, etc.

People who never replied to my requests during a process I’m involved with regarding ways to improve or my questions on where to find something but then, when the event or campaign is over, are suddenly are brimming with ideas of how things should have been done.

People who don’t answer my questions and then are stunned when I don’t do work that matches their expectations.

People who post endlessly on Facebook about injustices or various social causes but never come to city council meetings, or citizens’ advisory committees, never attend public meetings to talk to police officers one-on-one, don’t attend candidate debates or town halls by elected officials, don’t vote, etc.

Consultants who make all sorts of suggestions about what an agency should be doing, but have never employed those suggestions first hand themselves. (“Here’s how you should be recruiting volunteers! Oh, no, I’ve never employed these methods myself… I don’t work with volunteers…”)

Consultants that promote themselves as social media experts and have just a few followers on Twitter.

Managers who believe lack of complaints means things are going really well (rather than, perhaps, complaints aren’t being heard).

Organizations that say they need volunteers but turn people away who try – including me.

Can’t get enough? Here are other blogs of frustration:

The cost of my greatest weakness

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logoIf you have ever been interviewed for a job, you are familiar with some version of the question “What’s your greatest weakness?”

My greatest weakness is the couch and a great day’s lineup on the classic movie channel here in the USA. But I know that’s not what someone in a job interview is wanting to know. Rather, they want to know what my greatest weakness is in the workplace.

Of course, so many people answer this question with, “I love to work! I’m a workaholic!” Spoiler alert: I don’t say that and saying it doesn’t make a person a good candidate. A workaholic is unhealthy for both employee and employer.

The reality is that “What’s your greatest weakness?” is a bad job interview question. All it does is make interviewees nervous and set them up for failure later. The potential hire is declaring to a potential employer, “Here’s what you need to be on the lookout for if you hire me!” And the employer WILL remember the declaration and be on the lookout for it – and probably be hypersensitive to any hint of a new employee showing it, in fact. Were it to be a truly fair question, everyone in the room would share their biggest weakness with each other, so the potential employee could decide if it’s the right office culture for him or her.

When I am interviewing candidates, I never ask that question. Instead, I ask “What frustrates you most in the workplace and how did you address it?” I’m not looking for a “Oh, nothing frustrates me, I love work!” answer. I’m not looking for a red flag either. What I’m trying to do is to see how self-aware someone is and trying to just get a feel for what kind of person they are. A red flag would be “I’m never frustrated in the workplace!”

But, with all that said, when I’m asked that “What’s your greatest weakness?” question in a job interview, I am honest. And my answer is this:

I ask a lot of questions and, often, this really frustrates my co-workers. 

When someone introduces a new project, or when I join an initiative, even one that I’m familiar with, I ask a lot of questions. I’m not trying to be critical and I’m not trying to play “gotcha” – I trying to understand an activity as completely as possible. I don’t just ask if something happens, but how it happens and who is responsible for different pieces of a project. The answers help me be clearer in my communications, help me know my own responsibilities and help me to be able to better support co-workers. It also keeps me from making a lot of mistakes that can hurt a project later.

Unfortunately for me, people often find my questions annoying. So many people see questions as criticism, even as a personal attack, especially if they cannot answer all of the questions. People starting new projects or people who haven’t introduced someone new to a project in a long while often haven’t thought about some of the issues I raise, and I think they feel called out when I ask my questions. People managing established projects are often shocked that I have questions, especially if it’s a project that has existed for several years. Again, I’m just trying to understand so that I can do the best job possible and prevent avoidable mistakes on my part.

In an effort to not seem critical, I often find myself prefacing my questions with apologies, something so many women do in order to try to head off any feelings that we’re “too aggressive.” Apologies I find myself making are statements like “I’m so sorry to bother everyone with this, but…” or “I’m sorry if the answer to this is already on your project web site but…” or “I hope everyone can be patient with me, but I don’t think I’m clear on some things…”  These kinds of self-depreciating apologies that women are conditioned to do are not something most men are conditioned to do. Women are conditioned to want to be liked and to assume responsibility for others’ feelings. Women apologize for being direct in an effort to somehow justify our questions, even our opinions. Professional women are told in so many ways: be assertive, but only if it doesn’t upset anyone else. It doesn’t matter how calm a woman remains, how civil a woman’s demeanor, how cool and collected she remains: it DOES hurt to ask when you’re female in the workplace.

Dr. Robert Alberti and Michael Emmons, authors of Your Perfect Right, provide a few questions to consider before choosing to be assertive, as quoted in the blog “Quit Being a Pushover: How to Be Assertive“:

  • How much does it matter to you?
  • Are you looking for a specific outcome or just to express yourself?
  • Are you looking for a positive outcome? Might asserting yourself make things worse?
  • Will you kick yourself if you don’t take action?
  • What are the probable consequences and realistic risks from your possible assertion?

Note that this blog is from the blog The Art of Manliness, not from an article to help women… the advice for women trying to be assertive is far, far different. Google it for yourself if you don’t believe me.

Still, I find these questions helpful to me. These qeustions have often kept me from asking a question I really wanted to, but didn’t, because the political cost will be too great. It hurts not only to bite my tongue, but weeks or months later, watch someone have to deal with something that could have been prevented, and perhaps my question could have prevented it – but I chose not to speak up because the consequences for me in terms of hostility or defensiveness by co-workers just wasn’t worth it.

The other frustrating thing I do in the work place is to take notes. Later, I sometimes refer to those notes when there is some disagreement on what was said or decided. Again, I’m not trying to be hurtful or critical but, rather, to be clear. And, to be honest, I’m often trying to cover my butt, as we say in American English. If I’ve done something wrong, I will absolutely take responsibility for it, but if I’ve been directed to do it that way – sorry, but I’m giving credit where it’s due. It’s not an easy strategy because no matter how diplomatically or gently I try to reference decisions from a previous meeting, my thorough note-taking does sometimes end up making people angry – they feel called out. And, let’s face it, who likes to be proven wrong?

Perhaps my weakness is that I like things explicit and transparent.

I offer this blog both as sympathy and encouragement to others like me, as well as a warning to potential employers of me. But before you shrink away in horror, I also ask this: wouldn’t you rather it was me, someone on your team, asking tough questions, rather than a potential funder or member of the press? Bridges are supposed to be stressed tested. Think of your project as the bridge and me the test…

Also see:

Frank description of what it’s like to work in communications in the UN

My most popular blogs of 2017

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logoEach year, I review which of my blogs have attracted the most traffic. Sometimes, a spike in traffic is because several people tweeted about the blog, or shared it on their own blog. Sometimes, I just have no idea why a blog starts seeing a lot of traffic. I also look at blogs that didn’t go anywhere, that have been seen by just one or two people – that does happen, and I need to figure out why.

I draw my material from my consulting work, from updating the Virtual Volunteering Wiki, from conversations with colleagues, from my own volunteering – even from things I’ve seen on TV or overhead somewhere. I never know what’s going to be popular. I’m frequently surprised what attracts so many readers – and what never catches on.

This list of my most viewed blogs probably isn’t of interest to anyone except me… but it’s something I like to do every year, to look for trends.

My top 20 most viewed blogs that I published in 2017:

I won’t help you recruit a receptionist/volunteer coordinator

Welcoming immigrants as volunteers at your organization

The harm of orphanage voluntourism (& wildlife voluntourism as well)

Anti-volunteerism campaigns

for volunteers: how to complain

Treat volunteers like employees? Great idea, awful idea

Mike Bright, Microvolunteering’s #1 Fan, Has Passed Away

Sympathy for one group – but not the other?

A plea to USA nonprofits for the next four years (& beyond):

Want to work internationally? Get involved locally.

J.K. Rowling speaks out against orphan tourism

Why Girls Want to Join the Boy Scouts

Creating a Speak-up Culture in the Workplace

When mission statements, ideologies & human rights collide

Volunteering, by itself, isn’t enough to save the world

What effective short-term international volunteering looks like

Resources re: labor laws and volunteering

Short-term deployments with Peace Corps & UNV

Medical Voluntourism Can Cause Serious Harm

Measuring social media success? You’re probably doing it wrong

If humans can do it, so can volunteers (who are, BTW, also humans)

That said… these weren’t my most visited blogs in 2017 – 17 of my 20 most read blogs in 2017 are from previous years, five of them having to do companies that sell letters saying someone has done community service for the courts and also claiming that the service is virtual volunteering (it’s not).

Also see:

My top blogs of 2016

My top blogs of 2014 (didn’t track it for 2015)

Nonprofits, NGOs: An Opportunity for a Fabulous Web Site

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I am thrilled to announce, at last, that I am working with Knowbility, a nonprofit based in Austin, Texas with whom I’ve been working with on and off since its founding in 1998. And even better: what I’m doing will help nonprofits, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), charities, schools and others to be able to welcome more clients, more donors, more volunteers and more supporters via their web sites.

I am the Knowbility liaison for nonprofits, NGOs, schools and other mission-based organizations that will participate in OpenAIR 2018 . OpenAIR is my very favorite group volunteering gig and hackathon anywhere in the world. This Accessibility Internet Rally (AIR) by Knowbility was a hackathon before there was the word hackathon. It was an onsite, local event for many years, and is now an international virtual volunteering event!

Via OpenAir, mission-based organizations get professionally-designed, accessible websites that accommodate all visitors. In fact, via OpenAir, they get more than a shiny new web site; they become a more-welcoming organization online – and maybe offline as well. This is a life-changing event for many participants – expect to have your horizons expanded and your way-of-thinking about how people use online tools transformed! 

People with disabilities want to donate, volunteer and otherwise support causes they care about. Like all people, they love the arts, animals, and the environment, they enjoy beautiful parks and fun outdoor activities, they support education, they want serious social problems addressed, and they want to be involved in these causes – as employees, as donors, as volunteers and as clients. But if your organization’s web site isn’t accessible to them, you leave them out – and that means you leave out potential donors, volunteers, clients, ideas, talent and more. All of that changes when your organization participates in OpenAIR! Here’s more about what accessibility means and why it’s important.This is a GLOBAL event: participating nonprofits, NGOs, charities and other mission-based organizations can be anywhere in the world!

This is a GLOBAL event: participating nonprofits, NGOs, charities and other mission-based organizations can be anywhere in the world!

I am SO EXCITED about my role, and I can’t wait to start helping nonprofits and others participate!  In September and October, I will market the heck out of this event, and I hope you will help by:

  • sharing this blog that you are reading now via your social media and in emails to colleagues and associates
  • by retweeting tweets that use the hashtag #OpenAIR2018
  • by following @Knowbility on Twitter, liking the Knowbility Facebook page and liking all messages related to OpenAIR
  • by talking to nonprofits, NGOs and charities you know that either don’t have a web site, or have a web site but it’s in need of a redesign, and encouraging them to check out the nonprofit section of the OpenAir web site.

In fact, you don’t have to wait – you can start doing all that NOW.

In November and December 2017, and in January 2018, I will be knocking myself out doing everything I can to help participating nonprofits prepare their information for their design teams, so that those teams can get started on their web sites in February – these design teams have just six weeks to develop these sites as a part of the OpenAir competition! Judging and awards will take place in March 2018. Participating nonprofits pay $100 to participate in OpenAir, but that fee isn’t due until December 2017, and the informational webinars in September and October about accessibility and the competition will be free.

The web designers in OpenAIR are professionals who want to apply their accessibility design skills to a web site for an organization doing good in the world. Each design team pays a small fee to participate, and commits to several hours of classes by Knowbility regarding the latest web accessibility tools and techniques. These design teams are mentored by leading experts in the accessibility field throughout their design time during OpenAIR. The designers that participate in OpenAIR are professional, trained web designers working for a variety of companies and universities. Since 1998, OpenAIR (then AIR) has included teams of web professionals from IBM, Dell, Applied Materials, Google, GivePulse, TradeMark Media, Elemental Blend, Cognizant Technology Solutions, Cal State, University of Michigan, University of Southern Florida and many more. For Knowbility, these teams are volunteers, donating their time and talent to create high quality, professional websites for participating organizations. If your company or university or group of friends wants to form a design team to participate and support a nonprofit or NGO in creating its web site as a part of this competition, please see this OpenAIR design team information.

Can you tell I’m excited?! This is a dream gig for me: I adore the work of Knowbility beyond measure (at left is a photo of me and Sharron Rush, a co-founder of Knowbility and its Executive Director, at a conference in 2006, with me displaying my “are you accessible?” temporary tattoo), I had a blast being a part of the AIR events almost 20 years ago, back when they were onsite in Austin, I am passionate about web accessibility, I love how corporations walk away from this event with much more awareness about the work of nonprofits, and I love helping nonprofits! This means, however, that I’m not available for any consulting gigs until after February 2018. So if you are thinking of me as a consultant for next year, contact me ASAP, as my schedule fills up quickly! More about my consulting services.

Direct links from the OpenAIR web site for nonprofits:

I can’t wait to work with you! In fact, if you are in the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area, I would be happy to talk with you face-to-face, in-person about participating in this event. Just contact me at jc@coyotecommunications.com to set up a time and place!

The legacy of early tech4good initiatives

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UNLogoThe Internet changes so quickly. As does our offline world. It’s amazing not only how quickly web sites go away, but how often entire initiatives are scrubbed online as well – even major United Nations initiatives that were covered extensively once-upon-a-time in major media. That’s a big problem if much of your professional work has been for and with online initiatives.

I’ve been working with organizations online since the 1990s, and many of those organizations are long gone. The initiatives I worked with may have gotten coverage from major media outlets and had huge names behind them back in the day – David Bowie, Bill Clinton, Bono, Nelson Mandela and more – and done a lot of great work, but when those initiatives go away, so do their web sites, all their research and all the records of their work – sometimes from the Internet Wayback Machine as well.

You may think outdated information is no longer useful and should go away. The reality is that “old” information is often vitally important. If anything, it often offers baseline data you can use to compare with data now, and together, it shows you, for instance, if the situation has improved for women online, or if the challenges for women getting online are the same now as they were in the 1990s, or if the promises made now regarding technology are the same unrealized promises from 20 or 30 years ago, and on and on. Having access to old information can also help you avoid previous missteps – or rediscover something that never should have gone away that you can use now.

If you can remember a defunct initiative’s web site address, you can often find archived versions of the site at archive.org, a site I use at least a few times a month. But if you can’t remember a defunct initiative’s URL, you may never be able to find deleted information again. And, as has already been noted, archive.org may not have the web site; sometimes, new owners of an organization ask for old web sites to be taken down, and the site complies.

Early in 2016, I started spending a lot of time updating various pages on Wikipedia related to subjects of greatest interest to me, including several defunct tech4good initiatives. Many times, when I’m trying to find information about a now-defunct volunteering or tech initiative, a Google or Bing search leads me to a page on Wikipedia, but the information isn’t always up-to-date or complete. When I can improve an entry, I do. But a big problem with Wikipedia is that someone can come along at any time and rewrite and delete all of your hard work – or even delete an entire page you have relied on for reference for modern research projects and proposals. I’ll keep updating Wikipedia, but I’ve realized there’s a need to create a more permanent archive of some of the volunteering and tech initiatives with which I’ve been associated, as well as those that I know did great work in the past.

So I have created the following pages on my own web site, to more permanently capture this information. Some pages are just summaries, while other sections are comprehensive. Whenever possible, I’ve included the original URLs, so that you can use archive.org to see complete web sites of these initiatives yourself, if they are there at all. I hope this info is helpful to those who worked on such initiatives in the past and would like to reference this work, as well as helpful to those doing research on the impact of nonprofit/NGO tech use, tech4good, ICT4D, volunteering and other initiatives.

I also hope these pages will be a caution to those who launching so-called disruptive technologies, or a tech tool or management approach the designers believe is entirely new and innovative, or a tool or approach with some pie-in-the-sky promises: always look at what’s been done before. You might be surprised to find that what you were promising now, or think you invented, was talked about many years ago:

United Nations Tech4Good / ICT4D Initiatives, a list of the various UN initiatives that have been launched since 2000 to promote the use of computers, feature phones, smart phones and various networked devices in development and humanitarian activities, to promote digital literacy and equitable access to the “information society,” and to bridge the digital divide. My goal in creating this page is to help researchers, as well as to remind current UN initiatives that much work regarding ICT4D has been done by various UN employees, consultants and volunteers for more than 15 years (and perhaps longer?).

United Nations Technology Service (UNITeS), a global volunteer initiative created by Kofi Annan in 2000. UNITeS both supported volunteers applying information and communications technologies for development (ICT4D) and promoted volunteerism as a fundamental element of successful ICT4D initiatives. It was administered by the UN Volunteers program, part of UNDP, and during the tenure of UNITeS, the UNV program helped place and/or support more than 300 volunteers applying ICT4D in more than 50 developing countries, including 28 Least Developed Countries (LDC), making it one of the largest volunteering in ICT4D initiatives. Part of the UNITeS mandate was to try to track all of the various tech volunteering initiatives and encourage them to share their best practices and challenges with each other. UNITeS was discontinued as an active program in 2005.

What Was NetAid?
A history of the NetAid initiative, part of which became the UN’s Online Volunteering service. This is what I was referring to specifically with all that name-dropping at the start of this blog.

Lessons from onlinevolunteering.org
Some key learnings from directing the UN’s Online Volunteering service from February 2001 to February 2005, when I directed the initiative, including support materials for those using the service to host online volunteers. This material, most of which I authored, was recently removed from the latest version of the OV service.

Tech Volunteer Groups / ICT4D Volunteers
A list of tech volunteering initiatives, some defunct, some still going strong, that recruit tech experts to volunteer their time support either local nonprofit organizations or NGOs in developing countries regarding computer hardware, software and Internet tech-related tasks.

The Virtual Volunteering Project
In 1995, a then-new nonprofit organization called Impact Online, based in Palo Alto, California, began promoting the idea of virtual volunteering, a phrase that was probably first used by one of Impact Online’s co-founders, Steve Glikbarg. In 1996, Impact Online received a grant from the James Irvine Foundation to launch an initiative to research the practice of virtual volunteering and to promote the practice to nonprofit organizations in the United States. This new initiative was dubbed the Virtual Volunteering Project, and the Web site was launched in early 1997. After one year, the Virtual Volunteering Project moved to the Charles A. Dana Center at The University of Texas at Austin, and Impact Online became VolunteerMatch. I directed the project from December 1996 through January 2001, when I left for the UN; the project was then discontinued. This is an archive of the Virtual Volunteering Project web site just before I left.

Early History of Nonprofits & the Internet
The Internet has always been about people and organizations networking with each other, sharing ideas and comments, and collaborating online. It has always been interactive and dynamic. And there were many nonprofit organizations who “got” it early — earlier than many for-profit companies. So I’ve attempted to set the record straight: I’ve prepared a web page that talks about the early history of nonprofits and the Internet. It focuses on 1995 and previous years. It talks a little about what nonprofits were using the cyberspace for as well at that time and lists the names of key people and organizations who helped get nonprofit organizations using the Internet in substantial numbers in 1995 and before. Edits and additions are welcomed.

Also see:

Here’s a list of all of the various volunteer recruitment / volunteer matching web sites of 1999. There are more than 30. Most are long gone. You can see what they looked like if you look them up on archive.org.

Incredibly Sad News re Gary Chapman Internet Pioneer

This article from the Nonprofit Quarterly about nonprofits losing critical archives as tech changes rapidly. In the article, the Atlantic is quoted:

Digital space is finite and expensive. Digitally stored data can become corrupted and decay as electrical charges used to encode information into binary bits leak out over time, altering the contents. And any enduring information could be lost if the software to access it becomes obsolete. Or a potent, well-timed coronal mass ejection could cause irreparable damage to electronic systems.

My top blogs of 2016

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logoThis blog entry that you are reading now is more for me than anyone else: here are my top blogs of 2016 – the ones I wrote this year and that got the most views:

Snapchat’s Potential Power for Social Good – with REAL examples

Volunteer management is community engagement

Vanity Volunteering: all about the volunteer

fake news, folklore & friendships

Universal accessibility in tourism! World Tourism Day theme 2016

Research needs re: virtual volunteering

Selling community service leads to arrest, conviction

Measuring the Impact of Volunteers: book announcement

Volunteering & social cohesion in a post Brexit world

Make volunteering transformative, not about # of hours

humanitarian stories & photos – use with caution

Citizens academy – intensive community engagement

Internet access / digital literacy in Havana, Cuba

Deriding the monetary value of volunteer hours: my mission in life?

Request to all those training re: volunteer management

Trusting teen volunteers with leadership – would you?

How Will Trump Presidency Affect Humanitarian Aid & Development?

Keeping volunteers safe – & keeping everyone safe with volunteers

The 2016 blog entry that got the most views was, in fact, On behalf of a Forest Grove family, but since I didn’t write most of that blog’s content, and it was targeted at an entirely different audience than my blog is normally for, I didn’t include it in the aforementioned list.

And it’s worth noting that the blog entry that got the most views in 2016, other than the aforementioned, wasn’t written this year – it was written in 2011. It’s Courts being fooled by online community service scams, about unscrupulous companies that will take money from people sentenced to community service and give them a letter saying they completed volunteering hours, when in fact, the people did nothing at all.

May your 2017 be full of strength, compassion and prosperity. And I hope you will consider me for help with your communications and community engagement needs.

My web site: online for 20 years!

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logoLast week, I celebrated the second anniversary of the publication of The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, (available for purchase in paperback or as an ebook (PDF) by Energize, Inc.). But there’s another anniversary as well that snuck up on me:

It’s the 20th anniversary of the launch of my own web site. The first version of my web site was uploaded on January 4, 1996.

Wow. 20 years. That’s centuries in terms of the Internet.

I began creating and posting tips on database management for nonprofits and other tech-related suggestions to the soc.org.nonprofit USENET newsgroup back in 1994 (see A Brief Review of the Early History of Nonprofits and the Internet for more about the early days of nonprofits and the Internet). Back then, questions about how to build and manage databases of volunteers, donors, clients and others was probably THE hot topic on any online discussion about nonprofits – not marketing (the other hot topic was, of course, how to raise funds). Two years later, I created my own web site to post my growing materials and favorite links, focusing on how nonprofits were, or could, use computer and Internet technologies. The earliest version of my web site that I can still access is at archive.org, from 1998. Super, duper simple design – like most of the web back then.

The original spirit of the Internet was to freely give information, as well as to take it, to make accessing information oh-so-easy, and to collaborate with anyone, anywhere. I got really caught up in that spirit. I was quite the Info Superhighway cheerleader back then. I still look at the 90s as a golden age, when sending just a few emails could double the amount of people that attended an event, when emailing a reporter or government official meant he or she would call you back, and when web sites downloaded oh-so-quickly. I wanted my web site to be a reflection of that, as well to promote my expertise and services as a new consultant, but back in the 1990s, it was online discussion groups, like USENET newsgroups, that got me jobs and built my professional reputation, not the web.

Why “Coyote” Communications as a name for my web site? Because I am quite partial to canines, and I think the coyote is unique among them, with qualities I greatly admire. Coyotes are amazingly adaptable to ever-changing surroundings – efforts to control or exterminate the coyote and the massive garbage-production of modern humans have produced an animal that is even more alert, opportunistic, and able to survive, even flourish. They are uniquely American creatures, incredibly misunderstood animals, much smaller than most people think, and often blamed for destruction not of their making. Coyotes are surprisingly, sometimes shockingly, intelligent, have the reputation of being “tricksters,” work well in groups, love to play, and have boundless love for their families. At night, to hear the high quavering cry or the short, high-pitched yips of coyotes is the most beautiful song you can hear outdoors. My only regret in choosing the name for my web site is that it is very hard for non-native English speakers to say, let alone spell, and most people abroad don’t know the word.

So, here I am, online for more than 20 years, and celebrating my two-decade-old web site. And this occurs within days of my 50th birthday. Wow. I’ had real champagne, not virtual bubbly, in case you were wondering.

Keynote speaking in South Carolina & Washington state!

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logoCome here me speak this month or next!

Me in South Carolina Jan. 27 – 29, 2016
I’ll be the keynote speaker and presenting workshops at the South Carolina Association for Volunteer Administration (SCAVA) annual conference, January 27-29, 2016 in North Myrtle Beach! You do not have to be a member of SCAVA to attend. Join me!

Me in Vancouver, Washington (state – USA) Feb. 11, 2016
I’ll be the keynote speaker at the Nonprofit Network Southwest Washington / Directors of Volunteer Programs Association (DVPA) conference on Thurs., February 11 in Vancouver, Washington (state), USA.

You can book me for your conference or workshop! After February 2016, my consulting schedule is wide open. I am available for presentations, short-term consultations, long-term projects, part-time positions, and, for the right role, a full-time permanent position. Here’s what I can do for your organization/initiative.

There are free online workshops by me which you can view anytime, if you want to know more about my presentation style. Most are more than 45 minutes long:

I’m available for interviews on Skype or your preferred video conferencing tool, and, of course, by phone – I’m on West Coast time (the same as Los Angeles). I’m available for in-person, onsite interviews in and around Portland, Oregon (the area where I live), and am willing to travel most anywhere for an interview or as part of a short-term consultation.

I need some quickie help re: a mobile-ready web page

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I would like to make a few pages on my web site mobile-ready (maybe all of them, if I have time). I have to do this myself – I’m a one-gal operation. And I’m no web designer.

Here’s my first attempt: it’s my page regarding microvolunteering. I used a template to create this page, making various adjustments, as I could figure them out – I’m no web designer (obviously).

But here’s what I need help with:

  • The specific lines of HTML or whatever, so that there is a space around the page (I hate how it’s pushed right up against the edges of my computer screen)
  • How to make the web links appear in a different color than the rest of the text (I’ve tried the way I did it on my other pages, but it doesn’t work – so, again, I’d need the *exact*  and how to place it)
  • How to make bullets appear (sometimes they do, sometimes they don’t, using UL and LI) and, if possible, how to make bulleted items indent (the way I did it on a non-mobile ready page doesn’t work). Again, I need the *exact* HTML and where to drop it in.

Or maybe I have to alter some other file? I’ve no idea. But the more simple you can make this for me, the better. 

And before you say something – yes, I know that, on this page, it’s a lot of text, and perhaps the design is unimaginative, etc. I get that. But for my audience, it’s what’s appropriate. And all I can manage for a web site of many thousands of pages. 

So give me a shout via email if you can help!

Have I offended?

1 Reply


A few years ago, whilst doing a training in Louisville, Kentucky, I explained that online volunteers shouldn’t be segregated in program management from traditional onsite volunteers, that they are just volunteers, like all other volunteers, and should be treated as such. An attendee was outraged that I had used the phrase just volunteers, even though it was obvious that I had meant solely or specifically, not merely.

A university student in one of my classes told me she didn’t like my use of the words target and setting my sights on something, because these were “references based in violence” (her words). I admit that, later,  I smugly chastised her over her own use of the phrase rule of thumb.

A workshop attendee in Egypt told me it was outrageous that I said volunteers should get written descriptions of the tasks they were getting or that there should be any talk of their commitment or performance. “We should accept their help and be grateful for whatever they can give! We have no right to ask for anything more!” She was almost in tears as she said this.

And then there’s the infamous Florida workshop at the Corporation for National Service conference from the 1990s, where a team of trainers, including me, tried to encourage a group of SeniorCorps program leaders to adjust their recruitment tactics in order to better attract seniors from the Baby Boomer generation. I don’t think I will ever recover from that.

These incidents – and lots of others I could talk about – prompted me to put a slide at the beginning of all of my presentations, called modus operandi. I tell the group there are no stupid questions, that I might not have all the answers, etc. And I also ask for no GOTCHA moments, where an attendee immediately becomes outraged at something I’ve said. I ask that, if anyone hears me say something that they think is offensive to please raise their hand and ask me to clarify. Some people have done so, and it’s helped head off a lot of bad feelings, because most of the time, I did not at all mean what they thought I meant.

I realize that there is no way in the world to avoid saying something that someone won’t like, but I really do want to connect with my audience, on a human level, and for us to be able to treat each other with respect and openness. I love training, and if there is an obstacle to my overall message getting out because of something I’ve said, or a perception of what I’ve said, I want that obstacle addressed post haste.

My work is out there in the public sphere for anyone to read and criticize. That’s the nature of my work, and it can be scary. Most of my work isn’t tucked away on an intranet at a humanitarian organization or in a classroom or high-priced academic journal – it’s on my web site, on my blog, on YouTube, on social media, even on other people’s web sites. It’s not easy to live with that much public scrutiny, and the criticism of me and my work can often be downright hateful, as we Kentuckians say (or, at least, as the Kentuckians I grew up with would say).

I was born and raised in Kentucky, and am fiercely proud of the fact. Fiercely. Ask my non-Kentucky friends and colleagues: they will tell you that they are sick of hearing about my beloved home state. Kentucky is like so many other states I’ve lived in or visited – Texas, Tennessee, Vermont, Iowa – or even other regions of the world – Ukraine, Catalunya, the Westerwald of Germany – where residents are intensely proud of being from that region, where there are unique aspects of their way of talking, even the way they dress, and they have faced jokes – sometimes good-natured, sometimes cruel – about their culture, including their accents. People from such regions get called out almost immediately anywhere else because of their accents, and they can be very sensitive about comments made about their culture, especially when most images about their culture in the media are negative.

Upon hearing that I am from Kentucky, I have heard comments all over the world which have stung me. There is a very particular joke that Germans have about Kentucky that I won’t repeat here, but when Germans would hear I was from Kentucky, and smirk, I would say the joke, in German, and they would be flabberghasted that I knew their “secret.” Instead of being offended, I turned the tables, and it actually often lead to some really great conversations about Kentucky – they got to learn just what an interesting, beautiful place it is, in contrast to what they thought. I hear a lot of hurtful comments from people from other countries when they learn I’m from the USA, because of how they perceive this country, based on our foreign policy, our movies and our TV shows. I have to find a way not to become overwhelmed with outrage at their comments, however cruel, because I’m there to work with them. I guess that’s why it takes a lot to offend me, as someone from Kentucky or from the USA as a whole.

Because of this worldwide perception of Kentucky, I sometimes comment about it at the start of a workshop I’m doing. It’s my way of disarming (oops, gun reference!) the audience: yes, I know you hear the accent, however slight. It’s also my way to represent: hey, you are going to get communications and tech advice from a gal from KENTUCKY – get your stereotypes about my state around THAT! I hope that, by the end of the workshop, they have not only learned about communications strategies, social media, volunteer management, etc. – I hope they have a new, better opinion of people from Kentucky.

I do just that at the start of this video. And it was recently brought to my attention that a Kentucky university professor was offended because of it. She didn’t tell me, however. Instead, she told her colleagues about her offense. Someone else had to tell me about her judgment.

So let me make it clear that my modus operandi isn’t just for my workshops; it’s also regarding my web site, this blog, and anything else I do online. If you read something of mine that you think is offensive, write me, via email (jc@coyotecommunications.com) or, as so many have done, in the comments section of my blog, and immediately ask me to clarify. Maybe I don’t mean what you think I mean. Maybe it’s exactly what I meant – and I will not hesitate to say so, so be careful what you ask for in a blog comment that will become public (an email, away from the public view, might be your better option). But you won’t ever know unless you ask me. And please do NOT call me out of anger out of the blue – that’s intimidating and provocative and I will very likely hang up.

And, no, I’m not wearing shoes right now. And I did use an outhouse last week, but it was in Canada.

Also see:

Could your organization be deceived by GOTCHA media?

Feuds in the nonprofit/NGO/charity world