Category Archives: Community Relations/Outreach

UNHCR web sites are NOT focused on helping refugees & that is shameful.

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white outlines of human figures with luggage, on the move, trekking across various landscapes

I have a lot of friends and acquaintances who are refugees. They have fled dire situations in their home countries (countries that most of them did NOT want to leave) and they are now in a different country, either trying to figure out how to stay there or trying to get to somewhere else, often to join family or good friends. I can’t help them with much: I’m not a lawyer and have no legal training. But I can help with tracking down information they are looking for and debunking things they have heard (usually something about how easy it is to get into some South American country).

I have been pleasantly surprised and grateful regarding the web sites of a variety of countries for their clear information, in English, about exactly how someone can legally migrate to their country. Even tiny countries that aren’t at all wealthy often have very clear, up-to-date information on their web sites for anyone thinking of coming there under any circumstances. These web sites have been incredibly helpful in my efforts to help friends and acquaintances to get accurate information and to avoid scams.

The same CANNOT be said of the web sites of UNHCR , the United Nations agency that is supposed to be the leader in protecting refugees – people forced to flee conflict and persecution, as well as those denied a nationality. UNHCR web sites based in various countries all over the world are NOT focused on providing critically-needed, up-to-date information for refugees. And that is inexcusable.

UNHCR country web sites are often focused primarily on enticing donors rather than helping refugees access the critical information they need:

  • the information refugees would be looking for is either hard to find or not there at all,
  • many pages that are supposed to have information for refugees are horribly out-of-date,
  • the information for refugees that is there is usually is NOT the info refugees want most,
  • and the sites are so full of jargon I can’t understand the information and English is my first language!

An example of what I’m talking about: UNHCR Pakistan: this web site is NOT focused on refugees. I wish it was an exception, but it’s not. I have an Afghan colleague now in Pakistan trying to register as a refugee, but the UNHCR office is closed! There’s NOTHING on the web site saying it’s closed.

Each and every UNHCR web site in ANY country should have a link called “Help for Refugees” on the home page as prominent as any link to donate. That link should be on EVERY page and be as prominent as any link to donate.

And when someone clicks on that “help for refugees” link, they should be taken to a page that has this information (or links to such):

  • How and when to register with UNHCR in that country.
  • Notices about office closures.
  • UNHCR office hours.
  • Statement regarding who is considered a refugee.
  • Rights and obligations of asylum seekers in dealing with UNHCR.
  • A list of the first things someone should do upon arriving in that country as a refugee.
  • How to apply for refugee status in that country.
  • How to contact the UNHCR office in that country.
  • Where UNHCR offices are located in that country.
  • Where or how to find shelter in that country (if this information changes frequently, then tell refugees how to find the most up-to-date information themselves).
  • What NGOs are in the country that help refugees, or how to find them (NGOs that can help with education, legal matters, shelter, dealing with the police, etc.).
  • Information regarding working in that country.
  • How to avoid scams that target refugees.
  • Tips for staying safe (including for children, for women, how to avoid traffickers, etc.).
  • How to research rumors (and why it’s so important to do so).
  • Why requests for asylum take so long to process.
  • The dangers of lying or misrepresenting information to UNHCR or any immigration authorities.
  • A list of reliable news outlets.

UNHCR, you would reduce the amount of phone calls and visits to your offices if you made the aforementioned information available and kept it up to date on your individual country web sites. You would prevent at least some of the harm that refugees experience because they are targeted for crime and otherwise exploited. You would help stop harmful rumors before they get too widespread. And you would be fulfilling your mission!

Have you ever asked refugees themselves what information they need most?

Do better, UNHCR.

And for those who wonder why I have a lot of friends and acquaintances who are refugees, or who desperately want to be such: it’s because I have worked for the UN and talk about that work, as well as other humanitarian-focused work, online in various online communities and via my own social media channels, and because I frequently write about refugee-related efforts:

You can volunteer to address the critical needs of refugees IN YOUR OWN COMMUNITY

Our Lady of the Manifest: the icon for a very particular community of online volunteers

Digital Dunkirk: online volunteers scramble to help endangered Afghans get visas & out of Afghanistan

My request to my US congressional representatives regarding Afghan refugees

If you’re promoting AI to nonprofits, be SPECIFIC about benefits. No more generalizations!

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HAL from 2001 a space odyssey

The hype regarding Artificial Intelligence (AI) is out of control, including regarding mission-based organizations. There are blogs, webinars, YouTube videos and more, all singing the praises of AI for nonprofits and NGOs. Various companies, nonprofits and consultants are falling over themselves to say that AI can do ANYTHING a nonprofit or NGO needs done: raise funds, manage volunteers, talk with clients, administer programs, manage all incoming calls, all with little or no human involvement.

Yet, these promoters are rarely specific. “You can use AI to research grants!” Okay, how? Tell me exactly what that looks like and how it’s different than just typing in keywords to an online search engine?

“You can use AI to screen volunteers!” Great. How? Tell me exactly what that looks like and how it’s different than just requiring certain fields in a volunteer application to be filled out or require a certain number of characters in that field? And is the goal to eliminate all human interaction until the volunteer shows up for the scheduled volunteering gig, because it’s that personal, human interaction that often seals the deal for a volunteer to show up at all.

So many of you are breathless about your use of AI, but you aren’t being specific about what that REALLY looks like. Specifics and obvious, real-world benefits are what lead to tech adoption.

Back in the 1990s, when the Internet started going mainstream, I started my own web site as a place to be specific about how the Internet could be used by nonprofit staff, specifically those responsible for outreach and those responsible for recruiting and engaging volunteers. Lots of makers of software and computers were making claims about what these tech tools could do for nonprofits, but they offered no specifics and no detailed guides, probably because they were talking in theory, not actual practice. As a result, a lot of nonprofits were dragging their feet about switching from index cards to track contacts to software that would manage clients and donors – they relished their personal relationships and saw tech eliminating something fundamental to their fundraising, outreach and program management success. A lot of nonprofits balked at the idea of creating a web site when they weren’t using any web site themselves: if a web site wasn’t the primary way they got info, why should they care? Of course, the reluctance of government and corporate donors to fund tech equipment, Internet subscriptions and training for staff also had something to do with many nonprofits not adopting computers and the Internet for so long.

I was one of the first people to start talking online and in workshops, in low-tech PLAIN language, about practical, real-world applications of online and computer tech for nonprofits. I could see the digital divide emerging between nonprofits that were adopting tech, especially online tools, and doing so much more with less, and those that still hoped the Internet was the CB Radio of the 1990s. But those latter nonprofits were providing critical services, and I did not want to see them die due to lack of understanding about emerging tech tools. In my work, I emphasized not only the practical applications and the specifics of tech use, but also that I would never propose the Internet or software as tools to replace humans; I always emphasized the application of tech tools with the goal of increasing meaningful human interactions, to increase support and help for humans, both clients and volunteers, and to free up time for staff so that they could spend more time in real-time work with clients, donors, the press, potential partners, other staff, etc.

(if you want to see those early versions of my web site, type the URL into The Internet Wayback Machine.)

That web site and my trainings launched an entirely new career for me. One of the things that made me so successful was that I was SPECIFIC: I didn’t just say, “The Internet can help you reach new audiences!”; I gave specific details on what that looked like, and exactly what a person would need to do to replicate those results. The Virtual Volunteering Project (1996 – 2001) was laser-focused on specifics and practical applications. I wrote one of the first articles (October 2001) about how hand-held technologies – what we now call smart phones – were being used in humanitarian and public health field work and grass roots organizing.

In all of this work, I also never stopped emphasizing the human aspect: when I talked about online mentoring, I noted that success was NEVER about the tech tools, but about the HUMANS involved and how well they were trained and supported.

As a result of my approach, via my web site and via workshops, I regularly got comments like, “This is the first time I’ve ever understood why I should care about the Internet at my job” and “I finally know what questions to ask software salespeople.”

To all of you promoting AI for nonprofits: you have to be as specific as I was. For instance, be clear about why using AI would be preferable to just a web search on Google or Duck Duck Go. In fact, in my opnion: it’s not AT ALL preferable, and if you use AI to make suggestions about small-budget fundraising events for an animal shelter, you should still go to the search engine of your choice and look for fundraising events for an animal shelter, because you will find even more ideas. YOU should know the full range out there, and no AI tool provides that.

And also to all of you promoting AI for nonprofits: you need to be clear in warning nonprofits NEVER to take an AI-produced product, whether it’s a graphic, a press release or a social media strategy, and use it as is. AI makes mistakes (link goes to one that was very personal for me and would have been traumatizing). AI hallucinates and FREQUENTLY puts incorrect info into the written text it produces. AI not only claimed Ananda Valenzuela was speaking at an upcoming conference, it doubled-down when she tried to correct it. AI also doesn’t adhere to standards of accessible or even GOOD design: you can use an AI tool like Canva to produce your event flyer, but a HUMAN still has to make sure it adheres to standards of good design (like appropriate color contrast).

One final note to all of you promoting AI to nonprofits: the energy needs of AI are threatening to overwhelm the power grid. They are increasing our need for electricity at a time when we need to be DECREASING that need and RAISING energy prices for regular folks. You had better acknowledge this, full disclosure, when talking to nonprofits, many of whom are trying to adopt greener ways of doing business (and some of whom are focused on addressing global climate change specifically).

Yes, I use AI. One cannot use anything is on a network of any kind, or even a stand alone new computer, without using some form of AI. My spell checker and grammar checker tool is considered an AI tool, because, supposedly, this tool “learns” from me. I use Canva sometimes. I was once charged with writing a poem that might be a part of a fundraising campaign, and after I wrote my poem, I then asked AI to write a poem, giving it the same parameters that I was given, just to see how it compared. The AI poem actually wasn’t horrible. Mine was better, of course, but if all I had had to work with was that AI poem, with some tweaking, it would have been okay. But just okay. But I never trust the AI summary at the top of an online search – I always go looking for the source. WIkipedia remains a far superior resource for explanations and summaries, IMO.

Think of AI-produced material as something that a new employee from the corporate world or volunteer fresh out of high school, someone who might be able to use the latest computer tech to play video games and watch TikTok videos but does not understand that not everyone has the latest tech tools, not everyone has great eyesight, not everyone uses their hands to navigate web pages, not everyone speaks English as a first language, not everyone understands your soon-to-be dated jargon, etc. You are always going to have to correct and refine the material AI produces, just like you would that new employee or volunteer.

Why am I not taking up the challenge myself and researching and compiling real-world, practical examples of specific ways nonprofits and NGOs are using AI?

  • I do not have the finances to do yet another mostly-unfunded project. I was paid when I managed the Virtual Volunteering Project. I have not been paid for any of the research and resources I’ve produced for my own web site, nor for the Virtual Volunteering Guidebook (when it comes to the book, which I paid to publish, I barely broke even).
  • I think it should be NOT ME. It’s overdue for someone else to take up this let’s-talk-plain-language-about-tech challenge.
  • I am much older now and would like to focus on other things.

I really hope someone out there is reading this and will take up the challenge.

Also see:

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

The campaign against US nonprofits has been a long time coming. The worst of it is starting. Are you ready?

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a primitive figure, like a petroglyph, shots through a megaphone

Upon the election of Donald Trump to a second presidency, many nonprofits became wary about how they talk about their work, even their mission statement. Even before the election, many nonprofits rushed to remove any mention of the phrase diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI, or ANY of those words on their own, from their web sites. Now, as the Trump administration threatens to revoke tax-exempt status from nonprofits supporting racial justice efforts, it’s made it further difficult for many nonprofits to communicate at all about their work. This article from the Chronicle of Philanthropy focuses on specific nonprofits who are having to significantly alter their messaging – or put a pause on public communications altogether (note that you must register on the site to read it, but registraiton is free).

Make no mistake: in addition to trying to purge the nonprofit world of work regarding diversity, equity, inclusion, racial justice, economic justice and climate change, they are focusing on the use of the word empathy, and any work regarding such.

This is an issue I’ve been researching, talking about and training about long before the current presidency. Because this campaign against nonprofits has been a long time coming.

I first wrote about the political right’s desire to undermine the credibility and support for nonprofit organizations in 2011, in my blog Could your organization be deceived by GOTCHA media?, where I showed examples of how any cause can become politicized, and any organization can become a political target. My favorite example of this is the successful and horrifying elimination of the wonderful Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), per right-wing misinformation via doctored videos. Now, there’s a new example: a selectively filmed and edited film about childcare centers in Minnesota run by Somali immigrants that have received federal funding has caused a firestorm in the media, implying that these childcare centers, and Somali immigrants were misappropriating millions of dollars. What’s less well known is that these efforts are being funded by GOP Megadonor Leonard Leo. The Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families conducted compliance checks on nine child care centers embroiled in controversy and found that the centers were “operating as expected.”

I wrote about it again in Growing misconceptions about the role of nonprofits in the USA in 2018. I wrote about it AGAIN in Your nonprofit WILL be targeted with misinformation; prepare now at the start of 2025. And when I watched a nonprofit consultant on an online community advise nonprofits to not just soften their language but to bend the knee to the current administration, I wrote a strategy for myself, in my own work, and it became Your Nonprofit CAN Resist. Here’s how.

I hope your nonprofit won’t back off of its commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. I hope your nonprofit won’t alter its mission statement. I do hope your nonprofit will:

  • Talk to your board of directors, staff and lead volunteers regularly, repeatedly, about why your nonprofit exists, why it does what it does, and why it has the values or commitments it does. Make sure they know how to talk about all of that from a place of confidence.

If this hasn’t been on a staff agenda or a board meeting agenda yet, then get it on there ASAP. If you had a meeting about it last year, you’re overdue to have one this year. Get busy.

Also see

Nonprofits: be honest with yourself, your staff & the public about how the November 2024 elections may affect you.

Governments cracking down on nonprofits & NGOs

Why I’m not outraged at the IRS from 2013.

Told ya. & I’m still telling you.

Design Checklist: What to Review Before Publishing a Communications Product

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A drawing meant to look like a petroglyph. It's of a person carving petroglyphs.

Nonprofits produce communications products, online and in print, from web pages to social media to brochures. Whether that product is designed by a professional designer or is designed by someone who has never had a design class, there are certain qualities those products MUST have. And while there are a plethora of online resources that provide excellent guidance on accessibility and usability for online products, like web pages and apps, there is a lack of guidance for how to make print products and graphics associated with social media relevant / necessary, complete, informative, legible for a majority of viewers / readers and understandable for a majority of the target audience.

This new page on my web site provides simple, easy-to-understand guidance for both designers and those who have the final say on something being published.

Design Checklist: What to Review Before Publishing a Communications Product.

And before I get the comment – yes, it’s pretty clear from the simple, almost primitive design of my web site that I’m not a professional designer. But when you work in communications for nonprofits, you often have to design flyers, posters, brochures, web sites, etc. My designs are plain and blocky. My designs won’t win any design awards. However, my designs adhere to all of the aforementioned suggested qualities, and that means they work: I am amazing at recruiting volunteers, at getting attendance to an event, at getting participation in a program, at getting traffic on a web site, and on and on.

Even if you are NOT a professional designer, you know what your nonprofit needs. You know your audience, which likely includes seniors and people over 40 who do not like to be called seniors but also can’t read 9 point fonts.  

If you have benefited from this resource, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

How to do a fundraising, volunteer recruitment or other video on the cheap for your nonprofit.

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a primitive image, like a cave painting, of a figure holding a smart phone under a sun.

The staff at nonprofits, no matter its size, no matter its focus, need at least one short video that succinctly explains their programs and their impact, or a video that shows how the organization engages volunteers. They may also need a video that helps onboard program participants or explains safety measures.

Your small nonprofit with just a handful of staff – maybe just a few employees, maybe just one employee, maybe all volunteers (unpaid staff) – may think it cannot make such a video, because it can’t afford a professional videographer. In fact, you can, and with just the tech assets you have.

Making a short video for your nonprofit with just the tech you have.
This resource on my web site takes you step-by-step in how to identify the hardware and software you have right now, via your smart phones and laptops and operating systems, and how you can leverage that very basic technology, as well as the photos you may already have on hand, to create videos you need, from videos of clients explaining the impact of your programs to short videos for Facebook and Instagram reels, Tik Tok, and whatever else shows up as the fun new social media.

If you want to see the video I made for the Habitat affiliate I work for now, the video I made on the cheap, it’s linked off the aforementioned page, but here’s the link to the video as well.

This is the first tech-focused resources I’ve created on my web site in YEARS. It’s nice to get back to the subject that inspired my web site back in 1996.

If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

.

My time as moderator on one of the most popular subreddits is at an end.

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For many years, I’ve moderated one of the most popular online communities on Reddit. Such communities are called subreddits, and the very popular subreddit I moderated for many years (but not the only one) is r/volunteer. The description, which has a character limit, reads:

Share volunteering experiences or attempts to volunteer (unpaid work for a CAUSE, like helping foster kids). Share vol opportunities for others or a paid or unpaid role for a manager of vols, or a resource for such. Ask questions or for advice on recruiting, engaging & supporting vols, or about policies or safety for vols & those they serve. Discuss volunteerism ethics. 

The description also notes: This sub is a highly moderated.

I’ve been a moderator and facilitator of online communities and discussion boards in association with events since the 1990s. My first gig was on the soc.org.nonprofit newsgroup (remember USENET?). I’ve done these moderating and facilitating gigs mostly as a volunteer (unpaid). Why? Because I enjoy networking with others in my professional areas, from volunteer engagement to humanitarian response to nonprofit management to communications for development and on and on. I’ve been a part of even more online communities as just a member – asking questions, answering questions, debating, and lurking. Online communities have always been what I loved most about the Internet, far more than the World Wide Web or any streaming service. Participation in online communities has landed me short-term paid gigs and full-time paid jobs, including with the United Nations. Participation has also given me some wonderful learning experiences and terrific professional colleagues.

I’m VERY proud of my many years moderating and facilitating the volunteer subreddit in particular. It has taken several hours a week to moderate and facilitate the group. It’s a group that has always been very popular on Reddit, but once I took over, membership exploded, and it got even more popular. It also had more on-topic posts, more on-topic comments and more viewers. What did I do so that the subreddit got more members, more viewers and much higher quality content?

One thing I noticed early on was a complete lack of quality control regarding posts on the subreddit. Misinformation about volunteering was everywhere, as were posts from very dodgy groups wanting foreign volunteers to pay a great deal of money to “help” in some developing country somewhere, and “nonprofits” that would give a person a letter, in exchange for a “donation,” saying they had completed online community service for the court. There were people recruiting volunteers but offering no information on who was behind the initiative, something I feel strongly puts people at risk for harm. There were also people asking for volunteers to engage in initiatives that many groups were begging people NOT to do, like create holiday cards for people in assisted living or children in hospitals. There were teens with no experience wanting to create mental health crisis lines – which could, of course, put more teens at risk and lead to teens being harmed. And on and on.

There were also frequently asked questions that were easily answered: how do I volunteer? How do I volunteer to explore a career? How do I volunteer to help animals? How do I volunteer to make me look good for a scholarship? Etc.

My goal in becoming the moderator of the group – and I was the only one, no one else wanted the role – was to get rules in place, get quality content posted regularly that addressed the FAQs, and counter all the misinformation.

Since I began moderating the group so many years ago, it has taken hours of my time every week:

  • reading every post,
  • writing and rewriting and rewriting the group rules as the group and the content evolves,
  • always giving a reason for deleting a post or comment,
  • welcoming someone who reposts because they’ve rewritten their message so that it fits the rules, complimenting good content,
  • creating meaningful content tags to that content is easier to find,
  • creating automated rules (such as requiring that the word “volunteer” appear somewhere in every post and comment),
  • addressing FAQs with detailed responses (and that sometimes means pointing people to previous responses),
  • regularly posting what I hope will be thread starters,
  • promptly banning trolls, people who won’t follow the rules, those trying to sell community service, etc.
  • trying to answer the many questions and comments that come in via modmail.
  • posting links to questions and comments to other social media, trying to get more people to respond with quality content or to raise awareness about an issue that I thought more volunteer management experts and consultants and volunteerism-focused organizations should know about.

I’ve always tried to be strategic and thoughtful in the writing and re-writing of every group rule, of every group structure, even of using the automod function. I created standard content tags for the group that I shadow tested for weeks, going back through years of posts and thinking, “which tag would this have if tags had been a thing then?” I never made a group change impulsively and I can justify every post deletion and every ban.

I think it speaks volumes that there are so many other subreddits that are focused on volunteering but have few or no rules regarding transparency, safety programs when vulnerable populations are involved, no prohibitions anywhere near what r/volunteer had – and those subreddits have never taken off. And I even linked to them on r/volunteer, so that people knew, if they didn’t like the rules, there were plenty of other places on reddit that had the “anything goes” vibe they claimed to be looking for.

I loved the experience of moderating r/volunteer in that I’ve gotten to help people volunteer and I think I’ve finally gotten through in a big way regarding why trying to be a volunteer can be so hard (because most organizations have zero volunteer management training, don’t have a person dedicated to volunteer engagement, and can’t get funding for such because foundations and corporations refuse to fund “overhead”). I’ve also really enjoyed seeing for myself just how much people under 40 really, REALLY want to give back to their communities and do good in the world. It’s why, when networking with volunteer management professionals elsewhere, I’ve been able to say, with confidence, that claims that “no one wants to volunteer” are not true. So much of my interactions on the subreddit have affirmed everything I’ve said for years about how to recruit volunteers and engage them effectively. The vindication has been wonderful.

But moderating has also meant a LOT of abuse and personal, nasty insults. I have kept those private from the members of the subreddit, because I see no reason to amplify that hate. I’m not talking about people who are criticizing my points of view; I’m talking about people who say vile things, things meant to terrify. I’ve also regularly been threatened with the filing of lawsuits (such has never been filed, BTW). Two different angry people called me at home – a consequence of me being transparent on Reddit about who I am, rather than hiding behind a cyber pseudonym.

But just as bad, and maybe worse, are the people who parachute in to the group for a few days and demand my credentials and demand that I prove I really am an expert regarding volunteer engagement; these are requests from people who won’t share their own credentials and are unaware that there were any global standards regarding volunteer management, unaware that there are global gatherings on the subject, etc.

Those constant demands for me to prove I am an expert, and the repeated “Why aren’t you doing it THIS way?” messages from people who rarely provide meaningful content has finally gotten too much.

And so, my time moderating the volunteer subreddit is at an end. Not ending how I wanted it to – I kept trying to recruit new moderators, so I could just be a regular member, but no one ever even tried to meet the criteria. But I’m done – as moderator and member.

I’ll stay as moderator, for now, on other subreddits – you can see all of them here. And active on even more. And I’ve reproduced Reddit4Good on my own Reddit page, and will keep that updated – no where else. If you ever see that list anywhere else, remember: I created it.

And one last note: I’ll always be frustrated with all of the volunteer management researchers and consultants out there, all of the leaders of volunteer management associations, all the volunteerism-promoting organizations like Points of Light and the Corporation for National Service, who would not even read the volunteer subreddit, let alone participate in it. For those consultants, researchers, nonprofits and associations to ignore what is probably the largest community focused on volunteerism is shameful.

Also see:

Why the Verboort Sausage & Kraut Festival is successful as a fundraiser & community event & what you can learn from it

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Verboort is an unincorporated community in Washington County, Oregon. It has less than 500 residents. It also has a very large Catholic Church and an adjacent, small Catholic School.

Back in 1934, the church and school started the Verboort Sausage and Sauerkraut Festival, with proceeds going for the upkeep of the school. It was small and attended by residents, families, and some people from surrounding villages.

Now, the one-day festival attracts about 10,000 people a year. The line for purchasing bulk sausage and sauerkraut starts forming four or five hours before sunrise. The cars that want to pick up ready-made dinners line up five hours before serving begins. The venue where dinner is served (rather than take aways) is continually packed from the moment it opens until it closes in the evening.

I’m just back, rain-soaked from standing in line for a take away meal, and covered in mud from the trek to and from the car parked in a farm field. And I’ve been wondering why this fundraising event is so amazingly successful.

Here’s what I think makes it successful year after year, even during COVID:

  • They’ve kept the festival simple in terms of what it serves. It’s pretty much the exact same meals, every year (pork sausages, sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, green beans, apple sauce, coleslaw, a roll and a piece of pie). No variation. They have the formula down – really hearty comfort food you want to eat in November – and they stick with it.
  • The food is incredible. I have never had mass-prepared meals that are this scrumptious. The sauerkraut is to die for – which is why they also sell it by the tub the day of.
  • The community was founded by six Dutch Catholic families, and the festival plays up the Dutch connection HUGELY. Actually, they get a little mixed up and play German Oktoberfest music too, but most people don’t know. The point is, this isn’t like any other festival anywhere else in Oregon. It makes it more than food – it’s an experience.
  • They grew slowly. What started off as maybe 100 people coming to a community feed has slowly blossomed. They didn’t immediately try to do something beyond their resources. People who enjoyed it returned – and told their friends. Then they started putting a sign out on the highway in farmer’s fields. Simple sign, name of the festival, “First Saturday in November.” SO easy to remember. Now, they will have TV crews come out to see the kraut-making process – and the local TV news always comes.
  • They know how to manage the crowd. This is a TINY town with ONE paved street going through it (not kidding). Yet, unless you are in line for a ready-to-take-away meal, you will rarely be in a traffic jam. You get directed to parking and you park quickly, no fuss, no muss. And that’s because…
  • Most of the festival is staffed by volunteers, and plenty of them. They are directing traffic, they are helping people park, they are taking orders, they are helping people find the right line, they are putting the meal trays together, etc. Some are students of the school, some are parents, some are residents, some are church parishioners from Verboort, some are parishioners from elsewhere, and some are people that just love this event and love being a part of it. SO MANY VOLUNTEERS.
  • I really cannot emphasize enough how well organized this event is. The volunteers are juggling orders and food and parking and cars like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s a well oiled machine.
  • Altogether, it feels like something you just have to go to if you live here. It feels like an event, a happening. It feels unique. You go even in crap weather. And I’m not Catholic and I don’t eat pork, but there I am, every year (the secret is that you park in the farm field and bring a wagon or a lot of bags, and you stand in line for the ready made meals – you can be there just 60 minutes before it opens and get all the food you want).

People come from Portland and Salem to this.

And many know it’s a fundraiser, but don’t know for what! I’ve done some informal polling, and people will say they like to support it because it’s a fundraiser, and when I ask for what, they’ll say, “for some school or something?” All that is important to them is that, in addition to the good food and unique experience they are supporting a “good cause” – even if they don’t know what it is.

There is a lot that smaller fundraising events could learn from this festival.

Also see:

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Social networks continue to lose their influence & that hurts nonprofits. What to do?

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With so many newspapers and local radio stations long disappeared, with so many TV stations serving only an urban population an hour’s drive away, I’ve long come to rely hugely on a variety of online tools to promote whatever nonprofit I’m working for. That shouldn’t be a problem, according to so many media stories that tell us that everyone is online in one way or another, and that all young people are whatever the Social Media Platform Flavor of the Month is, right? I should have no problem getting my information out about events, volunteering, helping the community and more, because we’re all so networked.

But, in fact, it’s never been harder for me undertake public relations and marketing to reach a diversity of people, especially local people in the region where I live.

Once I start working with someone in their mid 40s or younger, or on the oh-so-rare occasion I talk with a teenager, I will, inevitably, ask, “Are you on any social media with your friends, like Instagram? Which platforms?” And most of the time, the answer is that they are not on whatever platform that’s the hot new thing; they might look at videos on TikTok, but their interactions with friends are on messaging apps, like WhatsApp or Signal. Or they do old-fashioned text messaging. I don’t even bother asking if they are on Facebook – they aren’t. Many listen to Spotify, but they pay for a subscription specifically so that they never hear any advertisements.

I’ll also ask “How do you get news?” And the answer is usually that they don’t. They listen to podcasts and gets LOTS of opinions. Lots and lots of opinions. But they don’t listen nor read actual news.

They don’t know if the high school has a soccer team or not, even if they went there as a student, let alone if that team won a state championship. They don’t know what production the local community theater is mounting because they didn’t even know there was a community theater. They don’t know that there’s a Habitat for Humanity affiliate in the area and they could volunteer there. They don’t know if the nearest firehouse is staffed by career people or volunteers or a mix of both. They don’t know who the mayor is. They don’t know about the giant data center being built in that field over there.

And how would they know any of this local information without a local newspaper, a local radio station, even a local podcast, or if they aren’t following a variety of local organizations on social media?

Back in the late 1980s, I worked at a theater that had tremendous success with advertising shows by paying to put a notice in the pay stub envelopes of some of the largest employers – but with most people doing direct deposit, that’s no longer an option. Putting a notice in a newsletter that they city sends with a utility bill is still a good option in some places to reach some people, but most young people sign up for paperless billing.

I live in a community that has no local TV and no local radio. It has two struggling semi-print newspapers which people under 50 here have never heard of. How do I reach these folks about events, volunteering opportunities, and legislative issues they need to know about and care about?

Direct mail, via traditional post? That’s an expense far out of reach for most small nonprofits.

I’ve noticed a LOT of businesses are back to using great big banners and other signage outside their properties to let people know about events and special deals. The town where I live has two places in town where it strings a banner over the street to announce various events, that everyone entering may notice. If your nonprofit can afford it, consider doing the same. Be sure to keep the messaging simple: people are going to see it as they glance up or over while driving, and have just a few seconds for the message to get through.

I wrote about this trend two years ago in this blog, Social media is losing its influence for nonprofits – what to do? In that blog, I suggested that cities revisit the community bulletin board model of the 1990s, which flourished in places like Cupertino. I believe those models could still work if they had essential information on them – not just when the next city council meeting is, but also where to find a role-playing game meetup, or a basketball pickup game.

I also think every city needs to think about creating a podcast. If starting a community radio is out of reach, then why not a daily or weekly or bi-weekly 30 minute podcast? Use it to:

  • List upcoming nonprofit and community events that week.
  • List events at the local high school that week (games, performances, fairs).
  • List events at the local senior center.
  • Remind people of important deadlines (for registering to vote, for submitting a ballot).
  • Remind people of local government meetings.
  • List obituaries.

Does your local high school have a speech team or drama club, or does your nearest college or university have a drama club or political studies? Recruit from those students to record the information. Sell a sponsorship for each broadcast to a local business. The most popular podcast platforms are Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube, and any online search will provide you with a plethora of guides on how to get your podcast on those channels.

If you are leveraging young people to produce the podcast, you’ve already got a built-in group of marketers who will share the podcast with friends on whatever app they are using these days. You need to also market the podcast in your usual ways: social media posts, web site announcement, flyer in your lobby, press release to media outlets, etc.

And don’t be surprised if podcast success leads to serious discussions about starting a local community radio station…

Also see:

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The Undeniable Value of the Human Touch

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HAL from 2001 a space odyssey

I love that AI can see or find patterns. The advancements that can mean for everything from space exploration to medical treatment to analysis of ancient art are glorious to think about. I also love that AI can apply grammar and spelling rules to things I’ve written.

This is from the 2025 Human Development Report from the United Nations Development Programme:

AI-powered identification of bird species can enable users to better identify them in the future. The increased ability to identify species can, in turn, improve AI’s performance by directly contributing geolocated observations and uploading labelled sounds and images.

I love all of this.

However…

Have you ever seen a movie that you were assured by a trusted film critic was horrible and, in fact, it turned out you loved it? Or the opposite: he said it was wonderful and you loathed it?

Have you ever been told by a few people that someone you haven’t met yet through work or in your neighborhood was boring and not really worth hanging out with, but you did finally meet them and you thought they were hilarious and fun to be with?

Have you ever read a summary of a long report or a book, but then you read the report and you came to a very different conclusion than the summary?

Those scenarios are why I don’t trust AI for decision-making or for all things related to customer service and most client interactions. Those scenarios are why I want to keep interacting with clients and the community myself.

Whether I’m the director of a project or directing communications for a project, one of the first things I like to do is take some time to answer questions that come in via phone or email. It never turns out quite like it’s been portrayed to me, especially by an over-worked, under-trained administrative assistant or an executive director who has a million other priorities. Nothing teaches me more quickly what’s been working and what has not. Sure, I might come up with canned responses to frequently asked questions, but if that response doesn’t answer the person’s inquiry, I want to know about it.

And then there is the idea of care and support: for clients, for volunteers, for the community. Care is about awareness, concern and looking after something. Providing clear, easy-to-access and easy-to understand information for an audience is a part of caring about that audience, but it’s not all of it, because quality, sincere care – the kind that keeps clients coming back, that keeps volunteers engaged and keeps donors supporting the organization – is emotional and relational. When I listen to certain staff members talk on the phone with the clients of one of the nonprofits where I work, I know that AI is no substitute for those interactions – and that if we stuck those folks on an automated phone system or chatbot, we’d not only let them down, we would lose them.

I also would never trust AI to author most social media posts, nor answer most messages that come in via social media or an online group: I would never cede the incredible knowledge that comes from interacting with people, with actual humans, to AI.

I can’t imagine taking away one of the best ways ever to gather knowledge and build skills: interacting with people MYSELF.

I wrote about this back in 2017, in fact: No app can substitute for actually talking with people. The Tech Bros must really loathe talking to actual humans.

Also see:

My highlights from the 2025 Human Development Report from UNDP (the theme is artificial intelligence).

Nonprofits, don’t cede creativity or curiosity or customer relations to AI, & keep your use of AI ethical

Artificial Intelligence – friend or foe for nonprofits?

schedule social media posts? use with caution

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

Subreddits for Good Revisited

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Reddit Logo

Reddit was founded in 2005 is a community platform categorized around different interests. As of January 2025, Reddit had over 500 million people registered as users. 110.4 million daily active users and 416.4 million weekly active users, 44% of US Redditors were aged 18 to 29 years old and around 2 in 3 Reddit users were male. Redditors tend to be significantly younger than other online communities like Facebook, with less than 3% of users being 65 or over. 

These community members use the platform for highly targeted content, via whatever community, or subreddit, they subscribe to. And that, together with the demographics of the platform, are why I find Reddit so valuable for outreach: I can reach a group that’s hard for me to reach otherwise (people under 35, as well as young men) and I can target specific groups, like just the users that live in the town where I live (because there’s a subreddit for that), women that ride motorcycles.

If you have struggled to connect with young, male audiences regarding your nonprofit’s work, or if you want to get a handle on what young people say regarding nonprofits, volunteering, civic engagement, etc., Reddit is a great place to get to know.

Reddit has not only given me amazing insights into how young adults think about volunteering. It has also:

  • Helped a nonprofit I support FINALLY land a group of volunteers from a very, very large and well known company in our area that we had been trying to reach for a couple of years, with no success. I posted info about a one-day volunteering event on a subreddit for a large city near us and one of the employees stuck it on the employee intranet and, boom, we got volunteers from that corporation at long, long last – and later, a donation of $5,000.
  • I’ve been hired twice by another very large, well-known company for consulting work because of my activities on Reddit – on r/volunteer in particular.

Of course, your mileage may vary…

I hear a lot of people say they have no idea where to get started on Reddit. If you work for nonprofits, here’s what I recommend:

Look at my Reddit profile and see what subreddits I’m a part of and what I’ve been posting (you can also follow me on Reddit).

Then look at Reddit4Good, a massive list of Reddit communities that relate somehow to doing good. It has a list of:

  • Subreddits focused on areas related to nonprofit work, like biology, agriculture, etc.
  • Subreddits for formally established programs (CASA, AmeriCorps, Red Cross, Peace Corps, Habitat for Humanity, etc.).
  • Regional-based subreddits focused on volunteering (the UK, Brazil, Oregon, etc.).

ONE BIG CAUTION: change your settings so that you do not get a notification every time a new post or comment is made to any of the subreddits you join. Trust me on this – you do not want that many notifications in your life.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.