When it comes to a successful web site for a nonprofit, an NGO, a government agency, a school or other mission-based, cause-based initiative, content is king. When I say successful, I’m talking about a web site where the people that organization is targeting come to that site, and those people find what they are looking for: through experiencing the site, people have an understanding how this program can serve them or their community, know if the program is successful, can sign up to volunteer and can easily make a financial donation.
I’ve seen beautifully-designed web sites that meet all accessibility and usability standards that never say what the organization really does, what programs they offer, why I should care, if they involve volunteers, etc. The organization invested in design, but not content.
Lizzie Bruce has a wonderful blog, “Why Do You Need a Content Designer? The Words Just Appear, Right?” that says so much of what I’ve been trying to stay for years. It’s comforting to know I’m not alone in trumpeting the need for focusing on content in developing a web site (or any other outreach tool, for that matter).
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.
I’m a Reddit user, and in addition to being a part of a LOT of Reddit communities, I also moderate four subreddits, as a volunteer: one regarding volunteerism, one regarding inclusion, a subreddit to discuss community service, and the TechSoup subreddit. I’ve also joined a LOT of Reddit communities and spend way too much time reading them (and sometimes commenting).
So I was one of many reddit users that got a customized slide show “year in review” that Reddit sends to users (community members). And it’s a super fun way to recognize program participants.
Among the slides is one that shows that, in 2021, I scrolled the length of 35,495 bananas lying end-to-end:
There’s also a slide showing my most popular post in 2021 – it was to a subreddit I don’t frequent, the one for Portland, Oregon, and was how volunteers were urgently needed at cooling stations set up to help people deal with our 116 degree days (it got 218 “up votes”):
There was also a slide that showed how many hours I spent in 2021 in various subreddits – yes, I really did spend 123 hours, at LEAST, in the volunteers subreddit. The TwoXriders subreddit noted is for women motorcyclists, in case you were wondering, and the Malicious Compliance subreddit – that you will have to check out yourself:
There’s also a slide showing how many new communities I joined in 2021, how many user awards I got, and how many karma points (as Reddit calls it, fake Internet points) I got (pictured below):
What a fun way to recognize participation! Good ideas for honoring program participants and volunteers as well.
And note: they never said, “Your volunteering hours were the equivalent of this much money!” Because that’s a really, really bad idea.
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.
One of the biggest complaints by people that want to volunteer is this: when they express interest in volunteering with a nonprofit, NGO, school, or any community initiative, whether they submit an email, submit an online application, use something like VolunteerMatch or call, they may never get a response, or by the time they do get a response, many weeks or months later, they aren’t available anymore.
On the other side of the equation, lots of people would like to volunteer in a more substantial role than a micro task: they want to really feel like they are making a difference, and they are ready to commit a regular amount of time each week to do that. But they would like to do that from home (virtual volunteering).
A great way to both better serve people that want to volunteer with you and to appeal to those folks looking for a way to volunteer online/remotely in a substantial role is to create a volunteer screening role for a volunteer – or a team of volunteers.
Volunteer screeners:
Respond to all applicants immediately, to each person who sends an email or an application to express interest. The volunteer screener responds to that email within 48 hours (two business days), asking the person to fill out the application (if the potential volunteers hasn’t already), and asking for additional information, if needed; asking a few follow-up questions via email is a great way to screen out people who aren’t ready to volunteer with you – if they don’t reply, it means they weren’t ready to volunteer.
Screeners can set up a time to meet initially with each applicant – though remember that you do NOT need to meet with EVERY volunteer applicant: insisting on a phone, web conference or onsite meeting can be an unnecessary barrier to volunteering.
Screeners can ask simple questions to an applicant, via a phone call, an email or a video meeting that helps the screeners gauge if those applicants really understand what the organization is all about, the basic requirements of all volunteer roles, the variety of volunteer roles, etc. The organization can give the screener the final say on whether or not the applicant goes to the next step (the orientation, which can be online, or the training for a particular role) or, the organization can give that power solely to the manager of volunteers, who reads through the profile/evaluation written by the screener and makes the decision (but that manager has to move FAST – lack of response, or a slow response, will result in the volunteer applicant moving on – and feeling like their time so far was wasted).
Screening volunteers should:
Have a solid understanding of the organization and its opportunities for volunteering, and be able to answer the question, “Why does this organization involve volunteers?”
Be enthusiastic about the programs of the nonprofit.
Be able to promptly, immediately input information in a database of volunteer applicant inforamation, even if that database is just a shared spreadsheet.
Have excellent written communication skills – ability to express ideas and facts clearly – and, perhaps, to also be able to have excellent speaking skills. They may also need excellent online speaking/presentation skills as well.
Comfortable promptly emailing with, texting with and making phone calls or video calls to applicants.
To get your screeners to that point, you should have a training and a mock interview or screening session, where they get to try out their skills and have a feeling for what interactions with volunteers can be like. And, absolutely, that training can be entirely online.
The organization always needs to know where any volunteer applicant is in the process, the date of that person’s application, the date the applicant was initially screened, etc., so they can know if volunteer applicants are being onboarded quickly. Having applicant information inputted into a shared database is crucial. I’m a board member and in charge of onboarding new applications, and I use a spreadsheet on Google Drive, with the names of every applicant, the date they applied, the date of their interview, if they were going forward after the interview or withdrawing, if they suddenly went incommunicado, etc., and share it with all the other board members, who can view it at any time.
Did you notice that I just described a virtual volunteering role?
And if you want to learn how to avoid the common pitfalls in virtual volunteering and to dig far deeper into the factors for success in creating assignments for online volunteers, supporting online volunteers, and keeping virtual volunteering a worthwhile endeavor for everyone involved, you will not find a more detailed guide anywhere than The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. It’s based on many years of experience, from a variety of organizations. It’s available both as a traditional print publication and as a digital book.
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.
Did you discover last month that your nonprofit, NGO, government program or other cause-based, mission-based initiative is overly reliant on Facebook?
Sara Soueidan is a front-end user interface (UI) and design systems engineer / speaker / trainer and she tweets about usability and accessibility. On October 4th, when Facebook went down for several hours, she tweeted this:
While we’re at it: if you don’t have a Web site of your own and you’ve been blogging and creating content on third-party platforms, now might be a good time to reconsider creating one and owning your own little corner of the internet.
I completely agree. I am horrified at how many nonprofits, NGOs, government programs and other cause-based organizations have pretty much abandoned their own web sites and post only to Facebook.
Facebook is a for-profit company. If Facebook goes away tomorrow, there goes all of your data. By contrast, the address of your web site is yours, and if your web host were to go away, no problem – you move your site to a new host. Your address doesn’t have to ever change. You can move your web site to a different host is you decide you don’t like the host’s customer service or prices, or if the host goes out of business.
Facebook terms of service strongly imply that whatever you post there, Facebook owns, and that Facebook has the right to sell or give what you post to Facebook, even in your account profile, that you have marked as “private”, to anyone it wants to. By contrast, a web site is yours. The content and the address are yours.
Facebook content is only for Facebook users. If someone doesn’t have a Facebook account, they cannot see most of what is on Facebook. By contrast, a web site is public and anyone with Internet access can see it.
Your web site is your primary home on the Internet. Everything you do online, including on social media, should ultimately link back to your web site. Yes, you can use the Facebook events feature to announce events, but that event information should be on your web site as well. And remember that many of your clients, volunteers, donors and others use different social media channels. Have you asked them not only if they are on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or whatever the flavor of the month is, but also if they would want to interact with your program on these.
Your blog should be on your own web site as well. I use WordPress, which is free, but I use my own web site to host it. Twice, my blog host has gone under, and in both cases, neither was captured on archive.org. Luckily, one did give me enough of notice for me to download all of my blogs, so I could repurpose many of them here.
I even screen capture Twitter or Facebook interactions that are particularly memorable or worth bragging about, and upload them to Flicker and maintain a database of such, and all of my photos, on a hard drive.
Yes, there are people who are going to interact online with your initiative only via Facebook. Or Twitter. Or even only via email. None of those audiences are more important than another for your nonprofit, NGO, etc. Make sure all of your clients, volunteers, donors and others are reminded regularly of all of your various online communications channels – and your web address!
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.
The entire membership of the Art Institute of Chicago docent program, all volunteers, are being let go by the museum in an effort to entirely revamp how art education for museum visitors is staffed and to make such staffing much more diverse.
It is a move that has hurt long-time volunteers and outraged right-wing media, but many say it’s the only way to dismantle a system that, intentionally or not, is designed to exclude many people from participating.
On Sept. 3, Veronica Stein, the AIC’s executive director of learning and public engagement, emailed 82 active docents, telling them the program’s current iteration would be coming to an end. Stein told the Wall Street Journal that the museum must move “in a way that allows community members of all income levels to participate, responds to issues of class and income equity, and does not require financial flexibility.” In the letter, Stein said the museum “had a responsibility to rebuild the volunteer educator program in a way that allows community members of all income levels to participate, responds to issues of equity, and does not require financial flexibility to participate.” The AIC told USA TODAY that the pause is part of a “multi-year transition” to a “hybrid model that incorporates paid and volunteer educators.”
“Rather than refresh our current program, systems, and processes, we feel that now is the time to rebuild our program from the ground up,” Stein said in the letter, noting that current docents would be invited to apply for the paid positions.
While the elimination of docents struck many as sudden, it had actually been in the works for years, according to artnet news: the AIC stopped training new docents in 2012, and has been discussing internally how to restructure the program since 2019.
The institute’s docent council sent a letter Sept. 13 protesting the pause of the program. The letter described the docents’ expertise, noting that volunteers had trained twice a week for 18 months, done five years of research and writing, and participated in monthly and biweekly trainings. “For more than 60 years, volunteer docents enthusiastically have devoted countless hours and personal resources to facilitate audience engagement in knowledgeable, relevant, and sensitive ways,” the letter said.
Gigi Vaffis, president of the AIC’s docent council, told USA TODAY that she and other docents felt blindsided by the decision and weren’t included in the decision-making. Even now, she said there are few details about what the AIC’s multi-year plan will look like.
Docent programs have long been mainstays of major museums. Docents are all volunteers and are beloved by museum visitors. Becoming a docent can be quite competitive: not everyone who applies is accepted, and docents that get into the program stay for years, even decades. And involving volunteers is a sign a nonprofit wants the community to be a part of the organization – not just as donors or clients but also as people delivering services. But docent ranks at museums are often skewed toward a certain demographic: wealthy white women. The intention of the Chicago Institute is to dismantle this traditionally very rigid system that, intentionally or not, is designed to include/favor one, very privileged group and to exclude others.
Museum equity consultants have long advocated for transitioning volunteer positions at museums to paid roles, to encourage more diversity, allowing people who could never afford to give the time current docents give without pay. Monica Williams, executive producer of The Equity Project, a Colorado-based equity, inclusion and diversity consulting firm, who is NOT involved with the Art Institute, said this shift will open the doors for people who cannot afford to work on weekdays or do a significant amount of unpaid work. If docent programs switch to paid positions, she said it will help museums move away from “a particular demographic of mostly white and wealthy.”
Mike Murawski, a museum consultant and author of “Museums as Agents of Change,” said in the USA Today article that there has long been a tension between equity efforts and volunteer programs. When the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum ended its docent program in 2014 in favor of an initiative for younger volunteers who often work for college credit, Murawski said there was an uproar with many saying the museum might as well close. But now, he said. “they’re doing just fine.” Murawski is one of many museum consultants that says the way forward is not about making changes to programs, but to completely dismantle them and start over, and that docent programs often have “long-standing legacies of how things are supposed to be” that can make them difficult to adapt.
A side note: the Chicago Tribune, a once-great newspaper which was recently bought by Alden Global Capital, a secretive hedge fund that gutted the staff at the newspaper, wrote an outrageous editorial that had this jaw-dropping and completely misleading statement:
Volunteers are out of fashion in progressive circles, where they tend to be dismissed as rich white people with time on their hands, outmoded ways of thinking and walking impediments to equity and inclusion. Meaningful change, it is often said, now demands they be replaced with paid employees.
This is just flatly not true and the Tribune should be ashamed of itself.
As for me and my opinion: I don’t think programs should always be overly-cautious and ever-fearful of upsetting current, long-term volunteers – quite frankly, I think some long-term volunteers can have an entitled attitude that can discourage, even kill, much-needed changes and innovations. But I also feel like there was a better way to handle this transition. Absolutely, there are MANY systems related to nonprofits, including volunteer engagement, that have been exclusionary. But couldn’t current volunteers, who have invested a great deal of time in their roles, have been involved in the decision-making process, and perhaps, even bought into it? Also, will there still be a way for people to volunteer for the Art Institute – will there still be a community engagement component that isn’t donating funds or attending events?
If you have an example of a museum that significantly revamped its volunteering program so that it was vastly more diverse, but without having to fire the entire volunteer corps, please note such in the comments. Also note if it continued to have a volunteer program of some kind.
With all that said – what do you think?
October 17 update: the Art Institute of Chicago is, apparently, STILL not involving volunteers at all. Below is a screen capture from its volunteer page that notes “the volunteer program is temporarily on pause, and we are not accepting applications at this time.”
Below are excerpts from THE SDG PARTNERSHIP GUIDEBOOK: A practical guide to building high-impact multi-stakeholder partnerships for the Sustainable Development Goals, Darian Stibbe and Dave Prescott, The Partnering Initiative and the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA), 2020. And, to me, it’s the heart of why approaching public online activities as community engagement, at a way to use technology to build community and grow an organization, makes sense, though it never mentions online tools:
Most of us work in operating environments that encourage a sense of competition and separation, rather than collaboration and cooperation. We are often told that there is a scarcity of resources, and that our job is to secure for ourselves, and for our own organisations, as much of the available resources as possible, and that if others lose out in the process then that’s too bad… for the most part it is a reductive way of thinking, because it limits the scope of what can be achieved together. It makes collaborative working difficult, especially if we have been told to work in partnership as a way to help an organisation to compete with others for funding opportunities.
Rather than starting from an assumption of competition and scarcity, what happens if we start with a different assumption:
All of the ideas, people, technologies, institutions and resources that are required to achieve the SDGs are already available, and the task is how do we engage them and combine them in new and transformational ways?…
What if we approached every single one of our encounters as opportunities to create new ideas, and what if the best and most interesting ideas emerged from the most unlikely sources? What new connections might emerge then?…
There are (at least) three levels at which to engage: You can think about how it relates to you as an individual and to your professional practice; you can think about how it relates to your organisation, and how your organisation collaborates; you can also think about how it relates to existing or new partnerships that you might be involved in. Effective partnering calls for great personal leadership: brave, risk- taking people able to operate in ambiguous situations while remaining outcome-focused.
In July and August, I have been teaching MGT 553 Using Technology to Build Community and Grow Your Organization, part of the MS in Nonprofit Management for Gratz College. I started designing the course in February, and I first blogged about the course May. My mantra, over and over, to these students who work, or want to work, in the nonprofits world has been that online tools are best used when their primary purpose is to build community, not just to market, not just to build awareness about an organization, and that such a focus enhances all other functions: program engagement, community participation, fundraising, volunteer engagement, partnership development and more.
The students, in turn, reminded me of something that I’ve long known: the biggest challenges to this happening are those thrown up by their own organizations’ systems, processes and culture – something the United Nations publication also notes. Senior management or long-term staff who fear change are the far bigger obstacles to using online communications tools than budget or lack of tech knowledge. The reluctance and fear comes from knowing only the negative stories, the worst-case scenarios. I have a fantasy about making a list of all the in-person meetings I’ve been present for and people deciding they should never meet anyone ever again.
I talk a lot about leveraging online networks to reach new volunteers and other supporters via The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, co-written with Susan J. Ellis. The book also talks about using online tools to build community among your volunteers, cultivating information-sharing and shared learning among that particular group of supporters, as well as the detailed guidance you need to use the Internet to involve and support ALL volunteers, whether most of their service to you is online or onsite. And purchasing the book is far, far cheaper than hiring me as a consultant or trainer (though you can still do that)!
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.
It can be difficult for people to understand the difference in email, in social media and in online communities. They are different, but they do greatly intersect: email can be used to create an online community, and social media can be used to create an online community (Facebook Groups, for instance). And they all are people sending messages to people – so what, really, is the difference?
I realized, per an interaction with a student in my Gratz College course, just how much many people struggle with understanding the difference. So I tried to create a way to graphically represent the difference in email, social media and online communities for nonprofits, libraries, NGOs and other mission-based, cause-based initiatives. The differences in narrative form are also shown.
You can see how I did this here. Your thoughts, in the comments, are welcomed. How would you change the graphics or the explanation? What would your graphic representation look like?
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.
It’s been a mantra for at least two decades now, probably more, among those who promote volunteer engagement: we must do a better job engaging young people!
And, yet, managers of volunteers, as well as consultants who try to help them, seem to avoid spaces, online or onsite, where they could cultivate these younger volunteers.
Reddit is a good example. As of July 2019, Reddit ranked as the No. 5 most visited web site in the USA and No. 13 in the world. Users tend to be significantly younger than other online communities like Facebook, with less than 1% of Reddit users being 65 or over. Statistics suggest that 74% of Reddit users are male. Most of the niche online communities I’m a part of are overwhelmingly female; that’s why I use Reddit, to provide some gender balance in my online life regarding nonprofits, community development, volunteerism, etc. It also helps me understand what people outside of the nonprofit, volunteerism and humanitarian worlds are saying about nonprofits, volunteering and humanitarian issues.
The community on Reddit for discussions about volunteerism has reached 10,000 members. I did a poll last month, trying to get an idea of member ages. Just 262 responded, not even a 3% return. But I do think it’s a representative sampling, and it clearly shows that almost 60% of the members are 18 to 28, and 36% are either 30 to 49 or under 18.
I regularly ask colleagues to answer a question or offer advice on the community on Reddit for discussions about volunteerism. I regularly ask organizations like VolunteerMatch and the Points of Light Foundation, via Twitter, to post their announcements there. They never do. Here is an audience of young people asking questions about how to volunteer, how to do specific types of volunteering, how to make their volunteering more sustainable or effective, and I can’t get the people claiming to want to reach young people to, well, reach them.
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.
For my Master’s Degree in Development Management at Open University, (the degree is, as of 2021, called Global Development) my last course was TU874 The Development Management Project, completed in October 2005. This final course involved my researching a development-related topic of my choice, and producing a 10,000 word paper as a result of this research. My research project was an investigation of what elements need to be in place before an organization produces a live, in-person performance, or series of performances, as a development tool, excluding performer training and theater techniques. The goal was to identify the systems and atmosphere that need to be cultivated in order to ensure the success of a TfD initiative and to tie these to the concepts taught in OU Development Management courses.
There are numerous organizations using theater techniques as part of their development activities, and there are also numerous initiatives, publications, web sites and individuals that promote and chronicle successes regarding live, in-person performance as an effective tool for development. Even in our current age saturated with multi-media and podcasts, live, in-person performance/TfD is a popular and effective tool for education, outreach and capacity-building regarding a variety of development issues, such as HIV/AIDS prevention, domestic violence, evolving gender roles, or good sanitation practices.
However, at least as of 2005, there was little information on what has to be in place before these techniques are used, excluding performer training, to better ensure that these techniques will be well-received by an audience/participants, and to better ensure that the desired outcomes will be generated. I saw a need for more information on how to cultivate support for and trust in such an initiative among staff at the lead agency, among partner organizations, and among those for whom the theater-for-development techniques will be used.
This project included a review of key literature on TfD, and semi-structured interviews with 12 TfD practitioners.
Live, in-person theater has always been a love of mine: I was always involved in theater in some way during junior high, high school and then my undergrad at university, and for five years, I worked in public relations and marketing at various professional theaters, including the Tony-Award winning Hartford Stage and the internationally-acclaimed Williamstown Theater Festival. The power of theater to reach people fascinates me. There is nothing like it, no experience that matches it. Writing my Master’s Degree final project on a theater-related topic was my opportunity to get back in touch with something that started me off professionally, and something I believe in personally.
If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site or my YouTube videos and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.
I spent 15 minutes early one morning last week talking to IT professionals in Moldova about how accessibility online makes the world a better place for everyone. The opportunity came about thanks to a colleague I worked with at the United Nations who now works for the Swedish Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs in Moldova. It was part of an initiative her government, and USAID, supported in Moldova regarding Diversitate, Echitate și Incluziune în comunitatea IT (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the IT community), an initiative of Tekwill, organized by Startup Moldova and in partnership with Izarra, TechWomen Moldova and the Moldovan Association of Information and Communications Technology Companies.
Evenimentul reunește antreprenori locali pentru a încuraja și abilita participanții să-și împărtășească ideile fără limite sau frica de a fi judecați dar și să manifeste mai multă atenție privind respectarea normelor și etichetei culturale din regiune – credințe, convingeri, ținută sau obiceiuri.
The event brings together local entrepreneurs to encourage and empower participants to share their ideas without limits or fear of being judged but also to pay more attention to respecting the rules and cultural etiquette of the region – beliefs, beliefs, dress or customs.
Located in the heart of the Technical University of Moldova (UTM), “Tekwill is a 4,000m² hub that has everything one would ever need for ongoing growth, from co-working spaces, tech labs (IoT, 3D printing) and community events.”
Tekwill is built on the belief that to be competitive economically in the years to come, Moldovan startups and innovators must begin adopting and creating industry-disrupting technology today. Therefore, this message was coded into our name; “Tek” – for technology and “will” – for our future. The organization regularly gathers local and international tech leaders to empower the development of Moldova’s startup ecosystem by facilitating results-oriented innovation and collaboration.
I’m very partial to Moldova, having met some wonderful young Moldavians in 2019 hosted by World Oregon (I did a workshop on countering misinformation online). I have always found a very electrifying entrepreneurial, optimistic spirit among young Eastern Europeans, particularly from Moldova, Ukraine and Poland – people ready to innovate, to include, to explore and to create. I so long for the days when we can travel again so we call meet up face-to-face again!
One of the many things I’m proud of in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, is that it features an entire chapter on accessibility and diversity. I’ve been advocating for accessibility online since 1994 – and I’m going to keep doing it!
If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site or my YouTube videos and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.
