Category Archives: Community Relations/Outreach

Art Institute of Chicago docent program is no more – a painful change, but is it required for better inclusion?

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image of a panel discussion

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.”

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Connections & Partnerships Are Key to A Nonprofit or NGO’s Survival – & Online Tools Can Help

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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.

cover of Virtual Volunteering book with hands raising up various Internet connected devices

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)!

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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.

A Graphic Explanation of the Difference in Email, Social Media & Online Communities

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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.

Why aren’t you reaching out to young people via Reddit?

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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.

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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.

Theater as a Tool for Community Development

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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.

You can read online:

I know this is old research, but I still think it’s relevant, and I like to make sure people know it’s available.

Those of you who know me were all expecting me to do something regarding either volunteerism, specifically online volunteering or the vital role volunteers play in community technology initiatives, or mission-based organizations and technology, as that’s been the focus of my professional work for decades. Well… surprise!

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.

Also see my related blogs:

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. 

Encouraging the Moldovan IT sector to prioritize online accessibility

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screen capture of the webinar with Jayne Cravens and the event host interacting on the screen

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.

You can view my portion of the event, in English, on YouTube at around the 26:05 mark or via this Facebook page, at about the 26:10 mark. Introduction in Romanian.

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!

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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. 

Fans of Superheroes Are Acting Like Superheroes

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Back in the 1990s, I noticed online communities of fans for the X-Files, Xena, Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, other TV shows and various entertainers and sports teams engaging in volunteering, activism and philanthropy. It was more than virtual volunteering: it was the creation of intentional communities, where fans used their passion and sense of fellowship to support a variety of good causes. I noted that many of these online groups weren’t directed by any formal organization to engage in philanthropy; the fans decided to engage in these activities on their own.

I wrote and published an online article about it in July 1999: Fan-Based Online Groups Use the Internet to Make a Difference. My article includes examples of such groups at that time, with comments from members regarding their online philanthropic activities and what makes them successful.

That DIY fandom-for-good spirit has continued online, and I’ve paid attention to one of those more recent efforts in particular: The Harry Potter Alliance. The HPA has raised money for various causes and lead campaigns to create awareness about hunger, bullying, child slavery and more. The group also has the Granger Leadership Academy, named for the Harry Potter character Hermione Granger, and the Wizard Activist School, which create programming and workshops aimed to inspire and train members in a variety of topics, including feminism, environmental issues, fighting racism, social justice, conflict resolution, leadership styles, goal-setting, and on and on.

We founded the HPA in 2005 with a simple idea: what if fans used their passion and creativity to make activism more fun and the world a more loving, equitable place? For almost sixteen years that idea has driven hundreds of thousands of fan activists to organize protests and charity drives, to write letters and make calls, to donate books and time and money to make their communities better for all.

The Harry Potter Alliance is changing its name to Fandom Forward, and it’s now for fans of Avatar, Star Wars, Percy Jackson, Doctor Who, Marvel, DC and, of course, Harry Potter – and most everything else out there in the sci-fi / fantasy / superhero world. Its purpose is to turn fans into “heroes.”

We use the power of story and popular culture to make activism accessible and sustainable. Through experiential training and real life campaigns, we develop compassionate, skillful leaders who learn to approach our world’s problems with joy, creativity, and commitment to equity.

As it became more and more clear that our community had grown even bigger than the boy who lived, we started talking to friends from all corners of fan organizing about how to move forward together. We talked to you, our community members, about what you wanted to see next. Over 1,000 of you weighed in, and the answer was overwhelmingly consistent: this place we’ve built? It doesn’t belong to just one fandom. It’s for anyone who believes in the power of stories and fans to change the world. It’s for everyone, and our name should reflect that. 

Fandom Forward even offers its own virtual volunteering management guide. My favorite advice from the guide is section 4, on cultivating leadership among volunteers. The entire section is terrific. I like this especially:

Default to trusting volunteers. This is a big one, and something that is hard for a lot of people to grasp. After doing this for 15+ years, however, we whole-heartedly believe in the idea that you can and should default to trusting your volunteers. Of course, this doesn’t mean you should give anyone access to your organization’s most sensitive information. But if you have a task that needs to be done that involves giving a volunteer an organizational log-in to a website, give it a try! We’ve found that most people can be trusted. If anything goes wrong, you simply remove the volunteer from that task or the organization. However, most times it will go right.

I’m fascinated by this and other fan-based efforts for many reasons: because I’m a fan myself of many of these stories, because I love seeing the Internet used for good, because there are frequent stories and studies claiming that there is a decline in young people wanting to volunteer – stories and studies that ignore these efforts – and because of complaints that younger generations aren’t joining traditional civic groups like Rotary, Optimist, Lion’s, etc. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: younger generations ARE volunteering, ARE getting involved in their communities – but they are doing it in different ways. Maybe the local civic group didn’t bother to create any social media channels to talk about their work, haven’t updated their web site in years, and have spent more time complaining about declining numbers than trying to do an honest assessment of why that is happening. Maybe the local fire station makes it clear that only career first responders are the superheroes and volunteers are just there to roll hoses and serve coffee, or doesn’t make it crystal clear how a person would become a volunteer first responder. Maybe these groups need to pay more attention to Harry Potter fans.

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. 

Training on risk management in social media

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A coalition of nonprofits in my hometown in Kentucky asked me to put together a two-hour webinar on risk management in social media. And I did. I delivered it in early November 2020.

When I put together a new training on a subject I’ve not trained on before, I do a lot of research on the subject, to make sure my recommendations are timely and accurate. While I can base a lot of my trainings and blogs on my own experiences, I want to see what others are saying and doing as well.

For instance, for this workshop, I researched who “owns” a person’s online activities – when is a social media account the property of an individual and when is it the property of their workplace? The answer is different now than it was back in the 1990s when I directed The Virtual Volunteering Project. When are you speaking online such that it could bring your employer or program where you volunteer into disrepute – and can you be fired for that – and when is it your personal, individual opinion that your employer cannot take into consideration regarding your employment or volunteering? There have been a fair number of controversies about this over the years, and I was surprised at what I found.

I also researched people being fired for social media posts on their own, personal social media accounts and found that, often, those accounts were NOT public. How common is it? It’s very common. Here’s a sampling of what I found:

Employees, consultants and volunteers being fired, or having their contracts not renewed, because of posts they made to social media that disparaged certain groups or advocated violence, even via their own, personal, not public social media accounts, is something I’ve been paying attention to since 2011, via this thread on the TechSoup online community forum.

It’s not a black or white issue regarding firing someone for social media posts: while employers can and do fire employees over social media issues, there are also instances where it would potentially be illegal to do so and employees have been reinstated or been awarded financial compensation. This article from 2018 does the best job, IMO, of explaining when you may, and may not, fire someone for a social media post. This 2020 article from the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) is also excellent.

But I really didn’t want to get bogged down in my training on whether or not someone should be fired regarding a social media post, not only because I’m not a lawyer, but because I don’t think that’s what’s needed in such a training for nonprofits, libraries, etc. Instead, I focused on how to prevent or, at least, reduce the likelihood of such posts from happening at all and what to do when they do happen, from a PR perspective in terms of response.

The reality is that the most common problems nonprofits, charities, NGOs, schools and other mission-based programs will face from social media use by employees won’t relate to a lawsuit – they will relate to public reaction to something posted or “liked” or followed by an employee, consultant, volunteer or client from the program. And I believe the program’s body of work and body of social media posts, as well as that organization’s relationship with the community, are the greatest counter to negative fallout from a social media mistake or from one staff person who turns out to have a deeply-ceded prejudice that could affect their work with others.

I had a four-pronged approach to suggest to the audience about risk management in using social media:

  • You want to create and promote a culture that better discourages, even prevents, social media missteps.
  • You want to create and promote written policies that better discourage and prevent social media missteps.
  • You need to talk to employees, consultants and volunteers frankly about social media use, because conversations reinforce to staff that they need to be thoughtful about what they are posting and “liking” or following online, at all times, even when they are “off the clock.”
  • You want to have a strategy for how you will respond to when an employee or volunteer violates your social media policies and/or makes statements or likes or follows something online, even “off the clock”, that bring your organization or program into disrepute.

I spent a LOT of time emphasizing how to prevent inappropriate social media posts by employees, consultants and volunteers from happening in the first place and what to do to now so that it will mitigate damage when an inappropriate social media post surfaces. I think the most important strategy for a nonprofit, charity, government program, etc. on both of these points is establishing and reinforcing an agency’s culture regarding being a welcoming place, onsite and online, for all people, regardless of their age, race, gender identification, citizenship or residency status, disabilities, religion (or lack there of) or sexual preference.

You need to say, bluntly, in writing, in interviews, in new employee and new volunteer orientations, etc., that you are an organization that recognizes deep-ceded historic inequities and systematic racism in society, including the local community, and that your program is committed to evaluating its activities through the lense of equity and social justice and inclusion.

The more you emphasize this culture, the more some candidates for employment or volunteering will screen themselves out of your organization – someone who cherishes the activity of insulting and demeaning others or denies social inequities or who follows people who promote prejudice and conspiracy theories is not going to want to volunteer nor work with you otherwise if you are so upfront about your agency’s commitments.

I was pleased to find that what I was recommending was, in different words, also what the Forbes Nonprofit Council recommended, via this article, How To Ensure Volunteers And Staff Follow Your Ethical Standards.

To summarize the entire training’s messages:

  • Social media is worthwhile and even necessary for a nonprofit, NGO, charity, school, government agency or any mission-based program to use. You harm your organization or program and exclude vast numbers of donors, volunteers, clients and other supporters by not using it.
  • Agencies can’t come from a place of fear in using social media. If they do, they’ll never realize the wonderful potential of social media to connect with audiences.
  • Programs must realize that there is no way to prevent any bad thing from ever happening via something an employee, consultant or volunteer says or writes or likes or follows online, and that they cannot completely control employee, consultant and volunteer behavior, online and off.
  • An agency should engage in activities regularly that emphasize its values to employees, consultants and volunteers. 
  • An agency should have written policies regarding confidentiality (not just online), privacy (not just online), and the program’s official online and print communications. 
  • An agency should have written suggestions & other communications regarding “using common sense” online.
  • Employees, consultants, volunteers & maybe clients need training in social media.
  • There are ways to effectively address social media messages or other activities by employees, consultants and volunteers that reflect poorly on your agency or even bring it into disrepute.

Would you like for me to do a training for your organization? Here’s more about my online trainings / webinars. I can create, and have created, trainings on a variety of subjects, and trainings on communications tools and techniques for nonprofits, particularly small nonprofits, are my favorite. My trainings are based on practice and real-world experience: I am a manager of volunteers and a volunteer myself, I have a great deal of experience in communications for nonprofits and international aid agencies, and I continually keep up-to-date on what various programs, large and small, are doing with regard to community engagement.

If you are looking for training on virtual volunteering, I highly recommend you first view this series of online videos I prepared that, in around one hour, will give you a clear understanding of virtual volunteering and how you can pursue it at your organization.

cover of Virtual Volunteering book with hands raising up various Internet connected devices

Couple viewing these free videos with purchasing and reading my book, The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, and you will have all that you need for launching or expanding a robust virtual volunteering scheme at your nonprofit, charity, school, etc. You will not find a more detailed guide anywhere for working with online volunteers and using the Internet to support and involve all volunteers – even after home quarantines are over and volunteers start coming back onsite to your workspace. And it’s far, far cheaper than hiring me as a consultant or trainer regarding virtual volunteering – though you can still do that, particularly if it’s regarding some specific aspect of virtual volunteering, let setting up an online mentoring program.

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. 

How to support your online community manager in times of trolling

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If you write anything online, whether it’s blog or a comment on Facebook or even a caption on an online photo, you could become a target for online harassment – insulting posts on social media that call you out by name, insulting comments in reply to your posts on social media and blogs and online communities, down votes on communities that allow such, text messages that criticize you, your work, your family, etc. 

The only way to avoid it? Never do anything online at all, ever. And that’s unrealistic.

Women, in particular, are targets of abuse online, and this misogyny in digital spaces, because it is very personal in nature, can lead to women feeling degraded, terrified, even somehow to blame for daring to take up space online. This targeted hate against women impacts the inclusiveness of the online public sphere through the chilling effect it creates for women’s public participation. — from “Articulating a Feminist Response to Online Hate Speech: First Steps“, from Bot Populi, October 9, 2020.

If your organization has a marketing director that publishes anything online at all, or a social media manager, or an online discussion / forum manager, etc., senior management needs to be aware that the people in these roles are very likely getting anger thrown their way, at best, and perhaps even demeaning or harassing comments.

What should you do?

  • Regularly ask anyone who interacts with the public online (as well as offline) how they are, in a way that lets them know that YOU know that hostility might be thrown their way. “How are you?” isn’t enough. Ask bluntly, “Is everything okay online? I’d like to know if you are getting any insulting or harassing remarks. I know that often happens and I want you to know I’m here to support you.”
  • Direct staff members to screen capture any message directed at them personally that they feel is disparaging, insulting, harassing or threatening. Don’t wait until you hear about hostility online – send an official memo reminding staff of this.
  • If the person or people targeting your staff are violating a social media or community platform’s terms of service, direct your staff person to report them to that company. You or others on your staff should report as well.
  • Tell your staff person they have to right to block or ban anyone who is harassing them online from your organization’s online communities and other online spaces. You may want the staff person to discuss this ban or block with a senior staff person and to document the action in some way (when, who and why).
  • Your comments and questions to the person that is experiencing the “haters” online that can be helpful:
    • Tell me what’s happening.
    • Wow, this is really awful. What an annoying/horrible/disturbing thing to be happening.
    • Are you scared? What can we do to help you feel safe?
    • I hope you know we are here for you, we care about you and I want you to tell me any fears you have or challenges you are having.
    • Should we ask our staff and even our volunteers to go to such-and-such platform and upvote your posts, to counter the down-voting that has been happening? Do you need staff and volunteers to comment positively on your posts for a while, to counter the negativity and show that you aren’t alone?
    • Do you need to take a break from online activities for a while?
    • Do you have ideas on what you think we should do?
  • Comments and questions that are NOT helpful:
    • If you are going to be online, this is how it is. There’s no way to prevent it.
    • You need to come up with a way to prevent this in the future.
    • I’m going to take over our social media channel and online community (do this only after asking the person if this is what they think would be a good idea, because your taking over/stepping in can be seen by others as a sign that the person is lacking the abilities or temperament for the role).
    • Silence

I have been the target of online harassment and trolling. In 2020 and this year, it’s escalated to a point such that I have had to seek legal counsel. I’ve been online since the early 1990s and have never experienced hate and abuse online at these levels until last year. If someone like me, who posts about benign subjects like volunteer engagement and nonprofit public relations and tech use in nonprofits, can become the target of online trolls, any nonprofit social media manager can as well. They need your support to help counter that hate.

Also see:

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Resources to learn plain language writing

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A colleague of mine in another country wants to improve her report writing and writing for the web. She works in a government water & sanitation project. English is not her first language. She has a number of audiences she must write for, via various reports, briefing papers, project reports and the web: donors (mostly foreign governments), other government offices in her own country, the media in her own country and residents of her country, especially those her office is trying to help.

I think resources on plain language are the best guidance for writers anywhere. I use my journalism training and experience, which was steeped in plain language, to write reports, and at UN offices, I got a tremendous amount of great feedback from colleagues about my reports, along the lines of “Wow, I could understand this!”

Here are the free online resources I’m recommending to my colleague. Note that some of these resources link to even more resources:

  • Communicate Health, a health education and communication firm specializing in improving health literacy through user-centered design, research, and content development. Resources promote usability and accessibility of public health materials.

What would YOU recommend for my colleague? Say what you would recommend in the comments.

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.