Category Archives: Community Relations/Outreach

Recruiting board members in the time of social distancing

I don’t believe COVID-19 is going away this month, June, the month that marks the easing of lockdowns all over the USA. That’s why a lot of people – myself included – are going to continue to avoid large groups, even if they are outside, and avoid going inside for any meeting whatsoever, until further notice, regardless of what governments say. It’s very likely lockdown measures will be re-introduced in many places in the Fall, when there is a resurgence in the virus transmission. And all that presents a myriad of problems for nonprofit organizations. And one of those many problems is recruiting board members.

Board members are recruited from cultivating personal contacts, from building relationships with people over time, and this is best done in person – and I say this as an expert in virtual volunteering. Absolutely, you can work with board members online. You can have board meetings online. You can get a LOT done with a board online (and the Virtual Volunteering Guidebook can help). But identifying and recruiting board members entirely online is really difficult. Still, yes, it can be done.

If you are looking for the best place to post online about your board member needs – this isn’t the advice for you, because just posting “We need board members” is not how you get board members.

Instead, first, make sure your web site is rich in information on what your program has accomplished. You want a web site that inspires, not that begs. You want a web site that shows your staff’s credibility and expertise and capabilities for doing the work that needs to be done – not just “We have a good heart.”

If you haven’t established your organization formally yet – your program isn’t yet a nonprofit because, in part, you haven’t recruited a board of directors – then you still start a blog or web site, right now, about the organization you want to start, what it is you want it to achieve, the data that proves it is needed, and profiles of the people currently involved. Your goal is a content-rich site that says, “This is an idea worth supporting,” not “I’m one person, I’m really passionate and I want to do this” or “I’m really desperate for money and support!”

You should have an associated Twitter account and Facebook page for your web site or blog. Use keywords appropriate to your mission and regional focus. Also post links to appropriate Subreddits – communities on Reddit (if your proposed nonprofit is focused on children’s welfare, for instance, find subreddits focused on that. If it’s focused on a specific region, find a subreddit focused on that). Also post to appropriate LinkedIn groups – if your group is focused on protecting wetlands, for instance, try to find LinkedIn groups focused on environmental causes.

Your goal is to create an online presence that either shows you are an established, credible, accomplished organization worth supporting, or, that you are well on your way to having the people and resources in place to make that happen. Here are blogs specifically that can help you further – and to avoid pitfalls in launching a nonprofit or in nonprofit management.

Think about what you want out of new board members. Fundraisers? If you expect board members to raise funds, put that in your board role descriptions. Be upfront about how much you expect board members to raise or to give annually. Note how long you expect a board member to make a commitment to serve – a year? Two? Also state the status of your board liability insurance and the responsibility of the board to keep it current. There are plenty of places online to find sample board member role descriptions. Have the board member roles description on your web site and a way someone could express interest in perhaps being a board member – filling out a volunteer application, sending an email, etc.

By having this clear, robust information online, you will start to attract followers on social media – and, perhaps, online volunteers to help you with further web site development, research, social media management, etc. Invite all local officials – mayor, city council members, county officials, your US Representative, police chief, fire chief, city manager, etc. – to follow you on Twitter and Facebook. If local officials are mostly white men, look for nonprofits and cultural organizations that are focused on women, Black Americans, Latinos, Asians, and any group that represents communities not represented by the culture and ethnicities of elected officials, follow them on social media, comment supportively on what they are doing and ask questions, and make sure they know you care about THEIR work. Look for online events where anyone you might want on your board, or that you want to know about your organization, will be presenting and attend those online. Get all of these people used to hearing from you as an active, involved member of your local community.

Once you have done all of the above – and all of the above takes months – consider having a Zoom, WebEx, Microsoft Teams, Google Talk or whatever online open house, a “ask me anything,” where you and your team are available on a specific day and time, for one hour, to give a brief, inspiring pitch about your program and then you invite questions from the audience. Promote this event via your social media channels, your email newsletter, etc.

Only then are you ready to start your direct board recruitment process: look at the LinkedIn profiles or web sites of people that comment on your posts, that ask you questions, that attend your online open houses and that volunteer – they have shown they are interested in your work. They are your best prospects for board members. Are there people among this group with profiles that make you think they might be a good board member? If so, you can absolutely reach out to such a person personally: an email that says you would like to talk to them about possibly joining the board, a link to the description of what a board member does, and an invitation to a no-obligation talk.

Can you also post to sites like VolunteerMatch to recruit board members? Yes, but you are unlikely to find such that way, especially if you haven’t done all of the above. Again, effective, committed board members come from cultivation, not just an advertisement that you need such.

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

Systemic Exclusion in Volunteer Engagement

graphic by Jayne Cravens representing volunteers

You would have to be living under a rock to have not heard the term systemic racism or institutional racism. It refers to how ideas of white superiority are embedded at a systemic or institutional level all over the USA (and, indeed, all over the world): the standards of beauty promoted in ads and magazines and movies almost always being a white woman. Black Americans incarcerated at greater rates than white Americans, despite there NOT being a difference in the level of crime committed. The combination of deep mistrust of banks and targeting black Americans by for-profit paycheck advance companies and rent-to-own companies that keep a disproportionate number of black Americans crushed under debt. A Harvard study found job candidates were more likely to get an interview when they “whitened” their name. It’s the tendency of people in stores – of a variety of ethnicities – to follow someone who is black or Hispanic around the shop, but not a white woman. It’s a white woman calling the police on a black man in a public park who is bird watching.

I was so impressed with the Audubon Society immediately commenting on that last infamous incident with a series of tweets that began with this one on May 26:

“Black Americans often face terrible daily dangers in outdoor spaces, where they are subjected to unwarranted suspicion, confrontation, and violence. The outdoors – and the joy of birds – should be safe and welcoming for all people.”

In cooperation with other groups, like Outdoor Afro, they also promoted #BlackBirdersWeek and #BlackInNature on Twitter, featuring wonderful photos of black people and black families enjoying nature and talking about their love of bird watching.

I am sure there are people who said, “The Audubon Society is about birds, not politics, and I don’t like this.” I am so glad the Audubon Society ignored them. If the society lost donors over it, I’m so sorry – I hope they gained far more.

I hope every nonprofit, no matter their focus, no matter the mission, will make a similar public statement, if they haven’t already, about racism and exclusion. This is a cross-cutting issue. Animal shelters, environmental groups, nonprofit theaters, dance companies, museums, historical societies, and on and on – they all need to make a statement, right now, about what is happening and how it relates to their work and their communities.

Which brings me to you. And to me. People focused on recruiting and supporting volunteers, creating assignments for volunteers, consulting about aspects of volunteer engagement, and on and on. What are we doing about systemic racism in nonprofits, particularly volunteer engagement, particularly among managers of volunteers? I am sure that the vast majority of managers of volunteers absolutely abhor deliberate acts of racism and that they want to be more inclusive. And since they don’t engage in deliberate acts of racism, they often shut down at the term “systemic racism.” So, if they can’t say that volunteer engagement at most nonprofits is embedded with systemic racism, can we AT LEAST admit to systemic exclusion?

Take an organization that has decided to exclude anyone as a volunteer who has ever been convicted of a crime, no matter what the crime is, no matter how long ago that crime occurred. That policy automatically excludes a disproportionate number of black Americans as volunteers, because African Americans are incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of whites. In public schools in particular, the “no convictions” prohibition has the consequence of excluding black people, particularly black men, as volunteers – and schools that have a low number of parental vounteers have students that, overall, don’t do nearly as well academically as in schools where the number is high. Is the policy REALLY about safety, or is it laziness? Let’s just exclude everyone with a conviction rather than to have to think about it too much.

When I read an article about service clubs – nonprofit organizations where members meet regularly to volunteer for charitable works either by direct hands-on efforts or by raising money for other organizations – the list is almost always the same: Lions, Rotary International, Civitan International, Kiwanis, Optimist International, the Junior League, etc. What gets left out? Service clubs specifically representing black residents, Latino residents or Asian residents. Yes, all of the usual clubs are supposed to be open to everyone, and there are some chapters that are wonderfully diverse – but most chapters aren’t diverse, and to focus just on them leaves oh-so-many out – and leaves specific communities out. When I read about an organization’s volunteer recruitment outreach to “communities of faith”, I see a listing of churches with, primarily, white congregations – and all Christian.

When I lived in Austin, Texas, I was charged with increasing the number of people attending a local associations meeting. I emailed groups this association had never contacted before, and at our next meeting, for the first time, attendees represented a variety of ethnicities, neighborhoods, ages and economic backgrounds – but the presentation, on recognizing volunteer contributions, was so white-centric, so middle-class centric, and so women-centric, most of those new attendees never returned.

Those are three examples of systemic racism in volunteer engagement. I don’t think most of the people involved in those three examples are racists, by definition, and had any intention to exclude people of a particular race. But that’s what has happened, and we are perpetuating the practices that perpetuate it.

And then there are organizations that proudly tout their work in digital inclusion, addressing digital redlining, digital literacy, economic factors that keep communities in poverty and out of digital access, many of whom are focused specifically on black communities, but then balk at the idea that their online spaces should be accessible for people with disabilities. That’s systemic exclusion, and it’s something people with disabilities experience regularly from groups that are oh-so-proud of their diversity.

Can systemic racism show up in virtual volunteering engagement? Absolutely. As soon as online volunteer roles cross into the realm of warranting the knowing full names, hearing voices, seeing the faces of volunteers, implicit bias can creep into how those volunteers are (or are not) engaged.

I have tried to have conversations about diversity over the years at organizations where I’ve worked, in my workshops and in various consultancies. It is, by far, the most contentious topic I try to address as a consultant, and not just regarding race: I still get a shiver down my spine when I think of the angry, hostile people that made up the majority of an audience at a Corporation for National Service conference where I talked about recruiting the “new” seniors – Baby Boomers – in SeniorCorps programs. I get a bit of that hostility, though not nearly as overt, when I talk to groups about how to recruit specifically to increase diversity among volunteers. It’s not easy and I know I’ve lost some consulting gigs because I have asked some tough questions, but I’m going to keep doing so, of others – and myself.

I’m on an ongoing journey to look for ways I exclude without intending to, in my consulting, in my volunteer engagement, in my communications strategies, in my language, and on and on. I would like for you to do so as well.

New UN Initiative seeks “Information Volunteers”

Verified is a United Nations initiative to encourage people to check the validity of news, advice and information before sharing it. Verified is looking for “Information Volunteers” to sign up to receive a daily Verified briefing and then to share the fact-based advice and information with their networks.

You’re engaging right now in the biggest project of social collaboration the world has seen. Bigger than the moon landing, than the Olympics, than the building of the tallest skyscraper or longest bridge. Billions of people are working together – the doctor on the other side of the country. The parent homeschooling their child. The scientist working on the vaccine. The nurse working around the clock. You, reading this. Working towards one common goal: to look after each other.

In this crisis, sharing trusted and verified information will help keep everyone safe, while misinformation can put lives in danger. If you want to make sure the content you’re sharing helps the world, sign up to receive Verified content, and always look out for the Verified tick.

We’re doing this for each other – for everyone on the biggest team the world has ever seen.

The initiative is available in a variety of languages:

This is in addition to the UN’s main virtual volunteering initiative, the UN’s Online Volunteering Service.

Yup, I’ve signed up!

Also see:

You have an obligation to be truthful online

21 simple things to do while your programs are on hold during COVID-19 quarantines

WIth movement limited, public gatherings banned and so many people on home quarantine, many nonprofits, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), charities, government programs and other programs focused on helping or enhancing our communities or the environment are on hold. Some offices are closed entirely.

But there are LOTS of simple ways to use this “down” time that will benefit your program and make your program even stronger when physical distancing is no longer required. Many of these activities will help in fundraising efforts later.

Here are 21 ideas. Please add more in the comments:

  1. Make a list of your city, county, regional, state and national elected representatives and their contact info, if you don’t have it handy already. Going forward, you are going to always email these people about public events when your program starts having them again, and you are going to better advocate for your programs and all nonprofits, NGOs and charities as a result. An online volunteer could help you compile this info if you don’t have time.
  2. Make a list of all the off-site places your organization has held events, including meetings, classes and workshops, in the last few years. Put this list on a GoogleDoc or other shared space and ask staff and volunteers to comment on them in terms of what they liked about them, what they didn’t, etc. As a result, you have a robust database of event and meeting sites for the future.
  3. Make an archive of data you have always wanted to have handy: a list of every Executive Director your organization has ever had, or a list of every board member that has ever served, a list of every winner of a Volunteer-of-the-Year award you have given, a list of every major grant your program has ever had, etc. You can use past versions of your web site archived at the Internet Wayback Machine to access past info to the late 1990s (or ask a volunteer to do it). Such archives are great resources for institutional memory, to renew old contacts, to show your credibility, etc.
  4. Look over old versions of your web site at the Internet Wayback Machine and think about pages and resources your program has gotten rid of over the years that might need to be brought back and updated. This is a project multiple people can work on, including online volunteers.
  5. Find out the most-visited page on your web site, other than your home page. And what’s the second most-visited page? The third? What pages aren’t visited much, but should be? What can you do to make sure under-visited pages get noticed? Or should some pages be deleted per lack of interest, because they are so outdated, etc.? Compile this info and work with your web master or a volunteer to improve your site.
  6. Are your policies and procedures up-to-date regarding confidentiality, safety and sexual harassment, including in terms of online activities? Research the policies of similar programs (most will be happy to share them with you if they aren’t online already). Online volunteers can help with research.
  7. Define or revisit your organization or program’s Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and their answers. Documenting this helps new employees and volunteers and helps guide our web site design and communications strategies. The best person to define your program’s FAQs is the person who answers the phone and your main email account the most. Ask that person the top 10 – 20 reasons people call or stop by your organization or email your organization. Also ask this person to whom he or she transfers the most calls, and then talk to that person/persons as well, asking him/her/them what the top 10 reasons are that people call or email them.
  8. Do you have all of the information you should have on your web site for potential volunteers and for current volunteers? This is a great time to get your policies and procedures uploaded, an electronic version of your volunteer application posted (a volunteer can help you), photos of volunteers in action on the site, etc.
  9. Research Facebook groups and Reddit communities (subreddits) focused on your geographic area and think about how you could better leverage them in the future to promote your events, share new volunteering opportunities, share any messages meant to influence the public about an issue, etc.
  10. Create an online survey, or more than one: a survey to find out about the level of satisfaction of current volunteers (before lockdowns began) and where things can be improved, a survey of event attendees about what they would like to see in the future offered by your organization, etc.
  11. Create an online discussion group for your current volunteers. You can use GoogleGroups or https://groups.io/ for free. If you already have such an online discussion group, create a question or discussion of the week: How could our web site be better to represent what volunteers do at our organization? What’s the most challenging thing you’ve faced as a volunteer and how did you address that challenge? What’s a skill or talent you have that most people don’t know you have? Share a photo of you “in action” as a volunteer.
  12. Ask volunteers and clients to take a video of themselves on their smartphones or computers, something under one-minute, saying what your program has meant to them, why they think it’s valuable, etc. Tell them you will be using clips from these videos for a compilation video you will post on YouTube. Once you get enough footage, recruit a volunteer to knit these together, adding a title page, fade ins and outs, music, etc.
  13. Get your Twitter lists in order.
  14. Do you have raw footage of videos of events or training that aren’t shared with the public – but you wish you could do something with them? You could recruit volunteers to do things with such: make a one-minute or three-minute video with copyright-free music that offers program highlights, or to edit a video down to something that could be shared with the public.
  15. Add robust descriptions to your YouTube videos: name of the video, a summary of what it is, the full name of your organization, names of people featured in the video, a web address for more information, keywords/tags, etc. This will vastly improve the findability of these videos.
  16. Ask volunteers to caption your videos on YouTube so that people with hearing impairments and people who are in an environment where they cannot listen to them can experience them (YouTube will caption these automatically and then a volunteer can fix them).
  17. Ask volunteers to transcribe your program podcasts so people can read them (not everyone wants to listen to them).
  18. Ask volunteers to add alt text on all of your photos and graphics on your web site, making the site more accessible for people with sight impairments.
  19. Get rid of all “read more” and “click here” links on a web site, replacing them with descriptive links, so that the web site is more accessible for people with disabilities (you can ask a volunteer to do it if you don’t have time).
  20. Add appropriate titles in the title HTML for every page on your web site. This will improve Search Engine Optimization, improve accessibility for people with sight impairments, and means when someone types the URL (web address) of a web page into something like Quora, the correct title of the page will automatically show up.
  21. Take a deep dive into expanding virtual volunteering, exploring how to use the Internet to support ALL of your volunteers, including your traditional, onsite volunteers, is via The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, which I wrote with Susan Ellis. It is the most comprehensive, detailed resource available regarding virtual volunteering, and a copy of my book is far cheaper than hiring me to do a workshop!

And a reminder that there has never been a better time for your organization to launch immediate activities and roles for online volunteers. How they could help you with the aforementioned activities should be obvious. Here are even more ideas, from my last blog.

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

Remote tools: what do I (Jayne) use?

It’s become a frequently asked question of me, since I have worked remotely, from home, for so many, many years, and because I work with so many colleagues, including volunteers, who are also working from home:

What do you use to work remotely with others?

Here’s how I do it – but note that everyone has different preferences and you may find that yours are quite different:

Google Docs / Google Drive has been a fantastic way for me to work with others on word processing documents, slide shows and spreadsheets. This way, it doesn’t matter what software we use for these functions (Microsoft, LibreOffice, whatever). Also, it’s free.

I have used WebEx, Go to Meeting and lots of other video-conferencing platforms – I’ll use whatever the client is paying for – but I love Zoom most: it is super easy for meetings. I like it because it’s so easy to share my screen or for another participants to do so. I can use it on my laptop AND my phone (in case I need to have a meeting when I won’t be at my laptop, which never leaves my house). No matter what you use, keep in mind:

  • meetings should have an agenda (and you stick to it)
  • meetings absolutely start and end on time
  • encourage everyone to keep their video on and to be “present”
  • do as much as you can to keep it lively and focused – treat participants as an audience
  • always use a password for access to meetings, so you don’t get “zoom bombed.”

If someone else is paying for access (I can’t afford it otherwise on my own), I love Slack for quick updates and conversations – I think of it as someone stopping by my office and saying, “Got a sec? I have a question.” If I have access to it, leave it on during the workday so people can reach me anytime, but use the “in a meeting” when I need to not be disturbed. I haven’t found a good alternative to Slack, now that YahooIM and AOL Messenger are gone. I refuse to use Facebook messenger – that company already knows way, way too much about me. WhatsApp is owned by Facebook.

If someone else is paying for it (again, I can’t afford it otherwise on my own), I also love Basecamp – Basecamp has been absolutely essential for me to manage large projects, like a recent one where I managed more than 15 projects, each with 3 – 5 volunteers, plus the overall program for these projects, with about 50 different people working on it. There are places to share files, or to link to files shared elsewhere, to group those files into categories, to do chats, and on and on. So much easier to find things there than to go looking for attachments to emails. I wish I could afford it to use all the time on every project I’m working on with others. It’s password-protected. Groups are private (you have to be invited by the owner of the group to join).

For those that can’t afford Basecamp, I recommend Groups.io. I’m experimenting with it myself, as an online discussion group, but it could also be an online collaboration space, including a place to share files – so much easier to find things there than to go looking for attachments to emails. I wish I could afford it to use all the time on every project I’m working on with others. Groups can be private and invite-only.

If I don’t care about security, I use DropBox to share large files with people that I don’t want to attach via email.

I have two Google calendars, one private and one public. I have my calendar set to send me email reminders 24 hours before especially important meetings, and 4 hours and 1 hour before other meetings. It also sends me an on-screen reminder on my laptop 30 minutes before a meeting and an update on my phone. I also use the alarm function on my phone – not affiliated with Google – to remind me of particularly important meetings.

In the last year, I have found short videos to be a really easy way to orient or pitch something to remote staff or potential clients. I use Quicktime to record the video (it’s already on my computer, comes for free with a Mac) to record the video and iMovie to edit it (also free on my laptop). I had no training in either – I taught myself. In 2018, I did a video to encourage about 20 nonprofits I was working with to make a simple, short video of their own for a project I was working on, and it went over WAY better than an email! I got 100% participation, and I think it was because I showed them exactly what I wanted, instead of telling them. Since then, I’ve created several quick online videos, including three specifically because of the onslaught of interest in virtual volunteering because of COVID-19 home quarantines:

NOTE: Don’t be afraid to use video – to train new volunteers, to remind current volunteers of something they need to keep in mind, to talk about anything, really, that can be summarized in a compelling little speech of around 5 minutes. Your sound is as important as the image – you need to be CLEAR and as interesting to someone who would just be listening to the video as also watching it. And, absolutely, close-caption your video (YouTube does this automatically, for free – then you go in and fix what it got wrong).

As for safety and security: I do not like to share any document online that has my social security and/or birthday on it. But sometimes, I just have no choice. In such cases, I prefer to scan the document as a PDF or JPG and send it as an attachment via email. If I have to sign something, I have a printed and I print it out, sign it, then scan it again and send that as a JPG or PDF.

I subscribe to a VPN – a tool that creates a “virtual private network.” A VPN ensures that the information traveling between a connected device (computer, smartphone, tablet) and the VPN’s server is encrypted, making it more secure from hackers, cybercriminals, and data thieves. It’s a great tool if you ever use a public wi-fi network – at a coffee shop, the airport, the library, etc. As an added bonus, usig a VPN, you can also access restricted websites and apps from anywhere in the world – great to get around blocks on a website when you are outside your country (no more “not available in your country” messages). I recommend Hot Spot Shield (the free version has a lot of ads – it’s worth the monthly subscription fee not to have these).

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

your nonprofit is still relevant during COVID19 – SHOW HOW

If you are a nonprofit focused on helping the homeless, addressing hunger or nutrition, helping people with a chronic illness or children or seniors, helping people with addiction issues, your services are still hugely in demand and it’s easy for people to see how your nonprofit is relevant during COVID19 and all that it’s bringing to individuals and the community-at-large, like unemployment, social isolation and being homebound without onsite visits. I’ve noticed many nonprofits trying to address domestic violence have done an excellent job at messaging these days, noting that the requirements to stay at home have created a very dangerous scenario for those they try to serve and what they are trying to do to address that. If you represent such a nonprofit, you may even have seen a spike in donations as a result.

But if you are a nonprofit focused on live theater, artwork, dance, history, recycling or some other thing that isn’t directly, obviously related to the consequences of COVID19, it can feel like you are being lost amid all the calls for continuing to support nonprofits and addressing this pandemic.

ALL NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS MATTER to SOMEONE, at the very least. If a nonprofit doesn’t matter, it shouldn’t exist.

This is not the time to pause your nonprofit’s communications, wait for things to get better and hope people will remember your nonprofit when we’re through this, or to think that relaunching your public activities once public gatherings can happen again will immediately bring people back to engaging with your program and supporting it financially. Instead, your nonprofit, no matter its focus, needs to be thinking about what messages it can send out on its blog and social media channels, linked from its web site, about its work that will be relevant in these times. It needs to strategize about how to get those messages out and how to invite digital engagement on them as well.

Here are some ideas:

  • Historical societies and history museums need to be posting about what the culture or community they are focused on did in the past regarding an epidemic, a pandemic or other widespread hardship, with photos, any first-person stories they have on file or accounts by others. Did your city experience the so-called Spanish Flu and, if so, what happened in that time? Share stories of hope, courage, sorry, and with each message, remind people what your organization does to preserve local culture. This doesn’t have to be one major online publication – you can publish just one thing once a week, even twice a week. Always invite feedback on such – some people may have photos and diaries they would like to share with you from that time.
  • Historical societies should be finding free broadcasts of history-related topics (such as on public television) and encouraging home-based live-watch parties, and for everyone in their own community that’s watching to share thoughts as they watch on a Facebook thread or Tweet chat designed for them to share such. At least some of these quotes will demonstrate the power of learning about history and be great in a grant proposal.
  • History societies and groups focused on specific ethnic cultures should be sharing how people can get started on their own family history and ancestry projects: how to ask for info from family members, how to record that information (scanning, how to use a smart phone to record, etc.,), options for sharing that information with just family, or with the public, etc.
  • Community theaters should be posting stories about places and pieces related to any discussion of disease, or noting the ways past epidemics or pandemics have affected live theater in the past. Share these stories with the intent to say, “And live theater SURVIVED!” A group of online volunteers, recruited from your current home-bound volunteers or newly recruited, could help you compile enough information to share something every week – even twice a week. Maybe even every day.
  • There are art museums that are having a field day with social media during this crisis, such as the Getty, which has asked people to recreate famous painting scenes using whatever they can find in their own house. Check out a few of the Getty’s picks on its Instagram, and don’t forget to take a peek this hashtag. It’s a campaign that’s not only gone viral, it’s reminded people of just how images from art influence our lives and kept that museum relevant.
  • Operas could post people performing songs in operas, like La Traviata or La bohème, where a character is singing while dying and talk about how the performing arts have never flinched from portraying human suffering, and how that art can help people handle the horrors around them.
  • All performing arts groups – theaters, operas, dance companies, choirs, etc. – should be finding free broadcasts of performances by ANY group related to whatever art they themselves produce and encouraging home-based live-watch parties, and for everyone in their own community that’s watching to share thoughts as they watch on a Facebook thread or Tweet chat designed for them to share such. At least some of these quotes will demonstrate the power of performing art and be great in a grant proposal.
  • All arts groups should be posting messages regularly now about the links between producing art and experiencing art and the positive effects on such regarding mental health.
  • A nonprofit that produces a farmer’s market or artisan market should ask its clients to make short videos about what they are doing now – both challenges they are facing and what they are still producing and ways people might be able to order it online or pay for it in a safe exchange that involves a lot of physical distancing and no close contact whatsoever.
  • Many animal shelters and rescue agencies have done a brilliant job promoting now as a great time to foster an animal from the shelter, since families and individuals are homebound anyway, and it’s resulted in a windfall of great foster families for many shelters.
  • If your nonprofit promotes sports, the outdoors or an outdoor activity, this is a time to be interviewing people online who have benefited from your programs over the years, and sharing those stories online, to say, “This is why sports / this activity matters. This is how we have impact.” If you don’t need to do fundraising for activities, you could fundraise for equipment you will use once your operations resume. You could also be sharing with people how to clean and repair whatever equipment is associated with the sport or outdoor activity, or an at-home exercise that could help build strength or balance to help in engaging in that sport or outdoor activity.

Your volunteers would love to come up with their own ideas about what your nonprofit should be saying and doing to stay relevant now. You can bring them all together in a conference call or put one volunteer in charge of gathering their ideas, calling and emailing each one. Emailing is great – but calling someone is even better, in most scenarios. This doesn’t have to be a one-time ask: they should be given multiple opportunities to share their ideas with you, and opportunities to help bring those ideas to fruition.

Always invite feedback on what you are sharing, and track this feedback. You can use this to show the impact of your COVID19-related activities to potential funders.

And a reminder that there has never been a better time for your organization to launch activities and roles for online volunteers. How they could help you with the aforementioned activities should be obvious. Here are even more ideas, from my last blog.

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

Too much text on the web? Bollocks

I have always believed content drives design for any communications product, from a paper brochure to a website. What good is a supposedly “well designed” or “eye-catching” poster, billboard, flyer, manual or website if it doesn’t get the result you want – and the result is not just people looking at it and saying, “Oh, what a lovely design,” but what they DO and how they THINK after experiencing that product.

I will never forget being handed a company brochure at a nonprofit where I had just started and being told, “It won a design award!” I looked it over and said, “The text is too small for someone who needs glasses to read and dark green text on a light green background makes it really hard for ME to read as well.” I didn’t last long at that job…

Then there was the designer who so proudly presented me with his design for an upcoming event, and it was beautiful, but it was missing the date, the time and the location of the event, and it implied the event would be something that it wasn’t. But, hey, it was pretty! He was crushed when I told him he had to add the necessary info. “But… it ruins the design…” he sighed…

And then there was the nonprofit that decided it wanted to delete at least half the text off of its web site. It did so, resulting in an onslaught of email from people asking for more information, and me having to constantly cut and paste, over and over, the information that used to be on the web site.

My attitude about text – about the importance of clarity and completeness over just brevity for brevity’s sake – puts me at odds with many a designer. But it recently put me at odds with people who believe “too much text intimidates young people” and, therefore, you should cut down on the number of pages on your web site.

Bollocks.

Yes, I get it – most people don’t read everything on a web site. That has ALWAYS been true. I have always known people don’t go to a website and read it like a book – they go to a website, read the home page, and if they are enticed, or in need of certain information, they click on something and read more.

What’s great about the web is that you can create a site that appeals to BOTH of those groups of information consumers, those who just need a bit of info, and those who want to dive deeper.

Also, people often go to a web site not as a fresh, new visitor who need something shiny waved at them to be intrigued – there are those that go to a web site looking for specific details. They may be a current volunteer who wants to get clarification regarding the purpose of your organization’s community engagement. They may be someone who wants to understand more about why the issue your nonprofit addresses exists at all. They may be someone who is doing a reference check on someone claiming to be on your board. It may be a CURRENT STAFF MEMBER who wants to stay on brand/message, and to do that, needs to know what the official wording is regarding some program or practice.

How many times have I joined an organization as a new employee or consultant and my only source for vital historical information I need is the organization’s web site? And how many times has the organization not had that vital information on their new, shiny, modern, streamlined website, so I have to go find it on an old version of their site on the Internet Wayback Machine?

Absolutely, when someone opens a web page, they shouldn’t feel overwhelmed. Some are overwhelmed by lots of text. I’m overwhelmed by lots of photos – because I rarely go to a web site for photos, I go for information, and I feel like I’m lost in a sea of images and I search for real, actual information I need.

The philosophy is to put JUST enough information on a web page to get people to sign up for an event, put JUST enough to get people to buy a ticket. I get that. And, certainly, for landing pages, it’s a good philosophy. But there are many users who are going to need more information. So why not have a link to more information so people like me, who are NOT going to buy that ticket or sign up to volunteer based on just a paragraph or two, can dive deeper? Believe me, there is PLENTY of room on your web site for that additional information. There is plenty of room on the web for more web pages.

One last note: I have once again been in a position to create tasks for volunteers and then to recruit and involve volunteers in those positions. I tried the less-is-more for role descriptions – and ended up with an endless number of questions from volunteers, asking for all those details I was leaving out of my pithy recruitment posts. Lesson learned: I went back to long-form.

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

Are Accessible Web Sites Only For Companies That Can Afford Professional Web Designers?

A web site for any company based in the USA that is inaccessible to visitors with visual, auditory, or other disabilities may violate the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), according to a recent federal appeals court decision in Robles v. Domino’s Pizza. This decision includes nonprofits’ websites, according to “Ninth Circuit Ruling Bolsters ADA Website Accessibility Suits: Risks for Nonprofits,” by DC-based law firm Venable.

But just as important as the legal aspects, a web site that is not designed to be accessible for people with disabilities – people who use verbal screen readers, people who use screen magnifiers, people with mobility issues that use assistive tech and cannot use a mouse, etc. – locks out potential customers, clients, employees, volunteers, donors, and other supporters. People with disabilities in the USA comprise more than 19 percent of the people living in the country, an even larger percentage than Hispanics and Latinos, who are the largest ethnic, racial or cultural minority group in the USA, making up 15 percent of the population. Law or no law, can any nonprofit really afford to leave out so many, many people?

71% of people with disabilities leave a website immediately if it is not accessible, according to 2017 research conducted by the governance committee of Section508.gov in the USA, as quoted on this 3playmedia website.

The population that needs accessible web sites includes people who don’t identify as people with disabilities. People who wear glasses, for instance. I wear reading glasses and have started using the accessibility feature on my laptop and phone that automatically makes text large – but it doesn’t work with a web site that isn’t designed to be responsive to such settings.

You don’t have to be a professional web designer or developer to produce a basic, content-rich web site. You don’t have to be a professional web designer to produce a web site that’s easy to navigate. You don’t have to know most web design and development terms to produce a web site, like HTML, CSS, Java, ARIA, and on and on.

And that’s been wonderful for many nonprofits, NGOs, charities and other mission-based organizations, as well as small, independent artists like musicians, dancers, singers, poets, sculptors, theater troops, photographers and on and on, as most can never afford to pay a professional web designer or developer.

But you do have to involve a professional web designer or developer if you want a web site to have certain advanced features. And you do have to involve a professional web designer or developer if you want your web site to be fully accessible for all users and all devices (mobile phones, tablets, the voice reader in your car, etc.).

That means, for the vast majority of nonprofits, NGOs, charities and other mission-based organizations, as well as for the vast majority of artists, they cannot have fully accessible web sites for all users, because they will never be able to afford to pay a professional web designer or developer.

That means many people with disabilities who want to donate to, volunteer to, or just learn about a small vast majority of nonprofits, NGOs, charities and other mission-based organizations, can’t do any of these things via these programs’ inaccessible web sites. That means many people with disabilities that want to buy a ticket to an upcoming event, to find out where to purchase a CD or poster or book or whatever, to attend a conference about a cause they care about, can’t do any of those things.

A study from 2019 by the nonprofit RespectAbility found that most foundations and nonprofits aren’t doing enough – if anything – to enable people with disabilities to have the access and accommodations they need to fully participate in the work these organizations are doing – not as program participants, as volunteers, even as donors. The study included a review of nonprofits’ websites and online videos. “Philanthropy-serving organizations don’t know what they don’t know and often haven’t even thought about including people with disabilities,” said Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, president of RespectAbility. “Even among well-meaning groups who are engaged in a lot on racial and gender equity overall, disability is missing.”

What do we do about nonprofits not being able to afford fully accessible web sites? Anything?

The only program I know of that tries to address nonprofits that want accessible web sites, that tries to help small nonprofits, NGOs, charities and other mission-based organizations to have an accessible web site, as well as artists – just three to 25 organizations at a time – is the Accessibility Internet Rally, a virtual volunteering and web design/development training event by the nonprofit Knowbility. Otherwise… there’s nothing that I know of that is working to educate nonprofits, charities and other small mission-based organizations about digital accessibility – nor educating corporate donors and foundations about why they should fund such.

Are associations of nonprofit organizations going to explore how to address the inaccessibility of web sites for theater companies, dance troops, homeless shelters, nonprofits helping kids explore science, etc.? Are associations of museums, animal shelters, rural arts organizations, and other specific kinds of nonprofits going to at least discuss this?

Are companies that provide ready-to-use, customizable website templates and drag-and-drop web development platforms/web hosts like WordPress, Weebly, Wix, Square Space, Webflow and Jimdo going to address this, other than having a page on their sites that talk a bit about alt-text? (February 4 update: here is an excellent review of some of these sites regarding whether they are capable of creating accessible websites – spoiler alert: they aren’t).

Are companies and foundations that give money to nonprofits going to quit refusing to fund overhead – and, in fact, give special, additional gifts so that nonprofits can hire professional web site designers and developers to build accessible web sites?

Should associations like the International Association of Accessibility Professionals (IAAP), G3ict and/or the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) try to address this – or at least discuss it?

Or do we keep telling people with disabilities that want to donate, volunteer and otherwise support or be involved with nonprofits and artists, “Tough luck, they can’t afford to be accessible to you”?

I have no answers to these questions… if you have ideas or comments, I’d love to hear them. I have asked this question on Quora and my own Facebook page and ended up mostly with recommendations for techniques about how to make a website more accessible, rather than answers to how we elevate this as a priority at mission-based organizations.

In the meantime, if you need to make the business case to your board of directors for fundraising so that you can afford to pay a web site designer with accessibility training to build and maintain your site, here are some resources that can help:

And if you want to encourage your web manager, whoever that person is, part-time, full-time, volunteer, whatever: the government of the State of Illinois provides Implementation Guidelines for Web-Based Information and Applications (formerly Illinois Web Accessibility Standards) and, as a non-web site designer, I find it easier to understand than most other guidelines out there. These guidelines are good to ask your web site designer and manager – no matter that person’s web design skill level, to follow. These guidelines from the state of Illinois also provide links to resources from other organizations:

Also, in researching for and writing this blog, I came up with a new resource on my web site: How Volunteers Can QUICKLY Help Your Program To Be More Accessible Online.

Note that these are questions I’ve been asking for a while on Quora:

How can accessible web design become a priority for nonprofits, NGOs & charities when most can’t afford to pay a web design pro-they rely on volunteers or staff with other roles (receptionist, marketing person, etc.) who don’t have these skills?
Asked Jan 2, 2020

Why has your nonprofit organization or school chosen not to have a fully accessible website for people with disabilities?
Asked Nov 19, 2019

Do you know of other web design accessibility hackathons like Knowbility’s OpenAIR, where designers volunteer to build accessible web sites for nonprofits, charities, and artists?
Asked Dec 19, 2017

How did you overcome resistance in your company or nonprofit organization to making your organization’s website fully accessible for people with disabilities?
Asked Nov 14, 2017

Knowbility has done a few webinars with TechSoup about accessibility for nonprofit organization’s websites and they are available free online on TechSoup. The most recent was this webinar with Knowbility Executive Director and myself in August 2017. This is a good video for anyone who manages your organization’s website, particularly the non-webmaster webmaster – the person who doesn’t have much training in web design but does have the responsibility to update the site.

It might be out of your nonprofit’s price range, but Knowbility also offers several online courses and onsite (Austin, Texas) training events that can raise the skill levels of your web site master regarding accessibility – they are worth looking into if you are looking for training for the person who manages your web site.

January 28, 2020 update: I encourage EVERY company, not just businesses but also nonprofits and NGOs, no matter your business or mission, to take the 2020 State of Digital Accessibility Survey from IAAP, G3ict and Level Access. For nonprofits and NGOs – choose “foundations & charities” as your org type. If you don’t have an accessibility program, don’t have an inclusion strategy, you should still take this survey – because we need to show that such strategies are NOT widespread (and that they should be!).

January 30, 2020 update: There are various web hosts that have ready-to-use templates that say things like “If your website is hosted with us or you are looking to switch to our nonprofit content management system (CMS), we can add an accessibility widget to make your website more accessible. Our widget will allow visitors to easily adjust settings on your website to meet their unique needs.” Among web accessibility experts, add-on accessibility toolbars are referred to as “toolbar overlays.” I asked a website accessibility expert about this and this was his response: “accessibility overlays are a scam and a lie and do not fix the actual problems” and then he linked to this article from Karl Groves and this website, overlaysdontwork.com. I also found this blog that begins: “Thinking about using one of those plugins or widgets that puts an accessibility toolbar on your website? This article will make you think again… What’s ironic is many of the toolbar companies tout the ‘We won’t touch your website code’ line as a selling point when, in fact, this is what buyers should want and expect.

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

Creating One-Time, Short-Term Group Volunteering Opportunities

I was shocked when I looked to see what page on my web site got the most visits in 2019. I knew that the most popular pages would be from the section of my web site for volunteers themselves, a section I started because I got tired of writing the same answers over and over to Frequently Asked Questions on YahooAnswers, Quora, Reddit, etc. I knew these pages would be the most popular because I post links to them constantly on those and other online communities. But tucked away in those web site visitor stats was this page, for programs that host volunteers, or want to:

Creating One-Time, Short-Term Volunteering Opportunities for Groups.

I haven’t done anything special to promote this web page. I post a link to it a few times a year on my various social media channels, I post a link to it if someone asks for advice on how to do it, but that’s it. And, yet, there it is, a hugely popular page on my web site in 2019.

So MANY different kinds of groups want a group volunteering experience where they feel like they show up, they volunteer, they have fun together, they make a difference, they get great photos, and then they leave. But he reality is that, for most nonprofits and community programs, these group volunteers aren’t worth the trouble to involve. Most nonprofits and community programs do NOT have volunteering tasks laying around that could be done by a large group of untrained, one-time volunteers – or even an untrained individual volunteer. Most organizations also do not have the money, staff, time and other resources to create two-hour, half-day or one-day, one-time group volunteering activities, especially for teens and children.

This is really hard for group representatives to hear, especially from corporations. The reaction is what?! you don’t have something for my group of 15 people from our marketing and sales departments to do this Friday from 10 to 12:30? No. No, we don’t. And you don’t have something in your marketing or sales department for a group of 15 temps to do from 10 to 12:30 either, so don’t act surprised.

My page has a list of possible activities for groups, but I also note that all of these activities, and any other group volunteering activities that aren’t listed, take many hours by the organization to prepare the site for the group of volunteers to show up, engage in the activity, and leave after two-to-seven hours – and to leave the site in such a way that the organization or program isn’t left with even more work for staff. That includes hackathons and program consultations. That’s why I believe your group should MAKE A FINANCIAL DONATION TO THE ORGANIZATION where you want to have your group volunteering experience. Yup: you need to pay money to the organization you expect to host your volunteering group, to cover at least some of the many costs they incur by creating this experience for your group.

My formula: donate $50 per hour your group will be there per staff member the nonprofit or other hosting agency will have to provide for preparation and supervision – regardless of whether or not that staff member is a volunteer or a paid person at the host organization. So, if your company or group wants a two-hour experience, and the volunteer hosting organization will need to have two people supervising and supporting your group, that’s $200. If your group wants a four-hour experience, and it will take just one nonprofit staff member, that’s also $200 your group is going to donate to the nonprofit. And, no, “in-kind” donations don’t count: it needs to be actual money.

I’m glad my page about volunteering activities for groups has proven so popular. I just hope it’s not just nonprofits and other volunteer hosting organizations that are reading it.

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

United Nations site for people with disabilities is inaccessible

The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) created a web site for the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) initiative called the UNDP-UNV Talent Programme for Young Professionals with Disabilities. It’s a program to recruit people with disabilities to serve as UN Volunteers. Its web site opens with this: 

UNDP and UNV commit to leaving no one behind. As part of this commitment, the Talent Programme promotes the inclusion of persons with disabilities into our workplace. The Talent Programme also aims to build a talent pipeline of highly qualified professionals with disabilities who can contribute to the development sector, and to attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at national and global levels.

In addition to the grammar problem in the first sentence, the UNDP web site for this initiative leaves lots of people behind: the web site is not accessible for people with disabilities.
The web site does not meet even basic accessibility standards as outlined by numerous organizations, including the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). The UN General Assembly has designated the Department of Global Communications as the focal point for web accessibility in the United Nations, and this UN web site talks about the UN’s commitment to online accessibility – which, unfortunately, UNV and UNDP haven’t followed for their initiative specifically focused on people with disabilities.  How can an initiative that says it promotes the inclusion of persons with disabilities in the workplace exclude those same persons online? As someone who has worked for the UN, I know the answer to this question, but shall save that for another time…

Highly qualified professionals with disabilities absolutely can contribute to the development sector and to attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at national and international levels. In fact, they do already – if you don’t know that, you truly are not paying attention.

I have worked with highly-skilled people with a variety of disabilities – as employees, consultants and volunteers, online and face-to-face serving as web masters, editors, researchers, designers and more. It’s not unusual for me to find out someone I’ve been working with for weeks or months is, in fact, legally blind, or deaf, or is a person with limited mobility. We meet regarding what they CAN do, not what they cannot, and I’ve benefitted greatly, personally and professionally, from their expertise and talent.

I emailed representatives of UNV and UNDP in early December, saying pretty much the same thing I’ve just blogged, and I tweeted to UNDP and UNV as well. In my post, I also recommend to UNV and UNDP the nonprofit organization Knowbility to help their web designers and developers to fix this dire accessibility issue on the web site. 

I got a reply via email on December 11th from “Erik on behalf of the UNDP-UNV Talent Programme for Young Professionals with Disabilities”:

Thank you very much for your feedback. We are aware of the limitations of the websites and currently have teams working on projects that are focused on making them user-friendly and compliant with accessibility standards. Since we launched this initiative, we have been able to reach a wide range of persons with disabilities as evidenced by increased numbers of candidates registered and of applications. We also provide the option to reach out to us in person in case specific assistance or concerns are needed in the application process. As we are a continuously learning organization, our goal is to strive for a fully inclusive working environment and take every opportunity to improve. We appreciate your patience and understanding. Please let us know if we can further assist you in navigating the site.

So, in other words, they mean to say: the site is working just fine, people are applying for this program, people who can’t navigate our website can just email us and we’ll help them with the process, and being a “continuously learning organization”, we can’t be faulted for not having an accessible web site for people with disabilities for a program designed especially for people with disabilities at the get-go. Don’t bother us.

I really hope that UNV and UNDP will realize how bad this makes the agency and this program look, and choose to RAPIDLY remedy this situation regarding the accessibility of their web site for a program meant to increase inclusion of professionals with disabilities. They made a mistake – no excuses. Let’s hope UNV and UNDP not only fix this web site, but make a future commitment to digital inclusion in all of their web sites – especially those that are supposed to cater specifically to people with disabilities.

If you would like to let UNV and UNDP know what you think of the site and their response, I urge you to email these four addresses:

  • Talent Programme <talent.programme@unv.org>
  • Anant Sharma <anant.sharma@undp.org>
  • Anjali Kwatra <anjali.kwatra@undp.org>
  • UNV Media <unv.media@unv.org>

Also see: