Category Archives: Community / Volunteer Engagement

Get to know your volunteers now on a new level

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Most of the articles I’ve read on “tips for working with remote staff during COVID-19 lockdowns” have been way more basic than I need, say what should be obvious (at least to me – like the importance of starting meetings on-time and make sure you use your mute button when you aren’t talking) and really don’t offer much insight into this particular way of working. In short, when I read most of these articles, I say “Meh” and move on.

However, Charity Village in Canada shared 8 Tips for Nonprofit Leaders to Better Support Virtual Teams by Maryann Kerr and it’s outstanding. There are really great suggestions here that every nonprofit and government program needs to read and apply to their interactions with remote staff – I hope more than a few folks are brave enough to send the article to managers, including executive directors, who just aren’t getting what working from home during a pandemic is REALLY like and what their expectations of their staff REALLY should be.

In addition, many of these suggestions are applicable to virtual volunteering. Here are my favorite recommendations from the article that I think you need to be thinking about with your volunteers now as they do more service and interactions online:

Be patient and considerate of the specific challenges of your team. This is both a collective and unique experience for each of us. Some will be home alone and lonely.  Others may be desperate for a moment of peace. Still others may be caring for elderly family members or a combination of all three.

Speak up and don’t skip the hard stuff. This moment in history asks each of us to dig deep and develop our own innate ability to lead. You do not need to hold a position of leadership to act.  Speaking up, on your own behalf, and on behalf of others, is an act of leadership. If you have a concern or question, it is likely shared by others.

Get to know each other on a whole new level. Whether you use Patrick Lencioni’s Personal Histories Exercise or the Clifton Strengths Finder or any number of other team building activities available online and adaptable to a video conference – just do it. Lencioni’s is a favorite because I’ve never seen it fail to improve a team’s understanding of each other. Do team members have hidden talents they’d like to share?  A song, a poem, a musical instrument? A piece of artwork or craft they’d like to show?  You are suddenly in each other’s homes. Use this as an opportunity to see each other as whole human beings not just workers. 

Explore your values as individuals, teams and as an organization. Start with a free Personal Values Assessment  and then facilitate a discussion about what is important to you as individuals and how this is reflected in how you will work together.  Examine how these compare to your stated values as an organization.  How can you ensure you live these values, particularly now?

Again, I want to emphasize those four suggestions are from Maryann Kerr, not me – she gets all the credit!

But I will add that, in a past blog, I myself wrote this in a blog:

Successfully working with people remotely is a very human endeavor that people who are amiable, understanding and thoughtful tend to excel in.

And, indeed, that’s proven to be true yet again as millions of people experience remote work amid chaotic or lonely homes.

Also see these blogs and web pages from me:

Building a team culture among remote workers: yoga, cocktails & games

Team building activities for remote workers

Re-creating offline excitement & a human touch online

Virtual volunteering: it’s oh-so-personal

The dynamics of online culture & community

Leading in a virtual world

And this video about how personal working with online volunteers has been for me.

vvbooklittle

And, of course, for more advice on working with remote volunteers, or using the Internet to support and involve volunteers, check out The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. Tools come and go – but certain community engagement principles never change. 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. It’s available both as a traditional paperback and as an online book. It’s co-written by myself and Susan Ellis.

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. 

Bill before US Congress: Pandemic Response & Opportunity Through National Service

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A bill in the USA Congress, the Pandemic Response & Opportunity Through National Service Act, would expand AmeriCorps and SeniorCorps to aid in COVID-19 recovery efforts, including growing AmeriCorps to 750,000 positions over a three-year period; boost the AmeriCorps living stipend so that individuals regardless of financial situation can participate; increase the education award to cover up to two years of public university tuition; ramp up Senior Corps teleworking technology, and more. These programs are a part of the Corporation for National and Community Service.

More about the bill, from a group advocating support for such at this link: Support the Pandemic Response and Opportunity Through National Service Act.

Full disclosure: I have signed. I absolutely support this bill.

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. 

Recruiting Volunteers To Serve in Difficult, Dangerous or Controversial Roles

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There are people who want to volunteer in difficult or dangerous roles – it’s what they specifically seek out. Over on the Reddit group regarding voluntourism, as I write this blog, there are lots of messages from people, mostly young people, seeking to help on the “front lines” regarding people affected by COVID-19, either because they are ill or because they are isolated and needing help in lockdowns. Many online recruitment sites, like VolunteerMatch, have curated volunteering opportunities posted on their site that related to COVID-19 in some way, due to overwhelming demand from potential volunteers.

Some volunteering is perceived as difficult by potential volunteers and the general public, because of the clients that volunteers will work with or the kind of activities volunteers must undertake. Examples: serving as a Big Brother/Big Sister, mentoring a foster child, assisting adults with developmental disabilities, volunteering in a shelter for women experiencing domestic violence, or staffing a suicide hotline.

Some volunteering is perceived as difficult AND dangerous, such as fire fighting, search and rescue, volunteering with incarcerated people in a jail or prison or volunteering with people who are formerly-incarcerated.

Some volunteering is perceived as controversial, such as providing water stations in the desert for people entering a country illegally and can die from dehydration, or defending a women’s health clinic patients from protesters, or various protest and activism roles.

Difficult, dangerous and/or controversial roles actually appeal to many people who want to volunteer: they feel strongly about the cause, or they want to do something substantial and challenging. But other roles may seem too intimidating to new recruits, like mentoring a young person going through the foster care system, working with young people in the juvenile justice system, working with people with intellectual disabilities, or working with seniors.

How do you recruit for roles that might seem difficult, dangerous, even controversial? How do you recruit for a subject area or role that might provoke an initial reaction of fear among potential volunteers?

This web page, on my site, offers detailed advice.

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. 

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

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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. 

Three resources for your COVID-19-related volunteering

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Lots of nonprofits, charities, government programs and others are rapidly re-aligning their volunteer engagement because of COVID-19 and home quarantines:

  • Converting some programming and volunteer engagement online.
  • Launching new virtual “home visit” or online mentoring programs.
  • Mobilizing volunteers to support people in-need because of home quarantine, because of the stress of their professional work in response to the pandemic, etc.

Here are three resources for these new or re-imagined efforts:

(1) This short video about the importance of safety measures in any virtual volunteering programs, including virtual “home visits”, virtual visits to those in senior homes, etc. Spoiler alert: it’s my video.

(2) After a natural disaster – earthquake, flood, tornado, hurricane, etc. – affected areas can be flooded with spontaneous volunteers. They present a lot of challenges – and even dangers. COVID-19 is presenting a similar flood of spontaneous volunteers. How to deal with that flood of goodwill? These resources on dealing with spontaneous volunteers in natural disasters can offer some guidance.

(3) These recommendations regarding volunteers in post-disaster situations (hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, etc.) from Chapter 5: Discussion, Conclusions, and Recommendations, in Disaster Survivors’ Experiences with Disaster Volunteers by Christa Frances Lopez / Christa López Sandelier (it’s her doctoral dissertation for Walden University).

Except:

The data from the findings confirm that disaster survivors had positive and negative interactions with the disaster volunteers. The disaster survivors weighted the positive experiences over the negative experiences. Participant 8 stated that she did not want to talk about the negative experiences, while another was very specific about concerns about the disaster volunteers’ skill levels and fitness for working in the climate in Texas. There were several recommendations for training of disaster volunteers with a clear expression from the research participants that stopping to listen and have clear communication with the disaster survivors was a high priority, as stated by Participant 1, “Listen to the people.” While Participant 3 stated, “just know that the people that you’re working for or they’re in a bad place and you’re there to make it better and always remember, to smile.” Participant 6 mentioned,

It depends on the tenure or the experience of the group coming in. Whereas you have other folks who just have a heart and they show up and mistakes do come out of those, they walk into situations- working on projects that weren’t priorities like trees down in yards when other houses had trees fallen on roofs into bedrooms. And so that kind of misstep of a volunteer coming to do good being directed by the homeowner as opposed to being directed by a group. I saw a lot of that happen because people show up, they don’t know where to go. They end up getting questioned in by a group of neighbors that are out front. Well, there needs to be a leader of each group who has some knowledge of construction or safety.

This emphasized the need for effective volunteer coordination with focus on organization and leadership for the established volunteer groups and the emerging volunteers so that work can be prioritized….

The cultural fit using Campinha-Bacote’s (2002) model of culture competence may be best applied in the future at the volunteer reception centers where coordinators of the volunteers could provide training before the volunteers go into the field to work. This training could involve an intake assessment that asks questions about the volunteer and their reasons and intent for coming to volunteer for that particular disaster. This would help volunteers look inward and fit within the first construct of cultural awareness. The questionnaire could then build upon the next construct of cultural knowledge by asking what the volunteer knows about the community. That could then lead into the topics the volunteer center can focus on for the volunteers’ training before they work in the field. During this training there can be a brief on the culture of the community, such as, what the community was like before the disaster, what is like now, including stages of grief the disaster survivors may be experiencing and other information pertinent to the local community…

As mentioned in the recommendations, using Campinha-Bacote’s (2002) model of culture competence may be best applied in the future at the volunteer reception centers where coordinators of the volunteers could provide training before the volunteers go into the field to work. This training could involve an intake assessment, as well, to assess the volunteer motivation to gauge their culture awareness by looking inward at their own self-awareness as to what motivates them to volunteer. The training could then provide information about the local community norms and provide cultural knowledge to the volunteers so that they can know who they are serving, and thus improve service and cultural integration of the volunteers within the community…

(end excerpt)

How to Immediately Introduce Virtual Volunteering at Your Program (How to Involve Online Volunteers Right Away)

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(Original title: “NEVER a better time to explore Virtual Volunteering than NOW”)

The precautions being taken in communities around the world may feel like we are becoming more isolated from each other. Virtual volunteering is a fantastic way to bring us all closer together and fill our home-based time with meaningful activities that make a difference.

In this time of home quarantine and in-person social physical distancing because of COVID19, there has NEVER been a better time for your program to quickly create online tasks and roles for your volunteers – you need the volunteers and they need you! There are so many things volunteers could be doing for you, right now, to help your program and clients, without any investment in new systems or equipment.

The longest list you will find anywhere of online tasks and roles for online volunteers is here on the list of examples at the Virtual Volunteering Wiki, which is updated regularly.

In particular, it’s a great time for your volunteers to get busy right away and:

  • 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.
  • transcribe your program podcasts so people can read them (many people prefer reading to listening, and it also improves search engine optimization).
  • edit a video or podcast one of your staff has recorded from their home office, adding titles, intro music, etc.
  • beta test your new online orientation for new volunteers that will, eventually, work onsite (which you have been working on all this time so that volunteers don’t have to come onsite for that orientation – RIGHT?!?).
  • put appropriate keyword tags on your photos on Flickr or some other online photo archive.
  • brainstorm social media messages for a variety of platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) based on your program’s messaging goals.
  • create new pages for your web site.
  • put appropriate alt text on all of your photos and graphics on your web site, making the site more accessible for people with sight impairments.
  • 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.
  • make sure every page on your web site has an appropriate title in the title tag (this helps with SEO and the title automatically appears in many sites whenever someone types in the URL).
  • monitor the news to look for specific subjects your program needs to be aware of.
  • monitor Quora, Reddit or other popular online communities, to answer questions on a particular subject or about a particular organization, to refer people to a web site that will answer their questions, to counter fake news/misinformation on a particular subject, etc.
  • translate documents (and proofreading the translations by others).
  • November 19, 2020 updates:
  • look at Reddit and make a list of subreddits – online communities – where you should post information about volunteering, events, or educational/awareness messages. See if the volunteers that undertake this task come up with the same list.
  • interview the person who answers the main email and phone the most, and the person he or she transfers the most calls to or forwards the most emails to, and find out what the program’s Frequently Asked Questions (and their answers) are, then recruit a volunteer to prepare such as a new web page for your web site.
  • transcribe text you have in PDFs on your web site to text, for new web pages or to add to current web pages (this makes the content accessible for people with disabilities and improves your search engine optimization).
  • add titles, or make appropriate titles on every page of your web site (in between the <title> and </title> tags in the HTML). This helps with their accessibility for people with disabilities.
  • fill out your YouTube video descriptions completely with the full name of your organization, the content of the video, keywords and a link to your web site.
  • create lists on Twitter.
  • compile and prepare information for your organization’s web site that shows your organization’s credibility and accountability.
  • evaluate your web site in terms of the information about and for volunteers that is and isn’t there.

You don’t need any special training to have your current volunteers, already-vetted volunteers engage in these aforementioned virtual volunteering activities – just send them the list of possibilities and ask them if they know how to do any of them!

This is also great time for you to start strategizing to be even more ambitious regarding virtual volunteering at your nonprofit, non-governmental organization (NGO), charity, government program or school. What about:

  • Having a lead volunteer organize a survey of other volunteers to find out how they view success and challenges at your organization in volunteering so far? The data gathered could reveal successes and problems with your volunteer engagement you didn’t know you had and provide critical data to make improvements and to include in grant proposals.
  • Asking volunteers to take selfie videos describing what they like about volunteering with you, and then recruiting an online volunteer to edit these together into a celebration video of your volunteers? The result would be a fantastic volunteer recruitment and recognition tool – and create a tradition you should do annually, even without a pandemic lockdown.
  • Exploring tutoring or mentoring students regarding homework, writing assignments, online safety, professional development? If your program serves young people in some way, this could be a terrific extension of your services.
  • Ask volunteers to look through Wikipedia and make a list of pages that you think should mention or cite your organization, or that your organization could improve. If you are a historical society, are all the pages regarding your local area as detailed as they could be regarding local history? If you are an environmental group serving a region, do pages regarding local geography note information about flora, fauna and environmental issues? After volunteers and staff compile pages you think should be updated, create a work plan with volunteers on how this will happen.
  • Is there a way that a single employee or volunteer could be onsite inside your facility, isolated from everyone else, to scan photos and other documents you have on file? The resulting scans could be shared online, on Flickr, for instance, and your online volunteers could then properly describe and tag them. This can help better document your program’s history, which further establishes your institutional credibility and better celebrates past employees, volunteers and donors.
  • Revisit your staff policies. Do you need to expand policies regarding online safety, use of social media or confidentiality? Many of your volunteers would love to re-read policies, research those of other organizations, and then meet together online to make recommendations.
cover of Virtual Volunteering book with hands raising up various Internet connected devices

An easy, affordable way for you to take a deep dive into expanding virtual volunteering at your organization and 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! There are just 120 print copies left and I would love for you to have one – or more! You can buy the book directly from me. Virtual volunteering is a practice that’s more than 30 years old, and the suggestions in this book are time tested – and were just tested recently in an intense project involving more than 150 online volunteers!

Are you someone that wants to engage in volunteering from home? If you don’t already have a relationship with a program that you can contact about doing the aforementioned activities, check out this list of sources for virtual volunteering – the most comprehensive you will find anywhere.

April 8, 2020 Update: I have a new video making an urgent plea regarding a mistake many reporters, bloggers, nonprofits and others are making in talking about virtual volunteering. The video is about four-minutes long.

April 13, 2020 Update: Another new video! I lead virtual volunteering workshops in the 1990s & got big pushback from nonprofits asserting that an online program could never be safe. Now, many programs are launching brand new virtual volunteering programs, bringing online volunteers together with people in senior living homes, or with teens, and on and on. And that change is great, however, these programs need to think about safety! My newest video has more info and is about five-minutes long.

August 11, 2020 Update: I added more ideas under “strategizing to be even more ambitious regarding virtual volunteering.”

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. 

Saying “no” to recruiting volunteers for certain tasks

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Volunteer recruitment has always been easy for me. Often, when I post an assignment to a third-party platform like VolunteerMatch on behalf of whatever nonprofit I’m working for, I end up having to take it down two days later, because I get plenty of candidates to choose from.

I try to craft volunteer roles in a way that will benefit the volunteer (enhance or show-off skills, give them an opportunity to be involved directly in a cause, maybe even have fun). I also am explicit about why the task is important to the organization and those we serve. And I’m detailed in the role description of exactly what the expectations are in terms of time commitment and deadlines.

I also almost always get to make a commitment to involving volunteers in my work at a nonprofit – if I’m working for a nonprofit that already involves volunteers. I don’t involve volunteers in my work because “I have all this work to do and I can’t afford an assistant.” I do it because I think volunteers might be the best people for a task – like when I need more neutral eyes, when I need people who might be more critical in surveying participants or in reviewing the data they are compiling than a paid person. I do it because I think non-staff should get to see how a nonprofit works in a transparent, first-hand way – and I think those people turn into amazing advocates back out in the communities around the organization.

Sometimes, other staff see these volunteers involved in my work and are inspired to involve more volunteers in their work too. But they often just see “free labor” and want to treat VolunteerMatch like Task Rabbit: we’ve got work to do, let’s find someone to do it – for free!

I once had a staff person ask if I would recruit a new volunteer for her to serve food and then clean up after a breakfast meeting. I said no. At this particular organization, I believed strongly that every volunteering opportunity should include an emphasis on the volunteer learning what the nonprofit did, who it served and why the nonprofit was needed. Serving food and washing dishes didn’t do that. I also felt like involving volunteers in this way would contribute to the idea that so many staff members have at that organization: volunteers are free and do stuff we don’t want to do. I also didn’t like the idea of board members thinking of the “other” volunteers as merely waitresses and dishwashers.

It’s not a black or white issue: if someone contacted me and said, “I urgently need volunteering hours for court-ordered community service,” I might offer them that waitressing and dishwashing volunteer gig, knowing how hard it is for them to get the hours they need, but I would also offer all the other volunteering opportunities we have available as well and, if the volunteer was qualified, consider them for other, more significant roles too.

If this was a big fundraising event for the nonprofit, I might feel differently about having volunteers staffing the coat check, making sure there is plenty of coffee and helping clean up – but I would recruit the event-support volunteers from the ranks of our current volunteers, and those volunteers would be identified to all attendees: “We want to let you know that the staff you see here helping you all have a great experience here tonight are some of our volunteers. These are the volunteers who work with our clients, work on our web site, edit videos for us, research grants for us, etc. They are students, web designers, lawyers, job seekers, etc. They are here tonight, as volunteers, to further show their support for our organization and we encourage you to talk to them about what they do as volunteers for our organization.”

Why am I so concerned with the appropriateness of volunteer roles? The titles alone on these blogs and web pages that I have written should explain why – but if they don’t, then you’ll need to read them:

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

Guidance on Virtual Volunteering – time tested!

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The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook: Fully Integrating Online Service Into Volunteer Involvement was published in early 2014. Now, six years later, is it still relevant? Oh, yes… I know because I’ve been testing all the principles offered in it over and over since it was published (as well as before it was published, when I was still writing it). My latest test: working with more than 150 online volunteers that participated in Knowbility’s 2019 Accessibility Internet Rally.

The book is the result of more than 20 years of research and practical experience by me, with heavy advice and observations by the book’s co-author, Susan Ellis. When we wrote the book, we wanted it to be timeless, like so many of Susan’s own books about various aspects of volunteer management. It’s not that I don’t still have things to learn about working with volunteers, online or off – I do! We all do. It’s that we believed strongly that certain principles would not change, and would be easily adapted no matter how the technology or even society evolved. These were principles that were explored in-depth at a variety of organizations when I managed the Virtual Volunteering Project at the University of Texas at Austin back in the 1990s, and they continue to be explored and tested – and proven.

For instance, I learned in the 1990s that the easier I made it for volunteers to sign up to volunteer, the larger the percentage of those volunteers that dropped out without even starting the assignment, let alone finishing it. But just putting in a simple second step that a candidate had to complete before they got to start on the assignment screened out the people who didn’t understand this was REAL volunteering and screened in the people who would take it seriously. It was true in 1998 and it’s true NOW, more than 20 years later.

I learned early on in studying virtual volunteering, a practice that’s been happening since the 1970s, and in working with online volunteers myself in the 1990s, that volunteers need to feel supported and valued or they won’t finish an assignment, or won’t finish it with the quality needed by an organization. In my role with Knowbility this time, I came on very late in the rally process, and because of that, trying to build trusting relationships with the volunteers that were already on board and get answers quickly to their questions proved quite difficult. The problems I have had with volunteers and that they had with their participation can almost all be traced back to that situation.

I learned early on, many years ago, that having expectations of volunteers in writing, online, both in role descriptions and in policies and procedures, was KEY to ensure both volunteers and managers are all on the same page as far as what’s happening and what’s needed, don’t get conflicting information, have a common place to look for guidance, etc. It greatly reduces conflict and misunderstandings, two factors which can lead to a lot of problems in volunteer engagement. Everyone isn’t going to read absolutely all of the support materials, but having it for referral is amazing in getting questions answered and conflicts resolved quickly. This lesson has been reinforced over and over over the years, including during this Knowbility event.

I’m thrilled to know my book is still relevant!

I have more than 100 hard copies of The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook in my possession and I would love for you to have one – or more! You can also order an electronic version. Yes, it’s available via Amazon, but let me be frank: I get far, far more money from the sale if you buy directly from me. Please consider doing so – buy one for yourself and for your favorite nonprofit!

Creating One-Time, Short-Term Group Volunteering Opportunities

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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. 

Before you recruit any volunteers

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As the year comes to an end and things slow down at your organization for a week or two, this is a good time to think about reviewing some of the basics your organization should have in place to ensure you are getting the most out of your volunteer engagement and that volunteers are properly supported at your organization and feel like their donated time is being properly valued.

In fact, before your program recruits any volunteers – before you post anything to your web site or social media or a third-party site like VolunteerMatch, there are three things that I believe you absolutely should have in place first, and if you don’t have them already, this is a good time to get that taken care of. Having these three things in place will help:

  • ensure volunteers are engaged and supported appropriately – and that helps prevent volunteer turnover, misunderstandings, conflict, etc.
  • ensure volunteers are onboarded quickly – and that helps prevent volunteer turnover AND sets a tone with new volunteers that these are serious, real commitments.
  • inappropriate volunteers self-screen themselves OUT of your program – dropping out before they’ve gotten far along in your process and started an assignment. That means fewer people who drop out and leave you with unfinished activities and a scramble to get things done.

I get a lot of pushback when I try to implement these three things at any organization where I’m working – lots of complaints about bureaucracy and increased work, etc. But I regularly encounter a range of problems at programs where these three things are NOT in place, and I see just how much more work comes with NOT having these things in place. And, so, I’m going to keep saying it.

Here are the three things:

  • Have a mission statement for your volunteer engagement
    (Saying WHY your organization or department involves volunteers)
    This is at the heart of everything I say and recommend regarding volunteer engagement. This idea is what I would like to be identified with even more than virtual volunteering: that, in addition to carefully crafting the way you talk about the value of volunteers, your organization creates a mission statement for your organization’s volunteer engagement, to guide employees in how they think about volunteers, to guide current volunteers in thinking about their role and value at the organization, and to show potential volunteers the kind of culture they can expect at your organization regarding volunteers.
  • Required Volunteer Information on Your Web Site
    To not have this basic information about volunteer engagement on your web site says that your organization or department takes volunteers for granted, does not value volunteers beyond money saved in salaries, or is not really ready to involve volunteers.

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.