Category Archives: Community / Volunteer Engagement

Ethical question for nonprofits: should you delete your Facebook account?

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Green cartoon hand palm up facing the viewer, to denote caution

By using Facebook, you are exposing yourself to data mining at a level never before seen, with companies buying up all the information you freely share on Facebook through your posts and likes, as well as what you have put into your profile (your birthday, family connections, etc.) and using it to target you for products, services and, of course, misinformation. Through your continued use of Facebook, you may also be seen as endorsing Facebook’s business practices which are under investigation by Congress.

On the other hand, Facebook is, by far, the most widely-used social media platform and makes it oh-so-easy to share information with current and potential clients, constituents, volunteers, other supporter and the general public. A nonprofit or government agency that stops using Facebook may be cutting itself off from people who need its information, as well as from current and potential supporters.

So, should your nonprofit, as a matter of safety and ethics, delete its Facebook page and any Facebook group it manages and stop using the platform altogether?

For now, I’m going to say no, don’t, because so many, many current and potential clients, constituents and supporters of nonprofits are best reached by Facebook. I’m not sure deleting, say, a family homeless shelter’s Facebook page does anything to hurt the company’s bottom line or to make an ethical statement, but it certainly does cut off a critical avenue for that nonprofit to communicate with homeless families and people who want to support such. Even if Facebook is not your nonprofit’s primary way of communicating, your organization should have a page that notes your organization’s name, address, web site address and phone number, as well as your organization’s logo, so that someone looking for your organization on Facebook can at least find it.

That said, any nonprofit – or individual, for that matter – that stays on Facebook needs to make some commitments in order to stay ethical:

  • Encourage employees and volunteers to remove their birthdays from Facebook – not just to make their birthdays private, but to put in a false birthday. Tell them also not to use the “connections” feature on their profiles to show who their children, parents or siblings are. When Facebook sells data – which is entirely legal for them to do and they do regularly – they sell whatever you have freely inputted into Facebook yourself, including your birthday and the names of family members. This information can also be obtained via frequent data breaches on Facebook. Your birthday, plus your mother’s maiden name or your children’s names, are perfect for identity theft.
  • Do not force anyone to have to create a Facebook account to access information about your program or to interact with your organization. Your organization still needs a comprehensive, frequently-updated web site with all of the information anyone would want about your programs, so that people who do not wish to use Facebook or any other social media can still access complete information about you online. Your organization should not force volunteers to join a Facebook group. There are many people who do not want to use Facebook, because of the frequent security breaches, because of how it sells user information or because they just simply don’t want to, and you shouldn’t force them to do so. If you do have a Facebook group for volunteers, I strongly encourage you to look into an alternative and delete that group from Facebook. These days, I’m recommending groups.io – the free version is quite robust and it is NOT tied to anyone’s social media use.
  • No matter your organization’s mission, whether you are an arts organization, school, environmental organization, youth group, senior center, whatever, you should regularly remind your staff, volunteers and clients, both via your Facebook pages and groups as well as in your other communications (meetings, email newsletter, etc.) about online scams and misinformation, particularly those perpetrated via Facebook and particularly those promoted via Facebook messenger. As part of your education efforts, remind them to NEVER engage with any government agency or bank through Facebook, that if a family member or good friend sends them a Facebook message about needing money or a way to get money they need to call that family member or friend and make sure they really are sending that message, to NEVER pay for anything with gift cards, to ignore any message, even from a family member or friend, directing you to a page to claim a prize. Share with them AARP’s excellent Baby Boomers’ Guide to Facebook and encourage employees and volunteers to review this video about detecting and reporting scams.
  • You should have a training for employees and volunteers about misinformation and fake news sites: how to recognize such and how not to perpetuate that information online. A discussion over lunch is a good way to communicate about this. Good resources to use:

Fake News: How to Spot It, a resource from the Enoch Pratt Free Library at Maryland’s State Library Resource Center

How to spot fake news: Identifying propaganda, satire, and false information, a range of infographics and resources curated by Simon Fraser University

Fake News, Propaganda, and Misinformation: Learning to Critically Evaluate Media Sources, a range of resources from Cornell University.

Finally, do not rely entirely on Facebook as your nonprofit, school or community program’s way of communicating. As noted earlier, your organization still needs a comprehensive, frequently-updated web site. Your organization should still have an email newsletter people can subscribe to. Your organization should be using other social media platforms. Your organization may still want to have a mailed paper newsletter, or open houses, or public meetings, or any of the many other ways organizations communicate offline. You invest entirely in one social media platform as your way of communicating at your own peril!

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. 

Legal issues & virtual volunteering

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Recently, someone wrote to Energize, the largest publisher of books regarding volunteer engagement, asking:

I am specifically looking for information on laws regarding virtual volunteers. If a volunteer living in one state is a virtual volunteer for a nonprofit in another state, which state’s laws protect the volunteer should a legal issue arise/

Energize asked me to respond. One note: I don’t use the phrase virtual volunteers. I did when I first launched the Virtual Volunteering Project in December 1996, but got tired of people saying, “Oh, if they are virtual, they aren’t real?” or “I know how to work with real volunteers but I need to work virtual volunteers.” So I make a point of using virtual volunteering only for the concept/practice of working with volunteers remotely.

In my response, I noted that, since 1997, I have regularly asked questions of various lawyers about possible legal issues regarding risk management and liability about volunteers working remotely. In more than 20 years of asking, I haven’t gotten much advice specific to online volunteers. And in more than 20 years of searching, I haven’t found any legal issues at all regarding volunteers providing service remotely, in terms of anyone suing the online volunteers, being sued by the online volunteers, online volunteers being arrested, etc.

Board members are volunteers, and in some states, there are laws regarding online board meetings (if online votes are allowed, for instance, and what constitutes an online vote). I know California and Oregon have such laws. If you are wondering about specifics for your state, your state attorney general can guide you (a Google search might yield specifics as well). 

In talking with legal folks about worst-case scenarios that might happen someday regarding online volunteers, Susan Ellis, my co-author of The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, and I looked to how computer crimes are handled: if a person solicits a minor for sex, for instance, he or she is charged in the state where he or she used a computer to do that, not where the minor is. But, as far as I know, that worst-case scenario with online volunteers has not happened.

The only cases I have come across regarding legal issues and virtual volunteering have been re unscrupulous people running nonprofits that offer a letter to anyone needing to complete court-ordered community service hours and willing to pay a fee for that letter, which says, fraudulently, that the person undertook volunteering for that organization. I have tracked these stories for years.  

So, are there legal risks for an organization to involve online volunteers? I’ve found none beyond possible, theoretical scenarios, nothing that has actually happened. There are risks, just as there are by allowing volunteers to work face-to-face with clients, allowing volunteers to come right onsite at your organization. Indeed, volunteers, onsite, in schools and religious organizations and any number of nonprofits, have done some very bad things, exploiting the access volunteering has given them to data, money, children, and others. The reality is that when humans are brought together, face-to-face or online, bad things can happen, whether they are volunteers, clients, paid consultants or employees. 

Susan Ellis and I talk more about legal issues and risk management in virtual volunteering in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, available in print or as a digital version from the Energize bookstore (but note that there are less than 100 copies of the print version left!). The book is the result of more than 20 years of research and experience regarding virtual volunteering, including online micro volunteering, crowdsourcing, digital volunteering, online mentoring and all the various manifestations of online service. It’s packed with examples from a variety of organizations and details on how virtual volunteering works, how challenges are overcome, and how success is measured. It includes

  • Detailed advice on virtual volunteering assignment, including one-time “Byte-Sized” tasks (micro-volunteering / microtasks), longer-term, higher-responsibility roles and virtual team assignments.
  • A thorough look at various practices for screening and matching volunteers to assignments, with an eye to getting the most capable volunteers into your volunteering ranks and preventing incomplete assignments or burdensome management tasks
  • How to make online volunteer roles accessible and welcoming for a variety, diversity of people

Susan and I wrote The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook in such a way that it would be timeless – as timeless as a book about using computers, laptops, smart phones and other networked devices could be. It is USA-centric but it offers a lot of international perspectives as well.

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. 


NetAid: 20 years later

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October 9th is the 20th anniversary of the NetAid concerts, which launched a web site allowing people to volunteer online to help NGOs & United Nations initiatives all over the world – a web site that still exists and has mobilized many thousands of online volunteers to contribute to what we now call the Sustainable Development Goals.

NetAid started as a joint venture between the United Nations Development Programme and Cisco Systems, and launched with a concert event on October 9, 1999 with simultaneous activities meant to mobilize online volunteers and raise money and awareness for the Jubilee 2000 campaign – in the spirit of BandAid and LiveAid. The NetAid concerts took place at Wembley Stadium in London, England, Giants Stadium in New Jersey, USA, and the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. Performers at the concerts included some of the biggest names of the day: Eurythmics, Bryan Adams, George Michael, David Bowie, Robbie Williams, Sheryl Crow, Jimmy Page, Busta Rhymes, Counting Crows, Bono, The Black Crowes, Sean John Combs (then Puff Daddy), Jewel, Mary J. Blige, Sting, Lil’ Kim, Ladysmith Black Mambazo and many more. Cisco sponsored the concerts and the web site, originally www.netaid.org. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was an enthusiastic supporter of the initiative.

In an October 7, 1999 New York Times article, Djibril Diallo, then UNDP public affairs director, said ”We want to use the computer to help change how the world looks at poverty and motivate people to help.” He said UNDP began examining ways of combining music, high technology and altruism more than a year before the NetAid concerts. The article notes that the NetAid web site was meant to be “a clearing house of information on the state of world poverty and the agency’s programs as well as a means of raising money.” The article quotes Mark Malloch Brown, then head of UNDP, who said ”The difference between this and earlier concerts is that we created a vehicle for people to come back, not just on the night of the concert with the one check they write. But instead, here’s a site they’re going to come back to time after time.” The article also noted that the web site “will permit groups and people with particular needs to register them in a Netaid database. It will also allow people who are willing to donate particular skills or materials to register them in the database.” After the concerts, in a Washington Post story, “NetAid Catches Few On the Web,” Robert Piper, described as manager of the NetAid site for UNDP, said the main purpose of NetAid was to mobilize volunteers, not money. “We’ve been [complaining] for years about the need for people in the developed world to participate [in aid programs], but they never had the tools to participate,” said Piper. “With the Internet, people can now get emotionally and intellectually involved.“

I am asked frequently how I started working for the United Nations. The answer: NetAid. Specifically, to fix the NetAid website and process regarding virtual volunteering. A lot of effort was put into promoting NetAid and recruiting online volunteers – but very little effort was made to teach UN agencies and NGOs how to create assignments for online volunteers and how to support those online volunteers in assignments. Therefore, NetAid floundered. UN Volunteers, an initiative of UNDP, was in charge of the virtual volunteering part of NetAid, and someone at UNV found some of my messages on an online discussion group for managers of volunteers. At the time, I was directing the Virtual Volunteering Project at the University of Texas, and I just happened to be the only expert on the subject of virtual volunteering (thankfully, I’m not all alone anymore!). That UN employee shared my information with others at UNV HQ, and I was recruited, specifically, to work at UNV/UNDP on both NetAid and the UNITeS initiative. And the rest, as they say, is history…

By 2002, the online volunteering part of NetAid had been moved entirely to www.onlinevolunteering.org (like that URL? I’m the one that chose it!) and was entirely owned and managed by UNDP/UNV. And it still is!

Meanwhile, NetAid, which had become a nonprofit based in New York City, tried to find a path forward. It explored the use of videogames for social change, co-founding the Games for Change movement in 2004. In 2004, NetAid co-produced a game with Cisco Systems called “Peter Packet,” which addressed how the Internet can help fight poverty, focusing on issues of basic education, clean drinking water, and HIV-AIDS. By 2006, NetAid had a new focus: to raise awareness among high school students in the USA regarding poverty in developing countries. The different campaigns of NetAid are chronicled through archived versions of its web site, www.netaid.org, available at Wayback Machine. In 2007, NetAid became a part of Mercy Corps and was quickly disbanded.

The onlinevolunteering.org site continues to bring together online volunteers and NGOs, UN agencies to do good things. And the lessons from NetAid regarding virtual volunteering can still be helpful to any tech4good, micro-volunteering initiative starting now. In fact, lessons from NetAid, and many other organizations engaged in virtual volunteering, informed the recommendations offered in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, available for purchase in paperback directly from me or as an ebook (PDF) by the publisher, Energize, Inc.

Why & how to make volunteering as accessible as possible

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graphic by Jayne Cravens representing volunteers

If your nonprofit, school, government program, charity or other mission-based initaitive wants access to the greatest amount of talent and resources that volunteers can possibly bring to your program, you have to make all volunteering as accessible as possible. That means looking for ways to accommodate a myriad of people who have different abilities, needs, personality types and work styles.

Accessibility and diversity are about accommodating everyone, not just people with disabilities or people who are from minority groups. You want to make volunteering as welcoming to the widest number of people possible. – Volunteer expert Susan Ellis. 

There may be a fantastic web designer out there who would love to volunteer at your organization, but who also isn’t very talkative and doesn’t make much eye-contact and, therefore, might be seen by some as unfriendly. Is your screening process such that you would still welcome this candidate into your organization?

There may be a fantastic person with the talents, skills and time to run your new volunteer orientations, but she doesn’t have a car. Do you have clear guidelines on your web site on how to get to your agency by mass transit? 

There may be a fantastic writer out there who could tell stories about your organization in such a way as to move new donors to open their pocketbooks and new volunteers to sign up to help, but who also legally blind. Is your web site accessible so that that fantastic writer can read your web site and blog and online newsletter with an accessibility screen reader?

There may be a fantastic graphic designer out there who could do amazing work for your organization online and in your print material, but who also uses a wheelchair for mobility, or has no transportation to get to your work site. Could that volunteer with the mobility issues get through your front door for an interview? Would you be willing to have your mandatory interview online via Skype? Would you be willing to accommodate the volunteer through virtual volunteering?

Do you have a diversity of tasks – some that can be done by someone sitting at a desk, others that require a lot of movement, maybe even carrying things and walking a lot? Some that don’t require a volunteer to interact much with others and some that require a volunteer to regularly interact and help others? Some that put volunteers together as a group? Some that allow volunteers to provide service for a few hours on a Saturday, without any ongoing commitment? Leadership roles? Some that require expertise, some that don’t require any? Some that can be done during regular work hours and some that can be done on evenings or weekends?

I’ve launched a new resource to help you understand the advantages for your program in making your volunteer engagement as accessible as possible and how to do it. The resource covers task design, ethics in internship design, accessibility for people with disabilities, messaging, language use and more.

Of course, not every volunteer role can accommodate everyone: a role may absolutely require a person with a clear, understandable speaking voice. Or may require someone that can carry a certain amount of weight and walk a certain distance. Or to interact regularly with other people. Or may require structural changes to a building that are too expensive for your program to afford. Or may require a volunteer to be calm and thoughtful in highly stressful situations and to be able to manage the anxiety that can arise from such work. But thinking about ways to accommodate a variety of people at your organization as volunteers will give your program access to an amazing range of talent, skills, energy and knowledge you will miss out on otherwise.

And one more thing: nonprofits, NGOs, charities and others MUST take a leadership role in creating community cohesion, in the face of the rise of violent extremism all over the world, including the USA, and the increasing belief in demonizing the “other” – people of a particular religion (or no religion at all), people of a particular ethnicity, immigrants, people with mental illness and more. It’s a bold, vital statement to make your program’s volunteer engagement as inclusive as possible, as representative of everyone in your community as possible. It’s a practice and state that affirms to everyone – board members, consultants, EVERYONE – that your organization makes inclusion and accessibility a priority.

Also see:

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. 

Your favorite non-English resources re: volunteerism or nonprofits?

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I asked this back in 2011, but it’s time to ask it again:

I would like to know YOUR favorite online resources regarding volunteerism / volunteers (especially the support and management of such), nonprofits or NGOs (non-governmental organizations), including Tweeters, in languages OTHER than English.

Spanish, French or German are most desired, but any language – Arabic, Persian Farsi / Dari / Tajik /, Hindi, whatever – would be welcomed.

In short, I’m looking for the Spanish, French, German, Arabic and other non-USA, non-English-language versions of Energize, Inc., of VolunteerMatch, of resources for those that manage volunteers like what I have on my web site, etc.

Please send the name of the resource, the URL of the resource, and a summary of what the resource is – does it focus on volunteer management? On nonprofits / NGOs / charities using the Internet? Or helping organizations recruit volunteers? Or fundraising / resource mobilization? Or any aspect of management? Is it a web site? A database? A Twitter feed?

I have some of these resources already, but I would like to have more. Plus, mine need updating:

I will share what I’ve compiled already and what’s submitted – and is what I’m looking for – on my web site, and announce the page here on my blog, as well as my Twitter feed and my Facebook page.

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.

Tools for project managers with remote teams

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This article from International Center for Journalists is focused on journalists and editors working with journalists and other contributors remotely, but much of its advice is applicable for nonprofits working with remote staff and remote volunteers (virtual volunteering) – or working with staff you see face-to-face but you need to work with online as well. The article is written by the project manager of Chicas Poderosas, a community of women in media spread across 18 countries in Latin America. 

For instance, when brainstorming a story or a project with your team, she uses remote visual boards like Jamboard. “Jamboard has virtual post it notes, and allows your team to simultaneously create text boxes, write comments and even draw.” Has anyone else used it? What do you think of it?

To keep track of the individual activities in the chart, she uses Trello. Each task is its own card, which can be assigned to a team member, and can include deadlines and alerts. Trello has integrations with other tools such as Google Drive. “In our Chicas Poderosas weekly calls, we update the Trello board, checking up on what each Chica did, and we create and take ownership of new tasks for the next week.” 

She also has good, not-techtool-specific advice like: 

The best tool is not the latest, or the most complex and automated. The best tool is always the one that is more natural for your team, the project and any other involved stakeholders.

If you do find a new tool that you want to implement, always take the time to schedule on-boarding sessions so that your team can practice using it, ask questions and share their challenges. 

Do you use any of the tools she mentions? Do you have other ideas?

And if you want to explore how to involve and support volunteers, whether those volunteers are around the corner or around the world, check out my book with Susan Ellis, The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. The book is the result of more than 20 years of research and experience regarding virtual volunteering, including online micro volunteering, crowdsourcing, digital volunteering, online mentoring and all the various manifestations of online service. It’s packed with examples from a variety of organizations and details on how virtual volunteering works, how challenges are overcome, and how success is measured. It includes

  • Detailed advice on virtual volunteering assignment, including one-time “Byte-Sized” tasks (micro-volunteering / microtasks), longer-term, higher-responsibility roles and virtual team assignments.
  • A thorough look at various practices for screening and matching volunteers to assignments, with an eye to getting the most capable volunteers into your volunteering ranks and preventing incomplete assignments or burdensome management tasks
  • How to make online volunteer roles accessible and welcoming for a variety, diversity of people

Susan and I wrote The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook in such a way that it would be timeless – as timeless as a book about using computers, laptops, smart phones and other networked devices could be. It is USA-centric but it offers a lot of international perspectives as well.

There’s also a chapter just for online volunteers themselves, which organizations can also use in creating their own materials for online volunteers.

If you read the book, I would so appreciate it if you could write and post a review of it on the Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Good Reads web sites (you can write the same review on all three sites).

Hosting International Volunteers: A Where-To-Start Guide For Local Organizations

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I’m seeing more and more local organizations – non-governmental organizations (NGOs), charities, schools – in developing countries posting on sites like Reddit, asking foreign volunteers to travel to their countries and volunteer. These NGOs and others offer no information on whether or not its legal for foreigners to come to the country and volunteer, no information on what they will do to ensure volunteers will be safe, no information on what screening they do of volunteers to ensure safety of volunteers – they just post, “Hey, we help orphans / wildlife / women, and you can come here and help us.”

It’s troubling.

The reality is that it is not ethical nor appropriate for any NGO to recruit foreign volunteers unless they are already involving LOCAL volunteers and have the full endorsement of local people for the work they do, and it is inappropriate for them to recruit foreign volunteers unless they have complete information on assignments, safety, screening, quality control and more.

That said, some NGOs have a legitimate need for foreign volunteers, and this page on my web site is meant to help.

Hosting International Volunteers: A Where-To-Start Guide For Local Organizations provides detailed suggestions for NGOs in developing countries interested in gaining access to foreign volunteers. This is a “getting started” guide, NOT a comprehensive guide: it’s impossible within the boundaries of a simple web page to detail all an organization needs to do to host volunteers from other countries.

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. 

How to counter the ongoing drop in volunteer firefighter numbers

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In March 2019, the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) published its 2017 U.S. Fire Department Profile report. It’s based on data collected via a national survey of fire departments. The report estimates that there were 682,600 volunteer firefighters in the USA in 2017. That is down significantly from the 814,850 and 729,000 volunteer firefighters that the NFPA estimates were active in the U.S. in 2015 and 2016, respectively. The volunteer firefighter numbers for 2016 and 2017 are the lowest recorded levels since the NFPA began the survey in 1983. 

According to the report, 83,550 of the 132,250 reduction in volunteer firefighters between 2015 and 2017 occurred in fire departments protecting communities with populations of 2,500 or fewer residents. The NFPA estimates an overall decline of 83,900 firefighters (career and volunteer combined) in those communities, a reduction of more than 20 percent over a two-year span. 

In addition to the decline in the number of firefighters serving in the smallest communities, the average age of those firefighters continued to increase in 2017. Fifty-three percent of firefighters serving communities with populations of 2,500 or less were over the age of 40, and 32 percent were over the age of 50 in 2017. This continues an aging trend that has been happening for years among the population of firefighters in small communities.

Number of Firefighters in the U.S., 1983, 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2015-2017

YearTotalCareerVolunteer
1983*1,111,200226,600884,600
19901,025,650253,000 772,650
20001,064,150286,800777,350
20101,103,300335,150768,150
2015 1,149,300345,600814,850
20161,090,100361,100729,000
20171,056,200373,600682,600

*Note, this is the first year for which firefighter numbers are available from the NFPA.
Source: NFPA Survey of Fire Departments for U.S. Fire Experience

As the National Volunteer Fire Council notes, it is important to note that these numbers are estimates based on responses to a survey of a sample of U.S. fire departments that is designed to be representative of the overall U.S. Fire Service. Approximately 8.7 percent of fire departments surveyed responded to the survey. Any annual differences reflect both actual changes in what is being measured as well as year-on-year statistical and sampling variability.

The NVFC says that, this year, the federal government will award more than $40 million to local fire departments to help pay for volunteer recruitment and retention efforts through the Staffing for Adequate Fire and Emergency Response (SAFER) grant program, funded out of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. And that’s great. But it’s going to take a huge change in the attitude of most local fire departments for this money to make a difference. As I said in my blog why you can’t find/keep volunteer firefighters: There ARE potential volunteer firefighters out there, even in your small town. There are a LOT of people who are hungry to connect, hungry for a deeper, substantial activity that connects them with the community and causes they believe in, one that gives them an immersive, hands-on, intense experience. Volunteer firefighting can have a great deal of appeal to today’s young people. But if you don’t have a welcoming environment, if you aren’t trying to reach them where they are, if you aren’t using social media, and if you are just talking about all the work that has to be done and the obligations to be fulfilled, those young people are going to overlook you and even go elsewhere and numbers will continue to decline.

In short: we will never, ever go back to a time when volunteer firefighters are recruited in the way they were before the 1980s. The recruitment of volunteer firefighters must radically evolve. How volunteer firefighters are engaged must radically evolve. And it’s going to take more than money.

Also see:

All of my blogs regarding volunteer firefighters.

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.

Teaching youth about poverty – teaching compassion or supremacy?

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I’ve drafted a new resource: Ideas for Teaching Children Compassion & Understanding Instead of Pity With Regard To Poverty. It’s part of the section of my web site to help people that want to volunteer, rather than those that manage volunteers.

It was inspired by so many of the ideas for volunteering for young people that, in my opinion, are dreadful, suggestions that teach supremacy and superiority, that encourage a young person’s introduction to different regions of the world – say, the country’s of Africa – through a lense of poverty instead of first talking about the beautiful culture and rich history and many talents and skills of the people there.

How can adults – parents and teachers – encourage young people to be compassionate for and kind to others while not cultivating pity and feelings of superiority? Here are some ideas. It’s a first draft – suggestions welcomed (post in the comments or contact me directly).

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.

Justifying a position as “volunteer” instead of “paid staff”

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From February 2001 through much of February 2005, I worked at the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) program, managing the UN’s Online Volunteering service (formerly NetAid) and the United Nations Information Technology Service (UNITeS), an initiative created by then Secretary General Kofi Annan. UNITeS promoted the importance of engaging volunteers in information and communications technologies for development (ICT4D) activities and supported volunteers engaged in ICT4D initiatives. The UNITeS staff worked from the premise that a key to getting communities, government, civil society and individuals in developing countries to leverage computers and the Internet so that they benefit from their use was to involve volunteers in introducing the tech, building people’s capacity to use it, supporting digital literacy, etc.

UNV places and supports thousands of highly-skilled people throughout the world to undertake a variety of highly-skilled work: HIV education, providing medical care, managing schools, training teachers, managing a government office’s communications, being apart of Ebola response, and on and on. When a placement would get approved for a UN volunteer to work on a project that related somehow to computers or the Internet, there was a program manager for a particular region who would come to my office, per my association with the UNITeS initaitive, hand me the Terms of Reference for the volunteer placement and say, “UNI-Tize this.”

What she meant was this: add in required skills and responsibilities that justify this being done by someone under a UN Volunteers contract, rather than another type of UN contract that would require the payment of more money to the person that fills the position and the designation of that person as a consultant or staff member.

I’ve long believed that any organization that recruits volunteers, for whatever reason, must have a written statement that explains explicitly why that organization reserves certain tasks / assignments / roles for volunteers. The thousands of experts that are recruited and placed by UNV all over the world, working at a variety of agencies (mostly UNDP), in a variety of areas, are called UN Volunteers, or UNVs, but often, there’s not much to show that they are volunteers, especially given the generous financial compensation UNVs receive. The vision of UNV – as well as other volunteer-sending organizations like Peace Corps and VSO – is that the people that are volunteers through their programs are NOT necessarily people who are career humanitarians; rather, the volunteers are professionals willing to give up six months to two years of their jobs/careers and the compensation that would come with such and, instead, work as a part of a humanitarian endeavor. But I’m sorry to say that, for many agencies, involving people under UNV contracts is a way to save money, as such contracts are far, far cheaper than hiring someone as an employee or consultant outright.

When that UNV program manager gave me those TOS to “uni-tize,” I went through and added responsibilities regarding

  • building the capacities of local counterparts regarding whatever it was he or she was doing, with an eye to this UNV position becoming unnecessary as local people take over. I treated every UNV placement that was “Uni-Tized” as one that would eventually be taken over by a full-time, paid local person NOT under a UNV contract, and for that to happen, local capacity had to be built.
  • creating at least one, local event that could help build the skills of community members regarding some aspect of computer and Internet use: where to find information about current market prices for agricultural products, where to find reliable maternal health information, how to evaluate the credibility of online information, etc. In this case, “Uni-Tize” meant to evangelize regarding ICTs for various development activities (ICT4D).
  • suggestions to involve local volunteers in their work in some way, reaching out to students at nearby universities, or at home on leave from university, to help them gain experience that would help in their future careers. In this case, “Uni-Tize” meant to get local volunteers invested in the work of UNVs in some way.
  • suggestions to make particular efforts to reach out to women, girls, religious and ethnic minorities and people with disabilities in any of the above aforementioned activities, to take all of the tasks beyond merely getting tasks done.

I have to admit I loved looking up from my desk and seeing her standing there with a printout of a Terms of Reference in her hand, or getting an email from her for help to “Uni-Tize” an assignment. It was always challenging to really think about what would make the assignment worthy of the word volunteer. To me, my additions made those UNV placements fully justified in using the word “volunteer” to describe their work, to show that this was more than just a job that had a UNV contract.

I’ve said it before, I say it again: create a mission statement for your organization’s volunteer engagement that explicitly says WHY your organization or department involves volunteers. Such a statement will guide employees in how they think about volunteers and guide current volunteers in thinking about their role at the organization. It will help your organization avoid the reputation for being just a low-cost staffing solution – something no volunteer really wants to be a part of. Here’s more about my philosophy regarding justifying volunteer engagement and making certain roles volunteer instead of paid.

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