Category Archives: Community / Volunteer Engagement

For Executive Directors: It’s Time for Mandates Regarding Volunteering Engagement.

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graphic representing volunteers at work

Volunteer engagement is not going to expand, nor be worthwhile, at any nonprofit unless senior management does more than pay it lip service.

Nonprofit executive directors: you cannot keep treating volunteer engagement strategies from the point of view of “Wouldn’t it be nice if…” You can’t keep crossing your fingers and hope it somehow happens or that problems somehow work themselves out. Because none of that is going to happen on its own. You can’t just encourage volunteer engagement – it’s time for you to REQUIRE it.

Executive directors must MANDATE certain activities regarding volunteer engagement at their organizations, with some or all staff, or it won’t happen – or it won’t be successful and may, in fact, create frustration, disappointments, public relations problems, even safety and safeguarding problems.

What mandates regarding volunteer engagement look like:

  • Nonprofit executive directors include requirements for volunteer engagement in certain paid job roles – meaning certain staff have to include a goal of involving volunteers in their work. And when performance review time comes around, executive directors must look at how well each manager has – or has not – involved volunteers in their programs, and take necessary corrective action.
  • Nonprofits must provide regular training for all staff expected to work with volunteers and must provide time for staff to take part in workshops and to read about different aspects of volunteer engagement (screening, recruitment for diversity, safeguarding, etc.). And those expected to work with volunteers should have official opportunities to provide feedback to judge how well the executive director is supporting these capacity-building activities.
  • Nonprofits must have a systemic, well-thought-out process, IN WRITING, for onboarding volunteers, training volunteers, supporting volunteers, getting feedback from volunteers, and tracking information about volunteer engagement, as well as a way to generate performance reports on all of the aforementioned.
  • Executive directors must address volunteer engagement problems directly and as immediately as possible, like managers not following the official process to onboard volunteers, or managers not responding to questions or requests from volunteers in a timely manner – and that includes reviewing the performance of managers who are volunteers themselves.

I can feel the aversion from some readers. MANDATE volunteer engagement?! That’s not nice! It’s so harsh! Gee – we require staff to follow accounting procedures, we require staff to follow human resources policies, we measure staff performance on how well they communicate their work with management and other staff, how well they get along with other staff and clients, etc. and take corrective action when they come up short… Why have requirements for other business processes but NOT for volunteer engagement?

I’m not saying every staff member at a nonprofit has to involve volunteers. It’s not appropriate nor realistic for every staff member to involve volunteers. But if you, the executive director, do not mandate volunteer engagement in the job roles of those staff members you DO want to involve volunteers, and if you don’t support staff members in engaging and supporting those volunteers, volunteer engagement isn’t going to happen – or it’s going to be substandard and may, in fact, create something more than just frustration at your program.

If you are a nonprofit executive director and you need to learn more so that you can be a better manager of volunteer engagement at your organizaton, start with reading From the Top Down: The Executive Role in Successful Volunteer Involvement. I consider it mandatory material for any nonprofit executive director. It’s worth every minute you spend reading it.

You can also peruse my own materials on the essentials of volunteer engagement (free).

And if you think engaging volunteers is easy and that your staff should be magically better at it, consider that your board of directors is made up entirely of volunteers. How much support do YOU need to work with your board members, even to just manage a meeting? Why do you think your staff needs less time and support for working with volunteers than you do with the board? No mandates work without providing appropriate support.

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. 

Volunteering, or that meeting you are going to host, must sound enticing & compelling or people won’t care (our post-pandemic reality).

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image of a panel discussion

People are going on vacations again. They are going to restaurants again. They are going camping in droves. They are even attending work-related conferences again. But they have not returned to many onsite activities they might have done before the COVID-19 pandemic, like attending community meetings and volunteering.

Why?

I surmise it’s because people got very used to being home and they really don’t want to be away from home except for something they really enjoy or something that’s exceptional, something that is compelling. There’s so much great stuff at home – streaming services, that new pizza oven you bought during COVID, your couch… so if a person is going to leave it, it better be for a fantastic reason.

Before the pandemic, a lot of people attended meetings without deeply thinking about why they really, really wanted to – but now, post-lockdowns, we’ve thought a lot more about our time and our priorities. Going to an event before or after work requires organizing child or pet care, driving to the event, finding a parking spot, etc. – and in return, you might be bored, or intimidated, or under-valued and feel like your time is wasted. Plus, there is a vast amount of fantastic shows on TV that promise a lot of compelling stories and fun – and frequently deliver on that promise. Volunteering and in-person meetings? Not so much.

Many of you had to learn to run effective, even fun, virtual meetings to keep your nonprofit supporters engaged. It took a lot of effort on your part to learn do that and to actually do it. You are going to have to put in that same effort to rethink your onsite events, including your volunteer engagement.

“People who became leaders during the pandemic haven’t learned how to create irresistible in-person meetings,” said Cynthia D’Amour, MBA, mentor and leadership strategist at People Power Unlimited, in this article How to Re-Engage Members in Chapter Events from Associations Now. The article is about how it is now essential to “design programs that have energy and take advantage of the face-to-face location.”

I can’t tell you just in one blog everything you can do to make onsite meetings and onsite volunteering more enticing and inviting. And what works for one group might not work for another. I also don’t want to sound gimmicky – there’s not a magical icebreaker or theme that will make a meeting exciting or compelling. This is something you all need to think about at length, and you are going to have to experiment at length.

Here are some general ideas to get you started on your journey to learn how to change your onsite meetings and onsite volunteering to bring people back:

What was the last really enjoyable community meeting or volunteering you experienced – even if it was before the pandemic? What made it enjoyable? Ask all of your staff this question, about what they have experienced, first hand. They are likely going to say things that you can’t manage: my favorite band played or we all got an incredible swag bag or we made and baked our own pizzas. But amid that are going to be some things you can consider:

  • there were free sodas in the break room.
  • the meetings always start and end on time and are really well-organized – my time is never wasted.
  • they served really good food.
  • the ideas we offered at the first meeting had been implemented the following month.
  • the manager is really welcoming and makes it clear she’s happy we’re there.

Also consider that many people have a profound fear of rejection. Some think that younger generations take statements far more personally than older generations, but maybe they just aren’t as willing as older generations to put up with personal insults or being neglected. Either way, you have to make sure you have deliberate, ongoing activities to make volunteers feel welcomed and valued. Are you encouraging their questions and responding promptly to their questions and concerns? Does all of your staff show know how you are listening to volunteers? Do you believe no complaints means everything is okay?

Finally, you don’t want volunteers asking themselves why am I putting myself through this? And they will if their time is wasted, if they feel intimidated or devalued, or if they see no purpose or result in their volunteering. Are you regularly addressing those concerns with volunteers even if you haven’t gotten an indication that volunteers are asking themselves that question?

So many of us in the volunteer management training world have been sounding the alarm for years that nonprofits and other organizations that involve volunteers MUST change their ways regarding volunteer onboarding recruitment, onboarding, engagement and value or they will risk all of their current volunteers dying out. The pandemic has created an urgency: if you aren’t addressing the new realities of volunteer engagement, your organization is doomed.

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. 

Also see:

The problem with volunteer matching platforms isn’t a software issue

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I get a version of this message regularly from an IT or corporate person:

With today’s technology, it seems to me that it should be easier for both volunteers and nonprofits to find appropriate matches online.  

An illustraiton that is drawn like cave paintings - one image is of a figure holding a smartphone, the other is of a person at a computer.

Sigh. The problem is not DATA. It’s not a data issue. It’s not a tech issue. It’s not a software issue. The issue is that the vast majority of nonprofits, and staff charged with recruiting and involving volunteers, have no training in how to do so, and they start with volunteer recruitment when, in fact, that’s the LAST step.

Nonprofits, NGOs, community groups and other initiatives that want to involve volunteers – or that do currently – need to have training in:

  • How to create appropriate tasks and roles for volunteers.
  • How to create a variety of tasks and roles (short-term, long-term, for highly skilled, for low-skilled, for high responsibility roles, for micro/episodic volunteering, etc.)
  • How to create accessible tasks and roles (that welcome refugees, that welcome people with disabilities, etc.)
  • What screening is required for different roles in order for volunteering to be safe and in order for appropriate volunteers to be screened in and inappropriate volunteers to be screened out.
  • What support volunteers need in their roles.


That’s all of the many things that are needed BEFORE RECRUITMENT HAPPENS. And such training is getting harder and harder to find, instead of easier. And that doesn’t even get into all the other training that’s needed, like how to evaluate and report the effectiveness of volunteer engagement. Or other things that are needed, like policies and procedures, particularly around safety, and software to track volunteers time and impact, to schedule volunteers, etc. – most nonprofits can’t afford such (in fact, they can’t even afford the time to explore such).

Why is all that lacking? Because there’s no funding for it. Corporations and foundations refuse to fund “overhead”. That means they won’t fund training, they won’t fund the purchase of books or subscriptions to sites like Engage.

I could go on and on. And I do. And I have, many times, as the “also see” links below show. And I’ll keep doing it until funders, particularly, techie companies, “get it” – and are ready to pony up the funds needed to increase the number of people engaged in volunteering and to improve the engagement of volunteers.

Also see:

UN Volunteer requirements – but with no guidance?

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I’ve been reviewing open positions in developing countries from United Nations Volunteers. It’s something I do when I want to do a bit of dreaming about maybe going overseas again… and also to see what’s up with my former employer. Recently, I noticed that many of postings have a standard set of additional requirements, no matter what the role is (IT manager, sanitation communications, microenterprise development, etc.).

I smiled when I saw the requirements, because I was one of the first people, if not the first person, to develop these type of additional requirements on UNV terms of reference (TORs): back when I was working as a part of the UNV UNITeS initiative, focused on promoting volunteer engagement in ICT4D initiatives, there was a program manager for a particular region who would come to my office, hand me the TOR 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. When that UNV program manager gave me the TOR 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.

Here we are all these years later, and here are the requirements UNV now puts on many UN Volunteer TOR. If you’ve read the aforementioned, they will sound familiar. However, for each of these requirements, I have some questions that I really hope UNV answers for candidates it chooses for these roles:

UN Volunteers are required to:

• Strengthen their knowledge and understanding of the concept of volunteerism by reading relevant UNV and external publications and take active part in UNV activities (for instance in events that mark International Volunteer Day).

Seems fairly straightforward. Requires a volunteer to volunteer UNV on social media and read that social media regularly, read web updates, etc.

• Be acquainted with and build on traditional and/or local forms of volunteerism in the host country.

And HOW does one become acquainted with local volunteerism in the host country, let alone build on it? Most people aren’t acquainted with local volunteerism in their OWN country. UNV did away with the World Volunteerism Web, so there’s no online source now to do this. And what does “build on it” mean? Are UN Volunteers supposed to involve volunteers in their work? Or are they supposed to promote volunteerism, as a concept, in general? What does that look like for an IT manager or a microenterprise developer? I could write an entire manual on just this subject, because I’ve done it – and it’s NOT an easy thing to do.

• Reflect on the type and quality of voluntary action that they are undertaking, including participation in ongoing reflection activities.

UN Volunteers aren’t undertaking voluntary action; UN Volunteers are under a contract called “UN Volunteers”, but they aren’t really volunteers. UNVs receive an excellent stipend. International volunteers receive a stipend that’s equal to the regular pay for local government workers. The pay is enough for housing, food and local transportation – some “stipends” are enough to support a small family.

• Contribute articles/write-ups on field experiences and submit them for UNV publications/websites, newsletters, press releases, etc.

Reasonable requirement.

• Assist with the UNV Buddy Programme for newly arrived UN Volunteers.

Link to the UNV Buddy Programme? What is it? How does it work?

• Promote capacity development activities and transfer of skills to national personnel during the assignment.

Excellent requirement. Building local capacity is at the heart of international UN Volunteer engagement. But where’s the guidance on how to do that? I felt like I was pretty good at it when managing communications activities in Afghanistan and Ukraine – where I worked for UNDP but was not a UN Volunteer – but I’ve seen other UN workers who never made this a priority, or weren’t very good at it and needed a LOT of guidance.

• Promote or advise local groups in the use of online volunteering or encourage relevant local individuals and organizations to use the UNV Online Volunteering service whenever technically possible.

It’s really great to see this as a requirement – but where is the UNV guidance on how to develop online roles, how to support online volunteers, how to evaluate online engagement, etc.? It’s not on the UNV web site – UNV reduced, then shut down the online volunteering service a few years ago, and before that, removed support for those that wanted to involve online volunteers (I archived what I created for UNV about online volunteer engagement here). Or what about giving volunteers copies of The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook and helping make them experts in virtual volunteering?

Would love to see UNV’s responses to these questions… but I doubt that will ever come.

Also see:

Make volunteering transformative, not about # of hours.

Resources from my time at United Nations Volunteers.

The United Nations Information Technology Service (UNITeS).

United Nations Volunteers says, when it comes to onsite & online, “They are ALL volunteers”.

Misconceptions re: VSO, UNV & Peace Corps.

New UN Initiative seeks “Information Volunteers”.

United Nations site for people with disabilities is inaccessible.

Thoughts on new UN paper re: Volunteering Practices in the 21st Century.

I’m thrilled with UNV’s 2015 State of the World’s Volunteerism Report – Transforming Governance.

History & Evaluation of UNV’s Early Years

Initial feedback on UNV plan to integrate volunteerism in development.

A blend of international & local volunteers can “decolonize” humanitarian development.

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.

Should you leave Twitter & Facebook for the fediverse?

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It’s a mouthful, but bear with me:

The non-profit, distributed, community-oriented fediverse might be something you need to check out and use, for your personal and professional activities – and maybe the nonprofits you work for.

More and more users are leaving Facebook and Twitter to join such communities because they are uncomfortable with the corporate policies and the owners of the companies. Some nonprofits feel that they have an ethical duty to NOT be associated with such.

Most folks are staying on Facebook and Twitter, but creating profiles on other platforms, including the fediverse, just in case they decide to change their social media patronage altogether.

The fediverse is similar to social media networks like Facebook or Twitter, but it’s not controlled by any one corporation. To you, the user, it will feel like any social media channel, but how it is set up and organized in the background is very different from for-profit platforms.

The fediverse is a network of social media servers that share one another’s content. If I set up my account on one server and you set up your account on another server, we can still see and repost each other’s content because the servers are part of a “federation.” To the user, it feels just like, say, Facebook – you see all the content of those you follow – you will have no idea they are signed up via a different server than you unless you really look for it.

The only challenge you will probably ever face as a user on a fediverse is when you sign in – you have to remember the address of your server. I do this the same way I track my passwords. But, again, otherwise, a fediverse feels just like any other social network.

The most famous example of a fediverse is Mastodon, which is a lot like Twitter. When you join Mastodon, you have to join via one of its servers. Most people join via the “social” server – it’s the first one you see when you go to the site to create an account. Each Mastodon server has its own policies and administrators. If you do not like a change in policies on the server you have joined, you can leave one for another without losing followers. Most servers follow the Mastodon Covenant, which requires a basic level of administrative service as well as active moderation against various forms of hate speech. But, honestly, as a user, you probably won’t ever have to deal with ANY of this.

An added bonus: “Mastodon’s robust REST APIs are based on ActivityPub, a W3C standard”. That means Mastodon has a commitment to accessibility!

This article in InfoWorld by Andrew C. Oliver offers the best argument I’ve seen for creating a Mastodon account and for thinking very seriously about the consequences of supporting Facebook, Twitter and Instagram with your content.

As for me: I am on Mastodon and am using it more and more. I still have an account I use for professional reasons on Twitter, a Facebook professional and a personal page, and a mostly-personal Instagram account. But I like having alternatives – especially Mastodon and Reddit (and I’m getting more and more benefits from Reddit – including lots of traffic for my blog and two consulting jobs). I haven’t deleted my personal Twitter account but I use it primarily to encourage people to follow me elsewhere (difficult to do, since the Twitter algorithms now seek out such content specifically to downgrade it and keep it from being viewed by most followers).

For the nonprofits I work for, including TechSoup: I do have profiles for them on Reddit, and was able to reclaim TechSoup’s Reddit group, and posting there has resulted in some traffic here on the TechSoup community. But I still haven’t put any of them on Mastodon – mostly because I know that, in the case of one of the nonprofits I work with, none of their clients or donors are on it. But that could change… and I need to be ready.

What about you and the nonprofits you help/work for? Are they exploring other social media platforms with an eye to not over-relying solely on just one channel? Remember: no social media platform is forever. Eventually, the one you love most will go the way of AOL communities, MySpace, Friendster…

Also see:

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

For detailed information about leveraging online tools to support and involve volunteers, whether they provide their service onsite at your organization, onsite elsewhere, or online, get yourself a copy of The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. Online platforms and social media channels come and go, but the recommendations here are timeless. You will not find a more detailed guide anywhere on this subject than than The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. It’s available both as a traditional print publication and as a digital book.

If you have benefited from any of my 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.

How nonprofits can leverage LinkedIn

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It’s clunky, it needs a design update, it rarely gets referred to any more in articles about social media, but LinkedIn can be a valuable resource for nonprofits and other community groups and they should be using it regularly. Using even just the free features on LinkedIn will increase awareness about an organization’s work and it may lead to better board recruitment, more event attendance, more program participants and more donors, as well as greater awareness of progress among current supporters.

Here’s how your nonprofit or community program should be using the free features on LinkedIn:

  • Your organization should have a profile on the site and should ask all of its employees, former employees, board members and other volunteers to link to it in their list of job and volunteering roles. Your organization should also ask all of these people to regularly “like” the posts by the organization, if they feel comfortable doing so (but emphasize it is NOT a requirement).
  • Your organization should post public events to the LinkedIn events feature and then share these on the organizational profile.
  • Your organization should post updates to its organizational profile on LinkedIn – just like you do on Facebook, but perhaps with a more formal tone. Remember: LinkedIn is a web site for professionals to talk about their work and expertise, not for cat memes.
  • Your organization can ask employees, former employees, board members and other volunteers to share your organization’s LinkedIn status updates and to comment on such – but only if they feel comfortable doing so. Remind them that this is not a requirement and there will be no repercussions for not doing it (except for maybe your marketing manager!).

In addition, staff members can also join various LinkedIn groups and participate in such – but it’s their choice what they join and you should never ask them what groups they are on. But you can remind them that they should share info about your organization IF it’s on topic for whatever group they are on. These activities can further create awareness of the organization and a positive image.

You can also use the fee-based features on LinkedIn for paid roles. If you post a job, you ABSOLUTELY should reveal the salary in that posting. You can also use the job posting feature to post volunteering roles – I recommend using it for board member recruitment, but in such listings, making it clear that it’s an unpaid role, emphasizing the time requirements, and being explicit that not all applicants will be accepted.

I’ve been using LinkedIn on behalf of West Tuality Habitat for Humanity. I also used it some years ago to recruit board members for a cultural arts organization that funds nonprofits in the county where I live in Oregon. It has absolutely been worth the time investment – and most of the time, I’m just cutting and pasting info I’m already posting to Facebook or our web site – there’s been no need to create unique content. It takes seconds, not minutes, to keep info up-to-date on LinkedIn.

Is your nonprofit leveraging LinkedIn? How has it been working out for you?

Also see:

Social media is losing its influence for nonprofits – what to do?

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Here are comments from this article from December 2022 that every nonprofit and community group needs to consider:

This year, social media mostly stopped offering a window into the lives of our loved ones. It turns out that the social part of social media, which helped shape human behavior online and off for more than a decade, is proving to be something of a fad. It’s withering in the sad, slow way that internet habits do; eventually, the people who send public birthday messages on Facebook will be as rare as the ones who still have AOL email addresses.

In 2022, even the social media companies gave up on salvaging friend-related content. The networks rely on having enough in people’s feeds to keep them entertained during a scroll, so they can slot in ads between every few posts and make money. And there just isn’t much of that personal posting happening anymore…

The kind of service Facebook and Instagram will provide going forward is different, focused more on users’ interests than their friends…

There doesn’t seem to be a popular-enough startup waiting in the wings to connect people to their friends…

You can read the entire article here.

I find it sad for a whole range of reasons that this is happening, but for this blog’s purposes, I want to focus on how this change affects nonprofits and other community groups: this change makes it harder to reach our audiences via Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And with the demise of small newspapers (or any newspapers, for that matter) and community radio stations, we don’t have other communications avenues to fall back on.

I find myself constantly begging employees and volunteers, including board members, to “like” or comment on the social media posts of whatever nonprofit I’m trying to help, because it’s the only way we can get the content in front of more people – these nonprofits have no budget to buy higher placement on Facebook, Twitter, etc. But the reality is that it’s a very hard thing to teach and sustain among staff, regardless of their ages. Without constant reminders, it just doesn’t happen.

It’s probably why I have liked Reddit so much more than other online communities: it’s old-school Internet, where I see the posts on the groups I subscribe to, and I can control what I see so, so much more than on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. And I was astounded when I had to recruit board members for a local nonprofit and got a healthy slate of candidates mostly from posts to subreddits for cities in our county in Oregon.

What’s the answer? I think for small cities, an answer might be to revive something that was done 30 years ago:

Back in the early 1990s, long before Facebook and Twitter, and even before the World Wide Web began dominating the Internet landscape, there were different platforms that various individuals, groups and communities were using to share resources, have discussions, etc., and some city governments, like Cupertino and San Jose in California, were quick to try to harness such to create more transparency regarding information and decision-making with their constituencies. Back then, Free-nets and community networks were the rage among the small number of advocates for Internet use by everyday citizens, like Virtual Valley Community Network, a series of community bulletin boards via FirstClass and serving cities in Silicon Valley, California by San Jose-based Metro Newspapers, the most popular being Cupertino’s CityNet. I was involved in CityNet, just as a user, as well as Virtual Valley and Mac-focused online bulletin boards back in the early 1990s, when I was living in San José – I was much more excited by them than the World Wide Web, which, to me, was just a series of online brochures.

I think it’s time we revisit these online community models. I think they could feel the gap left by the way Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other platforms are changing, and the gap left by a lack of newspapers and community radio stations.

Also see:

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. 

Is trauma while volunteering abroad inevitable?

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graphic representing volunteers performing various service activities.

On one of the many online communities I’m on, one for people interested in serving as Peace Corps members, someone wrote about wanting to serve but also wanting to know what resources there would be “given the unfortunate, yet seemingly inevitable, traumatic experiences” a volunteer is probably going to face.

One of the responses was particularly excellent:

I want to challenge one point: trauma is not inevitable. It’s a dangerous framing to prospective service and sets up a self-fulfilling prophecy. Service is stressful, but it is not always traumatic.

I really liked this response, and the rest of it. I see a lot of people who want to work or volunteer abroad, in developing or post-conflict countries, in humanitarian initiatives, and they say things implying that the worst trauma-inducing events – assault, theft, sexual exploitation, life-altering injury, intense hostility from locals, witnessing violence or extreme, dire poverty – is inevitable.

None of that is inevitable in working or volunteering abroad in humanitarian efforts. It’s not inevitable working or volunteering in your own country. Could any of those circumstances happen to you? Yes – abroad or at home. Does any of that happen? Yes – abroad or at home. But none of it is inevitable.

I do believe in being prepared for The Worst – at home or abroad. It’s why, on the section of my web site about travel, I talk about always having a plan: what would you do if faced with the absolute worst circumstances, and the aftermath, while abroad? Do you know exactly who should call and where you should go if you are in danger or have experienced trauma? As someone who has frequently traveled abroad to not-so-stable countries, I have plans, even for being kidnapped, and have discussed them with loved ones. The likelihood of ever needing to employ those plans is small, but it gives me comfort to know I have a plan.

What’s much more likely when serving abroad: feelings of loneliness and isolation. Feeling that you don’t have an outlet or escape to take a mental health break. I had an Afghan colleague say, “It must be so hard for you here. I have my family to go home to each night. You have nothing.” It was a gut punch because it was true! It was one of the reasons I started going to a coffee shop frequented by expats every Friday: I was spending WAY too much time alone outside of work hours.

What is also much more common is a feeling of helplessness or disillusionment with your service. Realizing that one person really can’t change the world, and that your work may not actually transform the lives of anyone significantly, is not just humbling, it can make you question everything you think about yourself, the work of humanitarians, and, well, all of humanity. It’s a reality check many people that want to work or volunteer abroad aren’t prepared for.

As noted by that aforementioned Reddit poster:

Peace Corps volunteers have to be resilient and develop those self-management tools during service. That is a fundamental requirement when living remotely with limited resources.

This is true of anyone that wants to serve away from home, and especially in another country, even one that is quite peaceful and stable.

The responder goes on to say:

The best thing to do is discover and train your resilience today: Learn coping mechanisms. Develop healthy habits. Be disciplined with your time. Learn to accept what you cannot change and be content with what you can. Set boundaries. Exercise. Learn to maintain a positive attitude. Be selfless. Arguably, this is the most important thing. Service is going to be a path you’ll have to walk alone. It is demanding and mentally challenging, but you have to be strong.

And I second all of this! If you really want to be effective working or volunteering abroad in humanitarian contexts, you can’t assume you have these skills; you have to take a hard look at yourself and how you cope now with stress, strife, frustrations and, indeed, trauma.

Also see:

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. 

In-person / on-site work & meetings automatically better than online? NOPE!

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image of a panel discussion

Quit saying that to be productive, staff – employees, consultants and volunteers – need to be onsite. 

Quit saying that, to be productive, we need to return to onsite meetings. 

Quit saying that, to build trust and to be more personal, we need to be talking face-to-face in the same room. 

Stop it with that nonsense. 

Why do you think face-to-face meetings are more productive or are better ways to build trust in a team? I have had enough time wasted in onsite meetings to last a LIFETIME. I have sat in more onsite, face-to-face meetings than I can count where nothing was accomplished.

I’m not saying never to have onsite meetings. I’m not saying that people shouldn’t ever work together in the same time and place.

But this assumption that onsite meetings are somehow automatically better, more productive, have more personality, allow people to get to know each other better, is just BOLLOCKS. 

If your team doesn’t trust each other, if your team feels it can’t rely on certain members, if your team isn’t communicating well with each other, none of that is going to be automatically solved by changing from online to onsite meetings. 

None of what makes for an effective meeting automatically happens just because you are meeting onsite. NONE of it. Quit implying that it does. 

Effective meetings, whether onsite or online:

  • have clear agendas that are communicated before the start. 
  • have an agenda that is results-oriented/mission-focused.
  • start at the time they say they will and they end at the time they say they will. 
  • are effectively facilitated so that attendees stick to the agenda and scheduled decisions are made. 
  • allow everyone to speak within the time frame given.

The meeting facilitator needs to have recognition from members to be the person to remind attendees if the discussion period for an agenda item is finished now and it’s time for a decision, or when to table a decision for the next meeting. The facilitator needs to be empowered to remind people who didn’t read the meeting materials beforehand that, in the future, they need to do that. 

Case in point: I served on a board for three years. Our meetings became vastly more productive when we moved ONLINE because of the pandemic. I even got to know some of the board members more in our online meetings – the side chats on Zoom allowed truly EVERYONE to express their opinion, even their humor.

Meeting face-to-face, in the same place and time, does not magically create better communications and does not automatically create a sense of team. If your online meetings aren’t working out the way you want, the problem is probably not that you are all online.

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

Want to learn more how to effectively work with people online? The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. The lessons here are focused on engaging volunteers, but all are easily adapted for working with paid staff. If you want to learn how to leverage online tools to communicate with and support volunteers, whether those volunteers are mostly online (virtual volunteering) or they provide service mostly onsite at your organization, and to dig deep into the factors for success in supporting online volunteers and keeping virtual volunteering a worthwhile endeavor for everyone involved, you will not find a more detailed guide anywhere than The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. It’s based on many years of experience, from a variety of organizations. It’s available both as a traditional print publication and as a digital book.

If you have benefited from any of my 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.

AI: great for simplistic poems about virtual volunteering, not so great for biographies.

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A drawing of a woman holding a smart phone. The drawing is done in the style of a pictograph (cave painting).

Last week, I used Chat AI to create a history of virtual volunteering. And it did an excellent job, better than any journalist or blogger (other than me) has ever done. It was almost as good as the history I wrote of virtual volunteering. I was surprised because I use GoogleAlerts to let me know about new mentions of virtual volunteering online and about half of the alerts come from AI-generated clickbait sites that are painful to read: clunky sentence structure, incoherent (but grammatically correct!) sentences and at least a few inaccuracies. But let’s be clear: the history generated used a lot of phrasing I have authored and that can be found in a variety of web pages, blogs, etc.

I used Chat AI to create a biography of me, and it flunked HUGELY. It got a lot right, but also had me born in Buffalo (I was born in Kentucky), attending a university that I don’t even know where it is, had my birthday and birth year wrong (which I credit to how I refuse to share my real birthday online except when I have to), and lots of other inaccuracies. My husband had it write a biography of him and got a similarly inaccurate biography.

Then I used Chat AI to write a poem about virtual volunteering and… I have to say, it did a decent job. It’s not earth-shattering. It’s quite simplistic. It’s about as good as a greeting card poem or a very old-fashioned volunteer recognition event, but still – it works. Here it is:

In the digital age, a new way to give,
A chance to serve, to connect, to live,
From anywhere, with a single click,
Virtual volunteering, it’s the trick.

The world’s at our fingertips, the internet’s the key,
To lend a hand, to help those in need,
Through emails, chats, and video calls,
We spread our kindness, break down walls.

Distance doesn’t matter, time is no issue,
We can make a difference, with virtual tissue,
Writing, coding, designing and more,
We’re part of something greater, that’s for sure.

In a world that’s ever-changing, virtual volunteering’s here to stay,
To touch a life, to brighten a day,
We give our time, we share our hearts,
And though we’re apart, we’re never far apart.

Virtual volunteering, a new way to serve,
To use our skills, to use our nerve,
A world of good, we can do online,
We’ll make a difference, one heart at a time.

Only thing wrong: virtual volunteering is NOT new… which the history it generated noted.

Anyway…

I can absolutely see using Chat AI or something like it to write a cutesy, silly poem in a pinch – and that is something nonprofits often need for a gala or celebration. A friend that works in real estate told me she uses it to generate descriptions of houses she is trying to sell. But otherwise, be careful regarding what narratives these AI tools generate – they are NOT always accurate in the information they generate.

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

There’s no poetry in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook but it does contain the most comprehensive and detailed guidance regarding using the Internet to engage and support volunteers (and some sci fi references, per the authors both being geek girls). It’s for organizations that want to get started with virtual volunteering or to expand a program they already have, as well as those researching virtual volunteering. The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook is based on many years of experience, from a variety of organizations. It’s like having me do an in-depth analysis of your program, or me helping you set up your own program, but without having to pay my hourly rate as a consultant. It’s also better than any AI. It’s available both as a traditional print publication and as a digital book.

If you have benefited from any of my 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.