Commentary, resources & discussion re: nonprofits/ngos, communications, community engagement, volunteerism, effective humanitarian aid & development, ethics, women's empowerment & management ethics. Posts at least twice a month, usually on Tuesdays.
Category Archives: Community / Volunteer Engagement
Verboort is an unincorporated community in Washington County, Oregon. It has less than 500 residents. It also has a very large Catholic Church and an adjacent, small Catholic School.
Back in 1934, the church and school started the Verboort Sausage and Sauerkraut Festival, with proceeds going for the upkeep of the school. It was small and attended by residents, families, and some people from surrounding villages.
Now, the one-day festival attracts about 10,000 people a year. The line for purchasing bulk sausage and sauerkraut starts forming four or five hours before sunrise. The cars that want to pick up ready-made dinners line up five hours before serving begins. The venue where dinner is served (rather than take aways) is continually packed from the moment it opens until it closes in the evening.
I’m just back, rain-soaked from standing in line for a take away meal, and covered in mud from the trek to and from the car parked in a farm field. And I’ve been wondering why this fundraising event is so amazingly successful.
Here’s what I think makes it successful year after year, even during COVID:
They’ve kept the festival simple in terms of what it serves. It’s pretty much the exact same meals, every year (pork sausages, sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, green beans, apple sauce, coleslaw, a roll and a piece of pie). No variation. They have the formula down – really hearty comfort food you want to eat in November – and they stick with it.
The food is incredible. I have never had mass-prepared meals that are this scrumptious. The sauerkraut is to die for – which is why they also sell it by the tub the day of.
The community was founded by six Dutch Catholic families, and the festival plays up the Dutch connection HUGELY. Actually, they get a little mixed up and play German Oktoberfest music too, but most people don’t know. The point is, this isn’t like any other festival anywhere else in Oregon. It makes it more than food – it’s an experience.
They grew slowly. What started off as maybe 100 people coming to a community feed has slowly blossomed. They didn’t immediately try to do something beyond their resources. People who enjoyed it returned – and told their friends. Then they started putting a sign out on the highway in farmer’s fields. Simple sign, name of the festival, “First Saturday in November.” SO easy to remember. Now, they will have TV crews come out to see the kraut-making process – and the local TV news always comes.
They know how to manage the crowd. This is a TINY town with ONE paved street going through it (not kidding). Yet, unless you are in line for a ready-to-take-away meal, you will rarely be in a traffic jam. You get directed to parking and you park quickly, no fuss, no muss. And that’s because…
Most of the festival is staffed by volunteers, and plenty of them. They are directing traffic, they are helping people park, they are taking orders, they are helping people find the right line, they are putting the meal trays together, etc. Some are students of the school, some are parents, some are residents, some are church parishioners from Verboort, some are parishioners from elsewhere, and some are people that just love this event and love being a part of it. SO MANY VOLUNTEERS.
I really cannot emphasize enough how well organized this event is. The volunteers are juggling orders and food and parking and cars like nothing I’ve ever seen. It’s a well oiled machine.
Altogether, it feels like something you just have to go to if you live here. It feels like an event, a happening. It feels unique. You go even in crap weather. And I’m not Catholic and I don’t eat pork, but there I am, every year (the secret is that you park in the farm field and bring a wagon or a lot of bags, and you stand in line for the ready made meals – you can be there just 60 minutes before it opens and get all the food you want).
People come from Portland and Salem to this.
And many know it’s a fundraiser, but don’t know for what! I’ve done some informal polling, and people will say they like to support it because it’s a fundraiser, and when I ask for what, they’ll say, “for some school or something?” All that is important to them is that, in addition to the good food and unique experience they are supporting a “good cause” – even if they don’t know what it is.
There is a lot that smaller fundraising events could learn from this festival.
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Reddit was founded in 2005 is a community platform categorized around different interests. As of January 2025, Reddit had over 500 million people registered as users. 110.4 million daily active users and 416.4 million weekly active users, 44% of US Redditors were aged 18 to 29 years old and around 2 in 3Reddit users were male. Redditors tend to be significantly younger than other online communities like Facebook, with less than 3% of users being 65 or over.
These community members use the platform for highly targeted content, via whatever community, or subreddit, they subscribe to. And that, together with the demographics of the platform, are why I find Reddit so valuable for outreach: I can reach a group that’s hard for me to reach otherwise (people under 35, as well as young men) and I can target specific groups, like just the users that live in the town where I live (because there’s a subreddit for that), women that ride motorcycles.
If you have struggled to connect with young, male audiences regarding your nonprofit’s work, or if you want to get a handle on what young people say regarding nonprofits, volunteering, civic engagement, etc., Reddit is a great place to get to know.
Reddit has not only given me amazing insights into how young adults think about volunteering. It has also:
Helped a nonprofit I support FINALLY land a group of volunteers from a very, very large and well known company in our area that we had been trying to reach for a couple of years, with no success. I posted info about a one-day volunteering event on a subreddit for a large city near us and one of the employees stuck it on the employee intranet and, boom, we got volunteers from that corporation at long, long last – and later, a donation of $5,000.
I’ve been hired twice by another very large, well-known company for consulting work because of my activities on Reddit – on r/volunteer in particular.
Of course, your mileage may vary…
I hear a lot of people say they have no idea where to get started on Reddit. If you work for nonprofits, here’s what I recommend:
Look at my Reddit profile and see what subreddits I’m a part of and what I’ve been posting (you can also follow me on Reddit).
Then look at Reddit4Good, a massive list of Reddit communities that relate somehow to doing good. It has a list of:
Subreddits focused on areas related to nonprofit work, like biology, agriculture, etc.
Subreddits for formally established programs (CASA, AmeriCorps, Red Cross, Peace Corps, Habitat for Humanity, etc.).
Regional-based subreddits focused on volunteering (the UK, Brazil, Oregon, etc.).
ONE BIG CAUTION: change your settings so that you do not get a notification every time a new post or comment is made to any of the subreddits you join. Trust me on this – you do not want that many notifications in your life.
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According to the online dictionary on my computer, empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.
I have long believed that one of the biggest benefits in volunteer engagement, for the volunteer, for the host organization and for the community – indeed, for all of humanity – is the cultivation of empathy.
There are many benefits to both host organizations and volunteers when it comes to volunteer engagement. And usually when empathy is discussed regarding volunteerism, it’s focused just on the idea of well-off people learning more about the experiences of not-so-well-off-people. But for many years, I have been promoting the idea of volunteerism as community building, as a way to cultivate community cohesion and greater understanding among different groups, and as a way to address the growing gaps between different groups. Here are some of my blogs on the subject over the years:
In addition, I’ve also been fascinated by the study of compassion regarding how it impacts individual mental health and community cohesion. It’s terrific to find out that science shows that compassion isn’t just nice – it’s necessary:
So you can imagine my horror to realize that one of the foundations of volunteerism, one of the primary reasons it is worth supporting and worth promoting – the cultivation of empathy – is under attack, primarily by people that support the Republican party:
“I can’t stand the word empathy, actually. I think empathy is a made-up, new age term that — it does a lot of damage.” These are the words of Charlie Kirk, who was murdered a few weeks ago.
“We’ve got civilizational suicidal empathy going on,” says Elon Musk. “The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit…. they’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response.” Elon Musk.
Idaho-based Chrisitan pastor Joe Rigney has written a book called The Sin of Empathy and claims empathy is “the greatest rhetorical tool of manipulation in the 21st century”.
Extremist Gad Saad wrote a book called Suicidal Empathy which you see in the earlier mention as inspiring Elon Musk and which the author says highlights “the inability to implement optimal decisions when our emotional system is tricked into an orgiastic hyperactive form of empathy, deployed on the wrong targets.”
And I bring all of this up because nonprofits, NGOs, government programs, community organizations, schools, communities of faith and all those that engage volunteers and promote volunteerism NEED TO BE ON GUARD. If you think volunteerism is such a fantastic, pure, universally-loved idea that could never be the target of a political movement, you are wrong – and your lack of preparation will hurt your organization and your community.
This isn’t the first time volunteerism has been under attack by political movements. I started writing about Initiatives opposed to some or all volunteering (unpaid work) back in the late 1990s. I felt like I could reason with both sides of the political spectrum regarding their opposition to volunteer engagement, which in some respects were based in very real fears. But a war on empathy? That is going to be MUCH harder to win.
Are you preparing to argue for the value of empathy? Or are you, instead, rushing to remove the word from your web site, the way you did regarding diversity, equity and inclusion?
Update May 27, 2026: The Southern Poverty Law Center has a new article, For these hard-right influencers, empathy is a vice, which notes that the arguments of this anti-empathy movement are often rooted in anti-feminist ideology and that “This attempted alchemy of empathy into sin by hard-right groups is the latest expression of racist fear over the loss of white Christian power and privilege.” It also notes that, “At its heart, anti-empathy rhetoric denies the experiences of people who face systemic inequalities.” If your nonprofit is focused on any aspect of systemic inequalities, and that includes addressing hunger, homelessness, access to education and lack of affordable housing, or if your nonprofit is focused on women in any way other than helping them have more children, this campaign against empathy WILL affect you.
I attended a fantastic workshop on video editing several weeks ago. One of the things the instructor said has haunted me – and not just regarding video editing. He said that you need to NOT fall in love with whatever video you are making. Instead, you have to make the video, do work you can be proud of, post it, and then MOVE ON. But do NOT pour your heart into it and offer it up with the highest of hopes that all of your hard work and artistry is going to be popular or even acknowledged – because more than likely, you will get just a couple of “likes”, if you’re lucky. That’s it.
I pour my heart into my professional work. I do most projects as though I am doing them as a model for others. I relish in anyone acknowledging that they see my determination and skills in my work. In fact, I live for it. And my heart gets broken repeatedly.
Leaving it all on the field or court after every game is something that man fans and sports commentators admire, but it’s not a healthy approach to every day work and volunteering. I’m not sure I’ve experienced any benefits at all from just how much love and care I’ve poured into my work over the years – or even in the work I do now.
A few years ago, hungry to make some community connections and really missing any sorts of arts in my life outside of movies, I decided to apply for a citizens’ advisory group for a local government body regarding the arts. The role was simple: review applications from area arts organizations, very very small groups, entirely amateur, choose who gets what tiny sum of money, and attend a celebration at the end of the year where performing arts grants recipients perform. Perfect! I would get introduced to a big array of various dance, theater, music and fine arts groups and partake in their work. There would probably also be snacks.
I really enjoyed the first year, especially the grants celebration! Yes, there WERE snacks – and some beautiful performances.
I was shocked when one of the members asked me to be the chair for the next year. She said all the longer-term folks had done it already and I was “fresh” and I’d seen how it works, how much fun it was. So, yeah, okay! I said yes. COVID was in full swing, but we were having meetings online, and they were working WAY better than our face-to-face stuff, so I was quite happy to take on this volunteer leadership role.
At the very first meeting I ran came the bombshell, which the person who talked me into serving as chair swears she did NOT know was coming: our little advisory committee was losing its administrative support from the local government, and we had to form an independent 501 (c)(3) in 12 weeks if we were to continue.
I worked 20 hours a week for six months, identifying priorities, keeping track of who was doing what, scheduling meetings, opening a bank account, researching and drafting by-laws, drafting the web site content and then designing the simple site, working with our new fiscal agent, reading over the government requirements, researching grants management software, designing Google forms and spreadsheets for the data generated, and running meetings. I poured my heart into it.
One member of the committee didn’t like how I was doing things and would question every sentence, every detail, every suggestion, all of which came from hours and hours of research – but never offer to take over any task and work on it outside of meeting time. During one particularly horrible meeting, he insulted me during a long speech about how he didn’t like something I had drafted and, at last, I stopped him. I don’t want to get into details, but before the entire group, I calmly but FIRMLY told him he was going to stop that immediately, that his language and accusations were beyond inappropriate, and I wouldn’t continue for one more minute. He backed down. After that meeting, like so many other meetings, I sat at my computer and wept. Yes, I cried. At least two members wrote me to say they were so, so sorry at what I had just experienced. But they didn’t speak up at this or any other meeting.
The whole experience was grueling, degrading and soul-crusing. And I didn’t feel any sort of passion or love for this. Why did I stick with it? Because I have this ridiculous sense of duty and honor and pride when I take on a role: I’m going to see it to an appropriate conclusion and do my absolute best every moment and THEN walk away. Heaven forbid I inconvenience anyone, just because I’m being repeatedly insulted and overworked! At least I’ll have the knowledge that I did what I could and did my best!
Insert eyeroll here.
I wish I’d said, “F*ck ’em.” Because all but maybe one person on that committee, and no one in the government, saw the hours I was spending on what was supposed to be a simple community volunteering job, and that I was doing absolutely all that was necessary, in RECORD time, to see that this committee would get to continue its work and that small arts groups in my area would continue to receive a bit of funding each year.
I told the other members I would not be continuing on the committee once my term was up. I recruited six more board members, all under 45 – something the board said it wanted, since others were resigning at the end of the term as well and a need for younger minds was very much needed. I interviewed them and onboarded them, trying to give them as much support as I got when I first joined. I chaired my last meeting, introducing the new members, and then I walked away.
There was no real thank you and no acknowledgement that I’d undertaken a part-time job, for no pay, for much of the year to preserve funding for small nonprofits and to create a model that would allow the committee to get back to reviewing grant applications, awarding money and celebrating at the end of it all. In fact, what I felt mostly from the others was hostility at how demanding and pushy I’d been – something that was absolutely required to get all this done.
I kept all those emails and drafts and files from this experience. I went back and looked at them this week. The work takes up more storage on my computer than any one consulting job I’ve ever done.
I threw most of it away at last.
This is just one of MANY examples I could offer regarding having my heart broken because I wanted to do the BEST job possible. In fact, I’m doing this again now, professionally, for my one and only client, and I’m realizing that I need to stop. I need to scale back. I’ll always do work that I can be proud of and that a client and employer deserves. But do they deserve my absolute, tireless BEST, every time? Not for this pay.
I know that I am one of the best people out there for small nonprofits regarding leveraging social media, for crisis communications, for general public relations and marketing, and for donor cultivation, let alone volunteer engagement. But there comes a time when you have to say, “I’ll do just this much, and then stop. Because I’m not getting my heart broken at work anymore and the pay certainly is NOT worth 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.
Labor laws regarding volunteering vary from country to country. For instance, in the USA, creating a written role description or memorandum of understanding with a volunteer, ensuring there is an agreement on what is expected of a volunteer, is normal and entirely legal, but in the United Kingdom, such written agreements can make the volunteer a paid employee and due for financial compensation.
How should your organization determine who is a volunteer, unpaid, and who should be paid for the hours they work at your organization, no matter what country you are in? What does the law say? And what other laws apply to volunteers – and which don’t?
There are resources on the US Department of Labor web site regarding volunteerism that can help any nonprofit or charity, in any country, think about both why it involves volunteers and how it should talk about the value of volunteerism, as well as the qualities of a well-run volunteering program. Although these are USA-centric and cite USA law, much of what these documents propose regarding volunteer engagement is based in ethics as much as law.
Unfortunately, since 2017, DOL has made resources regarding volunteer engagement MUCH harder to find – and deleted some resources altogether, despite no changes in the law with regard to volunteers.
If I’ve been able to find the deleted DOL page I had on my 2017 blog on archive.org, I’ve linked to that instead below. If a DOL or other URL stops working, cut and paste it into archive.org and you should be able to find an old copy. Using old information is better, IMO, than not having any information at all. But please do not rely solely on this blog nor the links for legal guidance: you need a LAWYER to read over your policies and procedures, and to address any concerns or legal challenges you may face regarding volunteer engagement. I am NOT a lawyer and you should NOT rely on this advice solely if you have questions about labor laws and volunteers.
Most important is probably this DOL resource: Fact Sheet #14A: Non-Profit Organizations and the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), which notes that volunteers serve on a part-time basis and do not displace regular employed workers or perform work that would otherwise be performed by regular employees. In addition, paid employees of a non-profit organization cannot volunteer to provide the same type of services to their non-profit organization that they are employed to provide.
Employees volunteering outside of their jobs, at the direction of their employer, is further explored in this response from the DOL, which talks about nurses being asked to volunteer their time, unpaid, to participate in community service activities, such as taking blood pressure at a health fair, teaching child care classes to expectant parents, participating in “career day” at a local school, helping the Red Cross, or helping with the hospital picnic. Other activities in question involve employee attendance at patient care conferences, task force meetings, and committee meetings on their days off or outside regular working hours.
There’s also this detailed response by DOL staff to someone in 2006 asking if the time employees spend on volunteer activities outside their employer’s worksite or on activities outside their regular work are compensable working time. For instance, “Does the employer have a duty to compensate non-exempt employees for the time they spend volunteering on a Habitat for Humanity project outside of normal working hours?” Any corporation that organizes volunteering activities for its employees needs to read this document carefully.
Again, all of these are USA-centric but, again, the advice is terrific for other countries as well. Of course, you should still check to see what your country’s laws are regarding volunteers, including interns or anyone to whom you aren’t paying at least a legal minimum wage.
In addition, there’s also this Safety and Health Checklist for Voluntary and Community-Based Organizations Engaged in Disaster Recovery Demolition and Construction Activities. This detailed document emphasizes the importance of such organizations promoting the health and safety of their work teams, including volunteers, and provides a checklist outlining some of the hazards frequently encountered during disaster response and recovery operations and what the organization should have in place to support and protect volunteers, including what training volunteer work teams should have. This checklist is great no matter what country you are in.
You can find a lot more information about US laws that govern volunteers and volunteer engagement at both the OSHA and the Department of Labor web sites by using their search function regarding the word volunteering. But be ready to wade through a huge amount of results, most of which don’t involve volunteers.
Having a mission statement for your organization’s volunteer engagement can protect you from over-zealous staff members, consultants and corporate funders who want to push for volunteers to replace paid staff and save money, or to increase volunteer engagement in areas of the nonprofits work that would be inappropriate. It also could help protect you against lawsuits from volunteers who feel they were merely unpaid workers. The US Department of Labor (DOL) and US Federal Courts want to see that the work of volunteers is distinctly different from the duties of the organization’s employees – and their guidelines on how they make the determination regarding who is a volunteer and who should be paid are good guidelines for volunteering other countries as well. To determine whether an individual is truly volunteering, the DOL and US Federal Courts look to:
The nature of the entity receiving the volunteer services
The character of the volunteer services (activities) themselves
The amount of control the employer or engaging organization exerts over the volunteer
Compensation or benefits provided to the volunteer, or that the individual expects
Whether the volunteer work displaces paid work by regular employees
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.
Someone who manages the volunteer program at a public library here in Oregon wrote me. She said:
I’m looking for input from the field about accepting the non working spouse/family member of an H1B Visa holder, as a volunteer. Because these people do not have social security numbers, our background check process can’t accept them. This is counter to our library mission “For Everyone” and seems to run counter to our sanctuary city status. HR/RISK says it’s an issue largely due to our city’s insurance coverage. I say, I’ve mitigated the Risk and volunteers are not in a position that places them one on one with any patron, staff, or other volunteer. I have also run across information that seems to indicate visa holding people may put their visa status at risk by volunteering. Wondering if you have any words of wisdom I can use to advocate for being able to include these folks who wish to share their time and talent with us, but can’t pass a standard background check. (Don’t get me started on background checks).
I’m going to share the advice I gave her here, edited to protect her identity and organization. Perhaps this might help others.
And I have to start with a disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer, I don’t have a law degree, and so none of this can be considered legal advice.
In short: I think it’s absolutely fine to involve an HB1 Visa holder, and even someone here on a tourist visa, in volunteering at a nonprofit organization. But stay away from anything that could be seen as an unpaid internship (ongoing role), even for a student. And it gets even trickier with tourist visas.
Let’s get into the details:
How long has the person that does not have a social security number been in the USA? And in that time they have been in the USA, have they been in the same county and state? So, for instance, if the person has been in the same county for a year or more, then there should be a way to do a criminal background check with the sheriff’s department for the time they have lived here. The local police certainly have no problem arresting people without a social security number… but any check with local law enforcement would be for only the time the person has lived in that state.
Another option depends on what country the person is from. With online volunteers in mentoring programs, I have asked international participants to provide a letter from their local police in the country where they live to say that they are a person in “good standing” – also called a “certificate of good conduct.” Depending on what country they are from, they may be able to get this through their embassy or consulate here, for the area where they lived previously. No police in any country in Europe had any problem supplying such. But I’ve never had to do it for anyone outside of Europe.
I also think asking for professional and academic references, and following up on those, is a good idea – no matter what country they are in. I did that as well and I’m happy to provide you with the questions I asked them.
All that said… you should check with other libraries: maybe someone in the New York City or Chicago public library system, Atlanta, etc. And let me know what they say!
“I say, I’ve mitigated the Risk and volunteers are not in a position that places them one on one with any patron, staff, or other volunteer.”
RIGHT?!?! That should be enough! ARGH!!!
“I have also run across information that seems to indicate visa holding people may put their visa status at risk by volunteering.”
And one from the US Department of Labor, which says “Individuals who volunteer or donate their services, usually on a part-time basis, for public service, religious or humanitarian objectives, not as employees and without contemplation of pay, are not considered employees of the religious, charitable or similar non-profit organizations that receive their service.”
I read all of this as it being absolutely fine to involve this couple in volunteering.
Volunteering can turn into a problem for foreigners in the USA, or trying to come to the USA, on a tourist visa, or “volunteering” (working for free) for a family or for-profit company, even via Workaway or whatever.
For instance, Australian traveler Madolline Gourley visited the USA multiple times over several years to cat-sit in exchange for free accommodation – she was never paid money. But this year, she was stopped while transiting through Hawaii to Canada. Officials at a USA airport determined that what she was doing amounted to unauthorized work. She was detained for hours, her visa waiver was revoked, and she was ultimately deported.
Rebecca Burke,, a graphic artist from Monmouthshire in England, was trying to cross into the state of Washington from Canada when she was refused entry. She was planning to stay with a host family where she would carry out domestic chores in exchange for accommodation. Canadian officials told she should have applied for a working visa, instead of a tourist visa. So she went back to Canada, applied for what she thought was the right visa, and then tried again. But when she tried to re-enter the US she was handcuffed and put in a cell before being taken to Tacoma Northwest detention facility in Washington state.
(Workaway warns users that they “will need the correct visa for any country that you visit”, and that it is the user’s responsibility to get one, but it doesn’t stipulate what the correct visa is for the kind of arrangements it facilitates in any given country. )
But what about people who are going to volunteer for an organization – not pet sit or house sit or garden or whatever in exchange for free housing?
U.S. border law says Canadians do not require a visa to enter the country for volunteer work, as long as they can provide proof that their work will not be compensated. The group was told they had failed to have a letter sent from the host church “paroling” them into the country. The border patrol officer told the group he would grant an exception and let them through if the host church managed to fax or email a letter right away.
When the first letter was deemed “not specific enough” by a border patrol officer, the group asked the New Jersey host church send another, being careful not to make any specific reference to construction.
“In general, mission teams do team-building, tour mercy ministries of the church (food pantries, re-entry programs, thrift shops, etc) and assist with neighbourhood cleanup projects,” said the second letter. It was this last part that was interpreted as “work for hire,” says Hoeksema. Officers denied them entry after they had been stopped for more than two hours. The group was told that, as foreigners, they would be taking American jobs, and that there was no pressing need for relief work anyway this long after Hurricane Sandy hit the region in 2012.
A U.S. border spokesperson said the refusal came down to documentation. The official said groups doing humanitarian work need to provide documentation in advance from the municipality where the work is to be done stating what they will be doing.
Canadian media outlets reported also in 2017 that four Canadian senior citizens on their way to volunteer as ushers a performance of The Color Purple at the Fisher Theater in Detroit were detained, photographed, fingerprinted and eventually denied entry to the USA because non-American volunteers are only allowed to participate in religious or nonprofit events. The women, who had been volunteering for years at the theater, said they never had a problem before. The then USA Customs and Border Patrol Chief Ken Hammond told the Detroit Free Press that he can’t discuss individual cases for privacy reasons, but he referenced the Immigration and Nationality Act, stating that aliens volunteering in a program that benefits USA communities must establish that they are members of and are committed to “a particular recognized religious or nonprofit charitable organization.”
The Fisher Theater is a FOR-profit (commercial) theater. Had it been a nonprofit theater, even with a for-profit Broadway touring show playing, they PROBABLY wouldn’t have been turned away at the border if they had been carrying a letter from the theater with their 501 c 3 number and a statement that this was a nonprofit organization, stated their mission, and they reserve usher roles specifically for volunteers as a part of their commitment to ensure the arts are accessible to more people.
I have been telling people from other countries who are coming to the USA on a tourist visa but who might volunteer while here to say to the border enforcement folks that they are coming here as a tourist and to be absolutely open about all the places they plan to visit, and even say “I plan on attending the WHATEVEREVENT (cycling event, running event, motorcycle rally, etc.)”, but do NOT volunteer the information that they will be volunteering. Just emphasize how much they love cycling or running or motorcycling. And to make sure they do NOT have a post on social media saying, “Hey, I’m going to the USA to volunteer at the WHATEVEREVENT!” Carrying a letter from the organization where you are going to volunteer, stating that the organization is a 501 c 3 nonprofit, stating that the role you are doing is one they reserve specifically for volunteers, and with a statement as to WHY they do that (eg “we believe volunteer engagement is a way for people who care about such-and-such to be involved in this cause that they care about in a way that is more intimate and meaningful than merely attending the event”) can be helpful if you need to say that, as part of your traveling, you will be volunteering.
I am not encouraging anyone to do something illegal per the advice in that previous paragraph. But border agents in the USA make mistakes and currently are looking for ANY reason to turn foreigners away, or even arrest people trying to come into the country, including the wrong reason.
I’ve been telling people that are from other countries that are coming here to blog about their trip to either not come at all (there’s a pretty famous motorcycle blogger, Itchy Boots, who cancelled her US trip to promote her book because of the nonsense at the US border) or to NOT mention their YouTube channel or blogging when they are interviewed – emphasize you’re touring the US as a backpacker or whatever, period.
If you have other advice, please share it. Please cite sources – no “I think I heard that…”
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.
Along with the massive slashing of US government budgets, the demand for nonprofit services is going to be even greater than before – and nonprofits, per losing so much government funding (and corporate funding – layoffs abound) are going to have less and less resources.
A lot of boards at nonprofits are going to naively think, “Oh, let’s just get more volunteers – while also cutting the budget of the volunteer program, including firing the volunteer manager.”
If you work with volunteers at your nonprofit, regardless of if your title is manager of volunteers or not, there are three things you need to do RIGHT NOW, urgently, if you want to keep involving volunteers at your nonprofit and be ready to face the severe budget cuts coming.
1) you need to prepare a budget, RIGHT NOW, on what it costs to engage volunteers at your organization. That budget should include:
the percentage of staff time, at dollar value, to engage with and support volunteers
all expenses related to recruitment (that will include a portion of your web site hosting)
all expenses related to training and supervision (any software you pay to use for this)
all expenses related to appreciation/recognition (items you give to volunteers, rentals of space for volunteer events, etc.)
costs associated with volunteer management software
costs associated with background checks
advertising costs
travel costs
office supplies
insurance
volunteer center membership
professional development of those working with volunteers (training, certification, publications, conferences, membership fees, etc.)
2) You also need to create a chart that shows, as simply as possible, what it takes to onboard a new volunteer and to support your new volunteers. It needs to show exactly who does what at each step.
If you don’t do this, and communicate it to senior staff and the board, the budget cuts they make will be arbitrary, and volunteer engagement will plummet (so will individual donations, FYI).
3) And the third thing you must do: you must show the impact of your volunteer program. The number of volunteers you involved and the number of hours they gave IS NOT IMPACT. Testimonials from clients and staff about the impact volunteers made with them is impact. Testimonials from volunteers about how they did not understand fully what your nonprofit was doing before or the issue they were addressing, but now they do, because of their volunteering, is impact. Volunteers themselves can help you gather this data.
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I’ve been writing about how computer and Internet technologies can, and do, affect the work of nonprofits, NGOs, government agencies and other mission-based programs (as opposed to for-profit businesses) since the 1990s. I’ve been mostly a cheerleader for such, but also have tried to be realistic and to highlight cautions. So you shouldn’t be surprised that I have thoughts about AI and how it will, and is, affecting that work and those we serve.
And then there is the creative laziness AI seems to encourage. In an earlier blog I warned nonprofits to be careful using Canva, since their graphics are starting to all look the same. Here’s a new story about why reliance on Canva and similar AI graphic programs can be a bad choice: months ago, I had a volunteer from a high school who was supposed to create social media graphics in association with various holidays for a nonprofit I worked for. He turned in designs that were obviously the first template choice offered by Canva, with just our nonprofit logo and a date inserted somewhere – no other alterations at all. He supposedly had taken a marketing class that included learning graphic design basics, but seemed flummoxed when I talked about the need for color contrast, easy-to-read fonts, and the importance of ads being readable without someone having to have glasses. And don’t even get me started on Canva’s profound lack of diversity among its human images in terms of ethnicities, body types and ages. I ended up having to alter all of his work – spending more time on the task, not less.
Using AI-powered chatbots for schoolwork is undermining opportunities for young people to learn skills such as analyzing text, elaborating syntheses and writing coherent narratives. The writing process stimulates thinking, scrutinizing and self-improvement, tasks that all people should learn. But when it is outsourced to AI, people not only don’t have that stimulation or mental improvement, the reduction in cognitive effort can reduce memory retention and diminish learning and cognitive abilities (cited in the Human Development Report on page 73 and in Blanchflower, D. G., Bryson, A., and Xu, X. 2024, “The Declining Mental Health of the Young and the Global Disappearance of the Hump Shape in Age in Unhappiness.” Working Paper 32337, National Bureau of Economic Research, Cambridge, MA).
I’m working with someone right now who uses AI to write all of his emails and reports. These never provide me with the information I need – information I always got when his predecessor wrote the reports and emails herself (and in MUCH shorter form). For some reason, AI always deletes out the essential info I need for marketing efforts.
AI is determining what we see online, and hiding what someone or a company has decided they do not want us to see. Content is being curated, sorted and ranked by machine learning based on the desires of one person or a company, often with users not having any idea that this is happening. I’m using two and three different search engines whenever I do research, because the results are always so different.
AI-written text is showing up with hallucinated facts across the Internet landscape and creeping into the people and government’s decision-making. And if AI is leveraged to degrade human rights or coerce people to believe a lie or harm others, it’s NOT an ally. It’s easy to find examples of this all over the Internet.
We live in a world where trust and credibility is more important than ever before. We’re going to lose more of that if we keep ceding creativity, curiosity and human interactions to AI.
There are a lot of companies who are now telling their employees that they are not allowed to suggest the creation of any new positions – paid staff or consultants – unless they can prove AI could not do most of that job. That means the elimination of graphic design positions, receptionists, data analysts, social media managers, consultants brought on to create and design special products (annual reports, specific marketing campaigns) and managers of volunteer programs who spend most of their time reviewing applications and screening new volunteers. Yes, AI can do all of those jobs – but not well, and not to the standards nonprofits need. As more and more people are using AI to both summarize texts and write emails and reports as well as reading those texts and emails and reports, humans are less and less involved – thereby missing trends, insights and potential challenges, while clients and customers become more and more frustrated trying to get answers to questions and help to solve problems.
A way to counter this AI use demand by management: be able to say, right now, how you are leveraging AI in your work. Show that you are already using it to save money, such as grammar correction programs, graphic design programs, donor data analysis, volunteer data analysis, translating and news alerts regarding certain topics. But then also show why you hold on to certain tasks, like interacting with clients in real-time, because cultivating and sustaining trust with various stakeholders.
What I find fascinating in this push for nonprofits to use AI is that a much better strategy is to push nonprofits to engage more volunteers, thereby doing what AI cannot: engage with the community more, cultivate more supporters, and build more awareness and understanding about the nonprofit and the cause it addresses.
One last thing: if you use AI in any communications, DECLARE IT. If you write an email to someone and you used AI to create that email, declare it. Declare in any online or offline publication if the material was created or authored, primarily, by AI. If you publish a blog that has content that was, even in part, created by AI, say so. “Some of the content of this article was created using AI.” Affirm if an article or blog is written by a human: give credit to the person or people responsible for such, by name.
If your nonprofit has a chatbot for clients, be clear that the chatbot is not a human, that it’s AI. Many people do NOT understand that a box with a human image that says, “Hi, how can I help you?” is not a human.
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.
The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed 2026 the International Year of Volunteers for Sustainable Development. Your nonprofit, NGO, charity, or other community organization needs to start planning NOW on how to leverage the year.
I’ve created a IYV2026 resource on my site that notes the origins of the year, highlights the accomplishments and resources of the first International Year of Volunteers in 2001, and links to the growing number of official resources. I hope it can be used both to help organizations prepare for IYV2026 and to compare resources now and then, to see how far we’ve come and how much more we need to do.
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.
I was able to port my blogs since early 2010 from a different platform here to this one, but I was not able to do so for blogs from the first platform I ever used. Those are available only on archive.org and, even then, it’s really hard to navigate through them. Most are outdated and don’t need a revival. But some I think are worth revisiting, like this one from 14 October 2009:
Center for Global Development research fellow David Roodman set the philanthropy world and the humanitarian world abuzz last week when he wrote that Kiva does not work the way many lenders might think it does. Roodman details how “the person-to-person donor-to-borrower connections created by Kiva are partly fictional.” His criticisms of Kiva have been reblogged and caused quite a stir, and a number of knee-jerk reactions. Yet, his comments and supporting details that “What Kiva does behind the scenes is what it should do” and that “technically” Kiva isn’t hiding anything aren’t being referred to as well.
Before you decide to blog about this subject yourself, or to offer a summary of what’s going on, please read Roodman’s entire post. Read the ENTIRE post. Many of the people blogging about this obviously haven’t.
Kiva Co-Founder and CEO Matt Flannery wrote a detailed response to Roodman’s blog, featured on Roodman’s blog itself. And it’s a good response, one that people interested in crisis communication should read.
Flannery’s response on Roodman’s blog is not going to be enough, ofcourse; there are too many bloggers out there reposting tiny snippets of Roodman’s original blog and glossing over the details in order to create a firestorm of criticism against Kiva. Best of luck to Flannery and Roodman to try to bring the discussion back to the facts. Flannery is going to have to get busy posting replies to a lot more blogs, as it’s unlikely they will post links to his reply. In those replies, he should
quote liberally from Roodman’s original blog, as Roodman anticipated a lot of the criticism with several of his original comments,
point out what Kiva will be doing differently because of Roodman’s post and the resulting firestorm,
defend the practices that Kiva won’t be changing because the changes would hurt those Kiva is trying to serve, and
reiterate that the most important people in the Kiva equation are those that benefit from loans, not the donors.
Kiva needs to be ready to lose some donors, but also to work to change the way remaining donors and new donors think about effective financial aid to the developing world, because that’s at the root of this firestorm, IMO.
I’m a Kiva donor, and I’ll continue to be one.
2025 update: I was, indeed, a Kiva donor for years. I’m not one currently, because my funding priorities have changed, as has my finances, but I remain a fan of Kiva.
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.
