Category Archives: Community / Volunteer Engagement

Citizens academy – intensive community engagement

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WA Co Oregon sheriff logoLast year, I wrote a blog in defense of police departments involving volunteers while also affirming that many police departments need drastic overhauls to be more transparent, better serve their communities and to cultivate trust with the communities they serve.

Since moving back to the USA in 2009, I’ve seen several notices from various police agencies offering a citizens academy. These aren’t mere open houses, where members of the public come in to meet a few officers, take a tour of a station, have some snacks and take a selfie with a uniformed officer. These academies take place over several weeks, with citizens receiving detailed presentations about individual programs within the department – tactical teams, narcotics investigation teams, crisis response teams, patrol, robotics, incarceration, arrests processing, etc. – and these presentations aren’t by interns or admin assistants but the officers running those programs and working on the front lines. Attendees ask questions, sometimes contentious questions (yeah, me, as usual), and officers are on-the-spot to respond.

I signed up for such a citizen’s academy by the Washington County, Oregon sheriff’s department. It’s 14 sessions, over more than two months – every Tuesday night, and also all day on three Saturdays. There are almost 30 people in the academy; by my estimation, about a third in my academy are young people wanting to be police officers, more than half are retired people interested in how the police work and who have lots of time on their hands, and the rest of us, probably just six or so people, are what I would characterize as people who want to learn more because of both or professional work and our personal politics: a mental health professional, an advocate for the mentally ill, an employee at a school, a counselor in training and… me! We’re more than halfway through the academy.

I’m taking the academy for two specific reasons: first, as a consultant and researcher regarding volunteer engagement and communications, I’m talking to organizations about community engagement. While these academies are not volunteer engagement, they are most certainly community engagement, and I wanted to see such a model up close, first hand, to see how it works and to think about ways the idea might be exported to other, non-law enforcement agencies and even overseas. I think this model of community engagement forces a level of transparency across an agency, something in which many programs are great need. It’s not something that could be instituted overnight – it would require a cultural change at most agencies to institute something like this. I also would like to see police departments in transitional countries in particular, with reputations for police corruption and abuses, instituting their own citizen academies, jail tours, job shadows and ridealongs, but I can’t advocate for that in my work overseas if I haven’t experienced it myself.

Secondly, I’m a human rights advocate, and when I look at what happened in Ferguson, Missouri in particular, I am outraged. And I think about, and sometimes see, police abuses worldwide – corruption in police departments, under the guise of fees, fines, and law enforcement (like forfeiture), happens in many places globally. Reflecting a theme I said in a blog earlier, I would love to see Black Lives Matter advocates and police reform advocates signing up for these citizen academies at police and sheriff’s departments across the USA, as well signing up for jail tours and job shadows and ride alongs with patrol officers – I think it could create more understanding and change for both the police and the community.

I am really enjoying this academy, but there are two things missing: first, there should have been a survey of participants at the very first session about their perceptions of both the sheriff’s department and police and jails in general. Then, at our last class, they should give us that survey again. It would be fascinating to see if perceptions are changed. Secondly, the problems with the sheriff’s department regarding its own officers and other staff, such as this, or this, or this, or this, or this, or this or this, or this – all happening in the last three years – have not been mentioned – just a comment about “We’ve taken a beating in the media.” We really should have heard from someone in charge of internal investigations and about efforts to create a culture of respect within the department for women, teens, immigrants, etc.

Presenters should also keep in mind that they are talking to a diverse group in terms of feelings about the police and government. For instance, a few people in the class have had incarcerated family members and others on the other side of the criminal justice system; jokes about people in the throes of a drug aren’t always appreciated by such. Presenters are certainly entitled to share their opinions – I really like knowing where they stand – but they might not want to assume the silence of some people in the room means agreement.

I’d also like to see a similar academy for officers and jail staff themselves, done by various nonprofit and government agencies that serve crime victims (and those frequently targeted by criminals), such as domestic violence shelters, mental health providers, rape counseling centers, nonprofits working with immigrants, etc., that serve those that have been arrested and incarcerated, such as nonprofits working with gang members, programs serving people with alcohol and drug abuse problems, etc., and those that are engaged in local human rights and racial justice issues  That would force a level of face-to-face detail and discussion and even debate that’s very much needed in many communities.

All that said – HUGE kudos to the Washington County, Oregon’s Sheriff’s Department for doing this academy. It’s very well done, it’s a model for other police departments looking to do something like this, I’ve really enjoyed it so far, I’m really looking forward to the rest of the presentations and experiences, and I highly recommend it.

In case you are wondering, yes, I did a ride along with a deputy. I went on a shift from 6 p.m. to 4 a.m. It was fascinating. I hope I wasn’t too annoying with my many, many questions.

Update April 10, 2016: The Oregonian today published a profile of the death in 2014 of an inmate in the Washington County jail.

Update August 10, 2016: The first known citizen’s police academy held in the USA was established in Orlando in 1985, according to a report from the Criminal Justice Institute. Last year, the International Association for Chiefs of Police listed such academies as an integral way to improve community relations. Establishing these courses was also named as an action item in the final report from the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing. The National Citizens Police Academy Association explains the importance of the courses on its website.

Also see this info and resources regarding police corruption in other countries:

Handbook on police accountability, oversight and integrity from United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime.

Policy Briefing Paper: Gender Sensitive Police Reform in Post Conflict Societies from United Nations Women.

Ukraine replaces entire police force to beat corruption

Corrupt Mexico Police Concentrated in 10 States

Bulgaria Launches Ambitious Plan to Curb Police Corruption

Nigeria Police Extortion: Buhari Warns Against Corruption In National Force

Lessons on effective, valuable online communities – from the 1990s

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I’ve been researching updates for my page A Brief Review of the Early History of Nonprofits and the Internet (before 1996). I started the page a few years ago because I worried that the pivotal role that nonprofits played in the early days of electronic networks is overlooked, and because so many people claiming to be starting something new regarding the Internet for nonprofits are really recycling and renaming ideas from decades ago. As I revisited resources I already knew about and found new ones, it reminded me yet again of how much great stuff was written even 25 years ago or more about the potential of the Internet for a force for good, and how much of the advice from then is still valid.

An example of what a FirstClass online community looked like.

An example of what a FirstClass Client online community looked like (I wish I could show you what CItyNet, or any of the Virtual Valley communities, or BMUG, looked like, but there doesn’t seem to be any screen captures of them online).

One of my favorite early resources is from 1993; written by Steve Cisler, then of Apple Computers, “Community Computer Networks: Building Electronic Greenbelts” notes that, “On a local level, thousands of electronic bulletin boards have been started by dedicated individual hobbyists, small business people, non-profits, corporations, federal agencies, other governments and educational institutions.” And Cisler noted the role of volunteers in creating and sustaining these online communities – and that means online volunteers. Back then, Free-nets and community networks were all 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.

In May 1994, Apple Inc. and the nonprofit Morino Institute held the Ties That Bind Conference on Building Community Networks, at Apple HQ in Cupertino, California. It was about the potential of communities online that “make a difference” and “drive positive, sustaining social change.” It defined such communities as everything from neighborhoods to dispersed people with something in common, like a health concern, or caregiving. At that 1994 Silicon Valley conference, the Morino Institute presented a document called Assessment and Evolution of Community Networking. The document opens with a letter published in the newsletter of the Cleveland chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association:

“Every time I do get on Free-Net, I need some kind of help, and when I leave I have truly received the help I need. … I want you to know that without Free-Net I would be lost. … I don’t worry, I am not afraid, I have Free-Net and my Computer Family of loving and caring friends.”

He’s talking about online volunteers – people caring for loved ones with Alzheimer’s and donating their time and knowledge to others online. Is this the earliest heartfelt statement on record by someone that has benefitted on an emotional and psychological level from the efforts of online volunteers? It’s the earliest I’ve found – though virtual volunteering is a practice as old as the Internet, which means it began in the 1970s. Regardless, the statement well represents the potential of virtual volunteering – a potential thousands of organizations and their clients have realized.

I also found this San Jose Mercury News article in 1995 noting the lack of public interest at the time regarding the Cupertino CityNet system allowing users to message their elected officials. An excerpt:

Let the record show that history was made, but few took note.

Cupertino this week became the first city in the nation to allow people to communicate with the city council from home via computer during meetings. The results: Five notes saying, “This is a great idea,” and another, in response to a comment jokingly made by Councilman John Bautista, informing the council that people who commute by bicycle do obey traffic signals.

Although just a handful of residents sent messages, city officials say they have great hopes for the future of interactive computer access to the city council.

Doesn’t sound promising, in the heart of Silicon Valley, for this Internet thing… and yet, less than three years after this article was published, I was directing the Virtual Volunteering Project and abandoning my idea of listing every nonprofit, community or government endeavor involving online volunteers because there were already way too many to count.

My search this time to update my page uncovered a resource I hadn’t seen before: Janice Morgan’s 1997 Master’s Thesis, “Community ties and a community network : Cupertino’s computer-mediated Citynet“. I had forgotten that many these networks were strongly associated with local newspapers, even sponsored by such, until I started reading Morgan’s paper. Media companies started abandoning their relationships with these networks around the time her paper was published. You have to wonder if newspapers could have remained relevant with new generations had they kept their involvement in these communities instead of walking away.

Back in the 1990s, in addition to CityNet and other bulletin boards, I was also heavily involved in USENET newsgroups. These were worldwide distributed discussions that weren’t “closed gardens” like Facebook or Twitter – you didn’t have to join a particular network and fill out lots of information about yourself in order to see messages and participate. They weren’t even based on the World Wide Web. Rather, you just used a free tool to access newsgroups, found a discussion in which you were interested and jumped in! The one I was most involved with was soc.org.nonprofit, which was for the discussion of nonprofit organizations. soc.org.nonprofit, a USENET newsgroup that was also available by email subscription (and called USNONPROFIT-L via email). I joined shortly after it was started in 1994 by Michael Chui, then of Indiana University. I made friends and colleagues on that community, and others, that I still have to this day, and my involvement lead to all of my employment for the rest of the 20th century – not even kidding.

The sense of fraternity I got from those city-based FirstClass bulletin boards and USENET back in the day is missing from most online communities today. As I revisited these documents, I was reminded of this yet again. Social media, with its extensive registration and user information demands, focus on profits and requirements that users have either the most advanced hardware and software, even a special app for each platform, has taken that away.

Also, Assessment and Evolution of Community Networking presents 10 suggestions as critical to transitioning community networks to “a higher role and significance.” The suggestions are things that so many online startups, nonprofit or for-profit, have, sadly, ignored. Among them:

We urge you to consider relevance. We suggest gaining a better understanding of the people and institutions to be served and of the institutions and services to be involved. Gain an understanding of what needs are going unmet — at home, in families, in the workplace, for the unemployed, in the government, social services, and so on. The well-worn cliche, “if you build it, they will come,” is ineffective relative to the needs of community.

That statement is as relevant now as it was in 1994, and NOT just for community networks. I wish every person who wrote me about their fabulous new idea for a start-up nonprofit that will somehow involve tech4good or digital volunteers would have that paragraph in mind as they pitch their idea to me.

If you have never looked at documents from the 80s or 90s about online communities and the promise of the Internet as a tool for building more awareness regarding various causes, improving citizen engagement and participation, helping nonprofits, and driving positive, sustaining social change, you really should: you will be amazed at how early people were seeing the potential of the Internet for good, and how much we have yet to realize.

vvbooklittleAnd, as always, as I read these articles, research and case studies from years past, it all yet again confirms what Susan Ellis and I promote in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, and what I see being promoted many years later by the very latest digital engagement initiatives and “hot” new technologies meant to help people volunteer, advocate for causes they care about, connect with communities and make a difference. Tools come and go – but certain community engagement principles never change.

Also, if you interested in starting an online community for a neighborhood, town, city, county, school, or other small, defined region, one that’s meant to promote civility, promote civil society and build understanding, please see this resource to help you.

Updated: research regarding virtual volunteering

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For the first time in a year, I’ve updated, on the virtual volunteering wiki, a compilation of research and evaluation reports regarding virtual volunteering, including studies on the various different activities that are a part of online volunteering such as online activism, online civic engagement, online mentoring, microvolunteering, or crowd-sourcing, etc. These are not opinion or PR pieces – these provide hard data, case studies, etc.

When I first started researching virtual volunteering, back in the 1990s, there were no academic studies of virtual volunteering, that I could find. Now, it’s becoming a robust field of study. However, note that many research articles and case studies I have identified don’t use phrases like virtual volunteering, or even volunteers – they talk about unpaid online moderators, or social media activists, and other phrases. It can make researching research about working with online volunteers difficult! If you have any additions for this list, at any time, please feel free to submit in the comments.

Note that not all articles I’ve listed have links – many of the research papers are behind paywalls. If you want access, university libraries and large public libraries might be able to help you, but you will have to go onsite for access.or research date order.

vvbooklittleMy take away as I read these academic articles and case studies: so much of what they say confirms what Susan Ellis and I promote in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook.

Measuring the Impact of Volunteers: book announcement

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Want to make me cranky? Suggest that the best way to measure volunteer engagement is to count how many volunteers have been involved in a set period, how many hours they’ve given, and a monetary value for those hours. Such thinking manifests itself in statements like this, taken from a nonprofit in Oregon:

Volunteers play a huge role in everything we do. In 2010, 870 volunteers contributed 10,824 hours of service, the equivalent of 5.5 additional full-time employees!

Yes, that’s right: this nonprofit is proud to say that volunteer engagement allowed this organization to keep 5.5 people from being employed!

Another cringe-worthy statement about the value of volunteers – yes, someone really said this, although I’ve edited a few words to hide their identity:

[[Organization-name-redacted]] volunteers in [[name-of-city redacted]] put in $700,000 worth of free man hours last year… It means each of its 7,000 volunteers here contributed about $100 – the amount their time would have been worth had they been paid.

I have a web page talking about the dire consequences of this kind of thinking, as well as a range of blogs, listed at the end of this one. That same web page talks about much better ways to talk about the value of volunteers – but it really takes more than a web page to explain how an organization can measure the true value of volunteers.

9780940576728_FRONTcover copyThat’s why I was very happy to get an alert from Energize, Inc. about a new book, Measuring the Impact of Volunteers: A Balanced and Strategic Approach, by ChristineBurych, Alison Caird, Joanne Fine Schwebel, Michael Fliess and Heather Hardie. This book is an in-depth planning tool, evaluation tool and reporting tool. How refreshing to see volunteer value talked about in-depth – not just as an add-on to yet another book on volunteer management. But the book’s importance goes even further: the book will not only be helpful to the person responsible for volunteer engagement at an organization; the book will also push senior management to look at volunteer engagement as much, much more than “free labor” (which it isn’t, of course). Marketing managers need to read this book. The Executive Director needs to read this book. Program managers need to read this book. The book is yet another justification for thinking of the person responsible for the volunteer engagement program at any agency as a volunteerism specialist – a person that needs ongoing training and support (including MONEY) to do her (or his) job. This book shows why the position – whether it’s called volunteer manager, community engagement director, coordinator of volunteers, whatever – is essential, not just nice, and why that person needs to be at the senior management table.

I really hope this book will also push the Independent Sector, the United Nations, other organizations and other consultants to, at last, abandon their push of a dollar value as the best measurement of volunteer engagement.

For more on the subject of the value of volunteer or community engagement, here are my blogs on the subject (yeah, it’s a big deal with me):

Firsts… or almost

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logoI didn’t invent virtual volunteering. I started involving online volunteers in 1995, and did a workshop that same year about it for what was then the Nonprofit Center of San Francisco (now Compasspoint), but I didn’t know it was called virtual volunteering, a term coined by Steve Glikbarg at what was then Impact Online (now VolunteerMatch), until more than a year later. I know, and frequently remind people, that online volunteers have been providing services to various causes since the Internet was invented, long before I got online in the 90s. But I was the first to try to identify elements of successful engagement of online volunteers, via the Virtual Volunteering Project, I think I was the first to do a workshop on the subject, even if I didn’t call it that, and I’m very proud of that.

I didn’t write the first paper on using handheld computer tech as a part of humanitarian, environmental or advocacy efforts – I wrote the second. At least I think it was second. It was published in October 2001 as a series of web pages when I worked at the UN, at a time when handheld tech was called personal digital assistants, or PDAs. People are shocked that the predecessor to the smartphone and cellphone was used to help address a variety of community, environmental and social issues before the turn of the century, that apps4good isn’t all that novel of an idea.

And I probably didn’t write the first papers on fan-based communities that come together because of a love of a particular movie, TV show, comic, actor, book or genre and, amid their socializing, also engage in volunteering. Those kinds of communities played a huge role in my learning how to communicate online with various age groups and people of very different backgrounds, which in turn greatly influenced how I worked with online volunteers. In fact, I can still see some influences of that experience in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. But I stopped researching them in 1999. So I was quite thrilled to recently to find this paper, “The media festival volunteer: Connecting online and on-ground fan labor,” in my research to update a page on the Virtual Volunteering wiki that tracks research that’s been done regarding virtual volunteering. It’s a 2014 paper by Robert Moses Peaslee, Jessica El-Khoury, and Ashley Liles, and uses data gathered at Fantastic Fest in Austin, Texas, in September 2012. It is published on Transformative Works and Cultures, an online journal launched in 2009 that looks at various aspects of fan fiction (fan-created fiction inspired by their favorite movies, TV shows and books), comic book fandom, movie fandom, video game fandom, comic and fan conventions, and more.

It’s nice being a pioneer… though I don’t think my early contributions are much to brag about. But I do enjoy seeing things I thought were interesting back in the 90s finally getting the attention they deserve.

Also see

Early History of Nonprofits & the Internet.

Apps4Good movement is more than 15 years old

vvbooklittleThe Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, a book decades in the making, by Susan J. Ellis and myself. Tools come and go, but certain community engagement principles never change, and our book can be used with the very latest digital engagement initiatives and “hot” new technologies meant to help people volunteer, advocate for causes they care about, connect with communities and make a difference.

Fewer Pilots, More Scale: Making Digital Development Work

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Back in September 2014, I starting whining about the lack of anything sustainable coming from most of the hackathons / hacks4good / apps4good I was seeing popping up all over in support of nonprofit organizations, government initiatives and various communities, in the USA and abroad. My whining culminated in this blog, where are the evaluations of hacksforgood / appsforgood?

I’m so pleased to see this outstanding blog (IMO) by Ann Mei Chang, Executive Director at U.S. Global Development Lab at USAID, which says, in part:

“despite the potential impact, distorted incentives encourage one-off, flashy pilots (many sourced through hackathons, contests, and PR opportunities), undermining the potential for sustainable and scalable digital solutions. In fact, the proliferation of duplicative and uncoordinated mobile health applications caused an overwhelmed Uganda Ministry of Health to call a moratorium on further efforts in 2012, to ensure a focus on interoperable and sustainable systems… (in developing countries, there is) a lack of relevant platforms and infrastructure (that) means that developers end up spending the vast majority of their time rebuilding similar components from scratch, ending up with less time and money to truly innovate. Too much time and effort is wasted on duplicative work like beneficiary registration and tracking, negotiating and integrating with mobile operators, and promotion and distribution. The result is one-off systems that are fragile, unintegrated, not designed to scale, and unsustainable.

“This cannot continue. The development community needs to invest in reusable systems and the collaboration necessary to build and use these systems. This will mean smarter solutions designed for scale and sustainability.”

Right on, Ann Mei Chang & USAID!

In addition, Ben Ramalingam’s recent Institute of Development Studies blog points out that responsible digital development must also consider the risks of unintended consequences, exaggerating existing inequities, security, and repression.

USAID helped draft the Principles for Digital Development, a set of best practices for building technology-enabled programs, starting with the user. The Principles have been endorsed by over 50 development organizations, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Sida, UNICEF, WFP, and USAID. In February, USAID launched a report based on conversations with donors, implementing partners, and development practitioners to better understand how the Principles work in real-world contexts and how we can best integrate them into our organizations.

Also see:

Volunteers are more important than social media in Presidential elections

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Please see the end of this blog for an update nine months later.

graphic by Jayne Cravens representing volunteersLast night, the public radio show Marketplace here in the USA did an excellent story about the vital role volunteers play in a successful Presidential campaign. Social media is great, but the reality is that it’s old-fashioned volunteer engagement – people calling neighbors to get out the vote, driving neighbors to the polls, etc. – that wins elections. The story is available for free online, and if you are outside the USA and can’t access it, just download Hotspot Shield – you’ll be able to using that.

My favorite points from the article:

“It takes $670,000 dollars in ad buys in a general election to get the same number of estimated votes as you would by opening a field office which is about $21,000 dollars to maintain throughout an election season.” — Joshua Darr, assistant professor of political communication at Louisiana State University, quoted in the article.

“Donald Trump’s performance in Iowa has widely been blamed on his lack of volunteer organizing. ”

“Networks of lawn-trodding volunteers aren’t something you can just whip up overnight, and the people who build these networks are not a dime a dozen.”

I’m THRILLED with this story. It touches on so many things I promote in my work: that highly-skilled managers of volunteers, fully supported and funded, are required for effective volunteer engagement, that volunteers are not free, and that, sometimes, volunteers are the BEST people to do a task.

For the record, I knew President Obama was going to win re-election, despite what the polls were saying, because his campaign was getting new volunteers, and keeping volunteers, all over the country, right up to election day, while Romney’s campaign was closing offices many weeks before. And when I volunteer for political campaigns, I always rewrite the script I’m given, so that the first thing I always say is, “Hi, I’m Jayne Cravens, and I’m a volunteer with the such-and-such campaign,” because I know the person on the other end is much more likely to listen to me knowing I’m a volunteer, not a paid staffer.

And note: volunteer engagement might be cheaper than national news spots, but it still costs money. I know a lot of managers of volunteers that would love $21,000 for their volunteer engagement… and with that said, be sure to sign this petition at Change.org that calls on Congress to provide funding for the effective management of the volunteers it is requiring public lands, including National Forests, to involve.

vvbooklittleSuch a shame people managing presidential campaigns, senate campaigns, congressional campaigns, grassroots campaigns – whatever the campaign – aren’t buying The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook in bulk! Tools come and go, but certain community engagement principles never change, and our book can be used with the very latest digital engagement initiatives and “hot” new technologies meant to help people volunteer, advocate for causes they care about, connect with communities and make a difference.

— end original blog —

November 28, 2016 update:

I was wrong. This election was not won by volunteers nor by volunteer management. As my November 28 blog details, social media DID win this election. It proved an ideal vehicle for promoting misinformation. As I noted in my last blog, BuzzFeed reported that fake news stories about the USA Presidential election this year generated more engagement on Facebook than the top election stories from 19 major news outlets COMBINED – that included major news outlets such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, and NBC News, and on and on. And the majority of these fake news stories did NOT come from any campaign operatives; rather, they came from a man in Los Angeles who originally built fake news sites to as a way to expose the extreme right, a plan that most certainly did NOT work. And these fake stories, most of which promoted Trump as a candidate, were shared by millions of people via social media – people who believed them, and most of whom never signed up to be an official Trump campaign volunteer. See my November 28 blog for more details. A blog in December offers even more details on how volunteers were engaged, officially and unofficially, in this campaign, and how a well-managed, vast army of volunteers did NOT win this election.

Volunteers broke Flint water story

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It was VOLUNTEERS – unpaid people donating their time and expertise – that conducted the long-distance, independent sampling of Flint’s water and releasing findings that forced the government, the media, and the world to pay attention. That’s what unpaid “citizen scientists” are: volunteers. These 25 volunteers—four undergrads, 11 graduate students, seven post-docs and three faculty members—united “to help resolve scientific uncertainties associated with drinking water issues being reported in the City of Flint, Michigan.”

Local groups like WaterYouFightingFor and the Michigan ACLU (among others) also mobilized volunteers, helping local Flint citizens – as volunteers – to collect water samples.

THIS is the value of volunteers – not money saved, not paid staff replaced, but rather, a job done BETTER because it was done by unpaid people. Would the Independent Sector or UN Volunteers or the Corporation for National Service try to put a dollar value on this volunteer time donated in order to show the value of this volunteering?!

There is a GoFundMe page up for this volunteer team of scientists and students operating out of Virginia Tech, to help them cover the costs, paid out of their own pockets, for this work. The group goes by the name FlintWaterStudy and formed in August 2015.

More via The Nonprofit Quarterly.

Also see:

Make volunteering transformative, not about # of hours

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Images, in the style of petroglyphs, of people doing various activities, like writing or construction.

Online Q & A sites, like Quora and Yahoo Answers, are packed with young people asking “how many volunteering hours should I have to get into a great university?”

It’s a question that makes me want to cry. In my answer to these questions, I try to explain that number of volunteering hours means nothing to university admission boards or scholarship committees, that, instead, such volunteering should be about engaging in activities that demonstrate your skills in problem-solving, research, networking, persuasive speaking and consensus-building, and that in talking about such, you should emphasize what you learned, challenges you faced, what it was like to work with people different from yourself, etc. – not number of hours completed. I say so as best I can on my web page about Ideas for Leadership Volunteering Activities.

But Richard Weissbourd on the PBS News Hour this week said it better than I can. Weissbourd is a senior lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and the lead author of a new report that calls on colleges to lower the pressure on students to impress admissions committees by racking up achievements and accolades. On the PBS News Hour, he said the goal of volunteering by young people should be “meaningful ethical engagement. It’s being involved in your community, concern for others, concern for the greater good, for the public good… it’s not about doing a brief stint overseas. It is about doing something meaningful, doing something in a diverse group, doing it for a year, nine months to a year, doing it for a sustained period of time. And the chances are greater that you’re going to get something out of that kind of experience, and you’re going to be able to describe in the application in a way that’s meaningful and expresses what was meaningful about it to you.”

Video and full transcript here.

I cheered and clapped. And my dog got scared and ran into her crate. Ooops.

Now, if I could just get the Corporation for National Service, the Points of Light Foundation, the Independent Sector, and others to stop valuing volunteers by number of hours given and a dollar value for those hours…

Also see:

EU Aid Volunteers on track to include virtual volunteering

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eu aid volunteersTwo years ago, I had the pleasure of being hired to put together the online volunteering strategy for the European Union Aid Volunteers initiative. I provided:

  • Background on virtual volunteering – what it means in the EU context, what basic best practices have long been established, etc.
  • Details on the infrastructure and capacity that will be needed by host organizations and online volunteers in the EU Aid Volunteers initiative in order to participate, including policies and procedures and how to address issues around confidentiality and safety
  • Possibilities for how online volunteering in support of the EU Aid Volunteers initiative might look, in terms of applications, screening, assignment creation, volunteer matching and supporting
  • How to integrate returned volunteer alumni networks and peer-to-peer online mentoring into the scheme
  • How to evaluate the online volunteering component of the EU Aid Volunteers initiative
  • How the contributions of online volunteers might be recognized
  • Recruitment of online volunteers to support EU Aid Volunteers and volunteer sending organizations
  • How to address potential risks and challenges, like protection of personal data, protection of confidential data of organizations, fear of negative behavior online, lack of understanding of and support for volunteer management among some agencies, labour concerns that can arise with volunteer engagement, and what to call online volunteers that support the EU Aid Volunteer initiative.

What I loved most about this assignment is that it combined both my background in international aid and development and my background regarding volunteer engagement, particularly virtual volunteering. I don’t often get to combine them!

For the last two years, I’ve checked in regularly on the EU Aid Volunteers web page, managed by the EU Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department (ECHO), to see how things are coming along with this initiative, particularly with regard to virtual volunteering.
eu aid volunteersAt long last, I saw this (at left) as part of the FAQ about the initiative on the EU Aid Volunteers web page .

Hurrah! I’m thrilled to see this. Virtual volunteering is coming! I don’t know when, and I don’t know exactly what it will look like – I made recommendations, but ECHO is under no obligation to undertake them, of course. But, it’s coming!

I have EU Aid Volunteers in a Google Alert, and I also follow @eu_echo on Twitter, to keep up-to-date on this initiative, in case you are interested in doing so as well.