Category Archives: Community / Volunteer Engagement

the challenge of spontaneous volunteers

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Last week, on Wednesday, a tornado struck in Mississippi, killing 10 people and destroying or damaging hundreds of homes. It struck at night. While watching live coverage on MSNBC, at a news conference held just hours after the tornado in Mississippi, I heard Kenny Holbrook, Fire Chief in Holly Springs, said this, in response to a question about the biggest problem police and fire staff faced during and after the tornado:

The biggest problem we had was spontaneous responders – if you can use that word, spontaneous responders. They just came. And understand that, you know, in an emergency situation like this, everyone wants to help, but this morning, like I say, as of last night, people that were not a member of the law enforcement, EMS, or fire community, we withheld sending them out doing the emergency work. Now that that is finished, we can utilize a lot of this help in the private sector. We can’t assume the responsibility. We don’t know what training people have. So that’s been the probably the hardest part of managing: hundreds of people that you have never met until that moment. 

What Mr. Holbrook is saying is that spontaneous volunteers – people that neither he nor other emergency responders knew, people had no affiliation with any official government agency – showed up at and called police stations and fire stations in the minutes and hours following the tornadoes, wanting to help, in overwhelming numbers, which meant an enormous amount of time had to be spent explaining to those volunteers why they could NOT be involved yet, why they would have to wait hours, even days, to get to be involved – and even then, they might not be able to be involved ever.

It’s a fascinating problem to have: during and after a crisis, there is a deluge of people wanting to help. It may not really sound like a problem, but it is: dealing with these people can take trained people away from actually responding to disaster, as illustrated above. People who have experienced a disaster are especially vulnerable, and need people interacting with them that are trained in disaster response and have been properly screened. Spontaneous volunteers, with no training, can actually cause MORE problems after a disaster than they help: engaging in inappropriate or unsafe activities, providing inaccurate information to survivors and the press, exploiting victims, stealing from damaged or abandoned homes or vehicles, and more.

If your organization responds to disasters in some way, consider recruiting and training volunteers who, after a disaster, will do nothing but deal with people that want to volunteer or donate items in the hours immediately after a disaster. There are people (like me!) who would be happy to go through training NOW in order to be at, say, a fire station within minutes of a crisis and have one job: dealing with any individuals or groups who call or drop by and say, “We’re ready to volunteer!” or “We’ve got a truck load of clothes for the survivors!” Those volunteers can capture names, phone numbers, and services or items offered, can explain why the individual or groups should NOT come to the area at that time, and can explain where to find updated information online (a web site, a Twitter account, etc.) specifically for volunteers and in-kind donations. Also, I’ve blogged about the many things spontaneous online volunteers can do after disasters – not just nice things for online volunteers to do, but critical services that might not be able to be done otherwise.

Fire stations, police stations, animal shelters, schools, other agencies that deal with disasters: plan now for how you are going to deal with spontaneous volunteers! These FREE resources from a variety of agencies can help:

Managing Spontaneous Volunteers in Times of Disaster: The Synergy of Structure and Good Intentions – a free online publication from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Preventing a Disaster within the Disaster – Effective Use & Management of Unaffiliated Volunteers – manual from a training for National Service participants and program directors by the Corporation for National and Community Service and the Points of Light Foundation & Volunteer Center National Network.

Guide to Managing Spontaneous Unaffiliated Volunteers – from the Western Massachusetts Medical Reserve Corps, for its local affiliates.

Spontaneous Volunteer Management Resource Kit – from the Australian Government Department of Social Services.

OPB & Congress Think Volunteers are Free

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It’s bad enough that more than 30 miles of dirt trails and primitive roads in Deschutes National Forest in Oregon were deliberately wrecked in 2014 by unsupervised volunteers who were supposed to be doing necessary, environmentally-appropriate trail maintenance, causing more than $200,000 in damage and who, according to this story on OPB News, are still being allowed to do trail maintenance.

But the comments in the OPB story by politicians and others about the role of volunteers has my blood boiling, not to mention that OPB did not call any volunteer management experts, such as those that are a part of the Northwest Oregon Volunteer Administrators Association , to find an Oregon-based professional manager of volunteers to talk to, to find out about the vast amount of volunteer management resources and expertise that could help make things better and about the very high standards of various volunteer engagement programs. Or call Susan Ellis, the world’s foremost trainer and publisher regarding the management and support of volunteers. Or ME, right here in Oregon and registered on the OPB Public Insight Network to offer commentary regarding volunteer engagement!

The National Forest System Trails Stewardship Act, sponsored by Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyoming, has been proposed recently in the USA Congress. It would strongly encourage government agencies to increase volunteer involvement in trail maintenance, but it doesn’t include funding for agency oversight of volunteers – it doesn’t include any money for volunteer management, for recruiting volunteers, screening them, supervising them, etc. Why does it lack such funding? Well, U.S. Rep. Greg Walden, R-Oregon, a co-sponsor of the act, in his comment to OPB, shows exactly why:

“We don’t have the resources at the federal level to maintain these trails. And yet there’s a group of volunteers out there willing to do the work.”

Could you hear the unspoken “for free” at the end of Walden’s sentence? I could! In short: We have all this work to do. Let’s get some people to work for free to do it. That is a great summation of the National Forest System Trails Stewardship Act. And as any seasoned manager of volunteers or trainer knows, that’s a JOKE we frequently tell at conferences and workshops when trying to show what bad volunteer management looks like. Because NO ONE volunteers for that reason, and because of the implication that volunteers are free – and we know volunteers are NEVER free. Someone has to pay for the volunteers to be appropriately recruited, screened, trained, supervised and supported – otherwise, you end up with tragic consequences similar to what happened in Deschutes National Forest- or worse.

That’s the crux of all these stories from OPB about what happened in Oregon and about this pending bill: volunteers save money! That’s why they are involved!

Here’s a proposal for those managing public lands, and something OPB should consider in future stories about any volunteer engagement, good or bad, at any agency: maybe volunteers are actually the best people to undertake certain activities, like running campgrounds, teaching about Leave No Trace principles and staffing the front desks of ranger stations, not because they are unpaid, but because such involvement allows members of the public to experience first-hand how public lands are administered and how to support the public in experiencing them. Or because of the particular passion or approach volunteers bring to the task that paid employees might not. Or because members of the public might like interacting with a volunteer, rather than someone paid to be there. Or because volunteer involvement is per an organization’s commitment to create opportunities for the community to participate in the org’s work and offer feedback that isn’t financially-based (they aren’t being paid) and endorse the importance of public lands through their investment of time. Say volunteer involvement is part of an organization’s commitment to both transparency and in creating opportunities for community investment in its work. Involve volunteers because it allows people to be involved in the administration and enjoyment of public lands without having to give up whatever they do professionally. Those are reasons that INSPIRE people to volunteer – not, “we have all this work to do, please come do it.”

Emphasizing the money saved in involving unpaid staff also tends to create hostilities with paid staff, who are often angry at the idea of volunteers being involved in order to eliminate paid positions (and they SHOULD be angry at such comments!). The links at the end of this blog explore this and other dangers in emphasizing that the primary reason to involve volunteers is because they aren’t paid.

Instead, organizations that administer public lands should create a mission statement for your volunteer engagement that has NOTHING to do with saving money. And learn to talk about the value of volunteer engagement. Spoiler alert: it doesn’t involve dollar figures.

Oh, but wait, there’s more…. there’s the comments in the story from Andy Stahl, executive director of Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics, a national watchdog organization. First up from him:

“Relying on volunteers, as well-intentioned as they are, doesn’t always yield good results.”

The implication, of course, is that volunteers are unreliable, can’t be trusted, are incompetent, etc., and that paychecks are magical and make people better workers – thus, only paid employees can do such work properly! Here’s what the quote SHOULD say, to be accurate:

Relying on untrained, unsupervised volunteers, as well-intentioned as they are, doesn’t always yield good results.

And we could substitute the phrase “paid employees” for “volunteers,” and the new sentence would be accurate as well.

Mr. Stahl also made my head explode with his outrageous statement:

“it would be nice if we could hold volunteers to high standards, for even acceptable ones, but you get what you pay for.”

What an insult to every volunteer firefighter, every volunteer emergency rescue person, every Peace Corps member, and every other volunteer out there that goes through hours and hours and hours of training, over many weeks, even months, often right alongside professionals, to master the skills necessary to do their very serious, even dangerous work. These volunteers are held to high standards – and volunteers who can’t meet those standards are FIRED. They are removed from service, just like a paid employee. That loud “bam” you heard if you were listening to the OPB story in Oregon? It was me, hitting the table in front of me out of outrage over this shameful, insulting statement. My dog is still terrified of me over that.

Kevin Larkin, district ranger for the Bend-Fort Rock Ranger District in the Deschutes National Forest, had to learn of the vital importance of the basics of volunteer management the hard way. He says now, “It’s not as simple as welcoming a volunteer through the door, handing that person a shovel and saying, ‘Go do good work. There’s direction, guidance and attention that’s needed.”

Oh, Mr. Larkin, there are vasts amounts of resources that could have helped you manage and support these volunteers right from the get go. Some resources are free. Many aren’t, but they cost much, much less than $200,000. I wish you had known about them, and I wish you had the funding to tap into them – the books, the workshops, the conferences… even university-level certificate programs on managing volunteers.

Congress must realize volunteers aren’t free, and that there will be financial costs in involving volunteers in trail maintenance on US public lands – and that they are going to have to fund those costs. Otherwise, we’re going to have much bigger bills in terms of trail damage – and worse. I’ve created this petition at Change.org, calling on the bill’s co-sponsors to amend the act so that it provides the resources necessary for this increased volunteer engagement on public lands to be successful. If you are in the USA, or you are a USA citizen abroad, please read over the petition, consider signing it, and share it with your network!

And OPB: next time you are doing a story about volunteers, please call me, or the Northwest Oregon Volunteer Administrators Association, to find a volunteerism expert to comment on your story, give you guidance, etc.

Also see Volunteers trying to help on their own, a blog about how DIY “trail improvements” by unsanctioned, unsupervised volunteers are causing serious damage to a nature preserve, and what to do if you discover that an official volunteer of your organization is doing activities in the name of your organization but outside of the approval of your program.

For more on the subject of the value of volunteer or community engagement:

UNV announces Online Volunteering Award 2015

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UNLogoToday – 30 November 2015 – the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) program announced winners of the UNV Online Volunteering Award 2015, celebrating both volunteers and volunteer hosting organizations on the UN’s Online Volunteering Service, and launched a global voting campaign for the public’s favorite, to be announced on December 5.

Profiles of the five organizations chosen for the award, and their online volunteers, are here (and this is where you vote as well). The organizations are Association des Agriculteurs Professionels du Cameroun (AGRIPO), Fundación de Comunidades Vulnerables de Colombia (FUNCOVULC), Hunger Reduction International, Seeds Performing Arts Theatre Group in Papua New Guinea, and a digital media campaign run by UN Women. Each effort also has a tag regarding which sustainable development goals it supports.

If you know me, then you know which one of the winners immediately jumped out at me and what I voted for: Seeds Performing Arts Theatre Group in Papua New Guinea. The group uses live theatre performance to raise awareness on issues affecting the local rural population, including violence against women, and to inspire and implement social change. Seeds teamed up with a group of online volunteers via the UN’s Online Volunteering service to develop a screenplay for a video about the specific gender-based violence associated with witch hunting. The traditional belief in sorcery is used to justify violence against women in Papua New Guinea, and inhumane treatment of innocent women accused of sorcery is common in rural parts of the island as sorcery is thought to account for unexplained deaths or misfortunes in a family or village.

After voting, you are encouraged to copy the following message to your profile on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn or whatever social media channel you use:

Just voted for my favourite Online #VolunteeringAward winner. You can, too! https://goo.gl/CTGVfS #ActionCounts #GlobalGoals” and encourage others to recognize the true value and worth of online volunteers!

In 2014, according to UNV, more than 11,000 online volunteers undertook more than 17,000 online volunteering assignments through the service, and 60 percent of these online volunteers come from developing countries. I had the pleasure of directing the service at UNV for four years, from February 2001 to February 2014, successfully moving the platform from NetAid to UNV entirely, engaging in various activities that made the service the first link when searching the term online volunteering on Google (I also made it #1 when searching the term virtual volunteering, but that’s no longer true), vastly increasing the number of online opportunities available for organizations on the platform and authoring materials to support organizations engaging online volunteers that are still used by UNV. I still promote the site to any organizations working in or for regions in the developing world as the best way to recruit online volunteers.

Also see:

The Virtual Volunteering Wiki

The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook

My research on Theater as a Tool for Development/Theatre as a Tool for Development

Things I learned in Kentucky last month

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This week, I’m blogging and launching new web resources based on my experience in October as the Duvall Leader in Residence at the University of Kentucky’s Center for Leadership Development (CFLD), part of UK’s College of Agriculture, Food and Environment.

Monday, I blogged about one of my workshops regarding Democratizing Engagement. Specifically: has the Internet democratized community, even political, engagement. Yesterday, I launched a new web page about online leadership.

Today’s topic: things I learned while in this program, as well as before, during and after presenting in my hometown in Henderson, Kentucky for the Kentucky Network for Development, Leadership and Engagement (Kyndle), serving Henderson, McLean, Union and Webster counties in northwestern Kentucky:

  • People under 30 love Instagram. When I asked University of Kentucky students, and a small group of high school students, what they were using, they said Twitter and Instagram more than anything else. Snapchat also was always mentioned, though not as widely used. Periscope got mentioned a few times as well. Facebook is long gone as a regularly-used tool by the students I addressed.
  • Different communities, neighborhoods and cultures use vastly different online communications tools: I thought Topix, an online forum founded in 2002, was long gone, like Cupertino’s first official online community for its citizens, built on FirstClass. But, no – Topix still very popular in some communities, probably because of the ease of anonymity in participating in its online discussions/debates.
  • I’m not the only one that thinks nonprofits are using social media too much as an old-fashioned advertising tool and not nearly enough as an engagement tool – this article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy came out on the Friday I left Lexington. It is amazing to me that I’m still talking about this – something that I first read about back in the 1990s via the Cluetrain Manifesto.
  • Twitter remains so much better than Facebook when it comes to promotion and networking and engagement. I tweeted a lot, and was almost always retweeted or “liked”, and got lots of replies. By contrast, Facebook resulted in few “likes” – and maybe two comments.
  • Email is still a killer app. An email about one of my evening workshops, sent to various student organizations by a student energized by one of my earlier workshops, resulted in probably twice as many people as expected attending that evening event. In addition, my appointment for this residency was because of an email I sent to faculty at the CFLD last year about The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook and my ties to Kentucky.
  • People under 30 are volunteering, they are passionate about various causes (particularly the environment), and they want to volunteer even more! And they do not see their community service and political activism as merely getting tasks done: they see it as building community, as career exploration, as career preparation, and as fun. And they will stuff envelopes if you tell them why that really, really matters… and give them pizza.
  • A lot of people over 30 have given up on using social media, because they have no idea how to control the onslaught of content that came their way – they felt flooded with useless information, rants and hurtful comments, so they stopped signing on. Facebook in particular makes it oh-so-difficult to figure out how to put different friends on different lists, to hide people without unfriending them, to prevent certain friends from seeing a status update, to unlike pages, etc.
  • GooglePlus just doesn’t get talked about… except by me, who still finds it valuable…
  • If I didn’t attempt to use humor in my workshops, I might offend fewer people, but wow, I, and my audiences, would die of boredom.
  • Lexington, Kentucky is a jewel of a city, and my hometown of Henderson is infinitely more fun than it was when I was growing up there.

That’s what I learned. I wish I had thought to survey the students while I was there – I could have found out even more. They were a gold mine of information. I also talked to faculty and nonprofit staff from different organizations, and they were all lovely and interesting and fun – but I cannot lie: the students were my favorite audience.

University of Kentucky Duvall followup

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logos for u of kentucky programsThe last week in October, I was the Fall 2015 Duvall Leader in Residence at the University of Kentucky’s Center for Leadership Development (CFLD), part of UK’s College of Agriculture,Food and Environment, in Lexington. CFLD supports leadership related activities within the UK College of Agriculture, the University of Kentucky campus, the local Lexington community and counties statewide. My visit was sponsored by the W. Norris Duvall Leadership Endowment Fund and the CFLD, and focused on leadership development and community development and engagement as both relate to the use of online media.

It was a fantastic experience! I just can’t say enough about how well the residency was put together, how well my time was utilized. My time and knowledge were fully exploited – exactly as it should be! Thanks, Lissa and Dakota!

Here is a list of topics for all the workshops and consultations I created and delivered for such:

I cover all of these topics throughout my web site and in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, but I will be blogging in detail about a few of the aforementioned individual topics in the coming weeks, because there’s more to say – particularly “Democratizing engagement: leading in a virtual world,” which proved to be a fascinating project and discussion. 

1028151154This consultancy got off to a rocky start, so I’m very glad it ended up working out so very well. My favorite part was getting to talk with the university students: they ask fantastic questions, they make me think, and they are so fearless when it comes to just about everything (except asking questions in class). AND THEY USE SOCIAL MEDIA: they were tweeting about what I was doing, replying to things I was posting, inviting people to later workshops – loved it! I want to give a shoutout to the University of Kentucky football team in particularly, as two of its players provided some key input in three of my classes that really helped move things along – and as one of those players went on to score a touchdown a few days later against Tennessee, perhaps I should be brought in to address the entire team?

They say that, to be a great at a sport, you have to “leave it all on the court” or “all on the field.” I tried to do the consultancy version of that in Kentucky last month. Proud of my work but, wow, I’m still exhausted!

Here are some more photos from this fantastic experience.

And I’ll say it again: oh how I dream to teach an entire university course (or two!)

Using volunteerism to build clients’ skills

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graphic by Jayne Cravens representing volunteersPerhaps your organization has volunteers that help your employees or that help clients. But have you thought about volunteer engagement as a central part of your initiative’s program delivery? Have you thought about your clients in volunteering activities, as volunteers themselves, as a way to meet your organization’s mission?

Here’s an example: Adelante Mujeres is a nonprofit in Western Washington County, Oregon, about 30 minutes west of Portland. It provides education and empowerment opportunities to low-income Latina women and their families, in order to ensure their full participation and active leadership in the community. Its Chicas Youth Development works with more than 400 Latina students, grades three through 12, with the goal of instilling the importance of community leadership and civic engagement, and cultivating their skills for school, for future studies, for careers, and for life. The students, as volunteers, provide tech help at public libraries, pick up trash, plant trees and engage in other activities around the area. The participants in this program are role models for younger girls in the community, encouraging those younger girls to become volunteers, and leaders, themselves. The Chicas program has been selected as a 2015 Oregon Governor’s Volunteer Award Winner.

Here’s a theoretical example: a nonprofit serving people who are homeless could invite those clients to volunteer with the organization, or could work to help them volunteer at other organizations, so that they can build their skills, accomplish things that can be put on a résumé, and meet people that could be potential references for jobs.

Here’s anoter: a nonprofit that helps combat veterans re-integrate into society could help organize group volunteering activities so these clients can engage in a social activity together and have a positive result at the end of the day.

Too often, volunteerism is talked about only as something to supplement the work of paid staff, or as outsiders helping clients. By contrast, this other type of volunteering is integrated into a nonprofit’s program, into its mission-based activities. Volunteering is offered as an activity for clients to undertake themselves, as a part of accomplishing whatever it is a nonprofit wants to accomplish.

Congrats to Adelante Mujeres for this recognition of its outstanding program. And if you have other examples, please share them in the comments!

Also see

List of resources related to volunteering as a contributor to employability, compiled as a part of Internet-mediated volunteering – the impact for Europe, a paper and wiki I researched and compiled as part of the The ICT4EMPL Future Work project, a European Union initiative that aimed to inform policy of new forms of work and pathways to employability mediated by ICTs. The overall ICT4EMPL project produced a series of reports on the state of play of novel forms of internet-mediated work activity: crowd-sourced labour, crowdfunding, internet-mediated volunteering and internet-mediated work exchange (timebanks and complementary currency).

Ideas for Leadership Volunteering Activities – A long list of ideas to create or lead a sustainable, lasting benefit to a community, recruiting others to help and to have a leadership role as a volunteer. These can also be activities for a Capstone project, the Girl Scouts Gold Award, the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award (U.K.), a mitzvah project, or even scholarship consideration.

Volunteering in pursuit of a medical, veterinary or social work degree / career – a guide to volunteering activities that will help build your skills and give you experience applying skills to work in these fields.

Nov. 11, 2015 update: Team Rubicon “seeks to provide our veterans with three things they lose after leaving the military: a purpose, gained through disaster relief; community, built by serving with others; and self-worth, from recognizing the impact one individual can make.” It does this through volunteering, uniting the skills and experiences of military veterans with first responders to rapidly deploy emergency response teams.

June 26, 2016 update: The Washington County, Oregon Sheriff’s Department has a search and rescue team and membership is reserved for teen volunteers. Participants learn leadership skills, basic First Aid, some first responder skills, the basics of police investigations and more, and become eligible for college  scholarships. 

Oct. 23, 2019 update: High school students in New  York state studying building trades and construction participated in state and federal parks systems historic preservation projects as volunteers via HistoriCorps, a nonprofit organization who organizes volunteers to save and sustain historic places for public benefit. The students are helping to preserve the history of the nation’s public lands while also receiving an important real-world, hands-on education. Also see: Volunteering on public lands in the USA (national parks, national forests, national monuments, federally-managed historic sites, Bureau of Land Management land, state parks, wetlands, etc.)

Valuing volunteer engagement: an imaginary case study

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Imagine a nonprofit theater showing the value of its volunteer usher program by saying:

We involved 40 ushers in 2015, and they provided 100 hours of service, and since the Independent Sector says the value of a volunteer hour is $23.07, the value of our volunteer usher program in 2013 was $2,307.00.

Here’s what such a statement shows:
moneysigns

  • The value of volunteers is that the organization doesn’t have to pay them
  • Volunteers save money, because they do work for free.
  • Volunteer time, hour per hour, is more valuable than that of all the staff members that aren’t directors, because they are all paid far less than $23.07 an hour.
  • The organization could get even more value for its volunteer program if it could get more volunteers doing things it is currently paying staff to do.
  • The greater the number of volunteer hours, the greater the value of the volunteer engagement.

How would such a stated value of the volunteer usher program make the ushers feel? Make the receptionist feel? Make donors that are union members feel?

It’s an obviously awful idea. Yet, this is how so many consultants and organizations want nonprofits to state the value of volunteer engagement.

By contrast, I would find the value of a volunteer usher program through collecting data that could be measured against both the mission of the organization and the mission of the volunteer program. Let’s say the mission of the organization is “to provide theatrical works that entertain, enlighten, and have a transformative impact on our audiences, and build an appreciation of the arts in our community.” Yes, I just made that up. I have examples of mission statements for volunteer engagement programs here. Here’s how I would collect that data:

I would find out what impact being a volunteer at the theater had for the ushers. I would find this out through interviews and surveys, asking things like “Why did you want to be an usher at our organization?” and “What have you learned as an usher that you might not have known otherwise about our theater? Or about putting on theater productions?” I would also ask why they think volunteer ushers might be preferable for the theater to paying people to do the work.

I would survey new ushers before they began their volunteering, and then survey them after they had served a certain number of hours, asking them the same questions, to see if their perceptions about theater in general, and our theater, specifically, had changed.

I would ask audience members how ushers help their experience at our theater. I’d do this through surveys and interviews.

I would ask staff members how they believe hosting ushers benefits them, the audience, and the theater as a whole. I would also ask why they think volunteer ushers might be preferable to paying people to do the work.

I would look at the profiles of the ushers, and see what range of age groups were represented, what range of zip codes were represented (based on residencies), and if possible, look at the range of ethnicities represented, and other data, that could show how representative of our community the volunteer ushers are.

If I didn’t have time to do all of this data gathering and interviewing myself, I would talk to faculty members at area universities and colleges that teach classes in nonprofit management, sociology, psychology or sociology, to see if students in one of their classes could do the data collection as part of an assignment, or a PhD student who might want to oversee the project as part of his or her doctorate work. The students would get practical experience and I would get people who, perhaps, people would be willing to give more honest answers to than me, someone they know from the theater.

None of this is vague, feel-good data; it’s data that can be used not only to show the organization is meeting its mission through its volunteer engagement, but also testimonials that can be used in funding proposals and volunteer recruitment messages. It would also be data that could help the organization improve its volunteer engagement activities – something that monetary value also cannot do.

Whether your organization is a domestic violence shelter, an after-school tutoring program, a center serving the homeless, an animal rescue group, a community garden – whatever – there is always a better way to demonstrate volunteer value than a monetary value for hours worked. What a great assignment for a nonprofit management or volunteer management class…

For more on the subject of the value of volunteer or community engagement:

Tracking distributed volunteers (& their distributed managers)

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In the last two months, I’ve gotten the same request from two different organizations. I know how I would advise them entirely on my own, but I wanted to open this up to crowdsourcing.

Each of these organizations is based on just one region (they aren’t national), but have different work sites across the city/county. These work sites are sometimes offices, sometimes a garden, sometimes a farmer’s market, sometimes an airplane hanger… diverse! Each is well-established and growing, attracting lots of volunteers, from very diverse demographics. Their work is exciting, and their work cultures feel dynamic and fun, so they don’t have problems recruiting, nor retaining, volunteers – people REALLY want to be associated with these orgs because of the nature of their work (which could not be more different).

Each has distributed managers of volunteers – people in charge of various programs at these organizations and that, in addition to their program work, also recruit and work with volunteers – and that’s been a BIG part of their success at working with and involving volunteers. Volunteers don’t feel like they are working with an HR manager – they are working with people in charge of programs central to the missions of these organizations (that’s not a slam against HR managers, FYI). But that blessing has become a challenge and a potential for problems: the official, overall manager of volunteers is supposed to track all of these different volunteers working in different programs, ensuring each is trained properly, supported properly, etc., and that volunteers contributions are being properly recognized and tracked. But it’s not happening. Those that are working directly with these volunteers hate bureaucracy, and each have their own way of tracking and supporting volunteers. There’s no central database of information – every attempt to do so as failed.

I think the very first step to take is for the overall manager of volunteers at each organization is to make it clear that the goal of her effort is to create an on-going strategy to implement policies and practice that will create a system where every volunteer involved is properly screened and tracked, but a system that DOESN’T add a huge layer of bureaucracy such that it kills the incredible success these organizations have had in recruiting and involving volunteers, and the current very positive feeling volunteers have. It has to be emphasized again and again that the goal is to better support volunteers, and to better protect clients, volunteers themselves and staff as a result of whatever system is development – not just to create burdensome procedures.

I also think each organization needs to get executive director buy-in for this goal and development of a strategy, that the directive to staff to explore and implement a strategy has to come from the ED, loud and clear and more than once. I think the executive director needs to communicate to all staff that a system is going to be put in place because, while volunteer recruitment and retainment are, indeed, wildly successful at both organizations, there are some very negative scenarios that could arise because of the lack of accurate volunteer tracking – and then name some of those scenarios.

Then I think the overall manager of volunteers has to sit down, face-to-face, with each person involving volunteers, talk to them directly, and create a map, literally or figuratively, of how different volunteers in different programs are currently recruited, tracked and supported.

And after all of the above is done, only then is it time to start developing the actual strategy, and that’s where I would love your crowdsourcing in particular:

— Having every volunteer meet with the overall manager of volunteers is unrealistic, IMO – Habitat for Humanity doesn’t do that, SOLVE here in Oregon, which recruits huge numbers of volunteers to clean up beaches and trails and parks, doesn’t do that, etc. Each of the organizations I’m working with needs to identify exactly what kind of volunteer can have minimal screening and tracking, and exactly what kind needs to be strictly screened and supervised, and everything in between – and this needs to be clearly communicated, in writing, and enforced – meaning there are consequences for managers that don’t do it. What do you think enforcement/consequences would look like? If you had to do this – how did you get buy-in?
(I know how to advise them re: what volunteers need what level of screening).

— Do any of you have similar scenarios regarding distributed management of volunteers, and therefore have a central database where every volunteer registers himself or herself? Do they register by an onsite computer? Their smartphone? What software do you use? Do volunteers also use the database to report their hours, or only to register as volunteers? How do you ensure all volunteers are in the database? (I have my own ideas regarding all this, but would really like to hear yours!)

— What other advice would you have for this organization to get all those working with volunteers to buy-in to a more formal system of tracking volunteers? and what other advice do you have regarding tools they can use?

I will compile all answers, including my own, and share them with the organizations – and via my web site or this blog, if the comments section gets too unwieldy.

vvbooklittleOf course, there are also tips in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. about managing remote staff – both online volunteers, who do most of their service online, and remote volunteers, who do their service in a physical onsite location remote to the organization and who provide updates and interact with HQ staff primiarily online.

Supervising online volunteers in court-ordered settings

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graphic by Jayne Cravens representing volunteersA comment was submitted on one of the most popular blogs I’ve ever written, What online community service is and is not. That blog called out a company that is selling what it calls online community service hours, but which is, in fact, a ruse: customers pay a fee and receive access to videos, which they are supposed to watch, and in return for claiming to watch them, the company gives the “volunteers” a letter from a nonprofit saying they performed online community service. As someone that has been promoting virtual volunteering since the 1990s – and quality standards in all kinds of volunteer engagement – it continues to have me outraged.

I no longer approve comments on that blog, which has more than two dozen, because, for the last three years, most of the comments I get about this blog are from trolls affiliated with the company, ranting about how I hate hard-working people that don’t have time to do traditional onsite service (a rant that can come only from someone who has not actually read the blog) or name-calling such as this:

fanmail

Yes, really. Welcome to my world.

But a recent comment from Mark Waterson wasn’t either of those. I didn’t want his comment, and my response, to get buried in the sea of comments on that blog, so the blog entry you are reading now is devoted to this comment.

Mark says in his blog comment:

“This article points out online community service options that are legitimate, but really misses the point of why those other organizations exist. If you are doing community service for court, you need an official signed letter of someone in the nonprofit organization who “supervised” you saying you have completed X hours of community service. Your alternatives, while more legitimate, do not offer this, even at a price, and so no one doing court ordered community service can even consider your suggestions as possible alternatives for their purposes.”

Mark is incorrect, however, on this issue. Many of the online volunteering options I recommend on this page DO provide an official signed letter by the nonprofit organization who was assisted by the volunteer, stating how many hours the person gave as an online volunteer. And I have been one of those nonprofit representatives that wrote and signed such a letter for someone doing court-ordered community service through virtual volunteering. As I state on many of my pages for volunteers, a person needs to ask the nonprofit he or she wants to help – whether that nonprofit is down the street or across the country – BEFORE volunteering if staff would be willing to write and sign such a letter. Indeed, many will say no – even for onsite, face-to-face volunteers – but you will find some that will say yes if you keep looking, as I suggest on my pages.

As volunteerism expert Susan Ellis frequently points out, there are very few onsite, traditional volunteering activities where a volunteer is supervised the entire time he or she is performing service. Instead, the volunteers is trained, then given a desk, or a work space and materials, or a phone, or a garbage bag and some gloves, and then they do MOST of their volunteering largely unsupervised. As someone who has been fooled more than a few times by a volunteer sitting at a desk, looking at a computer screen for hours, and pretending to work – and after a day or two, I find out nothing is getting done – I’ve realized that volunteer supervision is much more than eyes-on-the-volunteer, or sign-in sheets at the door.

vvbooklittleAs Susan and I discuss in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, there are many ways to supervise online volunteers, to ensure the work is getting done, that the quality of the work is up-to-snuff, and that the volunteer is getting the support he or she needs, such as regular Skype calls, regular emails back and forth, shared work spaces, regular reviews of work to date, etc. In taking those steps, you are going to know very quickly if you are talking to the person actually doing the work.

Could someone fake online volunteering service? Sure, just as people can fake onsite service: hand the volunteer the plastic bag and the gloves, send them down the road to pick up trash, and when they are out-of-sight, a friend brings them a full bag of trash to return to you. Ta da! Or put three volunteers at your information booth, walk away for five hours, and return, not knowing that one of the volunteers paid the others to lie about her time at the table.

Let’s imagine a volunteering scenario: a father gets a DUI and has to do a certain number of hours of community service. He finds a nonprofit that needs 400 photos on Flickr that each need to be tagged with a unique set of keywords, and because each set of keywords is different, it has to be done manually. He signs up to do the work, is accepted to do the work, but his son actually does the work. But here’s the thing: he could also do that as an onsite volunteer: he could go onsite, sit at a desk, and play Tetris until someone passes by, then switch to the Flickr screen and pretend to work until they are gone; meanwhile, his son back at home is actually doing all the work. Here’s a similar scenario: a mom gets assigned court-ordered community service and she signs up to help a nonprofit translate brochures and speeches into Spanish from English. She comes into the nonprofit, sits at a desk, but she plays Scrabble whilst her daughter back home does all the translating.

I think that any volunteer manager of quality would sniff out these scams quickly, through their discussions with the volunteer, review of work, etc. And that would be true of onsite or online volunteers.  TMZ implied that Lindsay Lohan faked her virtual volunteering to fulfill court-ordered community service (be sure to scroll down to the comments – yes, I commented) – it would have been so easy for the nonprofit to know if she did the work or not, through basic volunteer management 101 principles.

Does the tiny possibility that a volunteer can fake work done on a computer mean volunteers fulfilling online community service shouldn’t be allowed to do any online work even if it’s supposed to be done onsite at the organization, rather than via their own computer? No more volunteer web site designers, database data inputters, app designers, translators, editors, podcast producers, photo taggers, and on and on, if they are assigned service by the courts? Of course not. Whether this kind of work is being done onsite or online from the volunteers’ home or a nearby library, the likelihood that a volunteer is pretending to do the work while it’s actually a relative or roommate is so tiny, and so easy to sniff out. Fear of what might happen, in this case, isn’t at all justification of not allowing people assigned court-ordered community service to engage in virtual volunteering.

The biggest challenge to court-ordered folks finding virtual volunteering isn’t fear that they will fake their service by having someone else do it; rather, it’s finding virtual volunteering at all. And many nonprofits refuse to work with court-ordered community service folks period, onsite or online. They just don’t love ’em like I love ’em.

Even though I disagree with Mark, I thank him for writing – I’ve been wanting to expand on this issue for a while now.

Also see:

July 6, 2016 update: the web site of the company Community Service Help went away sometime in January 2016, and all posts to its Facebook page are now GONE. More info at this July 2016 blog: Selling community service leads to arrest, conviction

What online community service is – and is not – the very first blog I wrote exposing this company, back in January 2011, that resulted in the founder of the company calling me at home to beg me to take the blog down.

Haters gonna hate, the latest update on Community Service Help and other similar, unethical companies

Community Service Help Cons Another Person, a first-person account by someone who paid for online community service and had it rejected by the court.

Update on a virtual volunteering scam, from November 2012.

Courts being fooled by online community service scams

Online community service company tries to seem legit.

Online volunteer scam goes global

Contradicting myself?

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In the same day, online, I applauded an organization that involved volunteers to help preserve historic sites on US public lands, and then questioned California for relying so much on volunteers to maintain state parks.

Am I a hypocrite?

No. Well, at least not about this.

The nonprofit HistoriCorps engages volunteers to work on historic preservation projects in USA. Individual projects might last from a week to more than two months. Cultural and historical sites in the USA are at risk because of drastic budget cuts by state and federal governments – many could already be beyond saving. This program could never repair everything that needs repairing, but what it can do, through volunteering, is educate people about those needs and about the consequences of those budget cuts. This program repairs a small number of sites every year, but maybe even more importantly, it also creates passionate advocates for US historical sites. It also is a way for historic sites to involve Americans in a deeper way than just as a visitor. This program builds job skills, gives people construction experience, and engages youth. From the web site: “Projects offer unending opportunities to tell America’s greatest stories, making historical connections real, and cultivating among those involved an appreciation of the heritage, balanced use and stewardship of our nation’s special places.” Even if there was enough money to hire paid staff to do all of the work needed to preserve these historic sites, it would be a great idea to reserve some work for volunteers, to keep those many benefits for historic sites and volunteers alike.

By contrast, this story from the Nonprofit Quarterly about volunteers in California state parks pretty much says, We don’t have enough money to pay people to do the work of keeping state parks open, so we need people to work for free. Ugh. Volunteer engagement in this case isn’t presented as building community or engaging under-served populations or building awareness or giving people a deeper experience at the parks – it’s presented as being about having an unpaid labor force to get the work done. I’m very grateful that volunteers are keeping California state parks open – I’m a California state park user. And just as with HistoriCorps, absolutely, let’s keep volunteers involved in trail repair, invasive plant removal, habitat restoration, rehabilitation of historic orchards, etc., so that not only can the work be done, but also, so volunteers can have a deeper relationship with the parks they love and become advocates for state parks – and state funds for those park.

In fact, I think that, in both these cases, volunteers are helping for the same reasons: their love of these sites. And I think the results are quite similar: volunteers get work done but, more importantly, volunteers are seeing first hand the consequences of cuts in government funding. The contrast really is a matter of language and attitude about volunteer engagement. So, let me say it again: watch your language regarding volunteer engagement. Saying,”If they don’t do this, we’ll close!” can also mean, “Volunteers are free! We don’t have to pay people! Hurrah!”

For more on the subject of the value of volunteer or community engagement: