Category Archives: Community / Volunteer Engagement

Court-Ordered Community Service Gone Bad – featured on “Judge Judy”

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I’m not much for reality TV. Except for one show. Judge Judy. It’s my late afternoon indulgence, working from home. It has less calories than anything in my all-too-close fridge.

Recently, on a rerun, an episode from 2012 was shown. A woman sentenced to community service for a DUI said a pastor had swindled her into free labor. In Judge Judy’s own words:

“You had to do a certain number of hours for community service (320). Your claim alleges that Miss Stewart, who you knew, scammed you into working for her at a shelter that she runs. And you thought you were doing work that would go towards your community service. And it turns out that she did not have the right paperwork. So you want her to pay you for the 143 hours that you spent working for free at her rescue. That’s what your case is about. Unusual. Miss Stewart says it was your idea to come to work and to do whatever you did around the shelter.”

So, how did Judge Judy rule?

She said that the woman who was suing for payment should have confirmed with the court that assigned her the community service that this shelter – which actually turned out to be not a nonprofit, but a woman who was inviting women in need to her house to pray with her – would be acceptable for her community service, and she should have gotten that confirmation in writing.

That’s the legal ruling. The ethical ruling is, of course, that the pastor should have had a written agreement with this woman, saying exactly what they were, or were not, agreeing to.

I realize a lot of managers of volunteers refuse to work with people assigned community service by a court or by a class, and they don’t see this as any kind of issue they have to care about. I think differently: people work unpaid at nonprofits and unofficial community organizations for a variety of reasons, and I’m okay with that. I’m concerned with just how often people undertake community service as directed by a court or class and find out the hours they’ve worked won’t meet their commitment. I wish more managers of volunteers were as well.

Also see:

My favorite virtual volunteering event originates in… Poland

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ewolontariat logoThe Discover E-Volunteering competition by E-Wolontariat (E-Volunteering Poland) is the best showcase of new virtual volunteering initiatives on the planet. I’m a HUGE fan of this event – and governments and corporations in Europe should be too. Here’s why:

  • this is the first and only competition of its kind in the world. And it started in Europe – not the USA. Who wouldn’t jump at the chance to scoop the USA re: something tech-related?
  • by making this a competition, the event ends up drawing out and then showcasing some of the most innovative initiatives in Europe that are blending technology with helping people, the environment, and other causes.
  • the competition grows every year, in terms of participants, applications and attention from both traditional and non-traditional media.
  • just about any person – people who are unemployed, people working at corporations, young people, retired people – can become online volunteers with many of the initiatives showcased in this competition. So virtually anyone can be a part of this event in some way.
  • the competition doesn’t just benefit the “winners”; E-Wolontariat shares much of what it learns from ALL applicants. via its web site and via its trainings, so that ANY NGO can benefit. That means, with more widespread promotion of the event, the event could build capacities at NGOs not just in Europe but worldwide, allowing those NGOs to involve even more volunteers.
  • governments and others are talking about encouraging young people to volunteer, how its so important, to help young people build skills for the workplace, to increase their civic engagement, to cultivate empathy and caring, and more. But there’s not much action to back up that talk. This event is actually helping to expand options for those young people to volunteer.
  • by helping organizations expand their involvement of online volunteers, this event is very likely helping them to expand their involvement of ALL volunteers, including traditional onsite volunteers, by helping them to improve recruitment and support of all volunteers.
  • by helping organizations expand their involvement of volunteers, this event is helping more people, including unemployed people and people who are often socially-excluded (the unemployed, immigrants, the disabled, etc.) to become better connected to society. And we keep hearing that we need to increase opportunities for socially-excluded people to connect with society…

Why tech companies, telecommunications companies, banks, and other multi-national corporations aren’t fighting each other to fund this event, I’ll never understand.

As I said in my last blog, there are so many corporate folks chastising nonprofits and NGOs, saying mission-based initiatives need to be more innovative, saying they need to embrace the latest network technologies and revolutionary management styles and on and on. Yet these same corporations demanding nonprofit innovation aren’t funding virtual volunteering-related initiatives. The Discover E-Volunteering competition would be a GREAT one to start with!

And media, you should be covering not only this competition, and not only the individual applicants to this event, but also all sorts of great virtual volunteering activities happening in the world.

More info about virtual volunteering, a widespread practice that’s more than 35 years old:

hey, corporations: time to put your money where your mouth is re: nonprofits & innovation

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logoI started talking about virtual volunteering – without knowing it was called that – as early as 1994, more than 30 years ago. Soon after I started babbling about it, I directed The Virtual Volunteering Project, based at the University of Texas, back in the late 1990s. Back then, I thought that, by now, well into the 21st century, there would be corporations clamoring to sponsor virtual volunteering activities and events. I could see back in the 1990s that this wasn’t just a fun idea – it was an effective one for nonprofits, NGOs, and volunteers themselves – and that it would become a widespread practice. I just knew corporations would want to be seen as leaders in the movement and, therefore, fund it.

Yet, 30 years later, while thousands of nonprofits all over the world have embraced using the Internet to support and involve volunteers, corporations remain largely silent in their involvement and support. I am frequently contacted by nonprofits and NGOs looking to expand their involvement of online volunteers, or that want to do something particularly interesting or innovative regarding virtual volunteering, but they need funding, and they want to know if I can help. And I can’t. Because corporations clamoring to be a part of virtual volunteering just hasn’t happened.

It’s not true of all corporations: the international telecommunications company Orange seems to get it, to a degree: Fundacja Orange (the Polish branch) partially funds the ground-breaking Discover E-Volunteering competition, the best showcase of new virtual volunteering initiatives on the planet. But, sadly, the UK branch of Orange seems to have already discontinued its Do Some Good smart phone app to help people volunteer through their mobile phone, launched in 2012 – less than three years ago. Hewlett-Packard used to have a pioneering e-mentoring program, bringing together their employees, as mentors, with high school students, and the program is frequently referenced in academic literature 20 years ago about the promise of e-mentoring – but that program is long gone, and I can’t find any association between HP and virtual volunteering anymore. Rolex seemed somewhat interested in microvolunteering, a version of virtual volunteering that engages online volunteers in micro tasks, but that initial interest seems to have quickly, completely waned. Cisco was a key financial and in-kind supporter of NetAid, a part of which became the UN’s Online Volunteering service, but that support ended in 2001.1

You’ve heard it and read it so many times: corporate folks chastising nonprofits and NGOs, saying those mission-based initiatives need to be more innovative, saying they need to embrace the latest network technologies and revolutionary management styles and on and on. Yet these same corporations demanding nonprofit innovation aren’t funding virtual volunteering-related initiatives.

Time to put your money where your mouth is, corporations: there are some terrific virtual volunteering activities out there. There are outstanding innovations happening at nonprofits and NGOs all over the world. You say you want more risk-taking, more innovations, more tech-use by mission-based organizations – okay, they stand ready to do it. All they need is the investment. Are YOU ready to put your money where your mouth is?

vvbooklittleAnd also… why haven’t you bought The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook?

😉

1: The last sentence of this paragraph, regarding Cisco and NetAid, was added on July 24, 2015

Nov. 11, 2015 update:  Nonprofit leaders are not focusing enough attention on innovation, measuring the impact of their efforts, and creating funding structures that encourage risk-taking, according to a new report from Independent Sector. Great – who is going to FUND THOSE ACTIVITIES?!

keep volunteer info up-to-date or else

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logoI really cannot emphasize enough the importance of keeping your records regarding volunteers up-to-date…

“Ada” was a volunteer for two years with a very-well known national organization’s state affiliate. She was very active with the organization in that time, taking on a number of high-responsibility roles and helping to increase the number of attendees at local events. But a conflict with an employee lead Ada to end her volunteering. There was no dramatic departure: she simply stopped taking on new volunteering tasks, stopped attending volunteer meetings, and let her membership lapse. Not one person from the agency contacted her to say, “Hey, where’d you go?!?” Ada always assumed they hadn’t noticed – or were happy that she was gone. A year after she left the organization, she moved to a city almost two hours away.

Imagine Ada’s surprise when, three years after she left the organization, she gets a very friendly email from the director of individual giving from the organization, talking about something that happened in the town where she used to live. The email wasn’t addressed to anyone specifically, such as “Dear volunteers in such-and-such town”, but given the informal, chatty nature of the email, it was obvious that that’s who it was supposed to be going to. As Ada had been gone from the organization for three years, didn’t live in the city mentioned anymore, and had never heard of the person that was writing her this oh-so-chatty email, she was shocked. And a bit put off.

“They didn’t even notice when I didn’t renew my membership and I stopped volunteering,” she said. “And now, three years later, they write me as though we’re the best of friends?”

By not noticing the departure of this volunteer, by not updating its database to reflect that she had withdrawn, and by contacting someone who obviously had disengaged with the program for quite a while now with a message that made it seem like they were still involved and happy with the organization, this organization now has an even more entrenched negative reputation as being incompetent and/or insensitive with this volunteer. Ada may bring this up to her Facebook friends. She may bring it up in social gatherings with friends and family. She may bring it up to co-workers. And it’s that kind of word-of-mouth experience that people really, really listen to.

Also see:

Online catalogue of data collection apps, mass SMS tools, more

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itt-logoMany low-cost information communication technology (ICT) -based tools already exist to help nonprofits, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), government programs and other mission-based initiatives to collect and share data on a large-scale, real-time basis. In fact, handheld computer devices have been used in various humanitarian, environmental and disaster-relief efforts since the late 1990s (when they were called PDAs, or personal digital assistants – you couldn’t use them to make a phone call but you could use them to gather data).

However, there isn’t a central place where organizations can access ICT-based tools and assess information so they can understand the features, the pros and the cons of different tools.

The Kopernik Impact Tracker Technology online catalogue is an effort to fill this gap, providing recommendations that assist users in making decisions about digital data collection apps, SMS communication platforms and more. The online catalogue is designed for small to medium-sized social enterprises or a nonprofit organizations working in international development or humanitarian emergencies with a main office that is located in an urban area with decent infrastructure and has access to slow to medium internet connection.  But any nonprofit or NGO, or any government agency, anywhere, can use these tools. This project is fully supported by the Impact Economy Innovations Fund in East and Southeast Asia, funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and Asia Community Ventures.

The catalogue includes information on:

  • Digital data collection apps utiliize mobile phones and tablets to collect, store, and transmit data. These apps allow for paperless and more accurate data collection processes. Organizations can use these apps to collect qualitative and numerical data from the field, as well as capturing multimedia data or pinpointing locations on maps. Users build data forms using a pre-programmed form builder, deploy them onto mobile devices, and aggregate data in a database. Even in areas without mobile or internet networks, data can be collected first and then transmitted to the database once users regain connectivity.
  • SMS communications platforms are tools that manage large-scale communication with clients, volunteers and others through SMS. With these tools, organizations in developing countries can reduce the number of phone calls and physical visits to project sites. These platforms are butt-based and can be accessed using any web browser straight from a computer, as well as via the platform’s dedicated mobile apps where available.
  • Geospatial mapping tools enable users to visually compile information from various sources in the form of a map. These visual maps are useful for tracking information, analyzing data, and presenting updates. These tools operate on web-based applications on which administrators build data forms to be filled out by individual users via their phones or tablets. Information can be sent through web browsers, mobile apps, email, or SMS. Once submitted, information will be automatically aggregated on a map. Organizations can use the produced maps both for internal and external communication purposes.

Also see:

  • Handheld computer technologies in community service/volunteering/advocacy
    This was a pioneering article, published in October 2001. It provides early examples of volunteers/citizens/grass roots advocates using handheld computer/personal digital assistants (PDAs) or phone devices as part of community service/volunteering/advocacy, or examples that could be applied to volunteer settings. It was originally part of the UNITeS online knowledge base.

UNDP Technology for Citizen Engagement Challenge

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undp tech challengeA key focus of the the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Strategic plan 2014-17 is inclusive and effective democratic governance. “We are committed to supporting citizen participation and engagement in policymaking and governance, to foster more peaceful and inclusive societies.” That’s why UNDP is launching the “Technology for Citizen Engagement Challenge”.

“UNDP invites you to come up with technology-enabled solutions that can help to better engage citizens in addressing some of the challenges faced in our daily lives. UNDP offers both funding of up to $10,000 and mentoring support to help turn the best ideas into reality.” Winning teams will also be invited to attend the 2nd Annual Build Peace through technology conference in Nicosia, Cyprus on 25th & 26th April 2015.

Examples of the use of networked technologies and tech innovations to help narrow the gap between citizens and decision makers that UNDP has supported:

  • In Georgia,  ELVA uses mobile phones to facilitate rapid responses to incidences has led to a restoration of community safety and security in often volatile circumstances.
  • In Cyprus, Hands on Famagusta brings together Greek and Turkish Cypriot architects who use new technology to create a future vision for the divided city of Famagusta.
  • In conflict-torn East Ukraine, UNDP is using a mobile app to crowdsource reports of structural damage, which will in turn, help UNDP help the government plan how to best rebuild.

So what are we looking for?

Do you have an idea for a technology enabled solution that can help to better engage citizens in addressing the following issues?

Common Vision for the Future – How can we use technology to bring together different groups to imagine a common vision for the future? Submit your ideas for how to embrace differing views to find common ground by sharing a vision for the future.

Inclusion through Diversity – How can technology help to diversify the voices that inform policy by embracing more inclusive decision-making processes? Submit your ideas for how to increase dialogue between citizens and decision makers so that a multitude of voices are represented in public policy, including those of women and youth.

Improve access to public services and data – How can we utilize technology to improve access to public services and/or data? Submit your ideas for how better access to services and data can strengthen trust in institutions and encourage greater public participation in decision-making.

Deadline for the submission of ideas is Thursday 5th March – Apply here

Guidelines for applicants

FOLLOW: @UNDPEurasia, @UNDPArabStates  and @mahallae on Twitter for updates.

 

Marketing staff: either help promote volunteer engagement or GET OUT OF THE WAY

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logoMy blog today is actually for public relations and marketing staff at nonprofits, rather than those managers of volunteer programs. And my message is this: either help promote your organization’s volunteer engagement OR GET OUT OF THE WAY. I talk to people managing their organization’s volunteer engagement activities – recruiting volunteers, supporting those volunteers, creating the majority of opportunities for those volunteers, helping other staff engage with those volunteers in their work, etc. – and among the many complaints I hear about challenges to their success is this one: the public relations and marketing staff won’t support me. Those leading volunteer engagement at your organization need a variety of support from marketing and public relations staff:
  • in using the organization’s Facebook page, blog, web site and other online activities to recruit volunteers and tout the accomplishments of such
  • in reaching out to the media about what volunteers are doing
  • in connecting media to those working with volunteers at the organization when the media says they want to do a story about volunteerism
  • in understanding when volunteers are doing something particularly special or innovative, or staff working with such are, such that it would be worthy of external attention (or internal attention, for that matter)
  • in including information about the organization’s volunteer engagement in all traditional publications, including paper newsletters and annual reports
  • in talking about volunteer engagement as more than just the monetary value of volunteer hours
Yet, I hear from staff again and again that the outreach staff won’t create a link on the home page to information on volunteering (though they will regarding donating money, no problem!), that they won’t include any volunteer-related messages on Facebook, that they won’t use any photos from a recent volunteer engagement event in outreach materials, and that they will include information about volunteerism in the annual report only regarding the monetary value of the volunteer time given. Public relations and marketing staff: if you are not going to create a detailed strategy for supporting your organization’s engagement of volunteers through all of your various outreach methods, then let the manager of that engagement do it him or herself, and stay out of the way as they execute that strategy. If you aren’t going to include information about volunteer recruitment and accomplishment in social media channels as often as you do about fundraising campaigns, then say nothing as staff in charge of managing volunteers at your organization create their own blogs, web sites, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and Instagram or Flickr accounts to share the information they want out. What would be FAR better than forcing managers of volunteers to do marketing and public relations on their own? If you, public relations and marketing staff, sat down with the staff that work with volunteers at your organization and said, “How can I support you? Tell me what you’re doing. Let’s meet once a month and talk about it.” What you might find is that, instead of additional work, you get much-needed information to raise your organization’s profile online and in the media. Maybe volunteers are taking amazing photos of your organization’s work that you could use in a variety of ways. Perhaps there is a really marvelous story waiting for you to discover: maybe your organization is engaging in virtual volunteering in some really innovative ways, or is involving someone as an online volunteer who could never do so onsite. Maybe some hot current trend, like micro volunteering, is happening at your organization but you don’t even know it. Maybe volunteer engagement has helped your organization engage with communities or demographics you never would have reached otherwise. An organization that involves volunteers can be seen as more transparent and open to the community than one that doesn’t – are you leveraging that image properly in your outreach work? No more excuses, public relations and marketing staff: support your staff that recruit and engage with volunteers – or get out of the way and let them do their own publicity themselves. This message brought to you by: Grumpy Jayne.
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.

Blogs & articles re: virtual volunteering NOT by me

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Why no, I’m *not* the only person who talks about Virtual Volunteering / e-volunteering / digital volunteering, etc.

In addition to research and evaluations of virtual volunteering, that is tracked on the Virtual Volunteering Wiki, which has been put together as a supplement to The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, there are also various other web sites, blogs, publications and initiatives focused on virtual volunteering, often under different names (digital volunteering, online volunteering, microvolunteering, etc.).

It’s impossible to create a comprehensive list of such – just as it would be impossible to make a list of all web sites, blogs and other non-research related to volunteering, in general. But I have made a list gives an overview of the different ways various people and organizations are talking about virtual volunteering, especially internationally. There are links to information about virtual volunteering in Spanish, Catalan, German, Polish, Ukrainian, and a wee bit in French.

Also see this page tracking news articles, blog posts, and other updates on virtual volunteering and this page lists RSS feeds that automatically link to the latest web pages, blogs, and other online materials that use terms that relate to virtual volunteering.

And, of course, check out The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook.

UNHCR mobile phone usage in refugee situations – pilot project

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SMS as a tool for humanitarian aid is becoming an increasingly common tool, and you can find several examples of this highlighted on the TechSoup Public Computing, ICT4D, and Tech4Good forum branch – most posted by me, because I’m oh-so-interested in this subject.

UNHCR Innovation recently piloted an SMS system in two UNHCR operations: Esmeraldas, Ecuador and San José, Costa Rica. There is an online article highlight its experiences piloting FrontlineButt in San José, Costa Rica and lessons learned. The project, named Ascend, began as a collaboration between Stanford University and UNHCR Innovation.

The goals for this particular pilot were:

  1. How do we best utilize SMS to connect with refugees residing in an urban area?
  2. How do we embed a new tool like SMS in organizations to be sustainable, even after the pilot is over?
  3. What types of utilities does an SMS application need to appropriately handle the requirements of UNHCR and non-governmental organization (NGO) staff?

A few key takeaways were observed: one, the need for message classification to handle a large number of inbound SMS (think Gmail classifying messages as priority or not priority); two, the ability to have a feature rich application to conduct polls and surveys via SMS; three, a focus on visualizing the data received and report generation in order to convey effectiveness to potential donors.

Before the implementation of the project, project organizers sat down with four refugees to get feedback to help with this project. The interviews are available here. In short, some key takeaways were:

  • Phone presence – most of the interviewees had mobile phones and used them, though some only used them for family matters. The majority cited mobile phones as a good means of reaching them. There were also two who said it was better to call rather than send an SMS.
  • SMS uses – by and large, most of the interviewees wanted more information on activities and opportunities that were available to them. In addition, some thought it would be a good way to ask questions to UNHCR, ACAI, or Aprode.
  • Challenges faced – the biggest challenges for the refugees upon arrival was surviving in a context they were not used to. In a similar vein, they also found it very difficult to find jobs.

At the end of the monitoring and evaluation phase, UNHCR again contacted the same refugees to get their opinion on the project. These interviews were conducted over the phone and the interviews can be viewed here. The responses were overwhelmingly positive which is a big success for the pilot as a whole.

My favorite takeaway:

Initially we had started the pilot with a prepared list of contacts to message. Sending the blast welcome message explaining the project elicited many responses saying, “Who is this?” or “Why am I receiving this?” After interviewing refugees we began to see a pattern. People were hesitant to trust a message from an unknown number. We ended up tackling this issue by first advertising the number in UNHCR and the other NGOs so that people would become familiar with the project and expect to receive messages. In addition to that, we set up boxes in which people could drop their contact information and we would then add that phone number to the FrontlineButt database. In this way we increased trust in and awareness for the project.

Here’s the full article from UNHCR.

And for some perspective, here’s an article from October 2001: Handheld computer technologies in community service/volunteering/advocacy .

When Board Members (& other volunteers) Get in the Way of Much-Needed Change

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“While organizations should be grateful to their hardworking board members, too often members overreach and can have a negative impact on decision making. This is especially true when it comes to marketing, design, and communications, disciplines that seem to attract an outsize share of unqualified participation.”

That’s from When Board Members Get in the Way of a Great Redesign by   for The Chronicle of Philanthropy, and it’s terrific. It not only shows what this interference can look like, it also talks about how to reduce the chances that a board member will derail a well-thought out, well-researched, much-needed strategy for social media, virtual volunteering, better financial management, adoption of new software, a logo change, and on and on. In fact, the advice is excellent for working with long-term volunteers as well, volunteers who may be resistant to change regarding policies and cherished-but-outdated practices.