Category Archives: Community / Volunteer Engagement

Why did we call it the LAST guidebook?

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In hearing about The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, you may have noticed two things:

    • My co-author, Susan Ellis, and I don’t talk about the guidebook as a revision of The Virtual Volunteering Guidebook that we wrote back in the 1990s. That’s because this new book was written from the ground up – we didn’t merely update that previous guidebook. While I think most of what we wrote in that first book remains valid, in terms of still being helpful advice to work with online volunteers, this new book provides substantially more information and reflects just how integrated the Internet is in our lives now versus back in the 1990s.
    • That standout word in the title: Last.

What do we mean by this being  The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook?

What we don’t mean is that there will or should never be a further need to write or talk about the latest developments in engaging volunteers online.

What we do mean is that, from this moment on, we hope that talk about virtual volunteering won’t be segregated to a separate book or separate chapter at the end of a book about volunteer management. Our dream is that this is a turning point regarding talk and training about volunteer engagement, and

  • any book about volunteer management, whether it’s a book about basic principals in general, group volunteering, episodic volunteering, skills-based volunteering, teen volunteering, whatever, has advice about using the Internet to support and involve volunteers integrated throughout the material. For instance, episodic volunteering, online, is called micro volunteering, yet workshops and other resources regarding episodic volunteering rarely talk about it – we hope that exclusion stops NOW.
  • any workshop about some aspect of volunteer management, whether it’s about the fundamentals of volunteer management, recruitment, risk management, adults working with children, whatever, fully integrates advice about using the Internet as a part of those activities.

In short, NO MORE SEGREGATION OF INTERNET-MEDIATED VOLUNTEERING. Virtual volunteering should not be an “add on” – not only in a book or training about volunteer engagement, but also, not in any volunteer engagement scheme at any organization. In fact, our dream is that we no longer hear about onsite volunteers as one group and online volunteers as another, separate group – how about we talk about volunteers, period?

Involving volunteers online is a practice that’s more than 35 years old. There are at least several thousand organizations using the Internet to support and involve volunteers. Actually, Susan and I believe virtual volunteering has, in some way, shape or form, been adopted by a majority of nonprofits and NGOs, whether they know it or not – we base this on the research that’s been done by others, our own research, and our observations in our extensive work with nonprofits. It’s even reflected in this discussion group regarding virtual volunteering on LinkedIn. And it’s based on this reality that we’re calling for full integration of virtual volunteering into any book or training about any aspect of volunteering.

Order information for The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook.

Also see our virtual volunteering wiki. Whereas the guidebook is written in a timeless manner as much as possible, focusing on suggested practices that the authors believe do not change, for the most part, this wiki will continually evolve as tracking and networking tech tools change, as new research is conducted, and as substantial news about virtual volunteering is announced.

If you read the book, I would so appreciate it if you could write and post a review of it on the Amazon and Barnes and Noble web sites (you can write the same review on both sites).

Community Service Help Cons Another Person

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It’s happened AGAIN – the shady company Community Service Help – communityservicehelp.com – has conned another person.

I just approved this comment on one of my blogs about this deceptive company. The comment says, in part:

“I wish I would have read this article before wasting my time using the community service help website. Of course the court did not accept it and now I have been put in a real bind trying to complete my hours… I have PTSD and social anxiety from my military service and was searching for a way to complete my hours when I stumbled across the website which seemed perfect for me due to my disabilities should have known it was too good to be true. I wish I could leave a review somewhere to prevent people from making the same mistake I did.”

I’m so sorry for this person’s experience – as an advocate for virtual volunteering since the early 1990s, it makes my physically ill that this company, as well as many others, are ripping people off with their scheme to charge people money to watch videos and call it “volunteering”, and to claim it will be accepted by courts. I’ve encouraged this person to contact this company and demand his money back. I also have asked him if he would be willing to talk to someone from the media about his experience with this fraud – there have been at least two local TV news stories about this shady company, and I would love to see many more.

Back in November 2012, I got an email from a TV reporter in Atlanta, Georgia who used my blogs about this racket to create this excellent, DETAILED video about this scam and the people behind it. Thanks again, Atlanta Fox 5! Of course, after an NBC affiliate in Columbus, Atlanta did a similar, shorter story, this scam company put a tag on its web site noting as featured on NBC news!

I would love to know this deceptive company’s response to the court refusing his community service hours – it’s a response they have to make regularly to people who find out the court will not accept “community service” that consists of watching videos rather than actual volunteering.

I’ve also told this person that most recently commented on my blog that, if he still needs community service, and he wants to do it online, there are MANY places to find such, with legitimate nonprofit organizations that won’t charge the volunteer, and where the volunteering will be *real* – it will actually help the organization, which is what volunteering should be.

Here are other blogs I’ve written about this deceptive company:

Back in 2011, and again at least once since then, I wrote the Florida State Attorney General’s cyberfraud division, the Consumer Services Department of Miami-Dade County, numerous parole and probation associations, the Corporation for National Service and AL!VE to PLEASE investigate or, at least, take a stand regarding these scam companies – to date, they still have done nothing.

And, yes, I still get harassing emails and blog comments from people who supposedly are satisfied customers of this company. The commenters never use their names or location, the messages are packed with misspellings and grammar errors, they ramble on and on about how watching videos really is community service, and they call me some rather vile names. I’ve been deleting those comments – but I think I’m going to compile some and make a blog post just about those, to show you the caliber of support for this company.

2014 update: The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook offers detailed advice that would help any court understand how to evaluate the legitimacy of an online volunteering program. It’s geared towards nonprofits who want to involve volunteers, but any court or probation officer would find it helpful, as more and more people assigned community service need legitimate, credible online volunteering options.

12.March.2014 Update: Just found this story from Portland TV stations KATU about a similar scam in Seattle. Another example of a judge rejecting watching videos as community service.

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

My voluntourism-related & ethics-related blogs (and how I define scam)

Virtual Volunteering discussion group on LinkedIn

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Susan Ellis and I have created a LinkedIn Group for the discussion of virtual volunteering.

We’re hoping this will be a place where organizations that are involving online volunteers can get very specific with questions and advice about their virtual volunteering experiences: sharing what tools they use to work with volunteers online, asking questions about a particular issue they are having in working with volunteers online, getting advice on how to recruit a diversity of online volunteers, and on and on.

This group isn’t a place for basic questions like, “How do I introduce online volunteering to my organization” and others that are detailed extensively in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, though if you would like to expand on that or another practice that is detailed in the book via this group, such comments would be welcomed!

The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook is available for purchase as a paperback and an ebook. There is also a virtual volunteering wiki in association with the book.

Feb. 12, 2014 Addendum

What I do NOT want to do is to discourage discussions on places like UKVPMs, OZVPM, and other discussion groups for volunteer management, about using online and networking tools (like SMS/text messaging) to support and involve volunteers – the practice that most of us refer to as virtual volunteering.

I had been opposed to the idea of creating an online group just for these discussions, because I do not want these discussions to be taken out of any online group devoted to volunteer management. If you have read even just the beginning of The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, you know that we chose that name in part because we DON’T want any more books about virtual volunteering, no more add-on chapters about it made to books about volunteer management, no more “virtual volunteering” as an add-on or after thought – but, rather, that using online and networking tools is integrated into all discussions about recruiting, supporting, managing, recognizing and involving volunteers, period.

With all that said, we did see a need for a global discussion about online and networking tools to work with volunteers, where discussions could be focused on any country or region. So we did start this LinkedIn Group for the discussion of virtual volunteering. I’m doing my best for it not to devolve into a “how do I involve online volunteers” discussion – we’re looking for more high-level discussions, like:

  • What online tools do you use to communicate with volunteers? Just email, or do you use an online discussion group platform? And how do you like it?
  • If you use Skype or other video conferencing to communicate with volunteers, individually or as a group, what advice do you have for others that might want to use it?
  • What’s the most popular activity at your organization for someone to do from a home, work or otherwise offsite computer or device?
  • How did you alter your volunteer policies to include Internet-related activities/communications?

So, if you use email, any other Internet tool, or even text messaging from a phone, to interact with your volunteers, or you create tasks that volunteers can do from home or work computers or other devices, I hope you will join the LinkedIn group and join in the discussions!

Me with The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook

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It’s real! Not virtual! Me with The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook.

Amazing to hold YEARS of research and writing in my hands at last!

The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook is now available for purchase as a paperback and an ebook , published by Energize, Inc. 

If you read the book, I would so appreciate it if you could write and post a review of it on the Amazon and Barnes and Noble web sites (you can write the same review on both sites). You don’t have to buy the book in those places to review it there (and I hope you will order it from me directly instead). 

Should the NFL involve volunteers for the Super Bowl?

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Taking a break from promoting The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook to talk volunteers and the Super Bowl (for those outside the USA, that’s the National Football League’s championship game).

In a story by the New York Times, Alfred Kelly, the chief executive of the New York-New Jersey Super Bowl Host Committee, estimated that 9,000 people would serve as volunteers in the days leading to the Super Bowl . That is far fewer than the 20,000 who were initially contemplated. Those numbers are down because the NFL opted to hire temporary paid workers for positions in which volunteers had typically been used. The decision was an apparent response to a class-action suit against Major League Baseball in the USA, which did not pay volunteers at the All-Star FanFest in July 2013.

It took me a LONG time to find out what volunteers actually *do* for this billion-dollar nonprofit with millionaire staff. From what I can tell, volunteers are at sites like airports, hotels and various transportation hubs days before the game to direct city visitors to whatever they need – transportation, bathrooms, etc.  And if that’s the case then – hold on to your hats – I’m fine with those roles being filled by volunteers. Why? Because, in those situations, I think these roles are best filled by volunteers – people who aren’t there for any financial gain, who want to be seen as volunteers, specifically, in doing these tasks: I’m here because I want to be here, because I love football and love my city, and I want to make you feel welcomed. But if volunteers are asked to do anything else – selling anything, cleaning anything, moving or hauling things, etc. – I have a HUGE problem with having these roles filled by unpaid staff, because I don’t see why volunteers would be best of those roles other than the NFL getting out of not paying people.

Even if the NFL wasn’t, officially, a nonprofit organization (which, by the way, I find that outrageous, IRS!), I would feel this way about its volunteer-involvement. Why? Because if I truly believe that some activities are best staffed by volunteers, NEVER as a money-saving activity but, rather, because unpaid people are best in that roles, I have to believe it for every sector.

Back in the summer of 2010, I attended an event by Triumph motorcycles in the city where I was living at the time (Canby, Oregon). The company had brought about 20 motorcycles you could sign up to ride, on group rides, every 30 minutes. The Triumph truck traveled all over the USA to bring these events to cities all over, and these Triumph events were staffed primarily by VOLUNTEERS. Because volunteers are “free”? Nope (volunteers are never free!). It was because an event attendee talking to a volunteer — someone who owns at least one of the motorcycles in the line up, and owned at least one other probably at some point, who can speak passionately about the product, who wants you to get to have the experience they have been having, and who won’t get any commission from a sale and doesn’t rely on this activity for their financial livelihood — is in such contrast to talking to a salesperson or paid staff person. The few paid staff there stayed in the background, there to fill in blanks and maybe to make a sale, but volunteers were the official spokespeople. It gave the event a total no-sales-pressure feel from a customer point of view – it was just a day to enjoy Triumph motorcycles.

I’ve never forgotten that experience. And it’s one of the reasons why I’m not ready to condemn the NFL’s involvement of volunteers. At least not until I can see what exactly it is that they do.

UPDATE: an article from The Star Ledger about what NFL Super Bowl volunteers did in 2014. Note – 1500 ambassadors were paid. Did those paid folks do the SAME work as the volunteers, or something more/different?

And now, back to promoting The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook.

Also see:

Have you ever changed your mind?.

Learning, learning everywhere, a blog about where I find new marketing and volunteer engagement ideas (spoiler alert: it’s not at conferences or workshops)

accessibility, diversity & virtual volunteering

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One of the many things I’m proud of in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, is that it features an entire chapter on accessibility and diversity.

That chapter, and the entire book, provide detailed advice regarding:

  • the benefits of having online volunteers representing a variety of socio-economic levels, neighborhoods, ages, cultures and other demographics
  • the benefits of accommodating a diversity of volunteers (an accommodation you make for one particular group often ends up benefiting ALL volunteers)
  • how to use language in such a way as to accommodate and welcome a variety of volunteers 
  • how to adapt online tools to accommodate different online volunteers, including those that may have physical disabilities
  • how to accommodate online volunteers with learning and emotional disabilities
  • how to recruit for diversity; and
  • how to track progress regarding diversity among online volunteer ranks.

The chapter on accessibility and diversity is referenced throughout The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook , because Susan and I did not want anyone thinking it was a chapter to take or leave.

I became an advocate for accessibility and diversity in volunteering and in computer and Internet use in October 1994 when I attended the annual meeting of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility at UC San Diego. There was a panel discussion called “The Meanings of Access,” and remarks during that talk, particularly by Deborah Kaplan, then of the World Institute on Disability, changed my life forever. I came to a realization of two things I’d never had before: accessibility is a human right, and accessibility brings me in contact with awesome people I would never meet or work with otherwise. I became an advocate right then and there.

In 1997, I got funding from the Mitsubishi Electric America Foundation for the Virtual Volunteering Project to explore how to make online volunteering as accessible as possible, and that same year, blew my mouth off at a conference in Austin, Texas about how disappointed I was that the panelists I’d just listened to, talking about the digital divide, never once mentioned people with disabilities, resulting in one of the greatest personal and professional relationships of my life, with Sharron Rush, who was also in the audience and later formed Knowbility, a nonprofit that promotes accessibility in technology tools and technology careers.

In 2008, I read “InVolving LGBT Volunteers,” published by The Consortium of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered voluntary and community organisations, based in London, the United Kingdom, and that solidified my understanding that making accessibility and diversity a priority in any program is about benefits for everyone in that program, not just people with disabilities or people who are from minority or under-represented groups. This publication is referenced in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, and remains one I return to frequently when preparing lectures or workshops about volunteer recruitment.

I have tried to put into practice all that I’ve heard about regarding virtual volunteering, including accommodations for a variety of people as volunteers and recruiting specifically to create a diverse volunteer pool. I won’t say I’m always successful, and I won’t say trying the methods we promote in the book is always easy, but I will say that it’s made my work experience oh-so-much richer and interesting, and it’s always been worth trying.

The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook is now available for purchase as a paperback and an ebook. 

Now available: The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook!

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vvbooklittleThe Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook is now available for purchase as a paperback and an ebook, published by Energize, Inc. 

The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook reflects all that has changed — and remained the same — since the first book was published online more than 10 years ago. Again co-authored with Susan Ellis and published by Energize, Inc., The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook still includes the basics for getting started with involving and supporting volunteers online, but it goes much farther, offering detailed information to help organizations that are already engaged in virtual volunteering with improving and expanding their programs. It also offers more international perspectives. The first book was focused on people who had never heard of virtual volunteering; this revised book still serves as the most comprehensive introduction to the subject available, but provides much more in-depth information and guidance for organizations already engaging online volunteers, who want to improve or expand their virtual volunteering activities.

New and advanced information includes:

  • More detailed advice on virtual volunteering assignment, including one-time “Byte-Sized” tasks (micro-volunteering), longer-term, higher-responsibilities and virtual team assignments.
  • A thorough look at various practices for screening and matching volunteers to assignments, with an eye to getting the most capable volunteers into your volunteering ranks and preventing incomplete assignments or burdensome management tasks
  • How to make online volunteer roles accessible and diverse
  • More details about how to work successfully with online volunteers, so that they are successful, your organization benefits and volunteer managers aren’t overwhelmed
  • Balancing safety with program goals
  • Respecting privacy of both the organization and online volunteers themselves
  • Online mentoring
  • Blogging by, for and about volunteers
  • Online activism
  • Spontaneous online volunteers
  • Live online events with volunteers
  • The future of virtual volunteering and how to start planning for oncoming trends

There’s also a new chapter just for online volunteers themselves, which organizations can also use in creating their own materials for online volunteers.

I’ve worked hard over the years to make this book worth the purchase price, and to be a resource you can turn to any time for support in your engagement with volunteers online.

In conjunction with the revised guidebook is the Virtual Volunteering Wiki, a free online resource and collaborative space for sharing resources regarding virtual volunteering. We are seeking a partner university or college that could recruit an intern from among students studying in its post-graduate program to keep this wiki updated.

If you read the book, I would so appreciate it if you could write and post a review of it on the Amazon and Barnes and Noble web sites (you can write the same review on both sites).

How Our Minds Mislead Us

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I discourage those that are screening volunteers from going with their “gut.” I like to remind them that everyone in the Penn State/Second Mile scandal went with their gut instead of following good policy and procedures. I’ve also brought up times when I hesitated to involve a volunteer because of a gut feeling, then decided I needed to go with real observations and fact, and ended up involving WONDERFUL volunteers that I almost passed on because I realized I had some prejudices that I needed to work on.

This recent blog from Brain Pickings, which notes various scientific studies that have shown that intuition is “sometimes helpful but often misleading.” It focuses on a new book by John Brockman: Thinking: The New Science of Decision-Making, Problem-Solving, and Prediction. In the book, Nobel-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman notes:

“There is no sharp line between intuition and perception. … Perception is predictive. . . . If you want to understand intuition, it is very useful to understand perception, because so many of the rules that apply to perception apply as well to intuitive thinking. Intuitive thinking is quite different from perception. Intuitive thinking has language. Intuitive thinking has a lot of word knowledge organized in different ways more than mere perception. But some very basic characteristics [of] perception are extended almost directly to intuitive thinking.”

The essays and lectures in this book don’t discount intuition altogether; what this book, and others, are trying to show is that intuition is more feeling than fact, and that always trusting your intuition can have dire consequences – just as always ignoring it would.

I would love to read this book. I often find these kinds of books so much more helpful in working with volunteers than other books that focus on management, even volunteer management.

Also see:

Volunteer managers: you are NOT psychic!

Why I liked an anti-crowdsourcing Facebook page

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On Facebook, I’ve just liked “Crowdsourcing Sucks,” which I originally found on Twitter under crowdsource666. Its motto: “Crowdsourcing, the scourge of the graphic design industry.”

How can a person such as myself that has been an evangelist for virtual volunteering, including crowdsourcing, since the 1990s, like this person or organization or whatever it is?

Because I do see his/her/their point.

I don’t trust a nonprofit organization that doesn’t involve volunteers in some way – but I also don’t trust an organization that talks about volunteers in terms of hourly monetary values of service given, as this says, “We involve volunteers because we don’t have to pay them! Look at the money we saved in not having to hire someone to do this work!” There is far greater value of volunteer involvement than that.

So, rock on crowdsource666.

Also see:

Traditional volunteering is now EXTREME volunteering

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I laughed out loud at this!

The rise of ‘extreme’ volunteering, by Nesta, a registered charity in the United Kingdom.

Yes, now traditional volunteering is rebranded as EXTREME VOLUNTEERING. The author talks about the revolutionary idea of… ready?… ready?…. volunteers helping patients in hospitals! Or taking a year off to volunteer!

Sigh… okay, if you want to rebrand these traditional forms of volunteering, that require longer-term commitment and put volunteers in direct contact with clients, as EXTREME VOLUNTEERING, fine.

I laughed because, after being told over the last three years again and again that what people really wanted micro volunteering – short-term, no commitment, just a few minutes of helping here and there whenever they might maybe find a little time – and me pushing back and saying, no, what people really want are real connections, deeper connections, through volunteering, even leadership roles that require longer commitment, and that kind of volunteering is what organizations want as well, it’s nice to read that, at last, the “buzz” is changing and recognizing reality!

The reality is this: different people want different kinds of volunteering. Some want micro volunteering. Some want long-term volunteering. Some want volunteering they can do by themselves. Some want volunteering that brings them in contact with staff. Some want volunteering that brings them in contact with clients. Some want a group volunteering experience. And organizations that need and want volunteers may or may not be able to accommodate all these varieties of volunteering – it depends on their mission, their priorities, their staffing, their expertise and their funding.

Also see: