Commentary, resources & discussion re: nonprofits/ngos, communications, community engagement, volunteerism, effective humanitarian aid & development, ethics, women's empowerment & management ethics. Posts at least twice a month, usually on Tuesdays.
Category Archives: Community / Volunteer Engagement
Ever since reading the Cluetrain Manefesto back in the 1990s, I’ve known that embracing the Internet as an interactive tool – not an online brochure or a press release distribution system – takes a changed mindset. Same for online volunteering – the key to success is a changed mindset that thinks about volunteers very differently than free labor that comes in, does things no one else wants to do and leaves.
On that note is this excellent blog about “strategic digital communication” – it’s tips are of value for all nonprofits, NGOs, government agencies and other community-focused organization, not just arts organizations.
So if you think you might be ready to re-build your website, stop. Think about digitally engaging your constituents instead. And if you’ve hired a website redesign shop or a technology shop, put them on hold: you need to work with a digital communications firm instead.
Or, if not a digital communications firm – which many of the nonprofits I work with could never possibly afford – start bringing together volunteers and clients and asking them how they use the Internet for fun, for their work, and regarding subjects that are essential to them. And thinking about what activities online outreach should inspire/launch/grow.
Also note that 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.
— Original blog from 2011 below —
As I’ve blogged about before, there is a for-profit company based in Florida, Community Service Help, Inc., that claims it can match people have been assigned court-ordered community service “with a charity that is currently accepting online volunteers” – for a fee, payable by the person in need of community service. But the community service is watching videos. Yes, you read that right: you pay to get access to videos, which you may or may not watch, and this company then gives you a letter for your probation officer or court representative saying you did community service – which, of course, you didn’t. – you watched videos.
Another of these companies is Community Service 101, which charges a monthly fee for users to track and report their hours – something they could do for free on a shared GoogleDoc spreadsheet. There’s also this nonprofit, Facing the Future With Hope, which also offers to find online community service, for a fee. And there’s fastcommunityservice.com, which claims that you can work off your court-ordered community service hours by taking an online “Caffeine Awareness Course.” It’s a $30 fee to take this “course” and get their letter saying you have done community service – which you have NOT, because taking an online course is NOT COMMUNITY SERVICE. And, not to be outdone is completecommunityservice.com, which follows the same model: pay a fee, get a letter that says you did community service.
At least one of these companies is affiliated with Terra Research Foundation; it didn’t have a web site when I first started blogging about this back in January, but it does now, and it’s now listed on Guidestar as “Terra Foundation”, however, the web site has no listing of staff or their qualifications, no listing of these offices they say they have all over the USA, no listing of board members, no listing of current projects, no testimonials from those benefiting from their projects, no listing of specific nonprofit organizations they have collaborated with/assisted, no annual report, no budget information, and on and on.
If it’s a for-profit company saying they can help you with community service for the court, you should be able to find on their web site:
A list of courts, by name, city and state, that have accepted community service arranged through this company (not just “courts in Florida”, but “the circuit court of Harpo County, Florida)
An official statement from a court – ANY court – saying, “We endorse such-and-such company for getting your court-ordered community service done”
A list of “charity partners” or nonprofit partners or government agency partners that use this service
The names of staff at the company and their credentials to show their experience regarding online volunteering or community service.
A list of all fees – specific dollar amounts – on the home page (not buried on the web site)
A scan of a letter they have provided to a court, a probation officer, a school, a university, etc. (with the contact name for the person blocked out, ofcourse), so you know exactly what the organization says to confirm community service.
A list of every court, school and university that has accepted the community service hours this company has ever arranged for anyone.
Good luck finding this information on the web sites I’ve mentioned in this blog. The information is NOT there.
If it’s a non-profit company, you should be able to find on their web site:
Their most recent annual report that notes their income and expenditures for their last fiscal year
The names of the board of directors
The names of staff and their credentials to show their experience regarding online volunteering or community service.
A list of courts, by name, city and state, that have accepted community service arranged through this company (not just “courts in Florida”, but “the circuit court of Harpo County, Florida”)
An official statement from a court – ANY court – saying, “We endorse such-and-such company for getting your court-ordered community service done”
A list about specific activities that people do as volunteers through the nonprofit organization
A list of “charity partners” or nonprofit partners or government agency partners that use this service
A list of all fees – specific dollar amounts
A scan of a letter they have provided to a court, a probation officer, a school, a university, etc. (with the contact name for the person blocked out, ofcourse), so you know exactly what the organization says to confirm community service.
A list of every court, school and university that has accepted the community service hours this company has ever arranged for anyone.
Again, this information is NOT THERE on the web sites I’ve already mentioned.
While I have no issue with a nonprofit organization, or even a government agency, charging a volunteer to cover expenses (materials, training, staff time to supervise and support the volunteer, criminal background check, etc.), I have a real problem with companies charging people for freely-available information.
I also have a big problem with judges and probation officers accepting online community service that consists of a person watching videos. Watching a video is NOT community service. Listening to a lecture is NOT community service. Watching an autopsy is NOT community service. Courts can – and do – sentence offenders to watch videos or listen to a lecture or watch an autopsy, and that’s fine, but these activities are NOT COMMUNITY SERVICE.
Sadly, courts are sometimes not catching the scam until it’s too late: I’ve been contacted by representatives of two different court systems, both in California, who had approved court-ordered community service by people who used one of these companies, not realizing that the people had just paid a fee for a letter and had not done any community service at all (and both representatives said watching a video or taking a course is NOT community service in the eyes of the court!).
I wish I could spend time reporting each of these companies to the State Attorneys General for each state where they reside, but I just do not have the time; it’s a lot of forms to fill out.
In that original blog, I asked if organizations that claim to represent the community service sector such as the Corporation for National Service or AL!VE would investigate and take a stand regarding these companies – to date, they have done nothing.
I’ve contacted the following organizations today about these unscrupulous companies, urging them to investigate. Let’s hope those who can really do something about these companies will do so!
And one final note: I’ve been lucky enough to have involved some court-ordered folks as online volunteers – I say “lucky enough” because they have all of them have ended up volunteering for more hours than they were required to do, and been really great volunteers. And, no, I did not charge them!
The blog you just read is the most popular blog I have ever published. Please note that I have no funding to do this research that I do on unethical community service, and some of these people that run these programs get incredibly angry at me for bringing them to the attention of law enforcement – one even threatened legal action against me, complete with letters to my employers, texts to my family and some very nasty social media posts. I do this research and these awareness activities entirely on my own, with no financial support for such. If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site or my YouTube videos 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.
Over the years, more than one person observed Jerry Sandusky, head of the nonprofit organization The Second Mile and former Penn State defensive coordinator, having sex with boys. Yet none of those people called the police, and none of the people in authority that they told about what they saw called police.
Why?
A leading candidate for the Republican nomination for President of the USA is being accused of sexual harassment by women who worked for a business association he lead, and by a woman who claims when she asked for help getting a job, he pressured her for sex (and, yes, the latter is sexual harassment – a coercive request for sex in exchange for a job, a good grade or other non-sexual “reward”). But people looked the other way, this latest accuser didn’t say anything at the time and for many years, and this man kept moving up in his political party to where he is now.
Why didn’t people in the know say more?
I have the answer to both of those questions: the consequences for the accuser or witness of saying something to people in authority or to the police seemed greater, and worse, than saying nothing. Consciously or unconsciously, people said to themselves, I don’t want to deal with this. This makes me uncomfortable. I may lose my job / never get a job if I say something. I don’t want this to define me, to follow me at this job and all jobs in the future. Maybe he’s better now or maybe someone else will deal with this. I don’t want to be the bad guy. It’s easier for me and this organization not to say anything.
I am not at all excusing the behavior of all the people who didn’t speak out. Penn State’s Athletic director and one of the university’s vice president have not only lost their jobs: they face possible prison time for lying to a grand jury and for not reporting to proper authorities the allegations of sexual misconduct. And that is exactly as it should be. Shame on them! It’s a shame that people in the Catholic Church who knew about sexual assaults by many priests weren’t similarly punished.
But I am challenging nonprofits, non-governmental agencies, universities, government departments and other mission-based programs – and particularly aid agencies with staff members in the field! – to take a hard look at not just their policies, but their culture.
Are you never hearing about inappropriate behavior by employees or volunteers at your organization not because nothing is happening, but because people don’t feel comfortable saying anything?
The consequences of a culture that, intentionally or not, discourages victims and witnesses from coming forward can even be deadly: Kate Puzey, a Peace Corps volunteer in the west African nation of Benin in 2009, was murdered in apparent retaliation for accusing a local Peace Corps staff member of child sexual assault. Her murder, and the poor reaction of the Peace Corps administration to this and to reported sexual assaults on Peace Corps members themselves, lead to a volunteer protection act, passed by Congress this year, establishing sexual assault policies and training to protect victims and whistle-blowers.
What about your organization?
Are you going to look at not only your policies, but your practice?
Do you do trainings and awareness activities for employees and volunteers regarding sexual harassment and inappropriate behavior every year?
What do you do to create a welcoming environment regarding the reporting of inappropriate behavior?
What do your individual employees and volunteers say about your organization’s culture, particularly in how comfortable they would feel reporting suspected inappropriate or even criminal behavior by someone, particularly a person in authority?
Each year has various theme designations from the United Nations General Assembly. So far, 2012 is:
International Year of Cooperatives. Organizations focused on microfinance, rural business development, small farmers and all organizations that support co-ops / cooperative enterprises should already be planning what they are going to do to leverage this year’s designation to promote their work and the needs of those they serve. Credit unions and even REI need to be thinking about leveraging the International Year of Cooperatives as well!
International Year of Sustainable Energy for All. Organizations focused on food production, health, climate change, jobs, the environment and, ofcourse, sustainable or alternative energy should already be planning what they are going to do to leverage this year’s designation to promote their work and the needs of those they serve.
More designations may come.
Your nonprofit, non-governmental organization (NGO), charity, grassroots organization or even government agencies doesn’t have to have a mission specifically-focused on these themes to leverage them for your own organization’s use:
Girl Scouts / Girl Guides, or a class or club at a school, could engage in various activities to highlight cooperatives or sustainable energy or for their membership to learn about such.
A local business association could highlight area cooperatives or local companies focused on alternative energy on its web site, or create a media guide for the press on such, so that there is a local angle in the media regarding these international designations.
A utility cooperative could issue a media guide or create a section on its web site to highlight either International Year theme (or both!).
Any environmentally-focused organization could leverage the themes of either day to talk about their work or their concerns in an event, a press conference or a dedicated page on their web site.
You can use these designations to tie in your organization’s events and programs, through issuing press releases, writing op-ed pieces for local media, blogging on a related topic, offering yourself for interviews to radio and TV, or even holding a special event. By doing so, you increase the chance of your organization coming to the attention of anyone doing a search online for information about these international year designations.
Also, look for Twitter tags that are trending on these topics, so can have your Tweets reach an even wider audience.
I would never judge the quality of an employee by how many hours he or she worked. When I see someone regularly working overtime, week after week, here are my thoughts:
That person’s job might be too much for one person; that job might need to be broken up into two positions.
That person might be doing things he or she shouldn’t be doing, and ignoring what should be priorities. I wonder what isn’t getting done?
That person may not be qualified for this position.
That person may have personal problems that aren’t allowing him or her to get this job done.
So, if I wouldn’t think the number of hours worked by an employee is a good indicator of their job performance, why would I judge a volunteer by the number of hours he or she contributes?
When judging volunteer performance, I look at:
What did he or she accomplish as a volunteer for this organization?
How does this person’s volunteering – specifically this person’s time and effort – have a positive effect?
How did volunteering have a positive effect on him or her?
Which is actually how I judge paid employees as well…
I gather that data by:
surveying volunteers, employees, clients and the public, through both traditional online and printed surveys and formal and informal interviews
reading through feedback that comes through emails, memos and online discussion groups
listening and writing down comments I hear
observing their work for myself
What about you? Is your organization still giving out volunteer recognition based on number of hours provided to an organization? Is the person who donated 100 hours to your organization last year really more valuable than the person who donated 20?
India is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country on the globe, the most populous democracy in the world, the world’s ninth-largest economy by nominal GDP and the fourth largest economy by purchasing power parity. Yes, it has only 8.5% Internet penetration, but it also has at least 100 million Internet users. (here’s where I got this info, in addition to Wikipedia)
In short, India is really big and really important.
But go to any online search engine and search for
volunteer India
and the links generated are for Westerners – people from Europe or North America or Australia – to travel to India and volunteer.
But people in India want to volunteer in their own communities, with local NGOs. On YahooAnswers, people from India, in India, regularly post and ask where they can volunteer locally, in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, and on and on. Here’s an example of one such person. Where is the online resource for people in India to find volunteering opportunities in their own communities and to learn how to be a great volunteer?
IVolunteer.in comes close to trying. It’s an initiative of MITRA, a not-for-profit organization in Delhi. But its database interface doesn’t allow a search by community, and seems to not be working properly – I did several searches using different criteria, and came up with no volunteer opportunities at all.
And what about a primary resource to help local NGOs in India build their capacities regarding financial management, fundraising, HR management, volunteer engagement, marketing and other key functions? South Africa has one. But not India? NGOsIndia.com comes close to trying…. but is far from there.
If you know of web sites that address either of these issues, please note such in the comments section. I really want to be wrong about these lack of resources for India.
However, please note, I am NOT looking for organizations or programs that send volunteers from other countries to India!
It’s not too early to start planning for how your organization will leverage December 5, International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development. This isn’t a day to honor only international volunteers; the international in the title describes the day — meaning it’s a global event — not the volunteer.
It’s a shame to turn the day into just another day to celebrate any volunteer, rather than specifically those volunteers who contribute to economic and social development. Such volunteers deserve their own day. There are plenty of days and weeks to honor all volunteers and encourage more volunteering; why not keep December 5 specifically for volunteers who contribute to economic and social development? Why not keep it unique?
Even if you are in a “developed” country – the USA, Canada, Norway, France, whatever – you have volunteers that are engaged in economic and social development. Here in the USA, there are volunteers staffing financial literacy classes for low-income populations, training unemployed people to enter or re-enter the workforce, helping refugees and new immigrants access much-needed resources and services, training seniors to use computers and the Internet, using theater, dance and other performance as an education and awareness tool, and so much more. Those are all examples of volunteering for economic and social development!
And in addition to keeping this day special, let’s also be careful of how we talk about volunteers. For instance, back in 2009, I got this note in a mass email sent out from United Nations Volunteers:
This is the time to recognize the hard work and achievements of volunteers everywhere who work selflessly for the greater good.
Selflessly?
Volunteers are not all selfless! Volunteers are not all donating unpaid service to be nice, to help the world, or to make a difference for a greater good. Volunteers also donate unpaid service:
to gain certain kinds of experience
for a sense of adventure
to gain skills and contacts for paid employment
for fun
to meet people in the hopes of making friends or even get dates
because they are angry and want to see first hand what’s going on at an organization or within a cause, or to contribute to a cause they feel passionate about
to feel important
None of those reasons to volunteer are selfless — and all of them are excellent reasons to volunteer, nonetheless (and excellent reasons for an organization to involve a volunteer). These not-so-selfless volunteers are not less committed, less trustworthy or less worth celebrating than the supposed “selfless” volunteers.
Please – no more warm, fuzzy language regarding volunteers! Let’s quit talking about volunteers with words like nice and selfless. Volunteers are neither saints nor teddy bears. Let’s start using more modern and appropriate language to talk about volunteers that recognizes their importance, like powerful and intrepid and audacious and determined. Let’s even call them mettlesome and confrontational and demanding. That’s what makes volunteers necessary, not just nice. Let’s increase the value of volunteers with the language we use!
In short, let’s give volunteers their due with the words we use to describe them.
And just to be clear: by volunteer, I mean someone who is not paid for his or her service, and his or her “stipend” that’s supposed to merely cover essential expenses so the volunteer can give up employment entirely during his or her stint as a volunteer isn’t in fact more than some mid and high-level government workers of a country are making. Yes, that’s a dig.
International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development was declared by the United Nations General Assembly per its resolution 40/212 in 1985.
But I was oh-so-disappointed to see that IVR’s project will be focused only on microvolunteering from the volunteers’ point of view.
The hype regarding microvolunteering, a form of online volunteering, is similar to the excitement a few years ago regarding family volunteering. That excitement regarding family volunteering translated into lots of campaigns to encourage families to volunteer together, rather than helping organizations get the knowledge and resources necessary to create volunteering opportunities that entire families could undertake. The result was, and is, a lot of very frustrated families who want to volunteer, but cannot find opportunities. I see the same thing happening with microvolunteering – far more organizations and media articles encouraging people to try it, rather than resources to help organizations to be able to create microvolunteering opportunities and support volunteers in these roles.
What’s needed – desperately needed – is research about microvolunteering from the *organizations’* point of view, specifically:
what kinds of organizations are creating microvolunteering assignments (in terms of the mission of the organizations, whether or not they have a staff member devoted to managing volunteers, the level of tech-saviness of staff, etc.)?
what kinds of microvolunteering assignments are most popular with volunteers? (which attract the largest numbers of volunteers, or seem to always attract at least some volunteers)
what kinds of volunteer management practices are necessary to ensure microvolunteering assignments are completed such that they are of value to the organization?
how is success measured by organizations regarding microvolunteering assignments? (is it just in number of volunteers that were involved or the amount of work done? Or do some organizations track different measures, such as volunteers’ perceptions changed, volunteers’ awareness built, volunteers signing on to longer-term projects, volunteers becoming donors, etc.?)
what are the challenges to organizations creating microvolunteering assignments and to effectively supporting volunteers undertaking such assignments?
when microvolunteering doesn’t work, from the organization’s perspective (it has no real impact on the organization, the volunteers don’t go on to become more longer-term volunteers, donors, other kinds of supporters, it’s a lot of work for very little, real return, etc.), *why* doesn’t it work?
Unless researchers try to get answers to these types of questions, unless microvolunteering research is focused on organizations themselves, rather than just volunteers, more organizations won’t create more microvolunteering assignments – and more potential volunteers will be frustrated when they get excited to participate in something that actually isn’t available to them.
Last week, I signed up to help at a community event, held yesterday.
Just. To. Help. To assist.
Yesterday, when I arrived at the event site – a public school – I found out I was in charge of the entire event. More than 30 kids would be there in an hour, expecting me to lead them through 90 minutes of activities that were completely foreign to me.
I don’t like kids.1 And I noted this at the time I signed up to help. I care about the cause, however, and as I was new to the committee – I just joined last week – I wanted to prove myself as a reliable, helpful committee member. By assisting at an event. By helping someone else in charge.
But there I was, in charge of an event I knew nothing about. About to face more than 30 kids, all under the age of 12.
I wasn’t scared. And that was good, because kids smell fear. No, instead, I was angry. Kids smell anger too, but it tends to make them listen to me. And that played to my advantage during the event – they never crossed that line into chaos that a large group of kids can so easily dissolve into.
Then there were the other adult volunteers, who were also there just to help, just to be nice. And they just kinda stood there, watching me try to pull it together. And as I was bossing those confused volunteers around in a frantic attempt to pull the event together, I wondered: Have each of these people been registered with the school and had a criminal background check? Is it my responsibility to check into that before they participate? Come to think of it, no one at the school checked to see that I was who I said I was, or asked me for my school volunteer I.D. number. How do I know any of these adults are safe to be around these kids?
I pulled the event off, on a very basic level. I drew on my experience as a manager of people, projects and events, on my two years of experience volunteering with the Girl Scouts (I’ve noticed that troop leaders at events get the kids started on an activity immediately and have them keep repeating it until volunteers are ready to move them on to the next activity), my experience having coordinated and directed more live events than is probably healthy for any one person in one lifetime, and by channeling my ever-so-bossy-but-organized Great Aunt Cornelia, who is still a legend in my family for her management abilities.
Also, it turns out none of the adult volunteers were predators nor inclined to ignore kids engaging in dangerous behavior. Lucky kids. Lucky me.
In addition, the volunteer that was supposed to be in charge did have all of the materials and equipment ready to go at the site – that helped tremendously. However, she was astounded, upon arrival just after the kids started the first activity, that the emails she sent in the preceding days weren’t understood by me and others as completely signing off on responsibility for the event (she had, indeed, said in those emails she would be late, and said myself and another volunteer would be the “leads” for the other volunteers until she got there, and some emails came with attachments… But, of course, I thought the school principal would be in charge, since she was cc’d on everything, since I have no experience at all with this kind of event, since I had made it clear I was just signing up to help, and since, to her knowledge, I have no experience doing anything like this. And I don’t like kids).
Was the event a success? In my opinion, no. It wasn’t bad, and the kids had fun and were kept busy, but the reality is: the kids didn’t really learn anything about the subject at hand. They had fun, and they walked away happy, and that’s nice – but they didn’t walk away retaining any knowledge, which was the entire purpose of the event. No minds were changed, no behaviors altered – and that was the mission of the event. A lot could have been done at the event to create that knowledge, to ensure things were remembered, to better ensure some behaviors would change, but I would have needed more than 90 minutes of prep to make that happen.
In addition, this could have been an event where not only did kids get some really essential knowledge, but also, some adults could be inspired to help at future events. And that’s why it was a stark reminder about why I – and others – train in volunteer management issues (as well as why there are so many books on event management). And why so many schools and other organizations struggle to find volunteers.
Let’s face it: a great way to drive away volunteers is to sign them up to help at an event and, when they show up, tell them they are in charge. Or have them confused about what they are supposed to do, and feeling generally unsupported. Or have them bossed around for a couple of hours by a very confused and angry me.
Volunteer management isn’t just mindless bureaucracy, with forms to fill out and procedures to be followed. It’s about ensuring that an organization or program or department mission is met. It’s about ensuring volunteers don’t show up and just do some seemingly random activities. It’s about creating experiences that lead to awareness and inspiration – not just getting some work done. It’s about ensuring safety – not just keeping fingers crossed and hoping everything works out.
And effective volunteer management is what keeps volunteers coming back again and again.
Volunteer management also isn’t just one person’s responsibility; some person at that school trusted a volunteer explicitly with organizing a safe, meaningful event for students from the school. Who was that person? What is he or she going to do about what happened yesterday? Does he or she even know what happened – and what didn’t happen? Did they just walk by and think, yeah, the kids are having fun, no problems here? Are they reading this blog right now?
I know the volunteer that was supposed to be in charge isn’t reading this blog: she also sent me an email last week proudly stating that she doesn’t read blogs and isn’t on Twitter or Facebook. Just like so many people I’ve met here in Oregon, I’m sorry to say…
Here’s a positive: I’ve never been more dedicated to the fundamentals of volunteer management and effective, program-based planning than I am right now.
I still don’t like kids though…
————
1. Okay, I don’t hate kids. I sometimes find them quite amusing. I really love watching them learn. And I’m passionate about girls knowing just how many choices and opportunities are out there. But I do not think kids are automatically cute nor innocent nor sweet, and I also don’t like parents and other adults who think of kids as precious snowflakes who have every right to scream in a restaurant – though I cut a lot of slack on airplanes.
The USA Senate unanimously passed the Kate Puzey Peace Corps Volunteer Protection Act of 2011. The legislation, which is named for a Georgia Peace Corps volunteer who was murdered in 2009 while serving in Africa, would provide better security and protection measures for Peace Corps volunteers. The legislation is named in honor of Kate Puzey, a 24-year-old Peace Corps volunteer from Cumming, Ga., who was murdered in 2009 in the West African village of Badjoude, Benin, soon after she had reported a colleague for allegedly molesting some of the young girls they taught.
The legislation provides whistleblower protection for Peace Corps volunteers, a safeguard that is currently in place for federal employees but not for Peace Corps volunteers. This type of protection would have given Kate more protection when she reported her allegations.
In addition, it requires the Peace Corps to develop sexual assault risk-reduction and response training and protocol in consultation with experts that complies with best practices in the sexual assault field. The training also is to be tailored to the specific countries in which volunteers serve.
Over the years, more than one person observed Jerry Sandusky, head of the nonprofit organization The Second Mile and former Penn State defensive coordinator, having sex with boys. Yet none of those people called the police, and none of the people in authority that they told about what they saw called police.