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.
It’s the end of a calendar year, and that means it’s time to look at what were my most popular blogs of 2021 – and to try to figure out why. It’s an exercise I do not so much for YOU, my readers, but for me. It’s the kind of self-analysis every nonprofit, NGO, government agency, or consultant for such should do.
One seismic shift this year: not one blog I published this year made it to the list of top 11 blogs of all time. Usually, I knock off at least one blog from the top 11 spot – but not this year.
My top 11 blogs for 2021 – the ones that got the most clicks:
Free books on management of volunteers. If you are in charge of creating assignments for volunteers or supporting volunteers, there are terrific, free resources for you.
Can volunteerism repair a nation? And is the government, corporations and foundations all ready to fund the effort to bring civility and cohesion back to communities?
High Impact Virtual Volunteering. In contrast to microvolunteering, this is a list of high-responsibility, time-intensive volulnteering that has a BIG impact.
It was also another good year for The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook – lots of sales (though not as many as in 2020). If you want to learn how to avoid the common pitfalls in virtual volunteering and to dig far deeper into the factors for success in creating assignments for online volunteers, supporting online volunteers, and keeping virtual volunteering a worthwhile endeavor for everyone involved, you will not find a more detailed guide anywhere than The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. It’s available both as a traditional print publication and as a digital book. And if you buy it directly from me, the last two boxes in my closet will soon go away! I also get a bit more money than if you buy it from Amazon (and it’s slightly cheaper to buy from me as well).
If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, 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.
The USA has evacuated thousands of Afghans in desperate need of safety, per the takeover by the Taliban, a terrorist group that does not believe women should be a part of public society and wants to require everyone in the country to live by their very strict views. Thousands of these Afghans are at military bases across the USA awaiting placement in welcoming communities.
No matter where you are located in the USA, you can welcome an Afghan family and provide them with the practical support they need to get settled – by your serving as a certified sponsor circle. As a sponsor circle, you and your neighbors will volunteer to take on tasks like finding initial housing, stocking the pantry, connecting children to school, providing initial income support, and helping adults to find employment.
Communities Circle Up: Bring together at least five adults in your neighborhood to form a sponsor circle. Complete background checks, fundraise, and prepare to submit your group’s application for certification.
Members Make a Plan: Check your knowledge of what is needed to serve as a sponsor circle and prepare a Welcome Plan in advance of being matched with a newcomer. Support in completing your Welcome Plan is available!
Circles Welcome Newcomers: Once certified, sponsor circle volunteers will welcome the newcomer directly into the community and provide tailored support through the initial integration process.
Each sponsor circle must fundraise a minimum of $2,275 per individual you will support. That means, if your sponsor circle is going to support a family of three, you will need to raise $6,825.
Each sponsor group must commit to providing a minimum of 90-days of reception and welcome support to an Afghan newcomer family. At least one sponsor circle member has to complete the required knowledge check, an online training program.
RefugePoint, which has been rescuing and resettling refugees for decades, is the NGO stationed at U.S. military bases to assign Afghans to circles for absorption.
I’m a Reddit user, and in addition to being a part of a LOT of Reddit communities, I also moderate four subreddits, as a volunteer: one regarding volunteerism, one regarding inclusion, a subreddit to discuss community service, and the TechSoup subreddit. I’ve also joined a LOT of Reddit communities and spend way too much time reading them (and sometimes commenting).
So I was one of many reddit users that got a customized slide show “year in review” that Reddit sends to users (community members). And it’s a super fun way to recognize program participants.
Among the slides is one that shows that, in 2021, I scrolled the length of 35,495 bananas lying end-to-end:
There’s also a slide showing my most popular post in 2021 – it was to a subreddit I don’t frequent, the one for Portland, Oregon, and was how volunteers were urgently needed at cooling stations set up to help people deal with our 116 degree days (it got 218 “up votes”):
There was also a slide that showed how many hours I spent in 2021 in various subreddits – yes, I really did spend 123 hours, at LEAST, in the volunteers subreddit. The TwoXriders subreddit noted is for women motorcyclists, in case you were wondering, and the Malicious Compliance subreddit – that you will have to check out yourself:
There’s also a slide showing how many new communities I joined in 2021, how many user awards I got, and how many karma points (as Reddit calls it, fake Internet points) I got (pictured below):
What a fun way to recognize participation! Good ideas for honoring program participants and volunteers as well.
And note: they never said, “Your volunteering hours were the equivalent of this much money!” Because that’s a really, really bad idea.
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.
25 years ago, give or take a week or two, I started my first day as director of the Virtual Volunteering Project, a then-new initiative that had been founded by a nonprofit organization, Impact Online (Impact Online was later absorbed by VolunteerMatch).
More than a year before the launch of the Virtual Volunteering Project, Impact Online had begun promoting the idea of virtual volunteering, a phrase that was probably first used by one of Impact Online’s co-founders, Steve Glikbarg. In early 1996, Impact Online received a grant from the James Irvine Foundation to launch an initiative to research the practice of virtual volunteering and to promote the practice to nonprofit organizations in the USA. This new initiative was dubbed the Virtual Volunteering Project.
One nonprofit group, Impact Online, was created to help charities use the Web. The group, in Palo Alto, Calif., uses its site to match what it calls ‘virtual volunteers’ with organizations that need them, and has begun a data base of group logos and missions.
This might be the first use of the term virtual volunteers in a newspaper, but any article about Project Gutenberg in the 1990s would also be about virtual volunteering, even if it doesn’t use the term (I believe that Project Gutenberg is the first initiative created specifically to involve online volunteers).
After a few months of preparation and drafting web pages, I launched the first Virtual Volunteering Project web site in early 1997. After one year, I moved the Virtual Volunteering Project, and its funding, to the Charles A. Dana Center at The University of Texas at Austin, and Impact Online became fully absorbed by VolunteerMatch and discontinued its promotion of virtual volunteering (at least for several years).
My first two years of the Virtual Volunteering Project were spent reviewing and adapting telecommuting manuals and existing volunteer management recommendations to apply to virtual volunteering, as well as identifying organizations that were already involving online volunteers. When I started the project, I thought there were just a handful of initiatives involving online volunteers, but I was wrong: in less than a year, I had found almost 100 organizations involving online volunteers, and I had to eventually stop listing every initiative I found on the VV Project web site because there were just too many!
I also spent a lot of time in 1998, 1999 and 2000 presenting at conferences around the USA, trying to convince nonprofits that virtual volunteering was a viable, worthwhile practice and already well established at a good number of agencies. The amount of skepticism and even hostility I encountered regarding virtual volunteering in the late 1990s was, at times, overwhelming. In particular, established organizations like United Way agencies and volunteer centers were quite hostile to virtually volunteering. I did a workshop about virtual volunteering for the Corporation for National Service and Points of Light Foundation in 1997 and when I called them in 1998 to ask about presenting at their upcoming conference, the response was, “Oh, but you did that last year.”
World-renowned volunteer management expert Susan Ellis was key in getting me in front of nonprofits who needed to hear about virtual volunteering. Susan was unflinching in her support for the concept and her chastisement of traditional organizations balking at the idea of working with volunteers online was crucial in getting people to let go of outdated ideas about what volunteering could look like.
The Virtual Volunteering Project used research about organizations leveraging virtual volunteering, as well as testimonials from online volunteers themselves, to continually create and refine guidelines for engaging and supporting online volunteers. And I made a point of creating meaningful roles and activities for online volunteers to help the Project, so I could gain more experience supporting online volunteers myself. Those online volunteers were vital to the project, not only for their service, but their testing of methodologies and their feedback.
I’m also very proud that from the moment of the project’s launch, we had a commitment to showing how virtual volunteering could create more inclusion for people with disabilities in volunteering – and I have a conference in 1994 in San Diego by Computer Professionals For Social Responsibility (CPSR) – and speaker Deborah Kaplan specifically, for awakening me to that possibility long before I heard the term virtual volunteering.
I left the Virtual Volunteering Project in January 2001, to work for the United Nations Volunteers program at its headquarters in Bonn, Germany, to revamp NetAid, the UN’s online volunteering matching service, and to help manage a new initiative, the United Nations Information Technology Service (UNITeS). The Virtual Volunteering Project folded soon after – there just wasn’t interest anymore in funding it.
If you were a volunteer with the Virtual Volunteering Project, or attended a workshop on VV back in the 90s, or just talked with me back in those days, I hope you will comment below and talk about how virtual volunteering has been a part of your life.
If you want to learn about virtual volunteering in-depth – how to create a range of assignments to appeal to many different people, from micro volunteering to online mentoring, how to use online tools to support and engage ALL volunteers, including those that provide onsite service, and to dig far deeper into the factors for success in keeping virtual volunteering a worthwhile endeavor for everyone involved – you will not find a more detailed guide anywhere than The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. It’s available both as a traditional print publication and as a digital book.
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.
One of the biggest complaints by people that want to volunteer is this: when they express interest in volunteering with a nonprofit, NGO, school, or any community initiative, whether they submit an email, submit an online application, use something like VolunteerMatch or call, they may never get a response, or by the time they do get a response, many weeks or months later, they aren’t available anymore.
On the other side of the equation, lots of people would like to volunteer in a more substantial role than a micro task: they want to really feel like they are making a difference, and they are ready to commit a regular amount of time each week to do that. But they would like to do that from home (virtual volunteering).
A great way to both better serve people that want to volunteer with you and to appeal to those folks looking for a way to volunteer online/remotely in a substantial role is to create a volunteer screening role for a volunteer – or a team of volunteers.
Volunteer screeners:
Respond to all applicants immediately, to each person who sends an email or an application to express interest. The volunteer screener responds to that email within 48 hours (two business days), asking the person to fill out the application (if the potential volunteers hasn’t already), and asking for additional information, if needed; asking a few follow-up questions via email is a great way to screen out people who aren’t ready to volunteer with you – if they don’t reply, it means they weren’t ready to volunteer.
Screeners can set up a time to meet initially with each applicant – though remember that you do NOT need to meet with EVERY volunteer applicant: insisting on a phone, web conference or onsite meeting can be an unnecessary barrier to volunteering.
Screeners can ask simple questions to an applicant, via a phone call, an email or a video meeting that helps the screeners gauge if those applicants really understand what the organization is all about, the basic requirements of all volunteer roles, the variety of volunteer roles, etc. The organization can give the screener the final say on whether or not the applicant goes to the next step (the orientation, which can be online, or the training for a particular role) or, the organization can give that power solely to the manager of volunteers, who reads through the profile/evaluation written by the screener and makes the decision (but that manager has to move FAST – lack of response, or a slow response, will result in the volunteer applicant moving on – and feeling like their time so far was wasted).
Screening volunteers should:
Have a solid understanding of the organization and its opportunities for volunteering, and be able to answer the question, “Why does this organization involve volunteers?”
Be enthusiastic about the programs of the nonprofit.
Be able to promptly, immediately input information in a database of volunteer applicant inforamation, even if that database is just a shared spreadsheet.
Have excellent written communication skills – ability to express ideas and facts clearly – and, perhaps, to also be able to have excellent speaking skills. They may also need excellent online speaking/presentation skills as well.
Comfortable promptly emailing with, texting with and making phone calls or video calls to applicants.
To get your screeners to that point, you should have a training and a mock interview or screening session, where they get to try out their skills and have a feeling for what interactions with volunteers can be like. And, absolutely, that training can be entirely online.
The organization always needs to know where any volunteer applicant is in the process, the date of that person’s application, the date the applicant was initially screened, etc., so they can know if volunteer applicants are being onboarded quickly. Having applicant information inputted into a shared database is crucial. I’m a board member and in charge of onboarding new applications, and I use a spreadsheet on Google Drive, with the names of every applicant, the date they applied, the date of their interview, if they were going forward after the interview or withdrawing, if they suddenly went incommunicado, etc., and share it with all the other board members, who can view it at any time.
Did you notice that I just described a virtual volunteering role?
And if you want to learn how to avoid the common pitfalls in virtual volunteering and to dig far deeper into the factors for success in creating assignments for online volunteers, supporting online volunteers, and keeping virtual volunteering a worthwhile endeavor for everyone involved, you will not find a more detailed guide anywhere than The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. It’s based on many years of experience, from a variety of organizations. It’s available both as a traditional print publication and as a digital book.
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.
I hear a lot of consultants and organizations that promote volunteerism and volunteer engagement say that you absolutely should put volunteering experience on your résumé, period. But consider this: a 2007 study found that a job applicant that noted she was a “PTA coordinator” on her resume – a volunteer – was 79% less likely to be recommended for hire compared to an equally qualified woman without children. I found this statistic via “Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood Penalty?,” Shelley J. Correll, Stephen Bernard, and In Paik, in the American Journal of Sociology 112, no. 5 (2007): 1297-1339.
Someone who has been a coordinator of a parent-teacher association very likely:
Knows how to manage large amounts of email.
Has experience managing a team online and onsite, including identifying tasks, delegating tasks, managing various individual team members, accommodating different learning and work styles, etc.
Has a great deal of experience in conflict management and customer service.
Knows how to juggle priorities.
Knows how to negotiate.
Probably has a lot of event management experience.
And if they did this during the pandemic, knows how to coordinate online meetings.
Yet, all some employers will see is: she has kids and she makes her kids a priority and that might mean she’s distracted on the job or absent. And I bet it’s not the same for a man who puts this on his CV – I bet for him, it’s: wow, what a caring multi-tasker!
Then there’s my own experience: some of my best marketing and public relations experience has been as a volunteer. I have had some substantial accomplishments regarding my outreach activities for a couple of nonprofits in particular. I list these experiences right alongside my paid work – why shouldn’t I? It’s exactly the same work, but some roles were paid, others weren’t. I had one interview become shocked and even outraged when, during our interview, she realized I had treated these unpaid roles with the same importance as unpaid roles, and said, “Wait, these just volunteer roles?” Needless to say, I didn’t get that job. By contrast, in interviewing for my very first job with the United Nations, one of the things the interview panel was particularly impressed with was my volunteering regarding marketing and public relations for the California Abortion Rights Action League – they liked the work experience AND they liked that I had done it as a community volunteer. That volunteering role was crucial to me getting that first UN job, no question.
For the most part, I do believe in sharing volunteering experience on your résumé if such demonstrates skills you think make you, potentially, a more attractive candidate for employment. Experience working with communities different from your own, or experience leading a team, or volunteering that’s given you training to handle stressful or emergency situations are all things that will get a potential employer’s attention. When I’m a hiring manager, I give as much weight to such volunteering as I give to paid work – I don’t care if you got paid to be in a leadership position as much as your having been in that leadership position.
But volunteering experience can also show your age – like volunteering activities with a group dominated by or exclusively for people over 55. I say this as someone both in her 50s and who has heard it from co-workers for decades: people over 45, especially in the USA, are discriminated against for employment because of their age. Be careful in showing it.
If you are a woman, you have to think carefully about what volunteering you share and how you frame it when looking for paid work. I, personally, would see being a Girl Scout leader as a HUGE plus, knowing just how much financial management, conflict resolution, excellent communications skills and customer service is required in dealing with both the girls and their parents. Others might see it as, “Oh, she’s a mom, her kids are going to interfere with her job.” I’m not at all saying not to put it on your résumé, but think carefully how to frame it – show how it makes you a more attractive candidate.
Always note in a role you undertook as a volunteer if it was, in whole or in part, virtual volunteering – where you did some or all of your service online. Note what you did and what you accomplished and, absolutely, use that phrase: virtual volunteering. I have heard it over and over from various folks: in a job interview, at some point, someone on the interview panel says, “Tell me more about this virtual volunteering stuff.” They use that exact phrase, virtual volunteering, when speaking to candidates, and are intrigued by it. It got the employer’s attention, and it made them have a closer look at that candidate’s professional qualifications. Also note what software tools you used as a part of that virtual volunteering role – being a Zoom video conference aficionado will get you far these days!
Have you ever gotten an interview in part because of your volunteering experience? Do you think you have been passed over as a candidate because of a volunteering experience you listed on your application? Do you completely disagree with this blog? Share your thoughts below.
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.
I save my political advocacy for other online avenues, for the most part. But as a humanitarian aid professional, I have an obligation to those I have worked with and for, to be ethical in my interactions with them and on their behalf and to be at least somewhat informed on their most pressing challenges. And my continued focus on Afghanistan, particularly regarding the people who are now in profound danger from the Taliban, comes from that belief in that obligation.
I have written my US federal representatives twice already, and even had a phone call with a staff member for one. Here’s what I wrote to Senator Merkley, Senator Wyden and Representative Bonamici today:
Afghans protected me when I worked in Afghanistan in 2007. Afghans, especially women and including my Afghan colleagues, pursued education, work and social endeavors specifically because the USA said it should. And all of those activities that were encouraged by me and so many others from the USA have now put them in grave danger. The actions of the USA have put Afghan women, Hazara Afghans, LGBTQ Afghans, religious minorities in Afghanistan, journalists and many others in grave danger.
Senator Merkeley (or Senator Wyden or Representative Bonamici), waiting for State Department approval has been a MAJOR stumbling block. You are needed to pressure the State Department to better explain to volunteer evacuee groups why manifests are being denied and flights canceled. Better yet, the State Department should adopt a default policy of non-objection: that is, people should be allowed to fly unless a national-security problem pops up during pre-flight vetting, in which case the individual or individuals should be removed and the flight allowed to proceed.
Also, high-risk evacuees cannot leave Afghanistan unless there is space at a “lily pad”—one of several locations outside of the United States where refugees can wait in safety for visa processing to the United States, such as the al-Udied base in Qatar. Expanding capacity may require the United States to offer carrots to regional partners to offset any costs and risk they accept. You can help pressure the powers that be to make this happen.
When high-risk people are waiting for visas, they are a drain on resources that could otherwise be put toward getting more people out. Congress should pass an Afghan Adjustment Act to allow evacuees to adjust their status to apply for long-term permanent residence.
The U.S. government needs to better support, not inhibit, evacuation efforts. Public statements must be matched with quieter efforts to expand multi-organization evacuation efforts such as the #AfghanEvac coalition, identify and work to mitigate common challenges and accelerate the overall evacuation process.
• Please pressure the powers that be to use humanitarian parole funds to hire staff and fund flights. Humanitarian parole applications that allow refugees to enter the United States in an emergency requires a $575 fee. Project ANAR, an advocacy and resource network for Afghan refugees, claims to have filed 20,000-plus applications alone, resulting in more than $11.5 million in fees. These funds should be redirected to hire temporary staff, federal or contract as appropriate, to accelerate visa processing. The fees should also be used to fund additional flights to evacuate high-risk people.
• Volunteer efforts largely drive the effort to evacuate refugees from Afghanistan. We volunteers also have other commitments to friends, job, and simple life. The effort cannot be sustained indefinitely. The United States should develop plans for what happens if those efforts diminish, or even disappear.
The USA has a responsibility to support those put in death’s path to defend it. Let’s get moving.
Did you discover last month that your nonprofit, NGO, government program or other cause-based, mission-based initiative is overly reliant on Facebook?
Sara Soueidan is a front-end user interface (UI) and design systems engineer / speaker / trainer and she tweets about usability and accessibility. On October 4th, when Facebook went down for several hours, she tweeted this:
While we’re at it: if you don’t have a Web site of your own and you’ve been blogging and creating content on third-party platforms, now might be a good time to reconsider creating one and owning your own little corner of the internet.
I completely agree. I am horrified at how many nonprofits, NGOs, government programs and other cause-based organizations have pretty much abandoned their own web sites and post only to Facebook.
Facebook is a for-profit company. If Facebook goes away tomorrow, there goes all of your data. By contrast, the address of your web site is yours, and if your web host were to go away, no problem – you move your site to a new host. Your address doesn’t have to ever change. You can move your web site to a different host is you decide you don’t like the host’s customer service or prices, or if the host goes out of business.
Facebook terms of service strongly imply that whatever you post there, Facebook owns, and that Facebook has the right to sell or give what you post to Facebook, even in your account profile, that you have marked as “private”, to anyone it wants to. By contrast, a web site is yours. The content and the address are yours.
Facebook content is only for Facebook users. If someone doesn’t have a Facebook account, they cannot see most of what is on Facebook. By contrast, a web site is public and anyone with Internet access can see it.
Your web site is your primary home on the Internet. Everything you do online, including on social media, should ultimately link back to your web site. Yes, you can use the Facebook events feature to announce events, but that event information should be on your web site as well. And remember that many of your clients, volunteers, donors and others use different social media channels. Have you asked them not only if they are on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or whatever the flavor of the month is, but also if they would want to interact with your program on these.
Your blog should be on your own web site as well. I use WordPress, which is free, but I use my own web site to host it. Twice, my blog host has gone under, and in both cases, neither was captured on archive.org. Luckily, one did give me enough of notice for me to download all of my blogs, so I could repurpose many of them here.
I even screen capture Twitter or Facebook interactions that are particularly memorable or worth bragging about, and upload them to Flicker and maintain a database of such, and all of my photos, on a hard drive.
Yes, there are people who are going to interact online with your initiative only via Facebook. Or Twitter. Or even only via email. None of those audiences are more important than another for your nonprofit, NGO, etc. Make sure all of your clients, volunteers, donors and others are reminded regularly of all of your various online communications channels – and your web address!
If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, 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.
Last week, I blogged about the controversy at the Art Institute of Chicago per their dismissing their entire volunteer docent membership and their plans to replace the volunteers with paid staff, in pursuit of a more diverse corps of museum guides to interact with the public.
GirlGuiding in the United Kingdom, the UK’s version of the Girl Scouts, has also incurred the wrath of many for one of its efforts at volunteer inclusion: on October 28th, the organization sent out a tweet that ended with, a shout-out to all of our asexual volunteers and members – thank you for everything you do in Girlguiding.
More than 2000 people liked the tweet. But the tweets-of-outrage were swift and many: the complaints focused on a belief that GirlGuiding was sexualising children with such messaging. One response that was representative of most of the negative responses: Why do your guides need to know whether your volunteers have a presence or absence of sexual desire? A nonprofit in the UK, Safe Schools Alliance UK, which has worked against allowing children to use the bathroom that corresponds with the gender with which they identify and works against bans on gay conversion therapy, is pushing back hard against the GirlGuide messaging. This group promotes its agenda as part of responsible safeguarding, the term used in the UK and Ireland regarding measures to protect the health, well-being and human rights of individuals, especially children and vulnerable adults, better ensuring they live free from abuse, harm and neglect.
I offer this info on this controversy for two reasons:
Creating and launching efforts in support of the diversity of volunteers your organization has, or wants, and in support of accommodation of that diversity, will always attract complaints, immediately or eventually. There may be just a few, there may be many. Some of the complaints will be sincere and from individuals not a part of any “movement” or organization, and some of the complaints will be from volunteers and paid staff of very well-organized groups. Either way, your organization needs to have thought about how to answer questions and comments like why are you doing this and why is this necessary and this puts young people in danger.
People asking the question or making the comment aren’t all obtuse or rigid. Don’t assume everyone complaining is so when you craft replies. Provide a response that comes from the point of view of this person just needs more and better information in order to support this statement or decision. Will such a response convince everyone? No. But your reply is being seen by people who aren’t entirely sure how they feel about the situation. Perceived arrogance on your part can drive those people who are on the fence into the arms of people and organizations who are only too happy to provide carefully word-smithed, detailed responses to frame their point of view.
My perspective: I adore GirlGuides and Girl Scouts of the USA. I deeply admire the commitment of both to ensuring all girls feel they can be a part of their activities. This isn’t the first time they’ve done something that’s lead to controversy. But no one – NO ONE – can say the GirlGuides and Girl Scouts don’t put safeguarding at the top of their list of priorities.
I also know that change can be painful – not just for others, but also for me. Work regarding inclusion and diversity is not easy, because many societal norms are deeply held, and cherished beliefs are challenged by conversations around inclusion and diversity – and that’s uncomfortable. It’s easy for a person to feel attacked during such conversations. I’ve seen diversity and inclusion experts be angered at the idea that they need for their own web sites to meet accessibility standards so that people with disabilities and using assistive technologies can access their online information – in their talks about inclusion, they were focused on ethnic and cultural groups, not people with disabilities, and the realization is embarrassing and painful.
I assure you that, eventually, even if you consider yourself an advocate for inclusion and diversity, you will have a moment where your own deeply held principles are challenged, and you will feel anger and you will be incredulous. Maybe you will decide to hold on to those principles – I’m not here to say you should or shouldn’t. But remember that feeling the next time you are facing it from someone else.
And I love how the corporate world, which always has oh-so-much to say about how nonprofits should operate, are oh-so-silent during these conversations as well.
The entire membership of the Art Institute of Chicago docent program, all volunteers, are being let go by the museum in an effort to entirely revamp how art education for museum visitors is staffed and to make such staffing much more diverse.
It is a move that has hurt long-time volunteers and outraged right-wing media, but many say it’s the only way to dismantle a system that, intentionally or not, is designed to exclude many people from participating.
On Sept. 3, Veronica Stein, the AIC’s executive director of learning and public engagement, emailed 82 active docents, telling them the program’s current iteration would be coming to an end. Stein told the Wall Street Journal that the museum must move “in a way that allows community members of all income levels to participate, responds to issues of class and income equity, and does not require financial flexibility.” In the letter, Stein said the museum “had a responsibility to rebuild the volunteer educator program in a way that allows community members of all income levels to participate, responds to issues of equity, and does not require financial flexibility to participate.” The AIC told USA TODAY that the pause is part of a “multi-year transition” to a “hybrid model that incorporates paid and volunteer educators.”
“Rather than refresh our current program, systems, and processes, we feel that now is the time to rebuild our program from the ground up,” Stein said in the letter, noting that current docents would be invited to apply for the paid positions.
While the elimination of docents struck many as sudden, it had actually been in the works for years, according to artnet news: the AIC stopped training new docents in 2012, and has been discussing internally how to restructure the program since 2019.
The institute’s docent council sent a letter Sept. 13 protesting the pause of the program. The letter described the docents’ expertise, noting that volunteers had trained twice a week for 18 months, done five years of research and writing, and participated in monthly and biweekly trainings. “For more than 60 years, volunteer docents enthusiastically have devoted countless hours and personal resources to facilitate audience engagement in knowledgeable, relevant, and sensitive ways,” the letter said.
Gigi Vaffis, president of the AIC’s docent council, told USA TODAY that she and other docents felt blindsided by the decision and weren’t included in the decision-making. Even now, she said there are few details about what the AIC’s multi-year plan will look like.
Docent programs have long been mainstays of major museums. Docents are all volunteers and are beloved by museum visitors. Becoming a docent can be quite competitive: not everyone who applies is accepted, and docents that get into the program stay for years, even decades. And involving volunteers is a sign a nonprofit wants the community to be a part of the organization – not just as donors or clients but also as people delivering services. But docent ranks at museums are often skewed toward a certain demographic: wealthy white women. The intention of the Chicago Institute is to dismantle this traditionally very rigid system that, intentionally or not, is designed to include/favor one, very privileged group and to exclude others.
Museum equity consultants have long advocated for transitioning volunteer positions at museums to paid roles, to encourage more diversity, allowing people who could never afford to give the time current docents give without pay. Monica Williams, executive producer of The Equity Project, a Colorado-based equity, inclusion and diversity consulting firm, who is NOT involved with the Art Institute, said this shift will open the doors for people who cannot afford to work on weekdays or do a significant amount of unpaid work. If docent programs switch to paid positions, she said it will help museums move away from “a particular demographic of mostly white and wealthy.”
Mike Murawski, a museum consultant and author of “Museums as Agents of Change,” said in the USA Today article that there has long been a tension between equity efforts and volunteer programs. When the Smithsonian’s Hirshhorn Museum ended its docent program in 2014 in favor of an initiative for younger volunteers who often work for college credit, Murawski said there was an uproar with many saying the museum might as well close. But now, he said. “they’re doing just fine.” Murawski is one of many museum consultants that says the way forward is not about making changes to programs, but to completely dismantle them and start over, and that docent programs often have “long-standing legacies of how things are supposed to be” that can make them difficult to adapt.
A side note: the Chicago Tribune, a once-great newspaper which was recently bought by Alden Global Capital, a secretive hedge fund that gutted the staff at the newspaper, wrote an outrageous editorial that had this jaw-dropping and completely misleading statement:
Volunteers are out of fashion in progressive circles, where they tend to be dismissed as rich white people with time on their hands, outmoded ways of thinking and walking impediments to equity and inclusion. Meaningful change, it is often said, now demands they be replaced with paid employees.
This is just flatly not true and the Tribune should be ashamed of itself.
As for me and my opinion: I don’t think programs should always be overly-cautious and ever-fearful of upsetting current, long-term volunteers – quite frankly, I think some long-term volunteers can have an entitled attitude that can discourage, even kill, much-needed changes and innovations. But I also feel like there was a better way to handle this transition. Absolutely, there are MANY systems related to nonprofits, including volunteer engagement, that have been exclusionary. But couldn’t current volunteers, who have invested a great deal of time in their roles, have been involved in the decision-making process, and perhaps, even bought into it? Also, will there still be a way for people to volunteer for the Art Institute – will there still be a community engagement component that isn’t donating funds or attending events?
If you have an example of a museum that significantly revamped its volunteering program so that it was vastly more diverse, but without having to fire the entire volunteer corps, please note such in the comments. Also note if it continued to have a volunteer program of some kind.
With all that said – what do you think?
October 17 update: the Art Institute of Chicago is, apparently, STILL not involving volunteers at all. Below is a screen capture from its volunteer page that notes “the volunteer program is temporarily on pause, and we are not accepting applications at this time.”
