A May 2022 report from VSO and Northumbria University in the UK says that changing how international and local volunteers work together, rather than eliminating the involvement of foreign volunteers abroad entirely, can decolonize humanitarian development, so that foreigners are no longer in control of decision-making and so that racist and discriminatory structures are addressed and dismantled.
The research, based on interviews and participatory workshops with volunteers, community representatives and VSO staff, found that there was no “one-size fits all” approach to designing and putting in place successful “volunteer combinations”. The report emphasizes that there is a need to adapt volunteer planning and management in programs based on local requirements and local learning.
The presence of international volunteers brings energy and donor attention to projects, whilst community and national volunteers enable effective engagement with local communities and increase the likelihood that impacts can be sustained due to their particular knowledges and longer-term involvement. However, there is no simple one-size-fits-all approach that can be applied to constructing a blend of volunteers, as the combination is dependent on the individuals within each blend, the environment around the project and the phasing of the work itself.
The report also warns that “community volunteers” – local volunteers, while crucial to the effectiveness of each blend, risk being sidelined.
I will always be fascinated by people at nonprofits, employees or volunteers, who will write a LONG post to an online forum about their lack of staffing for all that needs to be done or a safety issue regarding volunteers and clients, & when they read recommendations about how to address such, reply, Oh, yuck, bureaucracy… we’re non-traditional! We’re dynamic and nimble and get things done and rules are such a drag!
Being a dynamic, nimble startup nonprofit that GETS THINGS DONE! with NO RULES is lots of fun until volunteers start harassing clients or the executive director cries every night under all the stress and core volunteers quit because they just can’t anymore – and they aren’t replaced because the word is out about just how overwhelming volunteering can be.
Planning, policies and structure are NOT BAD THINGS. And they do NOT mean your organization can’t be dynamic and nimble and use all the latest jargon.
Put the mission of your program first, put your clients first, commit to quality, and remember that sometimes the reason for traditional ways of doing things is because traditional ways of doing things can WORK.
If you don’t have time to learn and apply the essentials, you’re being reckless with both volunteers and those they serve.
Foundations of Volunteer Engagement: Before you recruit volunteers, these are fundamental pieces that MUST be in place. If you choose not to do these and, instead, start recruiting volunteers right away, you are setting up your organization and those volunteers up for failure.
Support for Volunteers/Management of Volunteers & Safety Considerations: All of the resources I have regarding the support for and management of volunteers, as well as safety in engaging volunteers, are on one page because I believe they are inextricably linked – it’s impossible to separate these two issues. Also, I believe that these MUST be explored and drafted BEFORE you start recruiting volunteers.
Creating Roles & Tasks for Volunteers: A key to retaining volunteers is having roles and tasks well-defined and IN WRITING, so that expectations are clear. This is yet another step to undertake BEFORE you start recruiting volunteers – and if you don’t, don’t be surprised when you can’t keep volunteers and your volunteer engagement flounders.
Ethics in Volunteerism & Court-Ordered Community Service: If your organizations involves volunteers, you should also be thinking regularly about the ethics of such. Involving people who are not financially compensated for work that they do carries with it regular questions and criticisms. Exploring ethics in volunteerism has not won me many friends. Exploring ethics in volunteerism can help you avoid public relations disasters later.
Harumph.
Note: I will be quite hard to reach from Monday, June 20 through Wednesday, June 29. I will be checking email and social media only sporadically in that time.
High turnover of volunteers at a nonprofit, NGO, community program, etc., usually is not a good thing. But I hear nonprofits often talk about how they don’t want to lose any volunteers, or how they see a large number of volunteers leaving as an automatically negative thing.
No volunteer is forever. People’s lives change: they get married, get divorced, have babies, get new jobs, move, have a change in their health, have new caregiving responsibilities, develop new interests and on and on. Their interests also change: they may decide they want to do something that your organization doesn’t offer – work with animals, develop web sites, mentor young people, do outdoor service projects – and all of those changes are fine and normal.
Absolutely, you should do exit interviews when a volunteer formally quits, and surveys of former volunteers that stopped signing up to help, to find out if there is an issue you need to address. And if you see a problem – complaints about a toxic work environment, or volunteers being asked to do too much, or volunteer burnout – you need to address those.
But some volunteering turnover should not only be expected, it should often be welcomed. Volunteer cliques don’t welcome new members and exclude volunteers that are different than the clique’s status quo – so if you have a lot of long-term volunteers, is it really a sign that you do a great job of supporting and engaging volunteers or is it that you’ve created or enabled an unwelcoming clique of volunteers? How volunteers do what they do needs to evolve with the times: there are approaches that worked previously that don’t now, and new approaches that need to be considered and explored – is your lack of turnover really a sign of stagnation of ideas and methods?
I saw this message posted to social media from someone talking about an event that is staffed primarily by volunteers.
Longtime volunteers feel pride & ownership in what they do (which is generally great). But because they feel ownership, they dismiss any suggestion to change anything they do, even when that would help the event & the organization.
I’ve heard this complaint by managers of volunteers for many nonprofit initiatives, especially animal shelters, thrift stores and rural firehouses. Volunteer ownership is a blessing for the commitment and responsibility it can inspire, but it also can be a curse, for the inflexibility and unwelcomeness it can cultivate.
Maybe it’s not such a bad thing if you lose some volunteers because you introduced more thorough safety policies, or because the volunteers wanted to rally around a volunteer who was dismissed for sexually-harassing clients or other volunteers. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing if you lose some volunteers because you now require them to go through a training to better protect and serve clients. Maybe it’s not such a bad things to lose some volunteers who don’t like your new focus on inclusion and diversity. Maybe it’s not such a bad thing if you lose some volunteers who are opposed to all change and like to say, “But we’ve always done it THIS way…”
Do you think some annual turnover of volunteers at a nonprofit might actually be a good thing? Comment below.
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.
Years ago, I was a part of an online community for humanitarian aid and development workers. It wasn’t a group for the sharing of best practices or professional development. It was a group for venting and kvetching.
The group didn’t last long in that form – as the group became more and more popular and new members came in, venting started to be frowned on, because of the expectation of such workers to always be positive took over – as it always does in the offline world. The snarky commenters were shamed into silence and the group became yet another boring, rarely-controversial discussion group for best practices and where to find jobs and funding.
One of my favorite times on the group were when conversations would break out about eyebrow-raising comments that came from funders. I loved the comments so much, I saved many of them. I just found them as I was cleaning out a hard drive and decided to share my favorites. No actual humanitarian groups or donors are named here.
These are reported to be actual comments humanitarian workers have gotten from foreign funders:
For the household disinfection kit you are proposing, could you please explain the purpose of the mop? I mean, I know people use it to clean their house, but could you write a justification to that effect?
Email conversation: Funder: “Hey, can you include some photos of children. They usually look good for fundraising”. Agency: “No. I cannot.” Funder: “Why not?” Agency “Because the project is NOT about children”.
Funder: “When refurbishing the health facility, ensure that a maximum of 2 coats of paint is used”.
After sending a very long and detailed report (according to the donor’s format and per their request), including photos showing the progress of each activity, I got this email response: “Hi. Can you give me some quick updates on the project?”
Funder, regarding the alphabetization component of a rural development program: “Why would women living in the desert need to learn how to read and write anyway?”
Funder: “We don’t understand why you want to do contingency activities due to increased fighting. Could you just solve the conflict?”
Funder: “Why do they need a gravity-fed spring water system? Don’t they have normal tap water?”
Funder said they would rather spend $200 US per day renting cars for a five-year project rather than actually buying cars, which would be far cheaper, “because we don’t support the purchase of assets.”
Funder, at our first meeting: “I thought you would be a man.”
I submitted a very long, detailed research report for a donor. Got it returned with feedback. Throughout the 120-page report there is a comment from the funder, stating “you should mention xyz government and UN report here.” The comments were given at least 20-30 times, and the comments got angrier and angrier throughout the report because we’d missed such an important document. Me in follow-up call with the donor: “I have searched all of the documents you sent that you wanted us to include and the Internet, I can’t find xyz report.” Donor: “It hasn’t been released yet.” Me: “errrrmmmm… Could you send me a copy? That way I would be able to mention its contents” (and actually know it exists which obviously I didn’t before). Donor: “I don’t have a copy.” Me: “errmmmmm… have you even read it?” Donor: “No, I just heard about it.”
Funder: “So are you actually a spy for the British Government?” Worker: (nervous, confused) “No, I am sure my Government considers me far too troublesome to employ” (i.e. sweary with an inability to toe the line), “Why?” Funder: “How else would a woman end up working in Mine Action here?”
Donor: “We are paid for a children’s rights project. We cant support you in a nutritional crisis.”
Had a potential donor call me at 3 AM local time, when I was helping with first response after a disaster, to say that they had decided that they wanted their aid to go to providing shelter to orphans and could my organization do that? At 3 AM, I had to explain that nobody knew which children were orphans as yet because they were still determining who had died, and that the first option would be to reunite children with extended family members rather than create a separate facility. They were noticeably displeased during this call. I clearly did not understand their humanitarian impulse to help ORPHANS. They didn’t give us the money.
Funder: “These photos don’t show a reality that would reflect the need for the kind of assistance you’re asking for. Do you have photos that more obviously show the effects of food insecurity and mass migration?” Many words for: put in images of starving children 🙄. For the record; the photos we provided were of adult women who had consented to having their photos taken.
As for myself, I had to help a colleague explain to the representative of a very large, well-known tech agency that Africa is not a country and that not everyone spoke English there.
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.
I am interested in using Facebook to build a community of potential donors. Anyone have expertise in this area?
Here’s what I think:
No one likes to be identified as a potential donor. They really don’t. You can think of me as a potential donor because I’m a volunteer, or because I’ve donated in the past, or because I came to your event, or because I’ve otherwise expressed some kind of interest in your nonprofit, NGO, charity, etc. But I won’t join a group called “potential donors,” because I don’t want to be thought of only as a financial donor, as someone that gives money, or should be targeted to give money.
People will join online groups that are focused on a cause they care about, or an online group that is going to educate them about that cause. They want to hear about the great work the program is doing. They want to know how to “live the cause” in their own lives: how they can recycle or how they can register voters or how they can explain the importance of vaccinations to their family or whatever. They will join online groups that discuss and debate topics related to the cause – how to advocate for accessible web design, how to rescue wildlife, how to run a youth soccer league, etc. And if those groups also, sometimes, solicit donations, that’s appropriate and will probably generate some donations – as long as no member feels that’s why the group exists (to ask for money). They are going to leave a group that just asks for money.
If you are going to call me a partner, by the way, that means I’m going to get to offer my advice, ask questions and disagree. If you don’t allow that on your online group, then I’m NOT a “partner.”
That said, in the 1990s I joined an online group for organizations that had received funding from one funder – the Mitsubishi Electric America Foundation. It was wonderful: we learned so much from each other, and MEAF got to see the nonprofits it funded collaborate in real-time. It was one of the best online community experiences I’ve ever been a part of.
For advice specifically on how to create and leverage an online community for your volunteers specificallly, have a look at 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! And your copy will be signed with best wishes from me! 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).
Leading in a virtual world: on engaging in activities that influence others online, that create a profile for a person as someone that provides credible, important, even vital information about a particular subject.
Cultivating Online Civility: Can online civility be restored? Is it possible to challenge misinformation and destructive speech in the strongest, most deliberate of terms without being accused of hate speech yourself?
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.
This is adapted from a blog originally published in January 2003 at the e-volunteerism Journal. I was living in Germany at the time, hence the comment at the start of the blog:
On a recent visit back to the USA, I heard very different opinions about volunteerism from two good friends.
The first said that she will never volunteer again. “I have tried to volunteer for more organizations than I can count. I have tried to volunteer with groups that help animals, with political groups, with women’s groups, and it’s always the same thing: they don’t return my calls, and if they do and they tell me to come in, they don’t care that I’m there once I show up. They don’t want to answer my questions, they look at me as a burden or, worse, as someone that has no feelings at all. I’m just free labor to them, and I’m sick of it.”
Harrumph.
The second friend said she couldn’t get enough of volunteering. Her favorite role has been head of the Parent-Teachers Association at her daughter’s elementary school. “I just love it! I get all this responsibility and respect I’ve never gotten in my job. I feel like I’m really doing something. I feel like I’m making a difference. I love just about everybody I get to work with and, when I don’t, I can still work something out. I just feed off this stuff.”
These two testimonies regarding volunteerism make me wonder if the organizations these two assisted are aware of their feelings. And so I ask volunteer managers reading this to consider: What would people who have volunteered with your organization say about their experience?
Do you know? Do you care?
If anything, these two episodes have made me realize yet again the value of surveying volunteers about their experience, and how easily this can be done using e-mail.
Granted, two people can have very different opinions about the same situation: one person will find my bi-weekly e-mail updates to current volunteers too detailed and too frequent; another will complain that there needs to be more information, sent more often. Still, for the most part, there will be enough similar responses to your questions about volunteering to see trends emerge for your organization.
Informal “Quickie” Surveys
Too many organizations survey only those who have completed at least one assignment with the agency, or survey those volunteers only once as part of some detailed, intensive evaluation program. Those kind of long, involved surveys are indeed important, but just as important are providing plenty of opportunities for current and potential volunteers to offer feedback, however brief, about their experiences at any point in the process.
Here are some suggestions:
Require all volunteers attending a group event to sign out and complete a brief three-question/five-minute survey right then and there before they leave. Examples of questions for group events include:
Why did you come here today?
What benefits do you think the organization got as a result of your service today?
If you could change one thing about your experience today, what would it be?
If you really can’t do a survey on the spot, then at least email everyone and ask them to fill out a quick survey. Follow up with reminders to ensure most volunteers respond.
Conduct “walking around” informal surveys during events and activities. Simply ask volunteers you encounter questions such as “What else would be helpful to you?” or “How would you change what you are doing?” Sometimes these “heat of the moment” questions can elicit more frank opinions than post-event questionnaires, especially from those reluctant to commit to a written response.
Once a year, send out an email to everyone who has ever expressed interest in volunteering and ask them if they did, indeed, volunteer at your organization and, if so, how would they describe the experience? If they didn’t volunteer, ask them what prevented them from doing so.
There are ways to get even more feedback:
Put a notice on the Web page that describes volunteering at your organization, saying: “Have you volunteered with our organization? Tell us about your experience!” This invites feedback from anyone at anytime.
Hand out a brief survey at a board meeting and ask the members three or four quick questions about their volunteering, to be completed in the first five minutes of the meeting. Let members stay anonymous in their responses. At the next board meeting, hand out their answers for discussion.
Conduct exit interviews of any departing volunteers, where possible. Ask the volunteers to evaluate their experience and make suggestions for improvement.
Finding the Right Question
There are questions I like to ask beyond the “what did you like and dislike” traditional queries:
What were your expectations before volunteering and how did your actual experience differ?
What did you learn because of your volunteering?
If you were to tell someone about your experience today, what would you say?
How do you think our organization has benefited from your volunteering?
How have you been recognized for your volunteer efforts at our organization?
How does staff support you in your volunteering with our organization?
Do you feel prepared for your volunteer work here? What else can we do to increase your skills?
These deeper questions may allow you to understand “why” volunteers are reacting the way they are and can surface helpful suggestions for improving your volunteer management system.
Here are sample questions a survey for volunteers at First Night Doylestown:
Did you enjoy volunteering? Would you be likely to volunteer again? How many hours were you on duty? Was that amount of volunteer time What could we have done better to help you in your volunteer position? What was the best thing about volunteering for First Night Doylestown? May we quote you? (we might want to use these comments in our recruiting efforts in the future)
Here are some survey questions that were asked by the Dartmouth University’s Oxbow student volunteer program:
What were your expectations at the beginning of the program? Were your expectations fulfilled? Why or why not? What were the strengths of the program? What was your favorite day and why? What were the weaknesses of the program? What aspects need work? Did you feel well informed and adequately trained? What information or training could we offer new volunteers in the future? Do you plan to continue participating in this program? What information can you provide that will be helpful to future volunteers?
Here is an example of a feedback form from the IVY project of Portland, OR
What would you tell your family and friends about what you did today?
Would you be interested in coming back to Forest Park to help with the Ivy Removal Project again?
What would you tell someone who came to remove Ivy for the first time in Forest Park?
What made the greatest impression on you today?
Do you have any suggestions or great idea to share?
Utilizing the Results
You will need to compile the feedback you receive from volunteer surveys and then share at least a summary with staff and the volunteers themselves. It’s especially important to note how any of the feedback is going to be acted upon in the coming weeks and months.
Just by asking such questions, you are demonstrating to supporters and potential supporters the importance of volunteers to your organization; the follow-up will reinforce that idea even more.
Reader Response Questions:
What are your favorite quick-survey methods to get information from volunteers?
What are your favorite non-traditional questions to ask of volunteers?
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.
Back in 2012 and 2013, I was one of many researchers in the ICT4EMPL Future Work project, focused on the countries of the European Union and funded by the European Commission. The overall project aimed to inform policy regarding “new forms of work” and pathways to employability that involved online technologies. For this project, I researched and mapped the prevalence of virtual volunteering in Europe and explored how virtual volunteering could support people’s employability. Here my complete final paper. And here is the Wiki I created for the project.
It is time for a new effort to research and map the prevalence of virtual volunteering in Europe. Because now, more than 10 years later, I’m sure the conclusions I found about virtual volunteering in Europe have changed, and it would be great to see what’s the same, what’s evolved, what’s reversed and what new insights have emerged – and see how this compares with past research.
Some of those conclusions from 10 years ago about virtual volunteering in Europe:
Organizations using the Internet to support volunteers, or that had roles and tasks for online volunteers, usually never used the term virtual volunteering. For instance, Germany hosted the FIFA World Cup in 2006 and recruited, trained and supported hundreds of volunteers all across Germany to help with the event; no doubt the Internet played an important role in the screening, training and support for volunteers, however, I could find no reference to activities related to Internet-mediated volunteering for the World Cup (and they also never responded to my emails).
Services where charities could recruit traditional volunteers might have talked about virtual volunteering 10 years ago, yet often did not allow for searches of just online roles and tasks opportunities on their platforms.
Online volunteering schemes come and go; for instance, while Samaritans was profiled for its involvement of online volunteers in the 1990s, as of the time of this paper’s writing, the web site did not note this past involvement, and a page on the site said that such an online program was “coming in the future.” Virtual volunteering activities were cited at a dozen European organizations in the paper – are they still happening?
10 years ago, there was no organization tracking the practice in Europe – or in any country outside of Europe, for that matter. Has that changed?
The research 10 years ago found at least 60 specific examples of organizations in the EU involving online volunteers, or involving online volunteers in the EU. The number of online volunteering opportunities, using a search of the services, was more than 1000, in total. And the research noted that Wikipedia already had contributors from every European country at that time. Excluding Wikipedia, a conclusion can be drawn from the research cited in this paper that there are at least a few thousand online volunteering opportunities available from organisations in Europe.
Spain was, by far, the country with the most virtual volunteering roles and tasks for volunteers, across a few hundred NGOs, and had a deeper history regarding digital volunteering than any other European country, by far. The UK, which was in the EU at the time, came in a distant second.
Far in the distance in terms of virtual volunteering, and well behind rates in Eastern European countries, was France – in fact, the lack of virtual volunteering materials in French was particularly shocking to me. I could find NO such materials in Europe – the few I found were in Canada. I so hope that’s changed in 10 years!
If you are looking for a research project idea, I highly recommend you take a stab at researching and mapping the prevalence of virtual volunteering in Europe – or even just one country in Europe. Or break entirely new ground: India? Certain countries in Africa? I will be happy to turn over all of my materials to you to help you in your research. I’m also happy to write a letter of endorsement if you want to shop this project around for funding. Contact me and let me know your full name, share your LinkedIn profile or another online profile where I can see your professional connections and research to date, let me know the kind of research you have in mind, etc.
Why am I not interested in doing this research myself? Both because I lack any funding to do this and also, I would really like to read someone else’s research!
If you are doing any research regarding virtual volunteering, or if your agency or organization is considering virtual volunteering as a path to helping people become more employable, check out the Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook: Fully Integrating Online Service Into Volunteer Involvement. This is the most comprehensive resource anywhere on working with online volunteers, and on using the Internet to support ALL volunteers, including those you might not think of as “online” volunteers.
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.
I’m reading materials about making volunteering more accessible for people with disabilities and my repeated thought as I read is These are great suggestions for ALL volunteers! There’s no reason to do this JUST with people you think might have disabilities!
Below are excerpts from various publications I’ve been reading that show what I mean: Some have been slightly edited for clarity (substituting one word, for instance). Don’t just do these with people who have disabilities – do them for ALL OF YOUR VOLUNTEERS:
Make sure that anyone who works with volunteers with disabilities always asks if there is anything that can be done to accommodate their needs. (Me: do this with ALL volunteers, not just those with disabilities).
Regularly ask volunteers is they are having any challenges carrying out a task and ask if some accommodation or different task would make the volunteer’s involvement easier.
Encourage a culture of watching out for volunteers while they carry out their assignments and making sure that their needs are met.
Regularly ask volunteers if they are having any challenges carrying out a task and ask if some accommodation or different task would make the volunteer’s involvement easier.
Formally adopt a policy that states that it is the right of your volunteers to ask for and receive alternative tasks or accommodations. Make all volunteers aware of this policy.
Adopt a formal policy that states that your organization will do a regular review of its volunteer recruitment and management procedures and practices to ensure that the organization’s needs are being met and that no group of people is being excluded.
Review the time commitments and schedules attached to your volunteer positions to see if there is a solid rationale for them.
Make it part of your volunteer management approach to adapt roles to volunteers and not volunteers to roles.
Regularly talk with volunteers to get an idea of what it is actually like to volunteer for your organization. If some volunteers have fixed time commitments, ask them if there is a better way to organize their work than the way you do it now. That is, ask if they would prefer a more flexible schedule.
Formally state in a written volunteer policy that volunteers will be assigned tasks based on their capacities and abilities and will be accommodated reasonably to carry them out.
When assigning tasks that are done every year (e.g. duties in an annual fundraising campaign), look at the health status and other factors of each volunteer before automatically assigning them the same tasks that they have “always” done. Consider alternative assignments where necessary.
Ensure that volunteer managers speak with volunteers before organizing an annual work plan and verify the volunteers’ ability and availability to do the same jobs as in previous years.
Ask volunteers what barriers they have encountered with your organization and how they have overcome such (if they have).
If you do interviews with candidates for volunteering, send the candidates the questions you are going to ask BEFORE that interview.
During an interview with a candidate for volunteering, plenty of time should be given for the volunteer to answer the questions, as some people might need more time to think about what has been asked.
During the interview, you may want to ask the candidate what support, if any, they feel they might need when volunteering. This is beneficial to both the organization and the volunteer so that any support needed can be planned and arranged before the volunteer begins the assignment.
It is very important that those that will support the volunteer meet with the volunteer before any volunteering begins. This will allow both people to decide if they are happy to work together and it is also a chance to get to know each other.
People have said they would prefer a trial period of 2 months. After the first month, at their supervision meeting, you should ask the volunteer if they are happy to go on to the next month.
You should feel comfortable in being able to say honestly what is working well and what, if anything, could be better.
Again – these tips were written to help staff work better with volunteers with disabilities, but the reality is that these are great tips for supporting and managing ALL volunteers.
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.
In November 2021, I wrote a blog that warned nonprofits, NGOs, community groups, etc. not to over-invest in one social media tool – specifically Facebook. I wrote that blog because, when Facebook went offline in October of that year for about six hours, many organizations panicked: Facebook was their primary, even only, way of sharing up-to-date information with clients, volunteers and the general public – the organizations had either abandoned their own web sites and weren’t updating such much anymore and they used no other social media tools. That blog was a companion to another I’d written in 2019 exploring whether or not nonprofits should delete their Facebook accounts per Facebook’s reprehensible data mining, selling of data and unfettered spreading of misinformation and hate speech.
With the news that an extremely rich man who spreads medical misinformation, eschews philanthropy and efforts to address poverty and inequity, doesn’t treat his factory workers well, etc., has bought Twitter and will make it a “free speech” zone, removing its current community standards and probably restoring suspended accounts, many are thinking of deleting their personal or company Twitter accounts. And many folks are reeling from losing Twitter as we know it now, because they rely hugely on Twitter to get the word out about their work, to engage with others doing similar work, to network for jobs, etc. I am one of those people: while Facebook has been relatively useless for me professionally, Twitter has helped me sell my book, gotten me consulting gigs, gotten me invitations to speak at conferences and introduced me to so many amazing people I now call professional colleagues. It’s been more helpful to me professionally than any onsite, traditional conference I have ever attended in terms of networking, job leads and professional development. It’s been way more fun than Facebook personally as well: I have loved the social media challenges among museums on Twitter, the spontaneous poetry-writing events, and more very fun trending topics than I can count.
What to do regarding the Twitter dilemma? To stay could be seen as supporting the new owner, something that makes me very uncomfortable – and I’m not alone in that sentiment. And the reality is that, if he follows through on his plans, Twitter just isn’t going to be of value to me anymore.
Here’s what I’m doing in response to the potential changes at Twitter:
I acknowledge that, right now, stopping my participation on Twitter would be disastrous for me professionally. While Facebook has been largely useless for me professionally, Twitter has been a hugely important tool, for the reasons I’ve already stated, so I’m going to continue to try to squeeze some benefit from it until the changes come.
If Twitter goes in the direction that everyone is predicting – longer messages, adding suspended accounts back onto the platform (accounts that have spread misinformation, harassed people, etc.), not having rules about content, being a complete “free speech” zone, etc. – I’ll have to stop participating. I’m not sure if I will delete my Twitter account or just freeze it (just a last post to say where to find me).
Over the last three years, I’ve been investing more time in my YouTube channel and Reddit, as well as following my own advice and making sure my web site is always up-to-date, so that no one social media is my only outlet. I’m active on several LinkedIn groups as well, like the virtual volunteering group (which I own, actually) and ALIVE (a national group for managers of volunteers). You can follow me on LinkedIn (but note that I link only to those that I know professionally, that I could say something about you and your work) and join me on any of those groups. So, I’m already diversified, and will continue to do so, and hope that one of those platforms, at last, proves even half as valuable to me as Twitter has.
I’m always exploring other social media platforms. However, so far, the audience I want to reach professionally isn’t on TikTok, SnapChat, Instagram, etc. I’m on Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram, but I use those mostly for one-to-one communications, especially with folks overseas – the one group I’m on, for a nonprofit I volunteer for, is overwhelming and I’m not at all liking it. MeWe has never caught on with my colleagues (but you are welcomed to friend/follow me there).
I have a blog, which you are reading now. That blog is on my own web site, not on someone else’s web site. Twitter has been the primary of driver of readers to this blog (I post to Facebook and LinkedIn too, but those bring very little traffic to my blog). I’ll need to look for new ways to drive subscribers. Before you recommend RSS feeds – I would say 90% of the people that are my professional audience have no idea what that is.
I have a barely-used email distribution list (it died when I had to move it from YahooGroups because that platform went away) and a barely-used Google Group. I’ll be exploring how to leverage those better, but I’m not holding out much hope.
I’m redoubling efforts to make sure anyone who visits me on any online platform knows where else to find me. This blog is one part of that effort. I’ve put in links to all of my other sites on social media – please subscribe / follow / and like if you are there too.
I’ll be watching what the people that I follow on Twitter do, as well as the people and organizations on each of my many wonderful, informative Twitter lists do, as far as posting about their work other than Twitter. I rely on my Twitter lists more than anything else to know who is doing what in my professional worlds – I have yet to find anything that even comes close to a substitution for that (I’m NOT gonig to subscribe to hundreds of email newsletters!).
What about going back to traditional avenues for networking and outreach: writing one-to-one emails, attending onsite conferences, buying advertising, etc. I don’t have the financial resources to attend onsite conferences, and as I’ve mentioned earlier, attendance has rarely lead to a book sale or a new gig. I don’t have the financial resources to buy advertising – and quite honestly, I can’t figure out Google Ads. As for email, I barely read email I receive – I know that what I send also often doesn’t get read (if it makes it past a spam filter).
Am I disappointed about Twitter? Hugely. If the changes that the new owner has threatened do come to fruition, I am going to lose one of the most effective and easy-to-use outreach tools in my toolbox, and I’m going to lose touch with so many, many people and organizations whose viewpoints and resources I value in my work.
News about the Twitter sale is hitting me hard. What’s going to happen to #a11y and #DisabilityTwitter communities? Or the committed team at @TwitterA11y? I always say accessibility is global and some of that is because of this platform. Plus @twitter pals and chats Cheer me up!
But I’ve been here before:
Back in the early part of the new millennium, when USENET newsgroups started becoming overwhelmed with off-topic advertising messages. Soc.org.nonprofit was an incredibly important outreach tool for me for almost a decade, and ALL of my professional successes since 1994 can be traced back to my participation in that online community. I hated losing it. In some ways, I feel like Twitter was a return to those wonderful, well-connected days.
At about the same time, people started abandoning YahooGroups, which was a huge blow to many professionally-focused online communities like associations of managers of volunteers in particular: CYBERVPM, UKVPMs and OzVPM. I lost touch with many people altogether, people I’d known for years. And as I mentioned earlier, I had to move my email newsletter distribution group as a result and most of those folks did not follow me to the new platform.
I’ve been on America Online, MySpace, GooglePlus and GoogleWave – those are all gone, at least in the form I used them. I left each of those because something better came along. I should be used to this situation by now… but I also have to say that, other than YahooGroups, no platform has ever been the powerhouse for my professional work that Twitter has been. And nothing better seems to be coming along.
So, this is yet another cautionary tale about over-relying on a social media platform. While you cannot use everything out there, you absolutely need to use a diversity of outreach tools. And remember: there are people who are going to interact online with your initiative only via Facebook, or only via 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, including your online communities – and your web address!
What are you or what is your organization doing about impending changes at Twitter? Please share in the comments below.
May 3 update: A tweet worth sharing:
Tweet from Eoghan Beecher: Elon Musk’s taking over twitter has serious ramifications for nonprofits who’s role is to challenge power. Not because he’s cozy with the establishment – they all are, but because he’s proven to be incredibly petty, and that is a huge threat to activist community.
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I have been uncomfortable for many years with the lack of guidance about the specific discrimination black volunteers and black professional humanitarian workers face when they go abroad. I’ve seen the discrimination, firsthand: at airports, in restaurants, in shops and even on the streets in countries all over the world without many black residents – including Germany and Afghanistan. And I’ve heard so many first-hand horror stories from humanitarian colleagues about what they’ve experienced. Yet, when I’ve tried to find guidance on how to be an ally or guidance for people experiencing discrimination, I’ve found nothing.
So I was impressed that the Peace Corps starkly and specifically acknowledged this situation and was frank about just how much harder it can be for black volunteers – specifically for Ukraine, but the reality is that this warning would be valid for a variety of countries where the Peace Corps has, or used to, place members, including Russia. The Peace Corps recommends that the Black volunteers react to racism in various ways depending on the situation, choosing to “remove themselves” from the situation for their own safety, get help from other volunteers or staff, or practice and explore self-care or coping strategies. It’s similar to the recommendations for women humanitarian workers – or women travelers: when you are in a country where you may not be respected, you’ve got to be prepared to deal with ugly comments and ugly situations and you won’t have the resources you have in the USA (not that law enforcement in my country always takes a woman’s safety concerns seriously, but I digress).
This article in the Atlanta Black Star says “Some have rebuked the Peace Corps for not doing more to protect Black volunteers.” One person tweeted that the Peace Corps shouldn’t send black Americans “to a place like this where you know they’ll be racially abused” and claimed that the Peace Corps was placing “the burden of educating racists” on the shoulders of Black members.
I think it would be a terrible shame if the Peace Corps didn’t send black Americans to Ukraine or anywhere in Eastern Europe or Asia or anywhere else where there is not a large black population, or if the United Nations didn’t send black African professional humanitarians to Afghanistan or elsewhere in Asia and on and on. Absolutely, people need to be safe, and there has to be a consideration for what specific challenges an African, a woman, a trans person, a person of a particular nationality, and others may face in various countries – and it may mean not sending a great candidate somewhere because the security situation is just too tenuous for the person, specifically. But while the Peace Corps’ primary mission is to empower communities in underserved parts of the work, the corps is also intended to promote mutual understanding between citizens of the USA and foreign peoples. Black Americans are a part of the rich fabric that makes up the USA. You cannot understand this country without experiencing its very specific forms of black culture.
I’m going to continue to do all I can, including abroad, to be an ally. I stumble, sometimes I flounder, often I misstep, but I’m going to keep trying. And I hope everyone else will too, not only for Black Americans but for any person who might be targeted for insults, harassment, abuse or violence.
I’m also going to continue to try to encourage people, especially women, to travel abroad, while also offering realistic safety recommendations (and I’ve been criticized for my recommendations by women travelers who say they have never experienced any problems and I’m being alarmist. Sigh.).
When your perceived race, sexual identity, religion or nationality can put you in danger in a region, you have every right to know of the specific dangers you might face, and you have every right to reconsider going to that region. And when you feel insulted anywhere, you have every right to choose how you are going to react, based on what you think is the appropriate thing to do.
I know if I made a list of everything that has been said to me by local people where I’m living or working, targeting me as a woman or as an American, I would scare a lot of folks from traveling abroad. Sometimes, I have pushed back: I’ve sometimes expressed anger, I’ve sometimes expressed hurt feelings, and I’ve sometimes just walked away – it depends on how safe I feel and what I think the consequences might be. It’s all my choice to make. I hope that my reactions have sometimes helped to change some local people’s minds – but I can only do so much.
What do you think of its advisory to applicants about racism they may face? Share your thoughts in the comments.
For those who think the Peace Corps, or any other volunteering abroad or humanitarian agency, should “do more” to “protect” black volunteers & humanitarian workers, what would that look like? Share your thoughts in the comments.
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