Motorcycle (scooter) ride for Cambodia!

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My personal motto is transire benefaciendo, or, “to travel along while doing good.” A lot of people want to combine a trip abroad with volunteering or some kind philanthropy. Here’s my advice on how to do good while abroad (including by motorcycle). And here’s what that kind of DIY volunteer-and-do-good trip can look like:

A good friend of mine, Dave Guezuraga, who has traveled most of the world by motorcycle (and stayed at our house and been subjected to many games of corn hole), is taking a break from his travels-for-fun to put together a group ride in Cambonia to raise money through United World Schools (UWS) for its efforts to provide schools in inaccessible, underprivileged and post conflict regions, including in Cambodia:

It’s a motorcycle trip across Cambodia that anyone can participate in, regardless of experience, with the aim of having a bit of fun and helping a local charity supporting Cambodian Children. For 2012 the ride is a scouting run to check out roads and routes, therefore numbers are limited… In 2013 it will be open to absolutely anyone who can get there – so start saving!

 

In a nutshell… Take 2 weeks off work, and approximately $2000-$3000 (including flights to/from Europe, Australia or America)

 

Get yourself to the kick off town in Cambodia by the morning of Monday the 30th of January 2012.

 

Make friends with the other riders you find in the town.

 

Buy a little motorbike at a good price ($300-$500), and try to get your new friends to help you prepare it for a 1500km trip by the end of that day.

 

then repeat this…

 

Get together for dinner, sample the local Angkor beer and agree on a destination for the next day.

 

Next morning, ride to to the destination while having maximum fun… Until Thursday the 9th of February 2012… On Friday the 10th, donate the bike, your medical kit, and whatever other money you have raised for charity.

 

Say goodbye to your new friends, and make your way back to wherever you came from.

 

And then do it again (or not) in 2013. Participants on either/both trips must buy a Honda Dream 125cc Motorcycle (4 Speed, Automatic Clutch) in-country, and then auction the bike off at the end of the ride (the auctions of the bikes are to raise money for charity). And, of course, participants will be encouraged to blog about their experience, tell friends, etc., and encourage donations to UWS.

Full details at the Ride for Cambodia web site. And feel free to write Dave directly through the web site if you have questions – and tell him Jayne sent ya!

Also see my advice on how to do good while abroad (including by motorcycle).

Benefitting from Internet Use Requires a Change in Mindset

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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.

Courts being fooled by online community service scams

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July 6, 2016 update: the web site of the company Community Service Help went away sometime in January 2016, and all posts to its Facebook page are now GONE. More info at this July 2016 blog: Selling community service leads to arrest, conviction

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!).

You can read about what happened when I started investigating Community Service Help, Inc. in January and reported them to the proper authorities, and what the company’s reaction was (not good!). And you can read the nasty comments that are showing up on that original blog – the people who are running these unscrupulous companies are definitely feeling the heat!

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!

American Probation and Parole Association

U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services System

Federal Probation and Pretrial Officers Association (FPPOA)

National Association of Probation Executives

American Correctional Association

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!

Also, here’s free information on Finding Online Volunteering / Virtual Volunteering & Home-Based Volunteering with legitimate organizations.

November 6, 2012 update: I just got got email from a TV reporter in Atlanta, Georgia who used my blogs about this scam to create this excellent video about this scam and the people behind it. Thanks Atlanta Fox 5!

February 2013 update: Here’s the latest on what’s going on with this company.

July 6, 2016 update: the web site of the company Community Service Help went away sometime in January 2016, and all posts to its Facebook page are now GONE. More info at this July 2016 blog: Selling community service leads to arrest, conviction

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

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.

Why don’t they tell? Would they at your org?

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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?

And in case you are wondering – yes, this is a personally important issue to me.

Your org can benefit from “2012 International Year of…”

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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.

For a list of these UN days, weeks, years and decades, see either this part of the UNESCO web site or this page by the UN Association of Canada.

The Internet hasn’t changed. Not really.

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The Internet hasn’t changed much since its invention more than 30 years ago. Not really.

Oh, fine, wave your arms and jump up and down and say, “No! No! It’s now interactive. It’s now social. Now people crowdsource problems.” It’s cute when you do that.

But the Internet has always been interactive. It’s always been social. And it’s always been about crowdsourcing. It’s why I fell in love with it, via USENET newsgroups, back in the 1990s.

What has changed about the Internet over the last 30 years? It has a lot more graphical interafaces, and there are many, many more people are using it. That’s it.

Consider the Cluetrain Manifesto, published in 1999 and which immediately became my guide for thinking about the Internet: the authors asserted back then that the Internet is unlike traditional media used in mass marketing / one-to-many marketing, and transforms business practices radically:

A powerful global conversation has begun. Through the Internet, people are discovering and inventing new ways to share relevant knowledge with blinding speed.

Even the Atlantic Monthly believes the Internet hasn’t changed much in 15 years. It spotlighted a high-school handout from 1996 explaining the advantages and disadvantages of using the newfangled Internet everybody was talking about – and it sounds exactly like what people say today.

I started using the Internet in 1994, when a colleague printed out Munn Heydorn’s guide to nonprofit organizations on the Internet. Even in 1994, it was a document of many, many pages. She suggested I explore some of the resources recommended, as she was too busy to do such (and was only interested in emailing her college friends). Somehow, soc.org.nonprofit jumped out at me most in that long list of resources, and I joined as soon as I could figure out how to do so. The World Wide Web seemed so boring to me then — it was just online brochures — whereas USENET was interactive, and its newsgroups felt like communities. As email groups via ListServ and Majordomo proliferated, and then along with YahooGroups, nonprofits on the Internet flourished.

Sure, there were nonprofits then – and for-profit businesses, for that matter – who used their new web site as an online brochure, and email as one-way communication with customers and constituents. In fact, there are a lot of companies still doing this. But these have never been the norm when it comes to Internet use.

So let’s stop talking about the Internet as something new and, instead, start looking to what’s worked, and what hasn’t, over the many years. There are some fantastic case studies from the 1990s – even the 1980s – about virtual volunteering, online mentoring, crowd-sourcing and microvolunteering via newsgroups, and so much more – that are still relevant today. Mistakes that were made in those early days of networking tech are being made again as the Internet gets rebranded as the Cloud and online social networking, as episodic online volunteering gets rebranded as microvolunteering, and as people are starting nonprofits or social enterprises to do with Facebook or Twitter what many nonprofits were doing with USENET back in the 1980s. Let’s learn from those mistakes instead of repeating them!

Also see The Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted.

Judging volunteers by their # of hours? No thanks.

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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?

Volunteerism & NGO resources in India, for Indians?

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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.

Is there really no kind-of VolunteerMatch or AllforGood for India? Really?

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!

International Volunteer Day for Economic & Social Development – Dec. 5

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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.

Also see Learning From The “Not-So-Nice” Volunteers, which I wrote back in 2004.

Here’s how I volunteer (no stipends yet!)

Who IS that person in charge of your social media?

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There is a large international organization I follow on Facebook and Twitter, and I’m sorry to say that its been making major missteps via these social media tools.

In the last four weeks, whomever is in charge of social media at this organization has posted a message that, in my opinion, was completely inappropriate and put the organization in a very bad light, as well as repeatedly posting inaccurate information relating to the mission of this organization and not responding to most online questions and criticisms. But no one seems to be noticing at the organization – the mistakes keep happening, and when I made inquiries to two people who work for the organization, they had no idea what was going on online (in fact, they weren’t sure who was in charge of social media activities). 

It’s painfully obvious that there is no strategy regarding this organization’s use of social media. Perhaps the job has been handed over to an intern or two – after all, if you are in your 20s, you are just automatically an online social media expert, right? It’s also obvious that no one in senior management is following the accounts regularly – because if they were, these very public missteps wouldn’t have gone on this long.

It brings to mind a long, long time ago, way back in the 1990, when a lot of marketing directors at nonprofit organizations handed over web site development and management to the person in charge of IT – the person who kept the computers running. These marketing managers saw the Web as technology, rather than as outreach. Web sites for these organizations often were packed with flashy web features, but light on information, and answers to basic questions that someone goes to a web site for – where the organization is located, the nearest free parking, the nearest mass transit stop, hours of operation, upcoming event information, how to volunteer, etc. – were oh-so-hard to find. Many marketing directors were oblivious to the web site’s shortcomings – they never looked at the site beyond a unveiling of such (at which pizza and soda was served in the break room and a good time had by all).

Back in 90s, I worked at an organization where I was the internal communications manager – but ended up in charge of all Internet outreach. The marketing director (to whom I did not report) thought the Internet was a fad and said he wasn’t interested in it, so I was in charge of building the organization’s web site, and in undertaking all online outreach via email and online discussion groups. He never had any idea what I was doing, and was never interested in sitting down and learning. After several months, he realized his mistake, as what was happening online was being talked about by people and organizations we were trying tor reach much more than our print materials.

I said it back in the 1990s, I’ll say it again now: everyone has a role in an organization’s outreach, online and offline. The receptionist needs to see the organization’s main brochure before it goes to print, or the web site before it’s launched – she or he knows the primary reasons why people call the organization, and she or he can make sure these publications include this information. The people that deliver the organization’s programs or interact most with the public, as well as senior managers, including the head of marketing, need to follow the organization’s social media profiles, and their feedback about such needs to be listened to. Everyone at the organization needs to have copies of print publications and, if they have a comment about the usability of an online tool or how the public is responding to the organization online, senior management needs to listen to them.

Just as importantly, your organization needs a fully integrated social media strategy, a plan that puts a reason behind every Facebook status update and every Tweet, one that answers the questions What are we going to accomplish today with our social media use? What are we going to accomplish this week with our social media use? Three months from now, how are we going to measure social media success? Does the head of marketing have a written outreach plan, and are online tools fully-integrated into such – not just mentioned? Does the head of programming have a fully-integrated plan for using online tools, including social media, in his or her written strategy for the coming year?

And, finally, make sure whomever is posting those messages to Facebook or Twitter or GooglePlus or whatever on your organization’s behalf is fully supervised. That person needs to be sitting in on every marketing meeting and every public event. That person needs to be presenting a briefing on what’s happened in the last week – and not just number of tweets, number of Facebook status updates, number of “likes”, number of “friends”, etc., because numbers really mean nothing. And senior management needs to be following what this person is doing online in real time.

Delegating social media tasks doesn’t mean senior management stops participating online. Too many nonprofit organizations, international aid agencies and other mission-based organizations forget that.