It’s About Respect

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This is a followup to my blog A Stupid Name for a Service for Nonprofits, regarding the unbelievably-poorly-named online volunteering service, Pimp My Cause.

The issue isn’t just about a service using language that is anti-women and, indeed, anti-children. It isn’t just about this service using a phrase that means to market women and children for sex. The issue isn’t just about lack of respect for women and children.

The issue is about respect for the third sector.

The work of nonprofits, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), charities and other mission-based organizations – the third sector – isn’t a pastime. It isn’t a hobby. Indeed, sometimes a nonprofit cause does become fashionable – suddenly, the media and celebrities may want to talk about getting rid of landmines, or HIV/AIDS, or immunizations, or breast cancer, or returning war veterans, and lots of flavor-of-the-day social entrepreneurs want to jump on the band wagon, with everyone wearing a particularly-colored ribbon, with lots of bumper stickers for the cause showing up on cars and SUVs, lots of shirts or shoes sporting a particular logo… but that spotlight doesn’t last. Long after the high-profile campaign by the department store or the software company or the talk show host or the singer or the actor has ended, these organizations will still be working, day-in, day-out, on a variety of worthwhile, even vital, causes.

Often, the work of nonprofits not only doesn’t catch on as fashionable or hip – it may even make people uncomfortable, because it addresses a not-so-hip issue, like child sexual exploitation and human trafficking – but nonprofits, NGOs and other mission-based organizations keep working year-after-year, without big-time donations or media campaigns.

The third sector isn’t perfect, but it serves society and the environment in ways that the for-profit or public sector cannot. Some causes are best addressed by the for-profit sector, some are best addressed by governments, and some are best addressed by mission-based organizations – and many are best addressed by all of these sectors working in partnership.

People that work for nonprofits aren’t simply nice people who can’t get jobs in the private sector. They are often highly skilled and experienced experts in their field – child psychology, emergency logistics, crisis communications, theater and dance as tools for community education and empowerment, arts management, social media to build awareness about HIV/AIDS, maternal health, organic agriculture, and on and on. They deserve to be listened to and consulted on actions that are going to involve them or effect them – and that includes being consulted by donors about new programs and projects donors want to fund.

The third sector has its own jargon, its own lingo. And different fields within the third sector each have a jargon or lingo all their own. And when you are talking to the third sector, you had better know that lingo and that culture: For instance, when you are standing in front of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, you don’t talk about drunk driving accidents; you talk about drunk driving wrecks, crashes… deaths. To do otherwise is highly offensive. If you use the term SME, you need to know what it means to the organizations and third sector experts you are talking to: Small and medium enterprises? Subject matter expert? Social Market economy? A Linux firewall?

In summary: if you are going to work with or for mission-based organizations, whether as a volunteer or as someone marketing services to them, you need to do your homework about the sector’s work, it’s language and it’s culture. The third sector deserves respect from the for-profit sector, including corporations, from the media, from the government – from everyone. To not spend time researching the sector and consulting with its members shows profound disrespect for the people working in such, and the people being served by such.  

No one who respects nonprofits, NGOs or other mission-based organizations would ever name their service Pimp My Cause.

Also see: How to Do Market Research–The Basics. I hear there’s some really good books and classes on this subject as well.

Finally, a shout out to the nonprofit FAIR FUND, a leading girls empowerment and anti-human trafficking organization that works to keep girls safe from exploitation. When I let FAIR FUND know about “Pimp My Cause”, they were ALL OVER IT. Follow @FAIRFund on Twitter and consider supporting them with a donation!

 

Basic Fund-Raising for Small NGOs/Civil Society in the Developing World

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Some of the most frequently asked questions (FAQs) to online forums for community-based organizations (CBOs) in developing countries, whatever the subject, are regarding funding.

In addition, the first impulse of many small non-governmental organizations (NGOs) seeking funding is to request the contact information for possible funders, and once they find the name of any company they think gives grants to NGOs, these NGOs often write immediately to the company with a desperate please for funds. This approach often harms the NGO, rather than garnering any support at all. Not only do these please rarely attract funding, they can turn funding sources against the NGO altogether.

After seeing these questions and messages again and again over several years (I’ve been on the Internet since about 1994) I drafted a list of basic tips for fund-raising for small NGOs – it was 15 pages long. Now, years later, it has evolved into 31 pages. It is a PDF file.

The document is meant to provide very basic guidelines for small NGOs in the developing world regarding fund-raising and adhering to the basic principles of good governance, and to point to other resources. By small NGOs, I mean organizations that may have only one paid staff member, or are run entirely by volunteers; and may or may not have official recognition by the government. These organizations are extremely limited in their resources, and are often in unstable environments and/or serving profoundly poor populations. Certainly medium-sized NGOs could use it as well – organizations that may have two or three paid staff members.

Please note that this document is NOT written for nonprofits serving the “developed” world — organizations serving communities in North America, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand or Japan would probably not find this document particularly helpful, as it has been prepared to make recommendations relevant for nonprofits serving in a developing country.

This document is also not for organizations that send volunteers into developing countries to work. This document will not help you fund the trips of such volunteers. If you are such a volunteer-sending organization, see funding your volunteering trip abroad and fund raising for a cause or organization for more helpful information.

THIS DOCUMENT IS NOT A LIST OF FUNDERS/DONORS.

Let me repeat that: THIS DOCUMENT IS NOT A LIST OF FUNDERS/DONORS.

It is, instead, a set of guidelines on how to prepare an organization in a developing country to be attractive to donors, how to search for potential donors and how to approach such potential donors.

The document includes:

  • A list of activities an NGO should NEVER do regarding fund-raising
    (& how I know if an NGO has actually read this document!)
  • How to network among various sectors in your country and establish credibility to insure fund-raising success
  • The absolute essential preparations to solicit donations, both locally and from international NGOs working in your geographic area
  • Establishing credibility and a reputation of integrity, transparency and accountability
  • How to find donors that would be interested in your NGO and how to make contact with them
  • A warning about fund-raising scams
  • Online resources for detailed tips on writing funding proposals
  • Suggestions regarding volunteers in other countries fund-raising on your NGO’s behalf (new chapter added October 2011)
  • Online resources for further information

Once you have received this document, please do NOT distribute the document via a web site or on an online discussion group without my written permission. I frequently update the document, and want to ensure people are getting the most recent version.

Here is the web page for more regarding: Basic Fund-Raising for Small NGOs/Civil Societ in the Developing World, including how to access the document.

A Stupid Name for a Service for Nonprofits

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Which one of the following is something that a company actually thought was a great name for a product, event or service?

  • Market to Kids Like an Internet Pedophile! Reach Any Kid With Your Message!
  • Women’s Shelter Wife Beater T-shirts (fundraiser!)
  • Pimp My Cause: Marketing a Better World
  • Nonprofit Marketing: How to Sell Yourself Like a Whore (but not get screwed over!)
  • Effective Volunteer Management: Learn Best Practices from Southern Slave Owners
  • Pole Dancing for Foster Kids (fundraising event)
  • Learn to Screw the Competition and Get That Foundation Grant!

The for real idea is #3, Pimp My Cause: Marketing a Better World.

Yes, some genius thought that naming an online volunteering service after people who enslave women and children and force them to have sex for money would be a great idea for a product name marketed to nonprofit organizations, non-governmental organizations and others – including NGOs working against human trafficking.

In addition to the makers of this service thinking it was a great name, the United Nations Volunteers program did too, tweeting about it to their followers via its @volunteerplus10 account. And i-volunteer, in the UK, wrote about it and never once mentioned anything in their article about the wildly-inappropriate name (but you can, in the comments section of the story, as I have).*

The last time a nonprofit, NGO or volunteerism-focused organization did this that got my attention was back in 2008, when NetSquared and OneWorld – both of whom should have known better – thought “OneWorld.net Gets ‘Pimped’ at NetSquared DC Meetup” was a splendid headline. When I called them on it, their defense was:

We’re really just trying to be a little lighthearted…we use it in the most recent mainstream definition of the word.

Were I to use a racial slur in a little lighthearted way, because in the most recent mainstream definition of the word, it just means friend or man of a particular ethnicity, I have a feeling use of that word would cause quite a bit of outrage. Or what if I’d greeted a female UN Volunteer in an equally lighthearted and mainstream way, calling her bitch or ho or the dreaded “c” word? After all, those terms are used just as freely as pimp these days, and all the singers and actors and comedians interviewed about their use of these words swear they aren’t being derogatory to women.

In the world in which I work — and in the world that nonprofits, NGOs, UN agencies and UN Volunteers work — the word pimp means a person who engages in human enslavement, trafficking and sexual exploitation, and a show on MTV and use by techno hipsters and rap stars doesn’t change that. And in this world, there are millions of people enslaved by pimps. For real.

This is wrong on every level. Shame on everyone who doesn’t think so.

For more information about the sex trafficking of enslaved women and girls, and to understand why there is NOTHING cool or hip about slave traders, also known as “pimps”, please see:

Be sure to let UN Volunteers, the comments section of the i-volunteer article and the makers of this outrageously-named service just how wrong this is. Or, if you don’t feel that way, then feel free to choose any of those name ideas at the start of your article yourself, so I can blog about it.

Update: See the followup to this blog: It’s About Respect – a lesson for all social entrepreneurs, corporations and other for-profit sector folks who want to help nonprofits, NGOs and other mission-based organizations.

* May 5, 2017 update:

I challenge you to go to Twitter and type in this phrase, pimp my cause, into the search function. Not only will the Twitter account for this reprehensibly-named organization come up, but look at the tweets and profiles that also come up. This is what any potential client would also see if they went looking. It shows all-too-well why the word pimp should not be used in a nonprofit’s name.

UNV’s @volunteerplus10 Twitter account has been discontinued, as have the IVO, i-volunteer, sagesf.org and againstourwill.org web sites , and the Against Our Will video, What is a Pimp, is no longer available online – at least that I can find. I managed to find the IVO/i-volunteer page originally referred to at archive.org, via this URL:
http://www.i-volunteer.org.uk:80/newshound/marketing-a-better-world-pimp-my-cause/

Yes, research microvolunteering, however…

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I was oh-so-excited when I read that the Institute for Volunteering Research in the UK is going to be undertaking a project to research microvolunteering, a form of online volunteering/virtual volunteering that’s been around for many, many years – long before there were smart phones.

But I was oh-so-disappointed to see that IVR’s project will be focused only on microvolunteering from the volunteers’ point of view.

The hype regarding microvolunteering, a form of online volunteering, is similar to the excitement a few years ago regarding family volunteering. That excitement regarding family volunteering translated into lots of campaigns to encourage families to volunteer together, rather than helping organizations get the knowledge and resources necessary to create volunteering opportunities that entire families could undertake. The result was, and is, a lot of very frustrated families who want to volunteer, but cannot find opportunities. I see the same thing happening with microvolunteering – far more organizations and media articles encouraging people to try it, rather than resources to help organizations to be able to create microvolunteering opportunities and support volunteers in these roles.

What’s needed – desperately needed – is research about microvolunteering from the *organizations’* point of view, specifically:

  • what kinds of organizations are creating microvolunteering assignments (in terms of the mission of the organizations, whether or not they have a staff member devoted to managing volunteers, the level of tech-saviness of staff, etc.)?
  • what kinds of microvolunteering assignments are most popular with volunteers? (which attract the largest numbers of volunteers, or seem to always attract at least some volunteers)
  • what kinds of volunteer management practices are necessary to ensure microvolunteering assignments are completed such that they are of value to the organization?
  • how is success measured by organizations regarding microvolunteering assignments? (is it just in number of volunteers that were involved or the amount of work done? Or do some organizations track different measures, such as volunteers’ perceptions changed, volunteers’ awareness built, volunteers signing on to longer-term projects, volunteers becoming donors, etc.?)
  • what are the challenges to organizations creating microvolunteering assignments and to effectively supporting volunteers undertaking such assignments?
  • when microvolunteering doesn’t work, from the organization’s perspective (it has no real impact on the organization, the volunteers don’t go on to become more longer-term volunteers, donors, other kinds of supporters, it’s a lot of work for very little, real return, etc.), *why* doesn’t it work?

Unless researchers try to get answers to these types of questions, unless microvolunteering research is focused on organizations themselves, rather than just volunteers, more organizations won’t create more microvolunteering assignments – and more potential volunteers will be frustrated when they get excited to participate in something that actually isn’t available to them.

How to get rid of volunteers

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Last week, I signed up to help at a community event, held yesterday.

Just. To. Help. To assist.

Yesterday, when I arrived at the event site – a public school – I found out I was in charge of the entire event. More than 30 kids would be there in an hour, expecting me to lead them through 90 minutes of activities that were completely foreign to me.

I don’t like kids.1 And I noted this at the time I signed up to help. I care about the cause, however, and as I was new to the committee – I just joined last week – I wanted to prove myself as a reliable, helpful committee member. By assisting at an event. By helping someone else in charge.

But there I was, in charge of an event I knew nothing about. About to face more than 30 kids, all under the age of 12.

I wasn’t scared. And that was good, because kids smell fear. No, instead, I was angry. Kids smell anger too, but it tends to make them listen to me. And that played to my advantage during the event – they never crossed that line into chaos that a large group of kids can so easily dissolve into.

Then there were the other adult volunteers, who were also there just to help, just to be nice. And they just kinda stood there, watching me try to pull it together. And as I was bossing those confused volunteers around in a frantic attempt to pull the event together, I wondered: Have each of these people been registered with the school and had a criminal background check? Is it my responsibility to check into that before they participate? Come to think of it, no one at the school checked to see that I was who I said I was, or asked me for my school volunteer I.D. number. How do I know any of these adults are safe to be around these kids?

I pulled the event off, on a very basic level. I drew on my experience as a manager of people, projects and events, on my two years of experience volunteering with the Girl Scouts (I’ve noticed that troop leaders at events get the kids started on an activity immediately and have them keep repeating it until volunteers are ready to move them on to the next activity), my experience having coordinated and directed more live events than is probably healthy for any one person in one lifetime, and by channeling my ever-so-bossy-but-organized Great Aunt Cornelia, who is still a legend in my family for her management abilities.

Also, it turns out none of the adult volunteers were predators nor inclined to ignore kids engaging in dangerous behavior. Lucky kids. Lucky me.

In addition, the volunteer that was supposed to be in charge did have all of the materials and equipment ready to go at the site – that helped tremendously. However, she was astounded, upon arrival just after the kids started the first activity, that the emails she sent in the preceding days weren’t understood by me and others as completely signing off on responsibility for the event (she had, indeed, said in those emails she would be late, and said myself and another volunteer would be the “leads” for the other volunteers until she got there, and some emails came with attachments… But, of course, I thought the school principal would be in charge, since she was cc’d on everything, since I have no experience at all with this kind of event, since I had made it clear I was just signing up to help, and since, to her knowledge, I have no experience doing anything like this. And I don’t like kids).

Was the event a success? In my opinion, no. It wasn’t bad, and the kids had fun and were kept busy, but the reality is: the kids didn’t really learn anything about the subject at hand. They had fun, and they walked away happy, and that’s nice – but they didn’t walk away retaining any knowledge, which was the entire purpose of the event. No minds were changed, no behaviors altered – and that was the mission of the event. A lot could have been done at the event to create that knowledge, to ensure things were remembered, to better ensure some behaviors would change, but I would have needed more than 90 minutes of prep to make that happen.

In addition, this could have been an event where not only did kids get some really essential knowledge, but also, some adults could be inspired to help at future events. And that’s why it was a stark reminder about why I – and others – train in volunteer management issues (as well as why there are so many books on event management). And why so many schools and other organizations struggle to find volunteers.

Let’s face it: a great way to drive away volunteers is to sign them up to help at an event and, when they show up, tell them they are in charge. Or have them confused about what they are supposed to do, and feeling generally unsupported. Or have them bossed around for a couple of hours by a very confused and angry me.

Volunteer management isn’t just mindless bureaucracy, with forms to fill out and procedures to be followed. It’s about ensuring that an organization or program or department mission is met. It’s about ensuring volunteers don’t show up and just do some seemingly random activities. It’s about creating experiences that lead to awareness and inspiration – not just getting some work done. It’s about ensuring safety – not just keeping fingers crossed and hoping everything works out.

And effective volunteer management is what keeps volunteers coming back again and again.

Volunteer management also isn’t just one person’s responsibility; some person at that school trusted a volunteer explicitly with organizing a safe, meaningful event for students from the school. Who was that person? What is he or she going to do about what happened yesterday? Does he or she even know what happened – and what didn’t happen? Did they just walk by and think, yeah, the kids are having fun, no problems here? Are they reading this blog right now?

I know the volunteer that was supposed to be in charge isn’t reading this blog: she also sent me an email last week proudly stating that she doesn’t read blogs and isn’t on Twitter or Facebook. Just like so many people I’ve met here in Oregon, I’m sorry to say…

Here’s a positive: I’ve never been more dedicated to the fundamentals of volunteer management and effective, program-based planning than I am right now.

I still don’t like kids though…

————

1. Okay, I don’t hate kids. I sometimes find them quite amusing. I really love watching them learn. And I’m passionate about girls knowing just how many choices and opportunities are out there. But I do not think kids are automatically cute nor innocent nor sweet, and I also don’t like parents and other adults who think of kids as precious snowflakes who have every right to scream in a restaurant – though I cut a lot of slack on airplanes.

*Another* Afghanistan Handicraft program? Really?

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Recently, I got an email from yet another organization that is teaching Afghan women how to make handicrafts and textiles to sell in the West.

And I sighed. Heavily.

I’m not saying that these are bad programs. In fact, I have supported many of them, as a consumer: My husband and I each have a lovely Shalwar Kameez from a shop run by Afghans for Civil Society in Kandahar (here’s him in his; I’m in the burqa), I have a custom-made jacket from AWWSOM Boutique in Kabul that I wore at my wedding reception, I have a custom-made purse from Gundara, and I have lots of items from Ganjini Showroom and various other stores in Kabul. These items are beautiful, they are well-made, and I love showing them off (for more info, see my guide to shopping in Kabul).

HOWEVER, teaching more and more Afghan women how to make purses, shawls, table cloths and other lovely items is not going to lift women out of poverty, nor move them into their proper place in society, because there is not enough of a market for all those products.

Capacity-building programs have to be focused on what is actually needed in a particular community, that are more guaranteed to provide income regularly, long-term. That means programs that teach Afghan women how to:

These are things that local people need, and/or that they want – they are not just that are nice to have.

If you know of a program – local or international, government-run or foreign run or civil society run, whatever – that is teaching Afghan women to engage in income-generation activities that are practical and sustainable, feel free to post names and links in the comments section of this blog.

Cell phones & activism: not a new idea, still a good one

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10 years ago, I published this on the United Nations Information Technology Service (UNITeS) web site:

Cell phones, beepers and text messaging are used by a growing number of demonstrators and grass roots activists to stay connected and facilitate activities on-the-spot. Wireless technology can allow widely separated participants to coordinate activities in real time, and communicate emerging information quickly.

That’s the introduction to chapter four of Handheld computer technologies in community service/volunteering/advocacy, a paper I wrote for the UNITeS initiative. It presents examples of volunteers/citizens/grass roots advocates using what we then called handheld computer/personal digital assistants (PDAs) or phone devices as part of community service/volunteering/advocacy, or examples that could be applied to volunteer settings (the term smart phone wasn’t one I knew back in 2001).

Yes, that’s right: activists were using text messaging and cell phones as a part of their organizing more than a decade ago; the earliest example I can find is the 1999 Seattle demonstrations against the World Trade Organization (archived versions of the web site for the Ruckus Society at archive.org is a good place to learn more). The debate in our office about whether or not this was online volunteering were quite lively back then (I came down firmly in the yes camp).

I also got major cool points for quoting Jello Biafra on a UN web site, but I digress…

The grass roots organizing that’s lead to the Occupy Wall Street protests is fascinating to watch, per its use of so-called social media, but let’s remember it’s not new – this has been done before, and I hope the organizers are using lessons from those previous expereinces, as well looking into how rumors and urban myths could interfere and even derail their activities (and how to prevent or address such).

Oh, and, indeed, this is also a volunteer movement. A DIY volunteer movement. Wish that got talked about more as well.

CNN Recognizes Virtual Volunteering; Do You?

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Virtual volunteering in all its forms – long-term service, online mentoring, online microvolunteering, crowdsourcing, etc. – has been around for more than 30 years, as long as the Internet has been around, and there are several thousand organizations that have been engaging with online volunteers since at least the late 1990s. While directing the Virtual Volunteering Project, I gave up trying to track every organization involving online volunteers in 1999, because there were just too many!

Virtual volunteering – people donating their time and expertise via a computer or smart phone to nonprofit causes and programs – has been talked about in major media, including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, CNN, the Associated Press, Deutche Welle, the BBC, even the Daily Show, for more than 15 years (I know because I’ve been quoted in a lot of those stories!).

But virtual volunteering has remained thought of as a fringe movement, or something brand new, by many, despite it being so well-established. Virtual volunteering still isn’t included in national volunteerism reports by any national or international body, such as the Points of Light Foundation, the Corporation for National Service or the Pew Research Center, Volunteering England, or Volunteer Australia.

Perhaps the last holdouts regarding virtual volunteering will finally give in and accept it as mainstream, now that an online mentoring program representative has been nominated as a CNN Hero.

I was introduced to Infinite Family in 2010, and was immediately impressed with its commitment to the fundamentals of a successful online mentoring program in its administration of the program, including the importance it places on site manager-involvement in its program. This is an online mentoring program absolutely committed to quality, to the children its been set up to support, and its online volunteer screening process is no cake walk – as it should be, as the children it supports deserve nothing less! Mentoring cannot be done whenever you might have some time, in between flights at an airport: it takes real time and real commitment, even when its online. Infinite Family gets that.

While all of the CNN Hero projects are worthy of attention and support, I am throwing my support to Infinite Family as the top CNN Hero for 2011.

If you want to volunteer online, here is a long list of where to find virtual volunteering opportunities, including long-term service, online mentoring, online microvolunteering, and crowdsourcing.

Also see the archived Virtual Volunteering Project web site, and resources on my web site regarding volunteer engagement and support.

Peace Corps Volunteer Protection Act of 2011 (for Kate Puzey)

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The USA Senate unanimously passed the Kate Puzey Peace Corps Volunteer Protection Act of 2011. The legislation, which is named for a Georgia Peace Corps volunteer who was murdered in 2009 while serving in Africa, would provide better security and protection measures for Peace Corps volunteers. The legislation is named in honor of Kate Puzey, a 24-year-old Peace Corps volunteer from Cumming, Ga., who was murdered in 2009 in the West African village of Badjoude, Benin, soon after she had reported a colleague for allegedly molesting some of the young girls they taught.

The legislation provides whistleblower protection for Peace Corps volunteers, a safeguard that is currently in place for federal employees but not for Peace Corps volunteers. This type of protection would have given Kate more protection when she reported her allegations.

In addition, it requires the Peace Corps to develop sexual assault risk-reduction and response training and protocol in consultation with experts that complies with best practices in the sexual assault field. The training also is to be tailored to the specific countries in which volunteers serve.

For background, see Peace Corps must better address assaults and murders of members.

Also see this story from ABC news about the passage of this very important legislation.

Using the Internet to recognize volunteers?

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I got quite a lot of traffic on a page on my web site re: using the Internet to recognize volunteers because it was highlighted in a Tweet by VolunteerMatch. Which is great… but the page is outdated. It needs an update.

Are you a nonprofit or NGO or government community program and, if so, how do you use the Internet – your web site, your blog, your Twitter feed, your Facebook page, your Flickr account, whatever – to recognize the contributions of your volunteers? Or any Internet or smart phone tool to do so?

Are you a volunteer and, if so, how has a program or organization you have helped used the Internet to honor your contributions? How aren’t they doing so that you wish they were?

Links to specific examples would be swell. Post your ideas in the comments or over on this TechSoup forum thread and let’s share!

Here’s an example I just found that I thought was fab: The Hayden Planetarium lists its employees and volunteers altogether on one page – in alphabetical order, instead of segregated by who’s paid & who’s not (first employees, then the volunteers, the unpaid staff). That’s a very interesting approach to volunteer recognition, don’t you think?