Feuds in the nonprofit/NGO/charity world

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I work with nonprofit organizations, international agencies and even government offices that don’t get along with each other. And it leaves me in an awkward position when I’m talking with such an organization about some activity or resources that would be oh-so-appealing to another organization. I know that, when I make the suggestion for collaboration, or even just an email update or event invitation from one organization to the other, a heavy silence will fill the air – or some quickly-made-up excuses will flow and the suggestion will be ignored.

Entire organizations hurt each other’s feelings all the time, just as people do – because organizations are made up of people. But often, what one organization views as a criticism or an act of conscious disrespect by another organization is actually incompetence or thoughtlessness – it’s not at all a deliberate act. It can be an email that doesn’t receive a response or a phone call that doesn’t get returned (They are ignoring me! They hate me!) or a duplication of activities (They *know* we already do an event like that! They did this to try to steal our thunder!) or an event that doesn’t get announced until late (They didn’t tell us about this earlier so we wouldn’t be able to participate!).

I know one organization that believes it’s in a feud with another organization – but that other organization has no idea there’s any hurt feelings! So while the Hurt Organization takes every action by Other Organization as an attack, a slight, an insult, etc., Other Organization is completely oblivious that Hurt Organization feels that way.

Sometimes, a feud is acknowledged by both organizations – but there’s no effort to get over it. And there always be an effort to get over it, because there’s no room in the nonprofit / NGO / charity world for feuds. Disagreements? Yes, those need to happen, and it may be you never see eye-to-eye about what the approach should be to homelessness, or women’s health care, or stray animals – but the disagreement can be acknowledged by both parties without a silent and/or nasty feud between them. Debates? Absolutely – we won’t evolve or learn if we don’t debate! But silent feuding? That hurts all of us and those we serve.

When I take on public relations/outreach activities for an organization, one of the first things I do is to look at the distribution list for press releases and announcements, invitation lists for events, etc., and I make sure every organization that has a similar mission and is working in the same area is on those lists. That can include groups that have publicly said they disagree with the organization’s mission. There might be some cringing from other department heads, even a closed-door meeting where I’m assured the overture won’t lead to anything positive, but I insist. And every time, maybe after weeks, maybe after months, there’s a thawing of relations: Someone has lunch with someone else. Someone attends another’s special event. A white paper is shared. Small steps.

Maybe the organizations will never like each other; but I don’t have to like you to work with you!

Also see:

How to handle online criticism

Community Relations, With & Without Tech

How to help Somalia

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Questions about how to help Somalia – where to send money, if you can send in-kind donations, where to volunteer, etc. – are starting to show up on various boards, such as YahooAnswers. So, here’s the answers to those questions:

ReliefWeb is tracking the crisis (as well as those in other countries).

Also see:

Fund Raising For a Cause or Organization

How to Make a Difference Internationally/Globally/in Another Country Without Going Abroad

Volunteering To Help After Major Disasters.

Ideas for Funding Your Volunteering Abroad Trip.

Details on volunteering abroad (volunteering internationally).

    Motorcycles in Development / Aid / Relief & Volunteer Efforts

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    Motorcycles for good? Indeed! This web page tracks the use of motorcycles in development / aid / relief / humanitarian efforts in developing countries. This isn’t so much about volunteers going to developing countries and using motorcycles for relief efforts; rather, these efforts are more about training local people to ride and service motorcycles themselves as a part of such efforts, which not only helps get aid, including medicine, where it needs to go, but also helps create small businesses.

    Are you an individual, or part of a group, that wants to travel and do good (transire benefaciendo) via motorcycle? You have several options for helping either domestically (in your own country), or abroad (in another country), but note that it will take planning before your trip, as well as a lot of coordination in the weeks and days leading up to your on-the-road activities. This web page, transire benefaciendo, will help you coordinate such an efort. See in particular the section on Volunteering On Your Own Abroad. Also see this page on Finding Community Service and Volunteering for Groups, as well as the links at the bottom of that page.

    I haven’t been to a developing country on my own motorcycle yet, but I’m working up to it:

    Road into Garnet Ghost Town 2010

    Of course, everyone knows Expat Aid Workers love motorcycles.

    Tags: motorcycles, motorcycle, bikes, bikers, motos, travel, volunteer, volunteering, outreach, collaboration, community, engagement, international, community, service, help, helping, NGOs, nonprofits, INGOs, Africa, Asia, South America, abroad, good, work, assisting

    International volunteerism conferences in 2011

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    You may remember that 2001 was the International Year of Volunteers. What you probably don’t know is that, as it’s 10 years later, there are IYV+10 activities going on. Not many, as promotional activities about IYV+10 have been few and far between – in stark contrast to the outstanding job the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme did promoting IYV more than a decade ago: online communities are largely silent on the subject of IYV+10, and when I have asked at my workshops if anyone knew it that IYV+10 was happening, I’ve been met with confused looks and shaking heads.

    One of the main events regarding IYV+10 is the newly-announced Global Volunteer Conference in Budapest, to take place 15-17 September 2011 and being planned jointly by UNV and the International Federation of Red Cross/Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). The conference theme is Volunteering for a Sustainable Future, and “will look at ways to mainstream volunteerism in peace, humanitarian and development work. Linkages between volunteering and issues such as climate change, migration, youth involvement, solidarity between generations, crisis prevention and recovery, disaster risk reduction, gender or growing urbanization will be addressed. The conference will focus on the following broad themes:

    • Volunteering during humanitarian crises and emergency situations
    • Volunteering for peace and development:  MDGs and beyond
    • Promoting an enabling environment for volunteering
    • Enhancing evidence of the impact, value, and power of volunteering and its contribution to peace and development
    • Engaging national and international policy makers to enhance protection, recognition, and promotion of volunteers”

    This conference was announced on July 15 – just two months before it’s going to happen! As of now, there is no information on speakers or specific workshops, let alone goals for the event or how to register. And even though this event is being hosted in Europe (in fact, in one of my favorite cities on Earth!), there’s no mention that 2011 is also the European Year of Volunteering.

    There will also be regional conferences, such as the Southern Africa Conference on Volunteer Action for Development, also hosted by UNV, as well as the Volunteer and Service Enquiry Southern Africa (VOSESA), in Johannesburg on October 17-19. Alongside that meeting, members of an African Working Group, consisting of African delegates that attended the International Association for National Youth Service’s 9th Global Conference in Alexandria, Egypt in October 2010, will meet to continue their efforts promoting opportunities for Africans to engage and interact on national youth service and youth civic engagement in Africa. 

    If you are attending either of these events, please let me know if you will be blogging about such – I would be happy to link to all those that will be writing about the event while there or shortly after.

    Tags: volunteering, volunteers, community, engagement, volunteerism, service, help, development, MDGs, humanitarian, aid, international, global, presenters, presenting, conference, event, presentations, Africa, Europe

    Photos & videos by & of volunteers online – privacy issues?

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    Following up on the post from yesterday regarding why nonprofits, NGOs and other mission-based organizations shouldn’t use stock photos, let’s talk today about privacy issues with photos of volunteers, particularly children.

    Back in 2010 on UKVPMs, a discussion group for volunteer managers in the United Kingdom, someone wrote:

    I have vague memories of this issue being discussed before, but I’m looking into guidance (mainly for volunteers, but also for paid staff and service users) around people posting photo’s or video clips etc on You Tube and similar sites. If working with children and/or  other vulnerable groups, are there clear legal responsibilities we need to be aware of ? I don’t have a deal of experience in this area, so don’t know how much vetting the sites carry out themselves and how reliable this might be. Is data protection an issue

    Video and photo-sharing sites do NOT vet any photos or videos submitted to their sites, just as the phone company isn’t responsible for what you are saying in a phone conversation.

    It’s important to remember that, in most countries, you cannot legally control what people take photos of or film at a public event. Think of it as the picnic in the public park rule — you cannot control someone taking photos or film of you if you are having a picnic in a public park, regardless of whether or not kids are present.

    That said, you should ask your staff and volunteers (same rule for all) to adhere to certain rules regarding taking photos or filming at any of your organization’s activities, public or not, and to adhere to certain rules regarding what they do with that film and video. You need to determine what those rules should be. You need to let volunteers know this includes whatever they do with their cell phones (so no one can say — “Oh, I thought you just meant cameras“).

    Do all of your staff and volunteers already sign photo release forms, saying that photos may be taken of them at organization activities in which they participate and may be used in your own outreach activities (your web site, your blog, brochures, slide show presentations, posters, etc.)? Do parents of all children participating in your programs sign such a form? If not, you definitely should get busy getting such a form put together and signed by everyone now, and everyone who joins later. You can find lots of examples of photo release forms on Google.

    I don’t know how much these releases would count in a court, but they do create awareness among participants that photos are sometimes taken. I haven’t lost any volunteers over the signing of such a policy — has anyone else? (I’d be interested to hear how you handled such in the comments section below — or did you lose the volunteer altogether?).

    Do you already have a policy regarding how your organization identifies children in photos? (first name only, no names at all, etc.) Make sure all staff and volunteers know this policy. If you don’t have such a policy, again, look on Google — lots of organization’s share their policy. Some I found:

    With the photo release and children-in-photos policies taken care of, talk with staff and volunteers and involve them in the development of further policies regarding taking photos and film during organization activities, and how they use these photos and videos. Reinforce your confidentiality policies and children-identification-in-photos policy during these conversations. Be clear about what cannot be filmed or posted under any circumstances (personnel discussions, staff meetings, counseling sessions, etc.). I find that involving people in the conversation about policy development (asking for their feedback in my online discussion group for volunteers, at onsite meetings, informally when we meet, etc.) better guarantees people will embrace it and make sure it is enforced.

    If you are going to prohibit all such photo and video-taking, you need to have very clear reasons why (in writing and in conversations), and you need to talk about what the consequences will be to staff and volunteers if the prohibition is violated. You also need to consider the consequences of such a draconian ban — you will be losing out on a significant public outreach tool. Volunteers can create a LOT of interest among their friends, family and associates for your organization when they share photos and videos of their activities as a volunteer. Also, you will probably lose more volunteers over such a draconian ban than you will if you allow photos to be taken.

    One of the guidelines I have is to ask staff and volunteers to always announce to their colleagues “I’m taking photos/video now!” before they start doing so, and to respect the wishes of people who say they do not want to be filmed. Ask staff and volunteers to respect the wishes of their fellow volunteers who may contact them and ask that an image that features them on their own Flickr account (or other photo-sharing site) or YouTube account to be removed (note that these accounts are owned by them, not you). Ask staff and volunteers to share links to videos and photos with the organization, as a courtesy. Talk with volunteers about what a photo dispute might look like and how such could be negotiated/mediated (you could give them two or three fictional scenarios for discussion). And, as noted above, ask for their own suggestions for policies.

    For whatever you come up with in terms of guidelines, you will have to reinforce the message frequently — you can’t just deliver the message once and expect it to be heard.

    Related blogs and sites:

    Social media policies for mission-based organizations

    Forget the stock photos; make your own photo archive

    Photos of me at work

    Tags: photos, communications, communicating, mission, outreach, story, news, volunteering, volunteers, community, engagement, volunteerism, smartphones, PDAs, camera, phone, cell

    Don’t use stock photos; make your own photo archive

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    One of the many online communities I’m on had a posting by someone from a nonprofit organization looking for stock photos of volunteers to use in a brochure they were producing.

    And I cringed.

    Stock photos are professionally-produced photos made available for companies and organizations to use to express a certain notion or idea. Stock photos are also of people who have no affiliation with the company or organization that uses them on their web sites, in their brochures, etc. You see stock photos in picture frames for sale.

    A stock photo used by a nonprofit organization on its web site, in its brochure, or on a poster is obvious — and dishonest. To me, it screams, “These are professional models who don’t actually volunteer here/aren’t actually clients here!”

    Unless the identity of your volunteers or clients needs to be protected (and that certainly does happen — for instance, with domestic violence shelters), you should have a folder on your computer system (on your local network, in the cloud, whatever) filled with digital photos showing genuine volunteers, clients, staff and others, ready for use in your marketing materials and fund-raising proposals.

    The good news is that you can easily compile such a stock photo archive!

    Begin by ensuring that you have a signed photo release for every volunteer at your organization. Volunteers should be asked to sign such a form at the time they attend the first orientation or volunteering session or with their completed volunteer application. If you intend to take photos at an activity or event where clients will be present, you will also need to get a photo release form for any clients (or anyone else) who might be photographed. You can find samples of photo release forms by typing in this phrase into Google.com or your favorite online search tool:
    photo release form

    Next, make sure every paid staff member, every unpaid volunteer, every client and every parent or guardian of a client knows your organization’s policies regarding taking photos in association with your organization’s activities (again, just type photo policy into Google.com or your favorite online search tool to find examples of such), and within the boundaries of those policies, invite them to take photos in association with your organization’s activities and to share these photos with your organization. With most smart phones and other handheld tech coming with a camera, your volunteers and clients may already be taking photos. Remind everyone associated with your organization, via regular meetings or regular online or print communications, both of these policies and that you would like such photos shared with you (people need to hear messages more than once in order to have them in mind).

    Note in your event or activity announcements if photos might be taken. Whoever takes photos should identify him or herself to those being photographed. This should be a part of your photography policies that you have communicated organization-wide.

    When photographing at events where people may not know me, I ask that whomever kicks off the meeting to announce that I’m taking photos that could appear on our web site or in printed materials, and that if anyone does not want their photo used, they should raise their hand any time they see me taking a photo they might be a part of so that later, when going through photos later, I will delete any photo of a person who is raising their hand, or crop them out of the photo. This worked really well when I took photos at community meetings in Afghanistan (more about Taking Photos in the Developing World, a resource I developed while working in Afghanistan in 2007).

    Frequently encourage volunteers, employees and clients to share photos they have taken at your events or during volunteering activities with your organization (they need to hear this message more than once!). The best way to share photos is, IMO, via Flickr (photos can be shared with just your organization, without sharing them with the entire world) or via Drop Box (don’t accept photos via email – it uses too much bandwidth and will slow your emails down!).

    As photos come in to you, create a folder on your computer or drive for photos you might want to use on your web site, in a brochure, in a fundraising proposal, etc. Look for photos that have at least one of these qualities:

    • shows action
    • shows smiles
    • shows diversity
    • teens
    • seniors

    If you don’t have software or an operating system that allows you to organize and search photos easily, create a naming system for photos, sub-folders and files on your computer so you can easily find photos for certain kinds of images, such as photos that show:

    • female participation
    • senior/elder participation
    • multi-cultural participation
    • physical action
    • enjoyment/happiness
    • caring
    • etc.

    If you can afford to use a professional photographer and have photo setups, where volunteers pretend to be in the middle of a service activity, or where staff pretend to be engaged in their work, great! It’s okay to set up a photo — just use your own folks, not professional models.

    Stay genuine! That attracts people much more than even the slickest of stock images.

    March 26, 2018 update: I was working on a very large PR campaign with a colleague. I wanted to solicit photos from various sources to use in our campaign, photos of people engaged in an activity that related to our campaign. She wanted to use stock photos. I relented for various reasons. A year later, I stopped at a gas station in Kentucky, and while inside, looked up at a poster about job opportunities with this particular company. There was a series of photos that I guess were meant to represent people that work for the company. And among that series of photos was one that we had used prominently in our own campaign, which had nothing to do with gas stations… I realize it’s unlikely that anyone else made the connection, and I certainly don’t dislike gas stations – I’m quite fond of their services. But it was a reminder of why using stock photos is often a very bad idea.

    March 8, 2021 update: Here is a fantastic blog about a company that created its own photo stock library, using its own assets (it’s own offices). I think going round your building with a smartphone, taking snaps and adding insta filters will always trump purchasing stock images. What a great task for volunteers to undertake for your organization!

    Harry Potter fans make a difference – as do other fan groups

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    Back in the 1990s, when I was directing the Virtual Volunteering Project, I researched the phenomena of online fans of TV shows, performers and sports teams using the Internet to organize volunteering, donations and other support for various causes and nonprofits. I thought it was such a splendid example of both online volunteering and DIY volunteering.

    There are thousands of online communities for people who want to to share information and excitement about a particular television show, movie, sports team, celebrity, hobby or literary genre. And just as offline communities and groups will often “pass the hat” at their gatherings for a good cause, these Internet-based fan groups often come together online or in person to improve their communities, promote a cause or generate funds for a nonprofit organization. Often, these fans engage in philanthropy with no prompting from any charity or formal organization.

    It’s been almost 15 years since I wrote that, and I’m pleased to see that this tradition is continuing. The latest example: The Harry Potter Alliance, a group 100,000 Harry Potter fans all over the world, has raised $15,000 for aid in Darfur and Burma and $123,000 for Haiti. Its Deathly Hallows Campaign is attacking hunger, bullying, child slavery and more.

    We are an army of fans, activists, nerdfighters, teenagers, wizards and muggles dedicated to fighting for social justice with the greatest weapon we have– love.

    Accio Volunteers!

    Tags: outreach, networking, connections, friends, connect, network, volunteering, volunteers, community, engagement, volunteerism, social, business, Harrry Potter, DIY, books, movies, novels, fiction

    It’s okay to say “no” to an online connection

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    When the popularity of the World Wide Web exploded in the late 1990s and every individual and organization decided they each needed a web site, requests abounded for link exchanges:

    I’ll link to your web site if you will link to mine.

    At first, it was an always-say-yes proposition. But nonprofit organizations in particular realized quickly that it wasn’t a good idea to link to anyone who asked: what if the request was from a corporation engaged in activities that went against the mission of the nonprofit? or if the request came from an individual who had material on his or her web site that insults particular groups of people, or encourages people to break the law? Many organizations developed web link policies; for instance, a nonprofit would link to a web page only if its content was directly, obviously related to the mission of the organization.

    Now, the popularity of online networking sites permeates our culture, with everyone, including many nonprofits, in a rush to build up their online profiles on various platforms and to build a high number of online friends. But is it really appropriate for you to accept every invitation to connect to your profile on an online networking site?

    It’s not only your nonprofit that needs to think strategically its online networking presence – you, as a volunteer or employee at a nonprofit organization, need to think about the purpose of your own online networking as well. If you link to anyone, anytime, on any platform, with no criteria for what connections mean to you, don’t be surprised if you find yourself over time lacking motivation to network online, as linking becomes mechanical instead of influential, without any meaning behind your connections. Your links become just numbers, rather than real connections to with which to share and collaborate.

    LinkedIn is a professional networking site. My Linkin connections are real connections: they are current and former co-workers and clients, volunteers I’ve supervised or worked with, people who have attended a workshop I’ve presented, classmates, and various other people I’ve worked with in such a way that I would be able to say something about them, people whose work I’m very familiar with, or people who are familiar with my work. That keeps LinkedIn connections of real value to me, rather than the online equivalent of a stack of business cards. My connections can view each other and know that these aren’t just a long list of names and email addresses I have no real connection to — these are my colleagues, in every sense of the word, and my colleagues are welcomed to leverage my connections for their own professional reasons.

    By contrast, I’m not always comfortable with professional colleagues and fellow volunteers wanting to connect to me via social networking profiles. Do I really want former supervisors to get regular, automatic updates about my vacations, political causes with which I’m involved, and which Buffy: The Vampire Slayer character I’m most like? Of course, with sites like Google, it’s quite easy for anyone, including potential employers, to find out just about anything about anyone – but, IMO, there’s a difference in being able to find information about me if you go looking for it and are willing to dig awhile, versus getting an automatic electronic update about my political views.

    Consider developing your own linking policy for your online networking activities – both those you do as an organization and those you do as an individual. What do you want your links on professional sites like LinkedIn to see about you, versus your connections on make-a-difference networks like Change.org, versus your online social networking on FaceBook? There have never been absolute lines in our lives where work and volunteering ends and social activities begin, of course, and you will always have gray areas, but it’s still worth thinking about, to keep your online connections true connections, with some kind of real value to them.

    When you say no to an online connection, consider offering an alternative. For instance, to people who ask to link to me on Linkedin whom I don’t know, I offer the alternative of getting to know each other online professionally, inviting the person to:

    • friend me on my professional Facebook profile (as opposed to my personal one)
    • Follow me Twitter at @jcravens42
    • subscribe to my email newsletter, Tech4Impact, which gives nonprofits and other mission-based organizations byte-sized tips for getting the most out of tech tools, as well as offering a list of my most-recent blog posts.
    • Subscribe to my blog via RSS (not necessary if they do any of the above)
    • Share his or her blog address with me

    As I’ve said many times before, the biggest value from the Internet is, and has always been, the ability to connect with people interested in an area similar to what you are interested in, and to be able to collaborate with and learn from these people no matter where you are on Earth. But when I say connect, I don’t mean just marking someone as a connection on LinkedIn or as a friend on FaceBook or whatever. When I want to actually connect with someone online:

    • I send the person an email or make a post to his or her blog, commenting on something that person has written or said. 
    • I post questions, answers and resources on an online discussion group with a membership that includes people I would very much like to know, and that I want to know me (and I still get way more value out of YahooGroups and GoogleGroups than I do LinkedIn or FaceBook).
    • I invite people to post comments on my own network in reply to my blog.
    • I refer someone to a person or resource, in response to something they have written online.
    • etc.

    This does lead to real connections — people I end up collaborating with, recommending to others, co-presenting with, even working with or for, or hiring.

    And one more thing: accept that there are two yous. Maybe even three yous. Maybe even more.

    There is your professional, public you: the one that works at such-and-such company, went to such-and-such university, serves on such-and-such board of directors, lives in such-and-such city and uses your first and last name in your emails and online profiles, etc. This is the you that is easy to find by co-workers, potential employers, even the media. The public you is the one that comes up in the first pages of a Google search.

    There is also your personal you: the one that engages in activities you wouldn’t necessarily want all of your co-workers or potential employers to know about in a readily-easy manner, the one that writes Harry Potter fan fiction, the one that is overtly politically-opinionated, and doesn’t use your first and last name in your emails and online profiles, etc. These activities may be easy to find online, but aren’t so easy to associate with you by co-workers, potential employers or the media even if they find it, because you don’t use your full first and last name, because you don’t list the city where you are, because you never mention your employer, etc.

    You have to decide where each of your activities, online or offline, fall among these two — or more — yous.

    Maybe you want to keep your volunteering activities and books you’ve read and so on in your personal you online activities. Or maybe you want to share even more in your public you profiles. The point is: you have control of the information you share online. Be deliberate, or at least thoughtful, in what you share and how you share information.

    Tags: communications, personal, private, outreach, networking, connections, friends, connect, network, volunteering, volunteers, community, engagement, volunteerism, social, business

    Volunteer managers in USA: learn from other countries too!

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    Erin Barnhart put together a “Volunteerism and Volunteer Management” course for Portland State University, (PA592 CRN 82727) and I was thrilled to be asked to teach one of the modules, particularly since Erin took such a different approach to putting together this university-level course: she didn’t just focus on the basics of volunteer management, though that was certainly there. And she didn’t segregate everything regarding the Internet into a module at the end (Internet use was integrated into ALL aspects of the recruitment, support and involvement of volunteers – as it should be!). She also included discussions of all volunteers – board members, interns, pro bono consultants, executives on loan, etc. – not just the traditional volunteer model (you have a task or role onsite, you recruit a volunteer to commit to doing that task or role for the rest of his or her life, etc.).

    This comprehensive course will cover topics ranging from core competencies and emerging trends and tools for building and sustaining a successful volunteer program, to understanding the broad-reaching impacts of volunteer service and effective volunteer management, to engaging individuals in innovative and accessible ways to serve in their local neighborhoods, via their computers and smartphones, and in communities across the globe.

    I was thrilled to be able to do a brand new series of workshops I had never tacked before:

    How the practices of volunteering in other countries, how international volunteering – long-term volunteers, short-term volunteers that pay for the experience, online volunteers that help organizations in countries different from their own, people that volunteer as they travel internationally – can teach us to be better managers/coordinators/leaders of volunteers here in the USA.

    I believe that my experience working with volunteers abroad, and being immersed in international development for most of the last decade, has made me a much better manager/coordinator of volunteers, and it was a fascinating, intense experience to do research and put materials together that could help the students in PSU PA592 – all of whom are working professionals with volunteer management experience under their belt – to learn about other countries’ views of and practices regarding volunteering, particularly very poor countries.

    I love teaching. I try to give my workshops a lively, audience-oriented feel. I use case studies to illustrate points, focus on both what’s happening now and what is trending, encourage a lot of student participation, and develop activities that get class participants designing strategies they can use immediately. My goal in any training is to give participants a base on which to further build and improve long after a class is over. My schedule fills up very quickly. Contact me and let me know what kind of training you might have in mind!

    Tags: volunteering, volunteers, community, engagement, international, volunteerism, volunteering

    Microvolunteering @ Techsoup

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    TechSoup has relaunched its microvolunteering initiative Donate Your Brain.     It allows anyone, anywhere, to help nonprofits, NGOs, libraries and other mission-based organizations with quick answers and suggestions for their Internet, software, and other tech needs. Right now, these microvolunteering tasks are being highlighted on Twitter, primarily.

    If you want to volunteer, here’s how you can get involved:

    • Search and save the hashtag #TechSoupDYB on Twitter
    • When you see a question you want to answer (2-3 will be posted every weekday), respond either via a tweet or by following the link to the TechSoup forum post where this question originated.

    Ta Da! That’s it!

    No Twitter account? No problem! You can also:

    Nonprofits – if you have a question regarding technology use at your organization, post to the appropriate branch of the TechSoup forum. TechSoup staff may choose to highlight your question on Twitter or on its TechSoup Global LinkedIn group!

    Why do I care? I’m working temporarily for TechSoup right now, and I have helped to relaunch the Donate Your Brain. To me, it was obviously microvolunteering intiative – but no one had ever called it that! Probably because the phrase hadn’t been coined when TechSoup’s DYB initiative was first launched a few years ago. But, then again, I promoted microvolunteering back in the 1990s, but didn’t’ call it microvolunteering – I called it byte-sized online volunteering. See more at Micro-Volunteering and Crowd-Sourcing: Not-So-New Trends in Virtual Volunteering/Online Volunteering.

    Also see:

    Microvolunteering is virtual volunteering

    But virtual volunteering means it takes no time, right?

    Tags: engagement, engage, community, nonprofit, NGO, not-for-profit, government, library, libraries, school, schools, volunteers, civil society, social media, technology, microblogging, microvolunteering, micro, volunteer, volunteering