Tag Archives: accommodations

Making volunteering more accessible for people with disabilities makes it better for EVERYONE.

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It’s happened again.

graphic by Jayne Cravens representing volunteers

I’m reading materials about making volunteering more accessible for people with disabilities and my repeated thought as I read is These are great suggestions for ALL volunteers! There’s no reason to do this JUST with people you think might have disabilities!

Below are excerpts from various publications I’ve been reading that show what I mean: Some have been slightly edited for clarity (substituting one word, for instance). Don’t just do these with people who have disabilities – do them for ALL OF YOUR VOLUNTEERS:

Make sure that anyone who works with volunteers with disabilities always asks if there is anything that can be done to accommodate their needs. (Me: do this with ALL volunteers, not just those with disabilities).

Regularly ask volunteers is they are having any challenges carrying out a task and ask if some accommodation or different task would make the volunteer’s involvement easier.

Encourage a culture of watching out for volunteers while they carry out their assignments and making sure that their needs are met.

Regularly ask volunteers if they are having any challenges carrying out a task and ask if some accommodation or different task would make the volunteer’s involvement easier.

Formally adopt a policy that states that it is the right of your volunteers to ask for and receive alternative tasks or accommodations. Make all volunteers aware of this policy.

Adopt a formal policy that states that your organization will do a regular review of its volunteer recruitment and management procedures and practices to ensure that the organization’s needs are being met and that no group of people is being excluded.

Review the time commitments and schedules attached to your volunteer positions to see if there is a solid rationale for them.

Make it part of your volunteer management approach to adapt roles to volunteers and not volunteers to roles.

Regularly talk with volunteers to get an idea of what it is actually like to volunteer for your organization. If some volunteers have fixed time commitments, ask them if there is a better way to organize their work than the way you do it now. That is, ask if they would prefer a more flexible schedule.

Formally state in a written volunteer policy that volunteers will be assigned tasks based on their capacities and abilities and will be accommodated reasonably to carry them out.

When assigning tasks that are done every year (e.g. duties in an annual fundraising campaign), look at the health status and other
factors of each volunteer before automatically assigning them the same tasks that they have “always” done. Consider alternative assignments where necessary.

Ensure that volunteer managers speak with volunteers before organizing an annual work plan and verify the volunteers’ ability and availability to do the same jobs as in previous years.

Ask volunteers what barriers they have encountered with your organization and how they have overcome such (if they have).

If you do interviews with candidates for volunteering, send the candidates the questions you are going to ask BEFORE that interview.

During an interview with a candidate for volunteering, plenty of time should be given for the volunteer to answer the questions, as
some people might need more time to think about what has been
asked.

During the interview, you may want to ask the candidate what support, if any, they feel they might need when volunteering. This is beneficial to both the organization and the volunteer so that any support needed can be planned and arranged before the
volunteer begins the assignment.

It is very important that those that will support the volunteer meet with the volunteer before any volunteering begins. This will allow both people to decide if they are happy to work together and it is also a chance to get to know each other.

People have said they would prefer a trial period of 2 months. After the first month, at their supervision meeting, you should ask the volunteer if they are happy to go on to the next month.

You should feel comfortable in being able to say honestly what is working well and what, if anything, could be better.

Again – these tips were written to help staff work better with volunteers with disabilities, but the reality is that these are great tips for supporting and managing ALL volunteers.

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If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

GirlGuiding Attempt at Inclusion Raises Ire of Many

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graphic by Jayne Cravens representing volunteers

Last week, I blogged about the controversy at the Art Institute of Chicago per their dismissing their entire volunteer docent membership and their plans to replace the volunteers with paid staff, in pursuit of a more diverse corps of museum guides to interact with the public.

GirlGuiding in the United Kingdom, the UK’s version of the Girl Scouts, has also incurred the wrath of many for one of its efforts at volunteer inclusion: on October 28th, the organization sent out a tweet that ended with, a shout-out to all of our asexual volunteers and members – thank you for everything you do in Girlguiding.

More than 2000 people liked the tweet. But the tweets-of-outrage were swift and many: the complaints focused on a belief that GirlGuiding was sexualising children with such messaging. One response that was representative of most of the negative responses: Why do your guides need to know whether your volunteers have a presence or absence of sexual desire? A nonprofit in the UK, Safe Schools Alliance UK, which has worked against allowing children to use the bathroom that corresponds with the gender with which they identify and works against bans on gay conversion therapy, is pushing back hard against the GirlGuide messaging. This group promotes its agenda as part of responsible safeguarding, the term used in the UK and Ireland regarding measures to protect the health, well-being and human rights of individuals, especially children and vulnerable adults, better ensuring they live free from abuse, harm and neglect.

I offer this info on this controversy for two reasons:

  1. Creating and launching efforts in support of the diversity of volunteers your organization has, or wants, and in support of accommodation of that diversity, will always attract complaints, immediately or eventually. There may be just a few, there may be many. Some of the complaints will be sincere and from individuals not a part of any “movement” or organization, and some of the complaints will be from volunteers and paid staff of very well-organized groups. Either way, your organization needs to have thought about how to answer questions and comments like why are you doing this and why is this necessary and this puts young people in danger.
  2. People asking the question or making the comment aren’t all obtuse or rigid. Don’t assume everyone complaining is so when you craft replies. Provide a response that comes from the point of view of this person just needs more and better information in order to support this statement or decision. Will such a response convince everyone? No. But your reply is being seen by people who aren’t entirely sure how they feel about the situation. Perceived arrogance on your part can drive those people who are on the fence into the arms of people and organizations who are only too happy to provide carefully word-smithed, detailed responses to frame their point of view.

My perspective: I adore GirlGuides and Girl Scouts of the USA. I deeply admire the commitment of both to ensuring all girls feel they can be a part of their activities. This isn’t the first time they’ve done something that’s lead to controversy. But no one – NO ONE – can say the GirlGuides and Girl Scouts don’t put safeguarding at the top of their list of priorities.

I also know that change can be painful – not just for others, but also for me. Work regarding inclusion and diversity is not easy, because many societal norms are deeply held, and cherished beliefs are challenged by conversations around inclusion and diversity – and that’s uncomfortable. It’s easy for a person to feel attacked during such conversations. I’ve seen diversity and inclusion experts be angered at the idea that they need for their own web sites to meet accessibility standards so that people with disabilities and using assistive technologies can access their online information – in their talks about inclusion, they were focused on ethnic and cultural groups, not people with disabilities, and the realization is embarrassing and painful.

I assure you that, eventually, even if you consider yourself an advocate for inclusion and diversity, you will have a moment where your own deeply held principles are challenged, and you will feel anger and you will be incredulous. Maybe you will decide to hold on to those principles – I’m not here to say you should or shouldn’t. But remember that feeling the next time you are facing it from someone else.

We’re all on a journey. That includes me.

One last thing: a chastisement to all of the organizations and consultants touting themselves as volunteer engagement experts and as the leaders of conversations on volunteerism who are silent on this and other controversies in volunteer engagement. I challenged you to comment on organizations that charge big money from volunteers, to comment on organizations that say if a person that has been assigned community service will pay a fee, the organization will give them a letter saying they did the hours required by the court which assigned that community service, to weigh in regarding governments wanting to require welfare recipients to volunteer in order to receive benefits and to comment about the situation at the Chicago museum – so far, you haven’t. In addition to having upbeat conversations about how managers of volunteers can build their brand or raise their profiles in their organizations or get a hug for International Volunteer Manager’s Day, we need to be having these very difficult conversations and controversial subjects. In fact, we should be leading the conversations.

And I love how the corporate world, which always has oh-so-much to say about how nonprofits should operate, are oh-so-silent during these conversations as well.

Also see:

You do not need to meet via video conference with every potential volunteer

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Most virtual volunteering assignments are text-based or designed-based: translating text from one language to another, transcribing podcasts, captioning videos, managing an online discussion group, designing a database, designing a graphic, and on and on. And one of the reasons I have really loved virtual volunteering is that, when it’s also limited to text-based communications with volunteers, potential volunteers can’t be judged regarding how they look or sound. Instead, volunteers in virtual volunteering, at least until recently, are judged by the quality of the character they show through their words and work. I don’t like to think of myself as prejudiced, but I have often wondered if I have been reluctant to involve a volunteer onsite because of unconscious bias on my part upon meeting a volunteer candidate face-to-face.

Virtual volunteering encounters in previous years have hidden the weight, ethnicity, hair color, age, accents, and other physical traits of online volunteers from the person onboarding that volunteer, and vice versa. But now, video conferencing is all the rage, and many programs are requiring that volunteer applicants participate in a live online meeting before they can volunteer online. As Susan Ellis and I note in our book, The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook:

Today’s preference to actually see and hear each other online is a double-edged sword: it can make electronic communication more personal and personable, but it can also inject offline prejudices evoked by how someone looks.

As a result of this rush to online video, are online volunteering candidates being turned away from programs because of possible but unacknowledged biases on the part of the manager of volunteers or whoever is initially screening applicants?

Are people that want to volunteer online hesitating to apply because they do not like how they look on video, don’t feel confident regarding their speaking voice or presentation skills, or are uncomfortable with welcoming someone “into” their home, even virtually?

Do people that would be interested in volunteering with you online on a text-based assignment decide not to apply because their Internet access isn’t fast enough for live video conferencing?

Are there people that would be interested in volunteering with you online that aren’t in your same time zone or who work or have home care duties that prevent them from being available at all the times you want to have a live video chat?

Think carefully before you make a meeting by video with potential volunteers mandatory. Is such a video meeting really necessary for the assignment the volunteer will do? Absolutely, certain tasks and roles require you to know if the volunteer is well-spoken, understands how to present themselves in a reputable, credible, clear manner, etc. But if it’s not required, per the role the volunteer is applying for, then consider how to balance your need for something personal with the volunteer’s desire for privacy. Consider how freeing it can be for a volunteer to be judged by the excellent web site they build for you rather than the physical disability people see immediately upon meeting them (not that people with disabilities EVER want to hide!). Consider how good it can feel for a person who is uncomfortable with his or her weight to be valued because of the excellent moderation skills and dynamic personality they show on your online community (again, not that any person, regardless of their weight, should EVER want to hide!).

vvbooklittle

For a lot more about screening and orienting online volunteers, as well as designing tasks, providing support for volunteers using online tools, evaluating virtual volunteering, designing an online mentoring program and much more, check out The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, available for purchase as a traditional print book or as a digital book. The book is an oh-so-much-cheaper way to get intense consulting regarding every aspect virtual volunteering, including more high-impact digital engagement schemes, than to hire me. You will not find a more detailed guide anywhere for working with online volunteers and using the Internet to support and involve all volunteers. It’s available both as a traditional paperback and as an online book. I also think it would be a great resource for anyone doing research regarding virtual volunteering as well.

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If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

Schools & Courts: you need to accept historical transcription online projects as community service

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Projects abound where online volunteers transcribe scanned documents for universities, nonprofits and government archives. By doing this, the documents become more searchable for researchers and more accessible to everyone. Through these programs, online volunteers are helping to amplify and preserve the stories of escaped enslaved people, the thoughts of and to people like Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, people who attended political meetings held at the state and national levels in the 1800s to free enslaved people or gain women the vote, and on and on. It can be a surprisingly intimate experience for the volunteer, one that benefits many thousands of people for years – for generations – to come.

I’ve done this myself as an online volunteer, and it was quite an emotional experience for me, transcribing newspaper ads seeking people who had escaped enslavement in the 1800s in the USA, part of the Freedom on the Move (FOTM) project. I have a list of every online transcription project for online volunteers that I know about at this resource on finding virtual volunteering roles and activities.

These historical transcription projects are wonderful virtual volunteering experiences, but most schools and courts will not accept this volunteering for required community service because they have a piece of paper that must be signed by someone from the project affirming that the volunteer did the service.

YA’LL NEED TO CHANGE.

These historical transcription projects are PERFECT for both students seeking community service hours required for graduation and for people who are ordered by the courts to do so.

Using suggestions already in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook: Fully Integrating Online Service Into Volunteer Involvement and a previous blog on supervising online volunteers in court-ordered settings as guidance, here’s how high schools and courts could verify community service hours via online historical transcription projects:

  • Require the volunteer to keep track of service hours on a Google Doc spreadsheet that that person gives you access to for viewing, so you can check-in at any time to see if they have updated it. It should have the name of the project or organization, a web address for more info, the date and time of volunteering service provided by the volunteer, the hours or minutes spent, and a summary of what the volunteer did (“transcribed a letter by George Washington to Alexander Hamilton from June 1775.”). Check into that spreadsheet weekly or every other week to see if it’s been updated.
  • Require that the volunteer take a photo on their smartphone every time they start transcribing a new document and every time they finish, and that they upload this photo to a private Flickr account album (Flickr is free), one that only the user (the volunteer) and you can see. You can spot check the time and date stamps on photos to see if the data corresponds to the aforementioned spreadsheet data (just spot check – you don’t have to do them all).
  • Require the volunteer take a screenshot of each document they are going to transcribe, and each transcription they complete, and to upload these screenshots to the aforementioned Flickr account album. This provides more documentation for confirming if a person did the assignment.
  • Require the volunteer take a selfie of himself or herself at the computer, about to do the work and then again at the completion, and upload these screenshots to the aforementioned Flickr account private album that only you and that volunteer can see. This provides more documentation for confirming if a person did the assignment.

Give the volunteer one to two hours of credit for service hours JUST for setting up and maintaining the Google Doc and the Flickr account correctly.

Could a volunteer fake all this? Yes, and it would take that volunteer about as many hours to create the fake documents, screenshots and summaries as it would for them to do the ACTUAL volunteering and record-keeping – meaning they would still have had to do all this time to fulfill community service hours, even if they didn’t end up doing what they said they were doing.

Could someone else do all of this service for the person? Yes: a parent, a sibling, a friend, or someone the person pays could do all of this. And this happens in onsite, in-person volunteering. People also frequently show up to volunteer at a beach clean up as community service, sign in, go sit in their cars and smoke or listen to music, then come back at the end and get their paperwork signed off that they did the hours. It’s the chance every program takes in not supervising people doing community service every moment. While Lindsay Lohan probably had her assistance do her online court-ordered community service, I don’t think most people do.

Doesn’t this create a lot of followup by the assigning body? Yes. For schools, keeping track of this is a GREAT assignment for an online volunteer, or group of online volunteers. For courts: sorry, but you all have never done well in this department with onsite, face-to-face folks – I’ve seen the forged paperwork first-hand for nonprofits that don’t exist or for nonprofits that have never seen or heard of the person that supposedly did the service. Let this be your opportunity to up your game in terms of confirming court-ordered community service completion.

cover of Virtual Volunteering book with hands raising up various Internet connected devices

There’s also my book, co-written with Susan Ellis which goes into a great deal of detail on supervising and supporting online volunteers, and how to track their progress: The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook: Fully Integrating Online Service Into Volunteer Involvement. In this time of a global pandemic, as well as this time where every program should be looking at how to be more inclusive and accommodating for working parents, people with home care requirements (for children for parents, for other relatives, etc.), people with transportation issues and people with disabilities, every program that relates to people completing community service for a graduation requirement or a court requirement should read this book.

Here are all of my blogs about some aspect of court-ordered community service.

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. 

United Nations site for people with disabilities is inaccessible

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The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) created a web site for the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) initiative called the UNDP-UNV Talent Programme for Young Professionals with Disabilities. It’s a program to recruit people with disabilities to serve as UN Volunteers. Its web site opens with this: 

UNDP and UNV commit to leaving no one behind. As part of this commitment, the Talent Programme promotes the inclusion of persons with disabilities into our workplace. The Talent Programme also aims to build a talent pipeline of highly qualified professionals with disabilities who can contribute to the development sector, and to attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at national and global levels.

In addition to the grammar problem in the first sentence, the UNDP web site for this initiative leaves lots of people behind: the web site is not accessible for people with disabilities.
The web site does not meet even basic accessibility standards as outlined by numerous organizations, including the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG). The UN General Assembly has designated the Department of Global Communications as the focal point for web accessibility in the United Nations, and this UN web site talks about the UN’s commitment to online accessibility – which, unfortunately, UNV and UNDP haven’t followed for their initiative specifically focused on people with disabilities.  How can an initiative that says it promotes the inclusion of persons with disabilities in the workplace exclude those same persons online? As someone who has worked for the UN, I know the answer to this question, but shall save that for another time…

Highly qualified professionals with disabilities absolutely can contribute to the development sector and to attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at national and international levels. In fact, they do already – if you don’t know that, you truly are not paying attention.

I have worked with highly-skilled people with a variety of disabilities – as employees, consultants and volunteers, online and face-to-face serving as web masters, editors, researchers, designers and more. It’s not unusual for me to find out someone I’ve been working with for weeks or months is, in fact, legally blind, or deaf, or is a person with limited mobility. We meet regarding what they CAN do, not what they cannot, and I’ve benefitted greatly, personally and professionally, from their expertise and talent.

I emailed representatives of UNV and UNDP in early December, saying pretty much the same thing I’ve just blogged, and I tweeted to UNDP and UNV as well. In my post, I also recommend to UNV and UNDP the nonprofit organization Knowbility to help their web designers and developers to fix this dire accessibility issue on the web site. 

I got a reply via email on December 11th from “Erik on behalf of the UNDP-UNV Talent Programme for Young Professionals with Disabilities”:

Thank you very much for your feedback. We are aware of the limitations of the websites and currently have teams working on projects that are focused on making them user-friendly and compliant with accessibility standards. Since we launched this initiative, we have been able to reach a wide range of persons with disabilities as evidenced by increased numbers of candidates registered and of applications. We also provide the option to reach out to us in person in case specific assistance or concerns are needed in the application process. As we are a continuously learning organization, our goal is to strive for a fully inclusive working environment and take every opportunity to improve. We appreciate your patience and understanding. Please let us know if we can further assist you in navigating the site.

So, in other words, they mean to say: the site is working just fine, people are applying for this program, people who can’t navigate our website can just email us and we’ll help them with the process, and being a “continuously learning organization”, we can’t be faulted for not having an accessible web site for people with disabilities for a program designed especially for people with disabilities at the get-go. Don’t bother us.

I really hope that UNV and UNDP will realize how bad this makes the agency and this program look, and choose to RAPIDLY remedy this situation regarding the accessibility of their web site for a program meant to increase inclusion of professionals with disabilities. They made a mistake – no excuses. Let’s hope UNV and UNDP not only fix this web site, but make a future commitment to digital inclusion in all of their web sites – especially those that are supposed to cater specifically to people with disabilities.

If you would like to let UNV and UNDP know what you think of the site and their response, I urge you to email these four addresses:

  • Talent Programme <talent.programme@unv.org>
  • Anant Sharma <anant.sharma@undp.org>
  • Anjali Kwatra <anjali.kwatra@undp.org>
  • UNV Media <unv.media@unv.org>

Also see:

Why Do So Few Women Edit Wikipedia? Insights into virtual volunteering

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wikipediaJulia Bear of Stony Brook University’s College of Business and Benjamin Collier of Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar published “Where are the Women in Wikipedia? Understanding the Different Psychological Experiences of Men and Women in Wikipedia” in the journal Sex Roles in January 2016.

Those that contribute information and edit Wikipedia, help others on the site, are called Wikipedians, and are online volunteers. So this study relates to virtual volunteering without ever actually saying that phrase.

From the abstract of the paper:

“We proposed that masculine norms for behavior in Wikipedia, which may be further exacerbated by the disinhibiting nature of an online, anonymous environment, lead to different psychological experiences for women and men, which, in turn, explain gender differences in contribution behavior. We hypothesized that, among a sample of individuals who occasionally contribute to Wikipedia, women would report less confidence in their expertise, more discomfort with editing others’ work, and more negative responses to critical feedback compared to men, all of which are crucial aspects of contributing to Wikipedia. We also hypothesized that gender differences in these psychological experiences would explain women’s lower contribution rate compared to men in this sample… Significant gender differences were found in confidence in expertise, discomfort with editing, and response to critical feedback. Women reported less confidence in their expertise, expressed greater discomfort with editing (which typically involves conflict) and reported more negative responses to critical feedback compared to men. Mediation analyses revealed that confidence in expertise and discomfort with editing partially mediated the gender difference in number of articles edited, the standard measure for contribution to Wikipedia. Implications for the gender gap in Wikipedia and in organizations more generally are discussed.”

Their study is summarized in this 02 June 2016 article “Why Do So Few Women Edit Wikipedia?” That article notes that Jimmy Wales, the founder of the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs the site, said that the organization failed to meet its goal of increasing women’s participation to 25% by 2015, despite launching several initiatives.

This is great information for anyone that works with online volunteers – or wants to. While most reviews of the makeup of online volunteers at organizations, at least in the USA, show more women than men participating, and women providing more hours during their service, Wikipedia attracts far more men in its online volunteer ranks. Your organization might also be unconsciously excluding a particular group of people from participating, and this study can help you think about ways to find that out. Kudos to the Wikimedia Foundation for acknowledging this gender gap problem and wanting to address it.

vvbooklittleInformation about this study of the gender gap among Wikipedians has been added to the Virtual Volunteering Wiki list of research regarding virtual volunteering, the most comprehensive list you will find anywhere of such, with information about virtual volunteering research dating back to 1997 (though most starts in 2000). Wikipedia’s engagement of online volunteers is talked about in The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, available both as a traditional printed book and as a digital book. The book is for anyone that works with volunteers – the marketing manager, the director of client services, and on and on – not just the official manager of volunteers.

February 10, 2017 update: @Wikimujeres_ES: voluntarias de Wikimedia que intenta reducir la brecha de género incorporando nuevas editoras y generando más contenidos relacionados con mujeres (Volunteers from Wikimedia who are trying to reduce the gender gap on the service, by incorporating new female Wikimedia editors and by generating more content related to women). Here is the web site of this volunteer effort. Here’s a nice 09 January 2017 article by the Association for Progressive Communications about their efforts, in English.

In January 2015, some women Wikipedia editors from the Wikipedia Mexico chapter, along with SocialTIC, Ímpetu, Luchadoras, Mujeres Construyendo and Sandía Digital, created an Editatona, or Women’s Editathon, “an event exclusively for women where we could learn and share information about Wikipedia just among ourselves, talking about our needs and failures in the project, but also finding solutions by uniting our strengths. And we also wanted to think about specific topics that global Wikimedia events organised by men simply do not take into consideration… we had 84 women registered at the Simone de Beauvoir Leadership Institute. Where there was room for 30 people, we squashed in nearly 40, and there we edited articles about feminist approaches.” On July 2th, 2016, a “Women’s Human Rights” Editatona was held at Mexico City Women Institute offices, Mexico City, Mexico, organized by Instituto de las Mujeres de la Ciudad de México and Wikimedia Mexico, and more than 30 Editatona events have been held in Aguascalientes and Chihuahua in Mexico, and in Argentina, Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Spain and Uruguay. “The Editatona does not have answers to all the problems in digital spaces, such as harassment, very few women creating content, etc. It is only a proposal which we hope will grow and become consolidated. We have a problem to face jointly and resolutely.” You can follow this effort on Twitter at @editatona or on Facebook.. More in this article.

Also of note: this exchange on the TechSoup forum which shows at least some men believe that women don’t feel comfortable as Wikipedia editors.

Also see:

Do you welcome people with your language?

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Someone who is associated with a blood and tissue donation program that is not based at a community of faith (church, mosque, temple, etc.) posted this on Facebook recently:

Wanted: A leader in a faith community who would like to share a blessing at our upcoming volunteer recognition event.

I offered this caution in response:

Be sure you get someone who will be respectful of the fact that not everyone at your event is of the same faith – and some may not be people of faith at all. As an Atheist, I have felt really unwelcomed at many volunteer-related events because of the faith leader’s address.

The response was as it always is to me when I offer that caution – what I call playing the “culture” or “majority” card:

Historically, however, this hasn’t been an issue in our organization. I find that the region in which we live is rather accepting of these blessings, and they are almost an expectation. In other areas of the country where I have worked, this hasn’t always been the case. Because of the work we do, we also find that more of our volunteers are spiritual in nature.

This person is making assumptions – because of the region, because of her own beliefs, and because of conversations she’s had with volunteers where everyone has seemed to be on the same page regarding religious belief – that everyone is fine with a religious ceremony at her volunteer event, that no one has ever been made uncomfortable or not felt welcomed as a result. After all, no one has complained before – therefore, everyone is fine with it. And, in addition, people who volunteer regarding blood donations are spiritual in nature. Why else would they volunteer?

Here’s the reality:

Most people who have been made uncomfortable by the mixing of religion and volunteering at an otherwise secular event are probably never going to say anything about that discomfort – the defensive reaction of this volunteer manager, as well as a religious leader that weighed in later, illustrate why. No one wants to be seen as ruining an event for others, or taking an activity away that others like, even if the activity makes them feel less a member of the group – so, rather than be accused of trying to remove all religious references at an event (even though all that was asked for was language that was respectful – no request was made not to make religion any part of the event), people that aren’t of the majority religion stay silent in their discomfort.

And you have to wonder: if no one has complained, could it also be because you’ve created an atmosphere where non-believers/other-believers don’t feel welcomed to volunteer?

People volunteer for a variety of reasons. And people have many different ideas of where “goodness” comes from. People who believe that goodness, and the desire to volunteer, comes from a “God” tend to be quite vocal about it. But volunteer managers – and all of us – need to remember that there are a lot of people that don’t believe in a “God” or a “higher power”, but do believe in goodness and in volunteering to help others – they just aren’t as vocal about that belief, or lack of belief, either because of the negative reactions such an expression often elicits or because they simply don’t believe in being so vocal about one’s motivations for volunteering. Volunteers Beyond Belief is a good example of such a group.

As volunteer managers, one thing we should be united about in terms of belief is the belief in creating welcoming, inclusive events for our volunteers, where we are careful about our language and our assumptions.

So, yes, you may have a blessing from a religion leader at a volunteer event that both celebrates that person’s beliefs and the belief of others but doesn’t make people that aren’t such believers unwelcome or unwanted.

Exclusive language at an event:

“We volunteer because, as Christians, we…”

“In the name of Jesus Christ…” or “In the name of Allah…, we are here today…”

“Let us all bow our heads and give thanks to God…”

Those are all fine at an event targeting a specific community of faith. But unless you have interviewed each and every volunteer about their beliefs, you have no idea what those beliefs might be for every person. So, instead, if you feel you must have a religious activity at your volunteer event, consider more inclusive religious language:

Let us all bow our heads and reflect on the goodness we have seen from volunteers, and if you would like to pray with me, please join me.

In joy we gather this evening, bonded together in our work and our goals, bonded together in our love and our dreams, bonded in festivity and thanksgiving, bonded in celebration. May the joy of our togetherness rise above all sadness. May the kindnesses we share rise above all harshness. May the unity for which we long rise above all divisiveness. And may all that is restless within us lead us one day to the ultimate Good, the ultimate togetherness. (from this web site)

Being culturally appropriate is important – but it shouldn’t be used as an excuse for impoliteness or prejudice to minority groups. Catering to the majority is easy; thinking about who I might be leaving out, and what I can do to welcome everyone into volunteering, is an ongoing learning process – and quite a struggle at times. It’s not easy, but in the end, it certainly creates a richer, diverse volunteer family.

People with disabilities & virtual volunteering

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I said it back in the 1990s, and I’ll say it again: Online volunteering / virtual volunteering can allow for the greater participation of people who might find volunteering difficult or impossible because of a disability. This in turn allows organizations to benefit from the additional talent and resources of more volunteers, and allows agencies to further diversify their volunteer talent pool.

In addition, ensuring that your volunteering program – online or onsite – is accommodating for people with disabilities will end up making your program more accessible to everyone. For instance, if you make sure your online training videos have captioning, don’t be surprised when people who have no hearing problems at all thank you, since they can mute the video and watch it at work or in a public area without disturbing people around them.

People with disabilities volunteer for the same reasons as anyone else: they want to contribute their time and energy to improving the quality of life. They want challenging, rewarding, educational service projects that address needs of a community and provide them with outlets for their enthusiasm and talents.

I was reminded of this recently when a fantastic testimonial from Alena Roberts for the Matilda Ziegler Magazine for the Blind was recently reposted to Inclusive Planet about online volunteering / virtual volunteering.

Here are 11 people’s testimonials about how virtual volunteering allowed them to volunteer, despite their disabilities, compiled by the Virtual Volunteering Project, that remain as powerful as when they were first-published back in the late 1990s.

I told this story back in April 2009, but it’s a good time to repeat it now:

Back in the late 1990s, when I was directing the Virtual Volunteering Project, I recruited and involved online volunteers myself to support the Project, feeling that it would be inappropriate to offer advice to other organizations to involve online volunteers unless I was engaged in the practice myself. The only recruiting I did was via the Project’s web site, on a page that was purposely not easy to find; online volunteers were oh-so-easy to recruit even back then, and by making the page harder to find, I regularly received applications from candidates who I knew were actually reading my web site.

One day, an application came in from a guy I’ll call Arnie. It was clear from Arnie’s application that he was… different. His answers to questions on the application were child-like (though everything was spelled correctly), and didn’t at all sound like they were coming from a man in his 40s (he shared his age despite my not asking for it). Among other things, he said that what he wanted to do most as an online volunteer was to share images and messages from the Virgin Mary, a skill set that I didn’t really have a need for at that time… But I kept reading Arnie’s application and thinking, well, while I know this person is very likely mentally disabled based on his answers, he spells just fine and he’s REALLY enthusiastic. There’s really no reason to say no outright. I’ll put him through all of the regular online screening steps and give him a trial assignment and see what happens, just like I do with all volunteers.

Unlike most other online volunteering applicants, Arnie followed all of the directions on the online orientation immediately, to the letter, and within just a couple of hours rather than a couple of days. I don’t remember what the first assignment was that I gave him, but just as the directions in the online orientation stated, he wrote back (within probably an hour) and said that he didn’t feel he could do what was asked for, so could he please have a different assignment? I think the revised assignment I sent him was regarding a list of names of people who had given me their business cards at conferences, but back in the 1990s, many people didn’t put their email addresses and web site addresses on their cards. I asked him to use Google to find that information for me, if possible. The next day, the finished assignment was waiting for me, with profuse apologies for each person he couldn’t find online, and a request for a new assignment.

I slowly became a bit obsessed with trying to create assignments for Arnie. He could do only basic things online, like looking up information, and he needed explicit directions on how to do every task, but he was SO enthusiastic about it all. I started saving things for Arnie to do that I could have done myself in far less time than it would take him to do. For each assignment he always wrote back promptly if he thought an assignment was too difficult, or wrote back to say how happy he was at the assignment, how excited he was to do it, etc.

I think Arnie’s favorite assignment was when I asked him to visit 20 or so web sites that were supposed to be targeted at children; I was putting together a list of things online mentors and young people could do together online, and I wanted to know if these web sites were worthwhile. A paid consultant could not have provided the thorough, brutally honest assessments that Arnie did. Things like

I did not like this site at all, Miss Jayne. It was confusing! I did not know how to use it! It is a bad web site for this reason.

    • or

I liked this site very much, Miss Jayne. It was fun! I showed it to my mother. She thought it was fun too.

I was starting an online mentoring program at a local elementary school in Austin, and I invited all the online volunteers I had worked with to apply to be online mentors. Arnie was probably the first applicant. At first, my reaction was: he can’t do this. I have to tell him no. But then I kept thinking about it — *why* couldn’t Arnie talk online with a 10 year old? His tone would actually be perfect for a 10 year old. They would never know each other’s real name or be able to contact each other outside the web platform we would use for online exchanges, every message he sent would be screened, just like the other mentors. Why not let him go through the whole application process and see if he makes it? So, I did.

Among the screening required was two references who could attest to the candidate’s character and communications abilities. One of Arnie’s references was his doctor. When I called for the reference check, the doctor said, “Are you the Miss Jayne?! I’ve heard about you for a year now! Arnie lives to volunteer with you! It’s changed his life!”

I’m glad I was on the phone, so he couldn’t see me crying.

Arnie survived the screening process and was a wonderful participant in the program. His emails to his student were always perfect, full of questions and enthusiastic comments, written in short, simple sentences. The only thing I ever had to do was ask him to revise an email that had a religious reference in it, not as in “I went to church this weekend and it was fun,” which would have been fine, but as in “I hope you are praying to God every day!” Arnie quickly understood why that was inappropriate once I explained it to him, and it never happened again.

After more than a year of working together, Arnie wrote to say that he would need to take a break from volunteering, because he was getting “too full of worry” when he did assignments. I wrote him after a month saying that I hoped he was doing well, and he wrote back a lengthy, somewhat rambling apology for “letting you down.” I wrote him again to say that was NOT the case at all, wrote lots of encouragement and thank yous, etc. When I didn’t hear from him after a few months, I called his doctor, just to make sure he was okay. He was, but his doctor said he probably wouldn’t be using email anymore, that it had become too overwhelming for him. Sadly, I never heard from Arnie again.

What did I learn from all this?

I became a better volunteer manager for all volunteers because of Arnie. My descriptions of all tasks for volunteers became much more detailed and explicit. I better emphasized to volunteers that the time to drop out of an assignment was right at the start, and that there will be no hard feelings for doing so before the commitment has begun. I started reserving a diversity of tasks specifically for volunteers, and for my own list of tasks, I would always ask, could volunteers help me do any of this? I tried to identify a range of very simple starter assignments, so that new volunteers would not feel overwhelmed — or, if they did, they would know that online volunteering was not for them very early on. I look very much into what a volunteer can do, not what limitations a volunteer may have. I also learned that everyone, people with disabilities and otherwise, screen themselves when it comes to assignments, and it’s rare that someone will ask to volunteer for a task they are unqualified to do.

Since Arnie, I’ve worked with other volunteers with disabilities, though often, I haven’t been aware of such, since online volunteering often masks any disabilities a person may have. I can judge people online only by their abilities, rather than their appearance, if I stick to text-only communications.

When I’m working at a nonprofit organization, I involve volunteers not to save money, not to do what I can’t pay staff to do, but rather, to involve the community in the work of my organization, to create an army of advocates for our work, and to make my work more interesting with input from many more people. I’ll continue to strive to create inclusive programs, not only because it’s the right thing to do, but because, in the end, it helps me be a better contributor.

2014 update:

vvbooklittleThe influence of this experience, and many others, as well as extensive research, can be found in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. This book, which I wrote with Susan J. Ellis, is our attempt to document all of the best practices of working with online volunteers, from the more than three decades that virtual volunteering has been happening. It’s available both in traditional print form and in digital version. If you read the book, I would so appreciate it if you could write and post a review of it on the Amazon and Barnes and Noble web sites (you can write the same review on both sites).

There’s also The Virtual Volunteering Wiki: a free resource featuring a curated list of news articles about virtual volunteering since 1996, an extensive list of examples of virtual volunteering activities, a list of myths about virtual volunteering, the history of virtual volunteering, a list of research and evaluations of virtual volunteering, a list of online mentoring programs, and links to web sites and lists of offline publications related to virtual volunteering in languages in other than English.

And there’s also our LinkedIn Group for the discussion of virtual volunteering.

Also see: Safety in virtual volunteering