Tag Archives: charities

How nonprofits can leverage LinkedIn

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It’s clunky, it needs a design update, it rarely gets referred to any more in articles about social media, but LinkedIn can be a valuable resource for nonprofits and other community groups and they should be using it regularly. Using even just the free features on LinkedIn will increase awareness about an organization’s work and it may lead to better board recruitment, more event attendance, more program participants and more donors, as well as greater awareness of progress among current supporters.

Here’s how your nonprofit or community program should be using the free features on LinkedIn:

  • Your organization should have a profile on the site and should ask all of its employees, former employees, board members and other volunteers to link to it in their list of job and volunteering roles. Your organization should also ask all of these people to regularly “like” the posts by the organization, if they feel comfortable doing so (but emphasize it is NOT a requirement).
  • Your organization should post public events to the LinkedIn events feature and then share these on the organizational profile.
  • Your organization should post updates to its organizational profile on LinkedIn – just like you do on Facebook, but perhaps with a more formal tone. Remember: LinkedIn is a web site for professionals to talk about their work and expertise, not for cat memes.
  • Your organization can ask employees, former employees, board members and other volunteers to share your organization’s LinkedIn status updates and to comment on such – but only if they feel comfortable doing so. Remind them that this is not a requirement and there will be no repercussions for not doing it (except for maybe your marketing manager!).

In addition, staff members can also join various LinkedIn groups and participate in such – but it’s their choice what they join and you should never ask them what groups they are on. But you can remind them that they should share info about your organization IF it’s on topic for whatever group they are on. These activities can further create awareness of the organization and a positive image.

You can also use the fee-based features on LinkedIn for paid roles. If you post a job, you ABSOLUTELY should reveal the salary in that posting. You can also use the job posting feature to post volunteering roles – I recommend using it for board member recruitment, but in such listings, making it clear that it’s an unpaid role, emphasizing the time requirements, and being explicit that not all applicants will be accepted.

I’ve been using LinkedIn on behalf of West Tuality Habitat for Humanity. I also used it some years ago to recruit board members for a cultural arts organization that funds nonprofits in the county where I live in Oregon. It has absolutely been worth the time investment – and most of the time, I’m just cutting and pasting info I’m already posting to Facebook or our web site – there’s been no need to create unique content. It takes seconds, not minutes, to keep info up-to-date on LinkedIn.

Is your nonprofit leveraging LinkedIn? How has it been working out for you?

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Helping online volunteers stay engaged & energized

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In pre-pandemic times, an online meeting felt like a luxury, a welcomed relief from driving to a site or taking mass transit. Now, because of COVID-19. when the only way to safely work together is online or via the phone, we’re all burned out by online meetings, and there’s nothing virtual about our fatigue.

In addition, volunteering onsite is a way to be a different person than we are at our paid work or in a classroom or even with our families. It’s a way to feel like we’re making a difference in the world. It can be a refreshing change from other parts of our life. For people that live alone, volunteering onsite can provide a much needed social life. While I think online volunteering can be wonderfully personal, I also know that virtual meetings, virtually all the time, is not the world most of us want to live in.

Volunteers are exhausted. Many that still have jobs and struggling to do those and assume new family care obligations – children are in virtual school and some older relatives have moved back in with younger family members. Many are having to look over their finances every day. Most everyone is scared of for their own health as well as everyone else in their household. And many people, especially living alone, are oh-so-lonely. Volunteering these days doesn’t offer the time out it did in pre-pandemic times – it can just feel like another online meeting.

But nonprofits still need volunteers, and volunteers still need volunteering. I know so many nonprofits, NGOs, charities and other groups have a huge amount on their plate these days and far more stresses than usual, but we all need to take a deep breath and spare some thoughts for both our current volunteers and those we want to recruit.

How to Recruit & Engage Volunteers in a Time of Virtual Fatigue, an article is by WBT Systems, which produces TopClass LMS, a learning management system for membership-based associations, has great advice for any program involving volunteers. It starts with some basics from quality volunteer engagement we should all know and apply even in non-pandemic times, like creating realistic roles for volunteers and emphasizing why the task matters to the program and the difference it will make. But then it gets into more specific advice that relates to current remote working challenges, which I’ve reframed and expanded below.

For instance, we all need to better commit to SHORT meetings that have a definite purpose and a definite start and end time. Don’t have a general, open group volunteer meeting; have a here’s-what-everyone’s-doing meeting, devoted exclusively to elevator speeches from each volunteer. Or have a celebrate-one-accomplishment meeting, devoted solely to quick updates. Whatever the meeting, be able to answer these questions: what do I want to happen as a result of this meeting? Why does this meeting matter? Why can’t you ask for this info via email?

I like to prepare my meetings as though it’s a stage performance: I like start and end on time and know exactly what I want to say, but also be ready for a spontaneous improv moment! I also am ready to facilitate: to frankly, politely tell a person who is going too long that we are going to have to table that discussion until later, for instance, because we need to hear from everyone.

Also regarding meetings, the article suggests telling volunteers you will open up an online meeting 15 minutes before the start and leave it open 15 minutes after so they have a chance for chatting, if they wish. I have REALLY enjoyed this in meetings and webinars.

I sometimes encourage people I’m meeting with to have the meeting in a different room than they are in usually – and I do the same. The same rules apply: you should be in a well-lit room that does not have lots of distractions, if at all possible (people walking through the space, intrusive sound, etc.). Otherwise, you might be surprised at how refreshing it feels to have a meeting in a different room, or even just in a different place in the usual room.

In addition, I like when I don’t have to have a full meeting to get a question resolved or check-in with everyone – I like having a Slack channel just for volunteers I’m working with, so they can check-in or ask a question of me, any time. It’s a virtual way of dropping by my office. And it keeps messages out of my email in-box.

The WBT Systems article suggests that you “Invite someone to Zoombomb the end of the meeting, perhaps the CEO, board chair or another leader who thanks the volunteers for giving their time and talent.” I LOVE this idea.

I’m somewhat tepid on the idea of things like encouraging everyone to wear a hat, or having everyone bring a toy to a meeting, etc. – the article doesn’t suggest this, but I’ve seen it elsewhere. I’m not big on ice breakers before every onsite meeting – I do not like having my time wasted, especially when I’ve schlepped across town or had to juggle to carve out time for a meeting, and everyone going around the room talking about who their favorite superhero is (Wonder Woman in the DC universe, Jane as Thor in Marvel). Online, I can find meeting games even more annoying. I want to feel like my time is valued and what’s most needed is getting done. In the end, you have to know your audience, you have to experiment and be observant, you have to be open to what is NOT working, and you have to work towards balance.

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

Don’t assume staff working with volunteers, or even volunteers themselves, understand how to lead and manage virtually. Yes, I’m going to yet again recommend The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, which emphasizes support for volunteers more than any other topic. Also, if you have time, look for videos and articles that could help others, and if you don’t have time, recruit a volunteer to curate such for you to review and share.

When Susan Ellis and I wrote The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, we never envisioned a global pandemic creating this massive, sudden shift to virtual volunteering for so many agencies. I’m glad to be able to recommend this detailed resource for ensuring success in virtual volunteering, with far more information than a blog or webinar ever could.

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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. 

Milestone: more than 100 virtual volunteering research articles

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As of October 2020, a milestone has been reached regarding virtual volunteering: I’ve found more than 100 research articles, dating back to 1997 and most with a university association, related to virtual volunteering. These are all listed here at the Virtual Volunteering Wiki.

I started tracking published research regarding virtual volunteering – using the internet to engage and support volunteers – when I directed the Virtual Volunteering Project at the University of Texas at Austin. I began heading the project in December 1996 and within several months of looking, I not only had found about 100 programs, most at nonprofits, a few at schools, that were involving online volunteers, I also realized that the practice was at least a couple of decades old, first starting at the Project Gutenberg, a volunteer effort that began in 1971 to digitize, archive and distribute the full texts of public domain books, such as works by Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Mark Twain. But what I had trouble finding was academic research on the subject. I had found a fair amount by the time The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook was published, but even so, it seemed still to be rather on the lean side for a practice that was so well-established.

I had no funding to research and write The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, and I’ve had no funding to continue maintaining the Virtual Volunteering Wiki, which tracks news and research regarding using the Internet to engage and support volunteers. But, indeed, I’ve maintained the wiki all these years, focusing on things that I deemed newsworthy and, especially, academic research. When I realized that there are now more than 100 research articles, dating back to 1997 and most with a university association, related to virtual volunteering, I felt it was worth celebrating. And this is just the English-language material: I bet there is a fair amount in Spanish, given Spain’s leadership in virtual volunteering for a couple of decades now.

Note that sometimes research articles do not call the unpaid contributors or unpaid virtual team members “volunteers.” For instance, any research paper on Wikipedia contributors could be considered research on virtual volunteering, as Wikipedia contributors – Wikipedians – are unpaid by Wikimedia for those contributions.

Also note that many of the papers make the mistake of talking about virtual volunteering as new, ignoring or overlooking its more than three-decade history. When I read that this is a “new” practice in an academic paper recently published, especially a thesis or dissertation, it makes it very hard for me to take the rest of the research seriously. I wish more university professors would catch that inaccurate point of view early on in a PhD student’s exploration of the subject.

It’s so wonderful to see that virtual volunteering now has a rich research history to go along with its rich history of practice, and I love reading perspectives about virtual volunteering by people who ARE NOT ME. Look, it’s been fun to be the world’s expert regarding virtual volunteering, but I’m so hungry to read perspectives by other people, particularly regarding what works best in supporting online volunteers, particularly different demographics of such volunteers – is it different to involve teen online volunteers in India versus tech-savy senior volunteers in Germany? Is there something that works well supporting online volunteers in South Africa that is different than what’s done in Spain? Is engaging and supporting rural online volunteers different from engaging and supporting urban or suburban online volunteers, even in the same country? I’d love to see such comparative studies!

What’s not needed? Research on the motivations of people who volunteer online. Good grief, people, ENOUGH!

I would also love beyond words if a university would step forward and be willing to take over management of the Virtual Volunteering Wiki. Having university students and faculty maintaining this would make it a much more rich and valuable resource. Any takers?

Let me be frank: I’m going to eventually retire. I’ll always be interested in virtual volunteering, and I’ll be an online volunteer myself for, I hope, decades to come (in between my extensive motorcycle riding). But just as there is no one Queen or King of All Things Volunteer Management, there shouldn’t be just one person, or always the same person, keeping track of news and research regarding virtual volunteering and distilling the key points of such. It’s overdue for new leaders, and a diversity of new leaders, to emerge in this field. I stand ready to support those new leaders (or, at least, figuratively – I can’t stand as long as I used to).

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. 

Why & how to make volunteering as accessible as possible

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graphic by Jayne Cravens representing volunteers

If your nonprofit, school, government program, charity or other mission-based initaitive wants access to the greatest amount of talent and resources that volunteers can possibly bring to your program, you have to make all volunteering as accessible as possible. That means looking for ways to accommodate a myriad of people who have different abilities, needs, personality types and work styles.

Accessibility and diversity are about accommodating everyone, not just people with disabilities or people who are from minority groups. You want to make volunteering as welcoming to the widest number of people possible. – Volunteer expert Susan Ellis. 

There may be a fantastic web designer out there who would love to volunteer at your organization, but who also isn’t very talkative and doesn’t make much eye-contact and, therefore, might be seen by some as unfriendly. Is your screening process such that you would still welcome this candidate into your organization?

There may be a fantastic person with the talents, skills and time to run your new volunteer orientations, but she doesn’t have a car. Do you have clear guidelines on your web site on how to get to your agency by mass transit? 

There may be a fantastic writer out there who could tell stories about your organization in such a way as to move new donors to open their pocketbooks and new volunteers to sign up to help, but who also legally blind. Is your web site accessible so that that fantastic writer can read your web site and blog and online newsletter with an accessibility screen reader?

There may be a fantastic graphic designer out there who could do amazing work for your organization online and in your print material, but who also uses a wheelchair for mobility, or has no transportation to get to your work site. Could that volunteer with the mobility issues get through your front door for an interview? Would you be willing to have your mandatory interview online via Skype? Would you be willing to accommodate the volunteer through virtual volunteering?

Do you have a diversity of tasks – some that can be done by someone sitting at a desk, others that require a lot of movement, maybe even carrying things and walking a lot? Some that don’t require a volunteer to interact much with others and some that require a volunteer to regularly interact and help others? Some that put volunteers together as a group? Some that allow volunteers to provide service for a few hours on a Saturday, without any ongoing commitment? Leadership roles? Some that require expertise, some that don’t require any? Some that can be done during regular work hours and some that can be done on evenings or weekends?

I’ve launched a new resource to help you understand the advantages for your program in making your volunteer engagement as accessible as possible and how to do it. The resource covers task design, ethics in internship design, accessibility for people with disabilities, messaging, language use and more.

Of course, not every volunteer role can accommodate everyone: a role may absolutely require a person with a clear, understandable speaking voice. Or may require someone that can carry a certain amount of weight and walk a certain distance. Or to interact regularly with other people. Or may require structural changes to a building that are too expensive for your program to afford. Or may require a volunteer to be calm and thoughtful in highly stressful situations and to be able to manage the anxiety that can arise from such work. But thinking about ways to accommodate a variety of people at your organization as volunteers will give your program access to an amazing range of talent, skills, energy and knowledge you will miss out on otherwise.

And one more thing: nonprofits, NGOs, charities and others MUST take a leadership role in creating community cohesion, in the face of the rise of violent extremism all over the world, including the USA, and the increasing belief in demonizing the “other” – people of a particular religion (or no religion at all), people of a particular ethnicity, immigrants, people with mental illness and more. It’s a bold, vital statement to make your program’s volunteer engagement as inclusive as possible, as representative of everyone in your community as possible. It’s a practice and state that affirms to everyone – board members, consultants, EVERYONE – that your organization makes inclusion and accessibility a priority.

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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. 

Your favorite non-English resources re: volunteerism or nonprofits?

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I asked this back in 2011, but it’s time to ask it again:

I would like to know YOUR favorite online resources regarding volunteerism / volunteers (especially the support and management of such), nonprofits or NGOs (non-governmental organizations), including Tweeters, in languages OTHER than English.

Spanish, French or German are most desired, but any language – Arabic, Persian Farsi / Dari / Tajik /, Hindi, whatever – would be welcomed.

In short, I’m looking for the Spanish, French, German, Arabic and other non-USA, non-English-language versions of Energize, Inc., of VolunteerMatch, of resources for those that manage volunteers like what I have on my web site, etc.

Please send the name of the resource, the URL of the resource, and a summary of what the resource is – does it focus on volunteer management? On nonprofits / NGOs / charities using the Internet? Or helping organizations recruit volunteers? Or fundraising / resource mobilization? Or any aspect of management? Is it a web site? A database? A Twitter feed?

I have some of these resources already, but I would like to have more. Plus, mine need updating:

I will share what I’ve compiled already and what’s submitted – and is what I’m looking for – on my web site, and announce the page here on my blog, as well as my Twitter feed and my Facebook page.

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.

What managing & growing a Twitter account looks like for small nonprofits

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There is a lot of advice out there for nonprofits regarding how to use social media, but it is often written using corporate perspectives: success is only in terms of huge numbers of followers and messages that go “viral.” That type of pure quantitative measurement is meaningless and unrealistic for most small nonprofits, community groups, schools, small government programs, etc. There are far better, more realistic measurements of social media success for these small organizations – and this blog entry that you are reading now is an attempt to provide an example of that.

In addition to writing about volunteerism and community engagement, I am also a volunteer in my local community. I volunteer for all the usual altruistic reasons, but also to keep my skills sharp as a paid consultant regarding marketing, public relations and community engagement for mission-based organizations. One of my current volunteering activities is being a part of the League of Women Voters – specifically, the Washington County, Oregon unit. The League of Women Voters started as an organization engaged in activities to educate women as voters – it was formed just before women got the vote in the USA and to encourage them to vote. Now, it is open to all people and has a similar mission, now universal: to educate people regarding issues their legislators are voting on, to educate them on issues they will vote on in upcoming elections, and to encourage them to vote. The League takes stands on issues, but not candidates. Here in the USA, it’s often a local chapter of the league that hosts forums and debates for candidates running for office, and these chapters are all-volunteer staffed and managed.

One of the activities I’m doing with my local League of Women voters is overseeing the Twitter account, @LWVWashcoOR. I’m not looking to have massive numbers of followers. Rather, I’m thinking about engagement. So my goals regarding followers for the league account are that:

Every elected official representing Washington County, Oregon that has a Twitter account follows the local League. There’s no master list for this: there are more than 10 Census-related cities in this county, each with some form of local city council members. Plus there’s a county government, a Portland Metro government with a representative for our county on it, state legislators and federal legislators (the easiest to find). That’s almost 100 people try to find on Twitter – and I’m still trying to figure out who is and isn’t on Twitter. I follow all that I find, retweet their relevant information, and often ask them, point blank, to please follow our League’s Twitter account.

Key Washington County government offices on Twitter follow us. This is not easy, because many don’t understand what the League is – they think it’s a political organization in the sense of promoting agendas, rather than a non-partisan organization that’s promoting civic engagement – civic engagement that their programs need more of!

Every local political group (or state version of such) follows us. This is a double challenge because, per the non-partisan political nature of the League, I can’t follow them back: instead, I put them on one of our Twitter lists, so I can read their tweets. For that same reason, I refrain from retweeting many of their messages because of their partisan nature. It’s hard to get someone to follow you when you don’t follow them back.

Most nonprofits working in Washington County follow the League. Many of these nonprofits work with the most marginalized in our county, as well as young people, all of whom need the most assistance in understanding the political process and how to engage civically. As with elected officials here, I follow all that I find, retweet their information I think relates to the mission of the League, and often ask them, point blank, to please follow us.

Any individual that cares about voter education, voter registration, civic engagement and civic education follows us on Twitter. There are individuals in this county that, independently, tweet regularly about these issues. I put them on a list of politically-engaged local folks so I can check in with them regularly and I retweet their messages if they relate to the mission of the League. How do I find them? I look for people tweeting about town halls by our US Senators and US Congressional representative, for instance.

I find more followers to target and subjects to tweet by using various keyword searches, like the names of city and county officials, or the words Oregon and voting. I tweet original content every time I log in – could be a reminder regarding Oregon state legislation that’s coming up for a vote, could be a reminder about our own unit activities, could be a poem for #WorldPoetryDay.

How do I get followers for the League’s account. Various ways:

  • From tweeting information that relates to our mission and that our desired followers will find relevant
  • From looking for and using keywords so that people looking for those keywords can find us. That includes #Oregon, #voting, #voters, #legislation, #elections, #electionday, etc. I also look for what’s trending and seeing if there is a way to use such in a tweet of our own in that moment. And I create content specifically to tag with certain phrases, like #blackhistorymonth, #internationalwomensday, #humanrights, #fairmaps, #gerrymandering, #veterans, etc.
  • From following someone that I want to follow the League
  • From retweeting someone that I want to follow the League, even just once (but it usually takes more than that)
  • By thanking someone for a retweet of our information
  • By responding to someone’s tweet with a question or comment
  • By asking someone to follow

I tweet a thank for every account that follows @LWVWashcoOR or that retweets one of our messages, so that their account can be shared with all of our followers, which I hope, in turn, gets them more followers.

I log in at least three times a week to do all of the above – it takes about 30 minutes each time. I try to mix up the times – sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon and sometimes in the evening, to reach different followers. I also schedule tweets via Hootsuite, so that something goes out most every day, but the reality is that I must spend actual time on Twitter, engaging with others, in order to get more followers and keep the ones we have.

My desired results of all this? I hope these officials, agencies and nonprofits will become more open to coming to League events and promoting our resources. I hope they will see the League as a resource. I hope more people in general will attend our events and see us an election and legislative resource. I hope more people will pay and join the League of Women Voters Oregon Washington County Unit. I hope we will see more diversity among people who attend our local events and who join the League.

How many Twitter followers will achieve those results? I’ve no idea. But I do know that these results won’t come from massive numbers of followers outside of Washington County, or a post going viral. I believe these results will come from having local followers and local engagement. When I started, there were less than 10 followers for the @LWVWashcoOR account. Now, less than six months later, there are 100 – not a huge number, but when I look at who those followers are, I know that we’re on the road to achieving some of those goals.

My only complaint: local league members rarely retweet our unit’s tweets. Without their participation in helping to further amplify messages, it’s going to be difficult to reach all that we want to.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into developing material, researching information, preparing articles, updating pages, etc., here is how you can help.

 

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More Than Me scandal in Liberia: a lesson to all who “just want to help”

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Katie Meyler of the USA wanted to save girls in Liberia from sexual exploitation, to educate them, empower them, keep them safe. She founded a charity called More Than Me and quickly raised more than $8 million for her efforts. The first More Than Me project multiplied quickly to 19 schools teaching 4,000 students. When the Liberian president, who had won a Nobel Peace Prize for her fight for women’s safety, was asked what she wanted from those keen to help her country, she answered, “To expand Katie Meyler’s initiative to as many communities as possible.” Meyler rubbed shoulders with Warren Buffett, Bill Gates and Oprah Winfrey, and even get invited to the Obama White House.

Yet many of the girls in the program were regularly raped by a high-level MTM staff member, who was never vetted and rarely supervised in his interactions with girls. Victims told authorities and the media that he threatened to take away their scholarships or even kill them if they reported him.

The first school launched byMore Than Me was staffed in large part by year-long American “teaching fellows,” volunteers who were each asked to fundraise or pay $10,000 to participate. Except for one position, teaching experience wasn’t required, nor was a criminal background check – applicants just had to show they were an “innovative, out-of-the-box thinker and risk-taker” and include a video demonstrating they were “on fire with passion.” And, of course, have the money to pay. One of the first volunteers tried to sound the alarm and mismanagement and lack of appropriate safety systems at the organization, drafting a document highlighting the risks the organization was taking regarding financial management and children’s safety. The organization did create a written policy which said staff members were required to report child abuse to the organization, but in a country where sex for grades and other school-based exploitation were prevalent, the charity had no procedures for how to do so, and did not train staff about what reporting would look like.

Instead of helping girls, this program has irreparably harmed many. It put girls into the path of a serial predator and ignored warning signs about such. And many thousands of dollars are unaccounted for.

If you want to go abroad, with no experience, just a good heart, to help others, and you don’t yet know about the horror show that is More Than Me in Liberia, you need to read up. The ProPublica piece that exposed More Than Me is worth your time.

As this article from the Nonprofit Quarterly notes about the More Than Me scandal:

Cases like More Than Me’s underline the importance of context and relevant experience. Anyone with the most basic understanding of the social dynamics in Liberia or any other post-conflict situation would have known that sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) was a huge problem and not taken it for granted. The inexperience of Katie Meyler has been remarked upon and shows clearly through her handling of this crisis. White saviorism also thrives on the porn of poverty that freezes affected countries into essentialized images and relations of dependence from which they struggle to recover. But equally dangerous is its instrumentality as a facade for the less than honorable activities of some so-called humanitarians. There can be no sustainable reform of humanitarianism unless the world puts heads together to block the unintended consequences of humanitarianism.

Why am I so hard on people that post to forums or write me directly and say, “I have a good heart and a love of adventure and want to help poor kids in other countries!”? Why am I even harder on organizations that say, “Pay us this amount of money and we’ll let you help in our orphanage abroad – no need for any special skills or a criminal background check!”? This is a perfect example as to why. Yes, I am abrupt and demanding with people that posts such messages to fora or directly to me – and I will continue to do so.

And it’s not just abroad: I frequently come into contact with programs right here in Oregon that do not have any written policies about preventing and reporting inappropriate behavior by staff, volunteers or clients, and have no training for staff, volunteers or clients on what inappropriate behavior is and what reporting looks like. And when I try to bring this up, however gently, prefaced by lots of compliments to the program for producing such great results, I hear “We haven’t had any problems with inappropriate behavior.” And my response is always the same, “How do you know?”

Four things I wish every person knew who wants to go abroad and help, and every organization knew that wants to fund efforts to help people abroad:

  • Having a good heart and passion for a cause will not make your organization immune to corruption, mismanagement, harassment of clients or sexual abuse.
  • Any nonprofit, charity or government effort to help people should always put the clients, their priorities and their safety FIRST, below whatever organizational, program or personal brand you are trying to establish.
  • Local people that you want to help, even children, get a say in how you are going to help them, a say in what the organizational and funding priorities should be, and a priority for when they complain about something that threatens themselves, their family or their community.
  • Your goal, as much as possible, is to build the capacity of those local people to eventually lead and staff these activities themselves WITHOUT YOU.

The backlash against humanitarians working abroad with children, including volunteers (voluntourism), is coming. Are you ready? Also see: Nepal’s children at risk: Sexual abuse in the aid sector.

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Something New & Innovative? How about something that WORKS?

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So often – TOO OFTEN – I hear nonprofits, government initiatives, NGOs, charities and other mission-based programs complaining that they aren’t getting good attendance at their events or program activities, or aren’t getting any press coverage, or don’t have enough volunteers, and so they are looking for something innovative and new in marketing.

But is something innovative and new really what they need?

In my junior year at Western Kentucky University, a million years ago, one of my professors proposed an idea to me: for one of my senior year classes, to fulfill my minor in theater, I could be in charge of marketing the Fall Children’s Theatre series, a then-annual event where three to four student-directed productions were presented, all focused on children audiences. I would get credit for a full senior-level class for such. I had also been working at the local arts center as a marketing intern outside of classes and had a wonderful mentor there who had taught me a lot about getting press coverage – combining this experience with my journalism major and newspaper experience, it was an offer I couldn’t refuse!

I was oh-so-successful at getting kids and their parents to the plays. One performance had to be delayed a few minutes because there were so many kids pouring in from an area kindergarten. We consistently sold out of intermission snacks, filling the coffers of our student theater society. Of course, I got an “A” for my efforts: my professor said they had never had so many full houses for the Fall Children’s Theater series.

Was I innovative in my approach to marketing these shows? No. All I did was the basics:

  • Sent press releases in a timely manner, with complete information, to area newspapers, and the one local TV station, in time to get into their calendar sections.
  • Sent press releases to local schools and kindergartens as early as possible.

That’s it. That’s all I did. And I sent these by mail – there was no Internet in my world back in those days. I had no budget to do anything else. All I did to be so wildly successful was the basics of marketing. And I did the basics WELL. Before my involvement, press releases were never sent, or were sent too late for information to be included in a local newspaper or on TV, or didn’t have complete information.

Before you start looking for something innovative to improve attendance at your events, increase program participants, recruit more volunteers, increase your visibility, etc., look at your current communications:

  • Is information on your web site up-to-date and complete, with answers to Who?, What?, Where?, Why? and When? right in the first paragraph of any information about events?
  • When you post about information on social media, do you make sure it includes Who?, What?, Where? and When? (you may not have enough room on Twitter for Why?)
  • Are you sending press releases and announcements to every area media outlet in your area, including newspapers, radio stations and TV stations watched in your area, in a TIMELY manner?
  • If you have a poster or brochure about the event, are the answers to Who?, What?, Where?, Why? and When? obvious and easy to find/easy to see?
  • Has your up-to-date, complete information been emailed directly to every employee, every consultant and every volunteer at your organization, in a timely manner?

There’s nothing innovative about any of that – but these steps are absolutely fundamental to successful marketing by nonprofits. And often, it’s all that’s needed.

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Crowdsourcing / Hive Mind – it’s been happening since at least 1849!

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Crowdsourcing is an open, public call for contributions from anyone to talk about a pressing issue, offer advice or data or to help solve a problem or challenge. It’s an open-call brainstorming session. While the term crowdsourcing was popularized online to describe Internet-based activities, there are examples of projects that, in retrospect, can also be described as crowdsourcing, without the Internet.

For instance, in, 1848 Matthew Fontaine Maury, an American astronomer, United States Navy officer, historian, oceanographer, meteorologist, cartographer and more, distributed 5000 copies of his Wind and Current Charts free of charge on the condition that sailors returned a standardized log of their voyage to the U.S. Naval Observatory. By 1861, he had distributed 200,000 copies free of charge, on the same conditions. The data the sailors provided was used to develop charts for all the major trade routes.

The Smithsonian Meteorological Project was started by the Smithsonian’s first Secretary, Joseph Henry, and in 1849 he set up a network of some 150 volunteer weather observers all over the USA. Henry used the telegraph to gather volunteers’ data and create a large weather map, making new information available to the public daily. For instance, volunteers tracked a tornado passing through Wisconsin and sent the findings via telegraph to the Smithsonian. Henry’s project is considered the origin of what later became the National Weather Service. Within a decade, the project had more than 600 volunteer observers and had spread to Canada, Mexico, Latin America, and the Caribbean. These remote volunteers submitted monthly reports that were then analyzed by a professor at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, and published in 1861 in the first of a two- volume compilation of climatic data and storm observations based on the volunteers’ reports.

The Smithsonian information in this blog is from a 2011 article “Smithsonian Crowdsourcing Since 1849!” by Elena Bruno, a Smithsonian intern who conducted research into how crowdsourcing could be integrated into mobile applications and making the Smithsonian experience, for those inside our Institution and beyond, more valuable and engaging.

I miss the crowdsourcing feel of the 1990s Internet, particularly via USENET newsgroups. My favorite was soc.org.nonprofit, for the discussion of nonprofit organization management issues. It was amazing to see someone post a question about how to reach a particular audience or databases or whatever and see knowledgeable people offer helpful advice on the subject within days, sometimes hours. There was lots of help and very little posturing – or trolls. Good times. Read more about the Early History of Nonprofits and the Internet (before 1996).

 

vvbooklittleOnline crowdsourcing is one example of virtual volunteering. Wikipedia is probably the most well-known example of online crowdsourcing, but there are many more. For advice on working with remote volunteers, or using the Internet to support and involve volunteers, whether in crowdsourcing initiatives or in more formal, higher-responsibility volunteering, check out The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. It’s written by myself and Susan J. Ellis, and is the result of many, many years of research and experience.

17 year old successfully fundraises, learns lifetime lesson

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A colleague’s question reminded me of when I got my first grant. It was a government grant. I was 17 years old and in high school – it was the late 1980s. My best friend and I formed a theater group with friends to produce a children’s play for the community. We bought the rights to the play, cast the show, rehearsed and looked into booking the high school auditorium for an evening. Then we presented a scene one night to the arts council in my hometown in Kentucky – the council acted on behalf of the city to make grants – so we could rent costumes and pay other fees.

We got the money! I was stunned! We were “just kids”! Was this government agency REALLY going to give us money, even just a few hundred dollars? Later, I learned that the council had been blown away by how organized our group of teens were – not only asking for money, but knowing exactly how much was needed and proving we were capable of pulling of the production. They were particularly impressed because, before we went into the meeting room, another arts nonprofit, one run by adults, had walked in and said, “We need money.” No documentation, no formal proposal, no budget, no list of how the money would be used – just a demand for support.

I have never forgotten that early lesson in making a proposal for support. We had no experience doing anything like this, but my co-founder – who went on to make The Blair Witch Project – thought carefully about how to sell our idea, to make it look worth funding. I thought it was audacious and doomed to failure – and I was wrong. In fact, our production was so successful that, the next summer, my co-founder and I produced another play for community children, one we co-wrote, this time in the central park.

Since then, I have never had any hesitation in writing a funding proposal or talking to any foundation, corporation or government agency about why a nonprofit I’m working with deserves support.

The name of our company, by the way, was the Henderson Audubon Repertory Company – HARC. Our first production was The Prince Who Wouldn’t Talk. There were three wizard characters in the show – I played all of them.

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