Tag Archives: digital volunteers

When Words Get in the Way (Like “Virtual Volunteering”)

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This blog originally appeared at the TechSoup blog space in March 2014:

At the start of any workshop I lead related to virtual volunteering, I ask the audience, “How many of you are engaging with volunteers virtually?” If few or no people raise their hands, I ask the question again at the end of my workshop. And the numbers always change.

Take for example the webinar I did recently for TechSoup’s audience on the best assignments for online volunteers. As usual, I ask a few minutes into the workshop how many people were involving online volunteers. The results:

Yes: 32%
No: 68%

So I went through the workshop and then, at the end, asked the question again. This time:

Yes: 58%
No: 42%

The term “virtual volunteering” is a contested term. Some people define oh-so-strictly: remote volunteers who never come on-site at an organization, and all of their service is conducted online. That means people who translate documents wouldn’t be considered online volunteers, because they aren’t actually using the Internet for their service, they are using their skills. So often, organizations are involving online volunteers – they are engaging in virtual volunteering – but because of the definition they’ve decided upon before the workshop, they have no idea they are engaged in the practice.

That’s why, at the start of any workshop, after the first poll of the room or the webinar attendees, I offer my definition of virtual volunteering:

Volunteers completing tasks, in whole or in part, off-site from the organization being assisted, using any Internet-connected device (computer, smart phone, etc.). 

That means a volunteer could perform most of his or her service for an organization on-site, but if he or she is doing some of the service from home – designing a logo, tagging photos with keywords, writing an article for a newsletter, participating in an online community of fellow volunteers – that person is also engaging in virtual volunteering.

Offering that broader definition at workshops makes people realize that, indeed, they are engaging with volunteers online, and a workshop about virtual volunteering isn’t going to help them introduce the practice; it is, instead, going to help them expand what they are already doing.

In Digital Engagement branch of the TechSoup Community forum!

Finding out how many orgs are involving online volunteers

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A followup to my last blog, where I whined that so many organizations charged with measuring volunteering in a region or country refuse to ask any questions related to virtual volunteering.

As I’ve said many times: when I do workshops on virtual volunteering, and describe all the different aspects of what online volunteering looks like, including microvolunteering, someone always raises a hand or comes up to me afterwards to say, “My organization has online volunteers and I didn’t even know it!” or “I’m an online volunteer and I didn’t know it!”

If you ask organizations, “Do you have virtual volunteering / microvolunteering at your organization?” most will say “No.” But if you ask the question differently, the answer is often “Yes!”

How would YOU ask the question of organizations to find out if they were engaging volunteers online?

Here’s one idea:

In the last 12 months, did any volunteers helping your organization work in whole or in-part offsite on behalf of your organization, and use their own computers, smart phones, notebooks (Internet-enabled devices) from their home, work or elsewhere offsite, to provide updates on their volunteering, or the results of their volunteering?

What is your idea for ONE question? Please post it in the comments.

Challenges to getting answers:

  • There’s rarely just one person at an organization involving volunteers; often, several employees or key volunteers are involving volunteers, but there may not be one person tracking all of this involvement. So if you ask this question of just one person at the organization, you might not get an accurate answer.
  • The word volunteer is contested. People will say, “Oh, we don’t have volunteers. We have pro bono consultants, we have unpaid interns, we have executives online, we have board members, but we do not have volunteers.” That means someone who is advising your HR manager regarding the latest legislation that might affect hiring or your overworked marketing person regarding social media, and offering this advice unpaid, from the comfort of his or her  home or office or a coffee shop, won’t be counted as an online volunteer – even though they are. In fact, I talked to the manager of an online tutoring program who brought together students and what she called “subject matter experts” (SMES) together online for school assignments, but because it never dawned on her that the SMES were volunteers (unpaid, donating their service to a cause they believed in), she had no idea she was managing a volunteer program, let alone a virtual volunteering program.

This is not easy. I’ve been researching virtual volunteering since 1996 and, geesh, it’s still not easy! When does it get easier?!

Microvolunteering @ Techsoup

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

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

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

Ta Da! That’s it!

No Twitter account? No problem! You can also:

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

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

Also see:

Microvolunteering is virtual volunteering

But virtual volunteering means it takes no time, right?

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

Transcribe & caption!

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Captioning a video, or offering a transcription of a video or podcast, should be a priority for your organization. Why?
    • Many people that don’t have time to watch that video or listen to that podcast DO have time to read the transcript.
    • Many people are in an environment that would not allow them to listen to a podcast or online video (their surroundings are too loud, they would disturb people around them, they can’t use headphones or ear buds for some reason, etc.).
    • Many people want to quote from a video or podcast in something they are writing (and if that’s online, that quote will often link back to the original broadcast).
    • A person may just need very specific information, and a text search makes that information oh-so-easy to find.
    • Some people prefer reading to listening or watching (I’m one of those people); they are much more likely to access your information in text form than a video or audio.
  • And, of course, so people with hearing impairments can access the information.
In short, you greatly increase the number of audience members for a video or podcast, reaching more potential donors, volunteers, clients and others, by captioning a video or offering a transcription of a video or podcast. At minimum,
  • Any video or audio training materials you have should be captioned and/or transcribed.
  • All PSAs you want to be distributed widely should be captioned and/or transcribed.
  • Videos and podcasts that are part of your service delivery should be captioned and/or transcribed.
Think you don’t have the resources to caption or transcribe a video or podcast? You do: volunteers. There are online volunteers who would love to transcribe your audios and videos. These volunteers may have speech recognition/voice recognition software that they can use to convert spoken words to text, or they may be willing to listen and type. Either way, you will want volunteers checking up on other volunteers’ transcriptions and captioning, to ensure information is rendered correctly. Keep such volunteer transcribing assignments small: you might have trouble finding a volunteer to transcribe a two-hour-long panel discussion, but it might be much easier to find someone to transcribe just a 10 minute excerpt. If a video or podcast is particularly long, you could divide the transcribing or captioning job up among several volunteers. You might even be able to find a volunteer who would happily lead up the entire project for your organization – leadership volunteering opportunities are highly sought by many people these days! Recruit these volunteers from among your existing volunteers and their networks, via your web site, via VolunteerMatch and AllforGood if you are in the USA, Idealist and whatever resources are available in your country, or, if you are in a developing country or your NGO or nonprofit is focused on such: the UN’s Online Volunteering service. December 21, 2017 update: I recently created a five-minute pitch video for the OpenAIR hackathon – the Accessibility Internet Rally – for Knowbility, a nonprofit based in Austin, Texas (I’m in Portland, Oregon). I also used the YouTube captioning tool for the first time ever – I couldn’t believe how easy it was! If I can figure it out, anyone can – including online volunteers you might recruit to caption all of the videos your nonprofit has on YouTube already.
cover of Virtual Volunteering book with hands raising up various Internet connected devices
A reminder yet again that The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook provides detailed advice on creating assignments for online volunteers and for working with online volunteers, including volunteers that are going to transcribe or correct the transcriptions of your videos or podcasts. The book also has detailed guidance for using the Internet to support and involve ALL volunteers, including volunteers that provide service onsite, for ensuring success in virtual volunteering, and for using the Internet to build awareness and support for all volunteering at your program. Tech tools come and go, but certain community engagement principles never change, and those principles are detailed in this comprehensive guide. 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 co-written by myself and Susan Ellis. Tags: volunteering, volunteers, community, engagement, volunteerism, volunteering, online, micro, microvolunteering, virtual

Photos of Online Volunteers Wanted

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Camping and surfing in North DakotaI’m looking for photos of people who help nonprofit organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), grassroots organizations, schools, or other civil society organizations (CSOs) via a computer at their homes, their work, a computer cafe, a cell phone/smart phone — as a volunteer (that means unpaid, NOT as a paid staff member or paid consultant).

You know: online volunteers. Virtual volunteering. Online mentoring. Cyber service. Microvolunteering. Crowd-sourcing. Clowd computing volunteering. Whatever the hot new term is.

I need photos of people who research information, design web sites, databases or graphics, prepare proposals, edit documents, translate text, offer professional advice, moderate online discussion groups, contact the press write newsletter articles, manage web sites, manage Flickr accounts, edit podcasts or online videos, or any other activities to help organizations that support causes those people believe in – but these people perform their service as a volunteer (unpaid!) from a remote site.

Why? I want to feature them at this Flickr Group, “Online Volunteers.”

These don’t have to be volunteers who help ONLY via the computer; most online volunteers also help onsite as well. So if the volunteer helps only half the time, or a quarter of the time, online, that’s fine! It still counts!

Photos or video of online volunteers should be taken either via your webcam or with the computer or other Internet device you use somehow visible in the photo, to give it that “Internet” feel. ALSO, describe what you do as an online volunteer, including either the name or a description of the organization(s) you support. If you really can’t work a computer into the photo, then at least make the description ultra-obvious about why you are submitting the photo.

ALSO, please tag your photo “online volunteer.”

Submit the photos directly to the Flickr group for online volunteers– which means you will need a Yahoo ID. If you don’t already have such, and don’t want one, you can send ONE photo to me, via email, however, please clearly note in your email who you are, why you are sending the photo, etc.; blank emails, or those with sketchy descriptions, will be discarded without viewing (to protect myself from computer viruses). Photos that don’t clearly represent online volunteers will be rejected.

Please forward this message to volunteers you work with, or anyone you think might be interested.

Goal: to show the diversity of online volunteers out there. The practice of online volunteering is more than 30 years old. I want to show just what a HUGE group of people volunteer online, and have been doing so for a long while now!

Another person’s take on microvolunteering

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The most popular blog I’ve ever written was Microvolunteering is Virtual Volunteering. It was my effort to make sure those who really care about quality volunteer engagement continue to advocate for volunteering, no matter what form it takes, to be results-oriented and beneficial to both the organization and the volunteer – whether it’s volunteering that takes just a few minutes, or just once with an organization, or over months, or over years.

Orange in the U.K. has jumped on the microvolunteering bandwagon, creating a smart phone application that is supposed to allow people to microvolunteer. But many of its claims regarding what microvolunteering is and what it can do are outlandish. Luckily, I don’t have to write a blog debunking their claims – this blog which does an excellent job of doing so, in much kinder terms than I usually use.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: microvolunteering can benefit – and has benefitted – many organizations. But it’s also not worth the enormous amount of prep and supervision time required for many organizations, just as one-day group volunteering events aren’t always worth the prep time and supervision for many organizations.

The first step in deciding if microvolunteering / episodic volunteering, group volunteering, teen volunteering, family volunteering or any other specialized volunteering is right for your organization is for your organization or program to think carefully about what is in it for you, the organization or program. What benefit are you looking for? Volunteering is never just to get work done. Instead – or in addition – volunteer engagement is about:

  • measurable results regarding participant or community awareness of a particular issue, program or your organization
  • candidates for longer-term volunteering in more substantive activities regarding service delivery
  • cultivation of donors
  • activities that fulfill your organization’s mission (the group volunteering experience results in activities that reach part of your organization’s mission)
  • reaching diverse audiences you aren’t reaching, or aren’t reaching well, otherwise

And the second step is thinking about how you will know if you are achieving these results! Those two steps are critical before ever embarking on volunteer engagement, no matter what kind of engagement you are thinking about!

How many organizations involve online volunteers?

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I gave up trying to find every organization engaged in virtual volunteering back in 1998. Why? Because by 1998, when I was directing the Virtual Volunteering Project, I had already found hundreds of such organizations, and knew there were probably thousands more organizations engaged in virtual volunteering – I gave up and focused exclusively on discovering best practices.

Now, 13 years later, I dare say most nonprofit organizations, at least in the USA, involve online volunteers, even if they don’t know it; most organizations allow at least some volunteers to do some service online. For instance, Girl Scouts of the USA doesn’t say they involve online volunteers, yet I’m an online volunteer with Girl Scouts: 90% of my duties coordinating communications here in my part of the world are done online, from my home, via my computer. When I do workshops on virtual volunteering, attendees come up afterwards and say, “I’ve got online volunteers and didn’t even realize it!” And that’s good, because it means they aren’t distinguishing between online and onsite volunteers, something far too many organizations try to do – they are treating them all as just volunteers (and I mean just volunteers in the most praiseworthy of terms). Animal shelters, homeless shelters, communities of faith (churches, mosques, temples), community gardens, community theaters, nonprofit zoos, YWCAs and on and on involve online volunteers, to create web pages, to write articles for a newsletter, to test an online tool, to translate text from one language to another, to moderate or facilitate an online discussion group, to tag photos, to edit video, to research a subject online and gather information, to make regular posts to Facebook, to Tweet regularly, and on and on.

There is no database of organizations involving online volunteers, just as there is no database of every organization that involves volunteers. I hope that organizations that research volunteering, such as the Corporation for National Service, will finally catch up to the practice of online volunteering and start asking organizations about their virtual volunteering engagement for their volunteering studies!

What I have kept up is a list of organizations that recruit or involve online volunteers primarily and specifically; opportunities range from mentoring students to mentoring entrepreneurs in developing countries to helping to code software to offering tech advice to nonprofits to reporting on your local weather. Some tasks take an ongoing commitment, and some are so-called micro-volunteering (episodic volunteering online – it doesn’t take an ongoing commitment). I published the list to show what real online volunteering / online community service / virtual volunteering looks like – as opposed to highly questionable ones.

This is on one of my monetized pages so, yes, there are ads. But no study of online volunteering should be limited to this list – remember, if an organization involves volunteers at all, it’s very likely they involve online volunteers – or could!