Tag Archives: digital

Please share about your experience working with online volunteers

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If your nonprofit, NGO, library, school or other mission-based program is involving online volunteers, or if your business / corporation has a virtual volunteering component in its employee volunteering program, below is a list of public online spaces where you can share information about your program: what software volunteers use to check-in or communicate with you, what they use to collaborate with each other, what tools and techniques (IT-based or otherwise) you use to support online/remote volunteers, your successes, your challenges, etc. These are also great places to ask questions and for advice regarding virtual volunteering:

You can share exactly the same information across all three of those online communities because each of those communities reaches a very different audience – the Linkedin group reaches a mix of people at a variety of programs working with volunteers as well as corporate representatives and university students and faculty. The subreddit reaches a younger and mostly male audience that you probably won’t reach otherwise. The TechSoup community reaches a mix of nonprofit folks and tech-savvy people who care about nonprofits. In short, there is very little audience crossover on those three communities.

(note that only the Reddit group is for recruiting online volunteers; on TechSoup, you should use this forum to recruit online volunteers)

Why share publicly about your experience working with online volunteers, including challenges? It’s a great way to both brag about what you are doing – and what you are doing is worth bragging about – and to learn from others. No one has a monopoly on knowledge about virtual volunteering – everyone is constantly learning, including me – and this is how we can all learn together.

The reality is that there needs to be a much greater diversity of contributions to those groups regarding virtual volunteering and I’m NOT going to work forever. This call is also my effort to try to cultivate a greater number of voices talking about virtual volunteering – there was far, far more online discussion about it back in the late 1990s than there is now!

Full disclosure: I am a moderator for all three of those groups, and I’m also hoping to see emerging leadership such that I can hand over the reins on these eventually!

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

For much more detailed advice on creating assignments for online volunteers, for working with online volunteers, for using the Internet to support and involve ALL volunteers, including volunteers that provide service onsite, and for ensuring success in virtual volunteering, check out The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. Tools come and go – but certain community engagement principles never change. You will not find a more detailed guide anywhere for working with online volunteers and using the Internet to support and involve all volunteers – even after home quarantines are over and volunteers start coming back onsite to your workspace. It’s available both as a traditional paperback and as an online book. It’s co-written by myself and Susan Ellis.

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. 

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. 

Free training in virtual volunteering (involving & supporting volunteers using online tools)

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Jayne ponders a point
Me pondering a point I make in one of my webinars.

I have a series of free, short videos on my YouTube channel that, altogether, in less than one hour, create a basic training regarding virtual volunteering – in using the Internet to involve and support volunteers. The videos are focused on staff – employees or volunteers – who are responsible for recruiting and supporting volunteers at nonprofits, NGOs, charities, government programs and other mission-based initiatives.

Here is the order I recommend you watch my videos in if you want a full, basic orientation in virtual volunteering:

Altogether, these videos cover developing initial online roles and activities for volunteers, how to rapidly engage online volunteers, how to expand virtual volunteering, how to adjust policies, how to address safety and confidentiality, the importance of keeping a human touch in interactions, addressing the most common questions and resistance to virtual volunteering and much, much more.

You have my permission to show any one of these videos, or some or all these videos, at any gathering or event of your own – a volunteer management workshop or conference, for instance – however, you must show any video you choose to show in its entirety.

(October 14, 2020 update: there’s a new, additional video, especially for corporations and businesses: Virtual Volunteering: Guidance for Corporate Employee Volunteering Programs. It’s 7 minutes long).

Does this mean there is no need to hire me as a consultant or as a trainer regarding virtual volunteering? I hope that’s not what it means! Rather, I hope It means there’s no need to hire me or anyone else for a basic virtual volunteering workshop. In fact, I would like to see basic virtual volunteering workshops go away entirely, because I think any workshop on, say, the basics of volunteer management, should fully integrate using the Internet to involve and support volunteers. A workshop on retaining volunteers should fully integrate using the internet to support and manage volunteers. A workshop on better recognizing and valuing volunteers should fully integrate using the internet to recognize and valuing volunteers. In short, virtual volunteering shouldn’t be regulated/segregated into a separate topic. It’s long overdue to FULLY integrate using the internet into involving ALL volunteers, even those you don’t think of as “online volunteers.”

What I’m much more interested in doing as a professional consultant is creating workshops or advising, as a paid consultant, on specific aspects of higher-level virtual volunteering, like:

  • online mentoring – considerations for such a program’s setup, setting goals for a program, evaluating such a program, etc.
  • online volunteers with particular skills or expertise training others remotely in something not virtual volunteering related, like public health messaging, teaching online media literacy to elderly people, helping public information officers prevent and respond to misinformation, etc.
  • online communities where people who previously participated in an onsite program advise people currently participating in an onsite program
vvbooklittle

Are my series of free videos a substitute for purchasing my book, The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook? I don’t think so. While my videos will, I hope, win over in last holdouts regarding virtual volunteering (few that they are), and will help programs rapidly, almost immediately, create and expand online activities and roles for online volunteers (something that became essential during the COVID-19 pandemic), 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. The book is co-written by myself and Susan Ellis.

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. 

Out-of-work professionals pushing back against volunteer engagement

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graphic by Jayne Cravens representing volunteers

It happens regularly: people who are seeking paid work, or who have been laid off from jobs, pushing back against volunteer engagement by previous and potential employers.

I am passionate about volunteer engagement as fundamental to both nonprofit and government programs, as fundamental to giving communities an opportunity to see firsthand what’s happening at these organizations and contributing to a civil society as well, but I am also passionate about volunteers NOT being used just to “save money”, and never to replace paid staff that do not have many alternatives for paid work. It’s why I believe any program should have to say WHY they involve volunteers and say, in writing, how every volunteer engagement will lead to something transformative. It’s why I have joined online protesters and said UN Agencies must defend their unpaid “internships”. It’s why I tell every person who asks me for a webinar or to consult on a project, “here are my consulting rates.” I have very strict guidelines for when I will offer my professional services for free – and even then, sometimes, I enter gray areas where I have to really think about the ethics about what I’m doing.

Once again, there is conflict between people who need paid work and the involvement of volunteers (unpaid labor). This time: many freelancers in the United Kingdom believe furloughed workers who are receiving 80% of their salary and are volunteering their time and professional expertise online (virtual volunteering) with charities via sites like Furlonteer.com are taking away much-needed paid work. This BBC article offers more details about this conflict.

My thoughts: I hope that freelancers will direct their very justified anger at FUNDERS – corporations, foundations, government agencies and individuals – who have whined that nonprofits need to “keep overhead low,” who have often refused outright to pay for anything they consider to be overhead, and who don’t believe nonprofits should ever spend money on expertise – not competitive salaries for employees and not decent salaries for consultants. Nonprofits, charities, NGOs, and other mission-based programs are frequently put into the impossible position by funders of delivering critical services without spending what’s needed for that to happen. Further contributing to the pressure to “get people to do it for free!” are programs like the Points of Light Foundation, the Independent Sector and even the United Nations who loudly, proudly promote the value of volunteering by an hourly rate – the amount of money saved because employees or consultants don’t do those tasks and volunteers are unpaid.

On the Furlonteer.com web site are these words: CHARITIES ARE DESPERATE FOR YOUR HELP. Well, WHY is that? Who created the conditions that have made charities desperate for this help? FUNDERS. I am looking at corporations and foundations in particular.

Also see:

Guidance on Virtual Volunteering – time tested!

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The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook: Fully Integrating Online Service Into Volunteer Involvement was published in early 2014. Now, six years later, is it still relevant? Oh, yes… I know because I’ve been testing all the principles offered in it over and over since it was published (as well as before it was published, when I was still writing it). My latest test: working with more than 150 online volunteers that participated in Knowbility’s 2019 Accessibility Internet Rally.

The book is the result of more than 20 years of research and practical experience by me, with heavy advice and observations by the book’s co-author, Susan Ellis. When we wrote the book, we wanted it to be timeless, like so many of Susan’s own books about various aspects of volunteer management. It’s not that I don’t still have things to learn about working with volunteers, online or off – I do! We all do. It’s that we believed strongly that certain principles would not change, and would be easily adapted no matter how the technology or even society evolved. These were principles that were explored in-depth at a variety of organizations when I managed the Virtual Volunteering Project at the University of Texas at Austin back in the 1990s, and they continue to be explored and tested – and proven.

For instance, I learned in the 1990s that the easier I made it for volunteers to sign up to volunteer, the larger the percentage of those volunteers that dropped out without even starting the assignment, let alone finishing it. But just putting in a simple second step that a candidate had to complete before they got to start on the assignment screened out the people who didn’t understand this was REAL volunteering and screened in the people who would take it seriously. It was true in 1998 and it’s true NOW, more than 20 years later.

I learned early on in studying virtual volunteering, a practice that’s been happening since the 1970s, and in working with online volunteers myself in the 1990s, that volunteers need to feel supported and valued or they won’t finish an assignment, or won’t finish it with the quality needed by an organization. In my role with Knowbility this time, I came on very late in the rally process, and because of that, trying to build trusting relationships with the volunteers that were already on board and get answers quickly to their questions proved quite difficult. The problems I have had with volunteers and that they had with their participation can almost all be traced back to that situation.

I learned early on, many years ago, that having expectations of volunteers in writing, online, both in role descriptions and in policies and procedures, was KEY to ensure both volunteers and managers are all on the same page as far as what’s happening and what’s needed, don’t get conflicting information, have a common place to look for guidance, etc. It greatly reduces conflict and misunderstandings, two factors which can lead to a lot of problems in volunteer engagement. Everyone isn’t going to read absolutely all of the support materials, but having it for referral is amazing in getting questions answered and conflicts resolved quickly. This lesson has been reinforced over and over over the years, including during this Knowbility event.

I’m thrilled to know my book is still relevant!

I have more than 100 hard copies of The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook in my possession and I would love for you to have one – or more! You can also order an electronic version. Yes, it’s available via Amazon, but let me be frank: I get far, far more money from the sale if you buy directly from me. Please consider doing so – buy one for yourself and for your favorite nonprofit!

NetAid: 20 years later

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October 9th is the 20th anniversary of the NetAid concerts, which launched a web site allowing people to volunteer online to help NGOs & United Nations initiatives all over the world – a web site that still exists and has mobilized many thousands of online volunteers to contribute to what we now call the Sustainable Development Goals.

NetAid started as a joint venture between the United Nations Development Programme and Cisco Systems, and launched with a concert event on October 9, 1999 with simultaneous activities meant to mobilize online volunteers and raise money and awareness for the Jubilee 2000 campaign – in the spirit of BandAid and LiveAid. The NetAid concerts took place at Wembley Stadium in London, England, Giants Stadium in New Jersey, USA, and the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland. Performers at the concerts included some of the biggest names of the day: Eurythmics, Bryan Adams, George Michael, David Bowie, Robbie Williams, Sheryl Crow, Jimmy Page, Busta Rhymes, Counting Crows, Bono, The Black Crowes, Sean John Combs (then Puff Daddy), Jewel, Mary J. Blige, Sting, Lil’ Kim, Ladysmith Black Mambazo and many more. Cisco sponsored the concerts and the web site, originally www.netaid.org. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan was an enthusiastic supporter of the initiative.

In an October 7, 1999 New York Times article, Djibril Diallo, then UNDP public affairs director, said ”We want to use the computer to help change how the world looks at poverty and motivate people to help.” He said UNDP began examining ways of combining music, high technology and altruism more than a year before the NetAid concerts. The article notes that the NetAid web site was meant to be “a clearing house of information on the state of world poverty and the agency’s programs as well as a means of raising money.” The article quotes Mark Malloch Brown, then head of UNDP, who said ”The difference between this and earlier concerts is that we created a vehicle for people to come back, not just on the night of the concert with the one check they write. But instead, here’s a site they’re going to come back to time after time.” The article also noted that the web site “will permit groups and people with particular needs to register them in a Netaid database. It will also allow people who are willing to donate particular skills or materials to register them in the database.” After the concerts, in a Washington Post story, “NetAid Catches Few On the Web,” Robert Piper, described as manager of the NetAid site for UNDP, said the main purpose of NetAid was to mobilize volunteers, not money. “We’ve been [complaining] for years about the need for people in the developed world to participate [in aid programs], but they never had the tools to participate,” said Piper. “With the Internet, people can now get emotionally and intellectually involved.“

I am asked frequently how I started working for the United Nations. The answer: NetAid. Specifically, to fix the NetAid website and process regarding virtual volunteering. A lot of effort was put into promoting NetAid and recruiting online volunteers – but very little effort was made to teach UN agencies and NGOs how to create assignments for online volunteers and how to support those online volunteers in assignments. Therefore, NetAid floundered. UN Volunteers, an initiative of UNDP, was in charge of the virtual volunteering part of NetAid, and someone at UNV found some of my messages on an online discussion group for managers of volunteers. At the time, I was directing the Virtual Volunteering Project at the University of Texas, and I just happened to be the only expert on the subject of virtual volunteering (thankfully, I’m not all alone anymore!). That UN employee shared my information with others at UNV HQ, and I was recruited, specifically, to work at UNV/UNDP on both NetAid and the UNITeS initiative. And the rest, as they say, is history…

By 2002, the online volunteering part of NetAid had been moved entirely to www.onlinevolunteering.org (like that URL? I’m the one that chose it!) and was entirely owned and managed by UNDP/UNV. And it still is!

Meanwhile, NetAid, which had become a nonprofit based in New York City, tried to find a path forward. It explored the use of videogames for social change, co-founding the Games for Change movement in 2004. In 2004, NetAid co-produced a game with Cisco Systems called “Peter Packet,” which addressed how the Internet can help fight poverty, focusing on issues of basic education, clean drinking water, and HIV-AIDS. By 2006, NetAid had a new focus: to raise awareness among high school students in the USA regarding poverty in developing countries. The different campaigns of NetAid are chronicled through archived versions of its web site, www.netaid.org, available at Wayback Machine. In 2007, NetAid became a part of Mercy Corps and was quickly disbanded.

The onlinevolunteering.org site continues to bring together online volunteers and NGOs, UN agencies to do good things. And the lessons from NetAid regarding virtual volunteering can still be helpful to any tech4good, micro-volunteering initiative starting now. In fact, lessons from NetAid, and many other organizations engaged in virtual volunteering, informed the recommendations offered in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, available for purchase in paperback directly from me or as an ebook (PDF) by the publisher, Energize, Inc.

What’s New Regarding Virtual Volunteering

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Despite lack of funding, I do my best to keep tabs on what’s going on regarding virtual volunteering: initiatives using the Internet to support and involve volunteers. What I’m particularly interested in are virtual volunteering activities that are new to me, are particularly innovative or particularly successful. I have a series of Google Alerts I use to keep tabs on news stories, press releases and blogs that use certain words and phrases that are good leads on virtual volunteering – remember, most initiatives that involve online volunteers never use the phrase virtual volunteering, and maybe not even the word volunteer.  That makes finding stories quite difficult.

I keep a list of news regarding virtual volunteering on the Virtual Volunteering Wiki. I did an analysis of this by year and found that 2014 and 2015 were prolific years regarding news related to virtual volunteering, but that after that, the number of stories I’ve found drops each year. Why the drop in stories about virtual volunteering each year for the last five years? I think it’s because there’s not that much that seems newsworthy about virtual volunteering anymore – after all, virtual volunteering is more than 35 years old.

I also use my news searches to update this web page that lists Virtual Volunteering initiatives, to help those looking for online volunteering. While my book with Susan J. Ellis, The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, is focused on helping organizations engage and support volunteers using the Internet, this page is meant to help people that want to be online volunteers. It lists more than 100 places to find virtual volunteering opportunities, and some of the sites I link to, in turn, list dozens, even hundreds, of organizations recruiting online volunteers.

In maintaining this list and in searching for virtual volunteering news, I’ve seen that, in the last five years, there has been a proliferation of opportunities for online volunteers to transcribe scanned historical documents or to tag photos. Examples:

The Old Weather project, where online volunteers transcribe hand-written weather observations made by Royal Navy ships around the time of World War I; using old weather observations can help predict our climate’s future.

Decoding World War I Punchcards, to help tag digitized punch cards that represent soldiers in World War I served by the YMCA, housed at the Kautz Family YMCA Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries. 25,926 men and women are represented by these cards. By digitizing these cards and having them properly tagged, this project seeks to shed light on these individuals and make freely available the biographical and demographic information contained within these cards.

The Freedom on the Move (FOTM) public database project at Cornell University mobilizes online volunteers to add data tags and transcribe scans of newspaper advertisements offering rewards for the capture of fugitive slaves – enslaved Americans seeking freedom and, often, their families. The resulting database will allow users to examine spatial patterns and compare trends over time.

These virtual volunteering transcription and tagging programs used to be few and, therefore,  newsworthy. One of the things that made them newsworthy is that they are microvolunteering or microtasks: a volunteer can spend just a few minutes accomplishing something, or spend hours transcribing and tagging. Now, there’s well more than 100 such programs – Zooniverse alone provides links to more than 80 such projects. There’s just nothing really new or innovative anymore about microvolunteering. But it is addictive: I lost a lot of time trying out one of these programs and one project turns into 20 – it’s better than CandyCrush!

What innovation is needed regarding virtual volunteering? A way for online volunteers to participate in these microvolunteering tasks in a way that the time they spend on them and their accomplishments could be automatically tracked, resulting in a report the volunteer could show as he or she wants to: on social media, to a high school administrator who wants to see the number of volunteering hours a student has undertaken or to a probation officer or other officer of the court who wants to see the number of community service hours a person has completed. If some aspiring hackathon or socially-responsible company or whatever wants to create this tool, just give me credit for the inspiration, please?

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.

Also see:

Online volunteers help with database of fugitive slave ads

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The Freedom on the Move (FOTM) public database project at Cornell University is a major digital database effort to bring together North American fugitive slave advertisements in newspapers from regional, state, and other collections – and online volunteers will be invited to add data tags to the screened entries and to transcribe the ads. This online public engagement by FOTM will allow database users to examine spatial patterns and compare trends over time.

“Ironically, in trying to retrieve their property — the people they claimed as things — enslavers left us mounds of evidence about the humanity of the people they bought and sold,” said Dr. Mary Niall Mitchell, professor of early American history at the University of New Orleans and one of the three lead historians on FOTM.

Mitchell explained. “At what time of year were enslaved people most likely to run? What places did they frequent? What skills did they have? How many could read and write? Or were likely to ‘pass’ for white, or claim to be free? What did they wear? Where were they suspected to be hiding and with whom? Under what circumstances did women run away?”

FOTM received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) digital humanities grants.

Here is an excellent article on about the database, from which I took Dr. Mitchell’s quotes.

Anyway, I gave it a try. I transcribed one ad. I would have liked to have done more, but I kept getting an error message on final submission, so I wasn’t sure if my attempt was even received. I’m wondering if I’m going to receive any sort of update or email from the project, if there is going to be any effort to keep me in the loop about the project and encourage me to transcribe more ads, if there will be any effort to survey me about my experience, or if there will be any solicitations for funding.

I’m also still thinking about that young woman I read about, who had fled someone in South Carolina and was suspected of being harbored by her enslaved mother somewhere… she’s a real person to me now. I hope she was never captured. I hope she got away. I hope she got to reach some dreams. I hope she was happy. Are other volunteers similarly connecting with the information the are transcribing on a human level?

vvbooklittleA shame organizers aren’t calling this a virtual volunteering initiative – because it is! Instead, they use the term “crowdsourcing.” It’s also a micro-volunteering initiative. I hope at least the organizers of this initiative will consider reading The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. The book, which I co-wrote with Susan Ellis, has lots of detailed suggestions and specifics about virtual volunteering, including task and role development, suggestions on support and supervision of online volunteers, guidelines for evaluating virtual volunteering activities, suggestions for risk management, online safety, ensuring client and volunteer confidentiality and setting boundaries for relationships in virtual volunteering, and much more. The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook is available both as a traditional printed book and as a digital book.

guide to ethics in app & other tech tool development

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I really love this and I would love to see this guide built into all hackathons / hacks4good, the development of apps4good, etc.:

Ethical OS Toolkit: a guide to anticipating the future of impact of today’s technology
Or: how to not regret the things you will build

I have only one disappointment with the guide, but I’ll save that for the end of the blog.

This is from the guide, and explains why this document is needed:

As technologists, it’s only natural that we spend most of our time focusing on how our tech will change the world for the better. Which is great. Everyone loves a sunny disposition. But perhaps it’s more useful, in some ways, to consider the glass half empty. What if, in addition to fantasizing about how our tech will save the world, we spent some time dreading all the ways it might, possibly, perhaps, just maybe, screw everything up? No one can predict exactly what tomorrow will bring (though somewhere in the tech world, someone is no doubt working on it). So until we get that crystal ball app, the best we can hope to do is anticipate the long-term social impact and unexpected uses of the tech we create today.

The last thing you want is to get blindsided by a future YOU helped create. The Ethical OS is here to help you see more clearly.

The guide includes:

  • A checklist of 8 risk zones to help you identify the emerging areas of risk and social harm most critical for your team to start considering now.
  • 14 scenarios to spark conversation and stretch your imagination about the long-term impacts of tech you’re building today.
  • 7 future-proofing strategies to help you take ethical action today.

The risk zones that the guide identifies are:

  • Truth, Disinformation, and Propaganda
  • Addiction & the Dopamine Economy
  • Economic & Asset Inequalities
  • Machine Ethics & Algorithmic Biases
  • Surveillance State
  • Data Control & Monetization
  • Implicit Trust & User Understanding
  • Hateful & Criminal Actors

The Ethical OS is a joint creation of the Institute for the Future and Omidyar Network’s Tech and Society Solutions Lab.

The guide has lots of discussion questions that developers can explore. It’s not so much that the questions have right or wrong answers – they are meant to spur consideration of how a new technology meant to help people could be misused, something that all too many developers DON’T think about.

The guide also has suggested questions for board members and trustees to ask themselves about tech development, so they can understand the possible risks to their organizations as a result of use of the app.

My only disappointment with the guide – and it’s a BIG disappointment – is that the section on Economic & Asset Inequalities never mentions accessibility for people with disabilities. When tech tools are not accessible for people who have sight impairments, people who have hearing impairments, people with mobility issues, etc., those tools create economic and asset inequalities. It’s really inexcusable that this wasn’t mentioned even once.

Some other blog posts regarding tech4good and work ethics:

Knowbility’s AccessU 2019: Call for Papers

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Knowbility’s John Slatin AccessU 2019: Call for Papers

Proposal submission deadline: Friday, January 24, 2019 at 11:59pm CST

Passionate about accessibility and inclusion?

Think you have a thing or two to share about accessibility?

Accidentally used the phrase “cool as an #a11y cat” in a sentence once?

Knowbility wants to hear from you!

Please complete this online form if:

– You are available to be in Austin, Texas, USA May 15-17, 2019 for AccessU
– You are a skilled practitioner in the field of web and app accessibility
– You are a great teacher
– You want to share practical skills that make the web and other online tools better for everyone
– You find it incredibly difficult to say no to fun

AccessU is the time of year where some of the most amazing instructors in this field get to roll up their sleeves, let their hair loose (here’s lookin’ at you, Denis Boudreau), and dive in as they share their expertise in a hands-on, practical training environment. In addition to valuable networking opportunities and free breakfasts/lunches each day, AccessU instructors receive a complimentary conference badge for Knowbility’s 2.5 day conference from Wednesday, May 15 to Friday, May 17, 2019.

Proposal notifications will be sent by email for each submission no later than February 10, 2019 at 11:59pm CST.

Just want to attend AccessU and soak up the knowledge? Get 2019 tickets at 2018 prices. Sale ends on December 31, 2018, or once the limited seats are gone (only 50 of each ticket type!). Ticket information and pricing at the AccessU web site.

If you have any questions, please email accessu@knowbility.org or call (512) 527-3138.

Also see:

Pioneering in “hacks for good”: Knowbility

Lessons for online outreach to nonprofits, NGOs & charities