Tag Archives: engagement

What I Did in Ukraine

Leave a reply

Ukraine booby dollMore than a week has gone by since I left Kyiv. The photo at right sums up how I felt most of the time whilst there.

Now, I’m in Germany, fighting a cold, and wondering if I dreamed that whole nine-week Ukrainian adventure.

What did I do in August and September 2014 for the United Nations in Ukraine? I tried to remember everything:

  • Drafted (and re-drafted and re-drafted) the revised strategy for the UN’s work in Ukraine, per the drastic change in circumstances in the country earlier in 2014 (this took up probably 25% of my entire work time in Kyiv).
  • Edited and rewrote more document proposals, press releases, web pages, meeting reports and field reports than I care to try to list (this took up probably 25% of my entire work time in Kyiv).
  • Drafted a marketing plan for a United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) project focused on getting people to care about and take action regarding climate change.
  • Drafted a strategy to leverage most of the UN days in some way via social media and, in some cases, traditional means (onsite events, press tours, etc.).
  • Live-tweeted UNDP Ukraine Social Good #inno4dev / #2030now summit, highlighting the many excellent tech-for-good initiatives happening all over Ukraine, and blogged about how future events might be more interactive and produce something by the end of the day (more than knowledge-sharing). I also blogged about how I was part of a group at UN Volunteers HQ back at the start of the century that tried to do many of the things now, at last, being embraced by UNDP, and got quite a bit of attention thrown UN Ukraine’s way as a result. 
  • Invented the #uatech4good tag, which I’m hoping will catch on as a social media tag for any tech4good initiative in Ukraine, including those with no UN-affiliation.
  • Mapped all of the various UN agencies and programs in Ukraine with regard to their Web sites, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, Flickr accounts and any other social media profiles they had, and created a page on the UN web site where anyone could find such (it also includes suggestions on where to find further info regarding the UN’s work in Ukraine using various UN HQ accounts).
  • Did research and then drafted recommendations for how various UN agencies, particularly UNDP, could use social media to promote respect, tolerance and perhaps even reconciliation in areas of Ukraine currently in conflict.
  • Live-tweeted UNDP Ukraine’s Social Good #inno4dev / #2030now summit, highlighting the many excellent tech-for-good initiatives happening all over Ukraine.
  • Helped to develop some simple ways to leverage the Humans of New York focus on Ukraine.
  • Advised on how to deal with some specific negative activities on both social and traditional media targeted at the UN.
  • Did trainings on using Twitter for all UN communications staff, and another for just UNDP staff and another just for UNICEF staff, tailoring those last two trainings to those different agencies specifically.
  • Prepared a guide for the UN Volunteers office in Ukraine on how to use Twitter and Facebook to better publicize their activities to not only external audiences, but also to those they are working with and their colleagues within various UN agencies in Ukraine (never forget that social media sometimes reaches someone in the office next door with news they don’t know about your initiative).
  • Wished for a better word for reconciliation
  • Wished for more web sites like this Ukrainian journalism student project, Stopfake.org
  • Lamented with my Crimean Tatar co-worker the lack of sustainability and evaluations of hacksforgood/appsforgood and any other projects launched during a hackathon, and our lamentations inspired this blog (I mention his ethnicity only because other references to such all seem to be only about how they are internally-displaced people and frequently oppressed – which is true, but many also happen to be very knowledgable, experienced professionals – just like anyone).
  • Advised on an app to help citizens report infrastructure issues to the government.
  • Researched whether or not our offices might need a policy re: editing Wikipedia (such editing is easily monitored by citizen activists and even some hostile “bodies”, and conflict of interest editing can turn into a PR nightmare; I doubt anyone is editing Wikipedia from the office, but this is a VERY tech savvy country – I was trying to think preventatively).
  • Had various ideas bounced off of me by various staff for events, announcements, activities, speeches, using Twitter, etc.
  • Participated in department meetings (though, believe it or not, I would have liked to have been a part of even more).
  • Created new text for the UN Volunteers in Ukraine page regarding online volunteering and volunteering NOT as a UN Volunteer.
  • Asked a lot of questions, listened, took a lot of notes, read lots and lots of information so I could write about various topics when called upon, read and responded to a lot of emails…
  • Tried to kill my boss with roses.
  • Took care of our field security guy’s puppy for a few days.
  • Bothered my co-workers regarding my overwhelming desire for mashed potatoes.

I bring up the mashed potatoes because, while very few people liked or commented on Facebook regarding my “I want mashed potatoes” status update, several co-workers did in-person; it’s how I realized just how much people were reading what I posted online, and what a poor judge of readership the number of “likes” is.

Did anything change as a result of my time in Ukraine? I’m not sure. I think a couple of people now realize the power of social media and it seems that the changes in their use of such while I was there is continuing after I’m gone. I think I helped to raise the profile, to a certain degree, of what various UN agencies are doing in Ukraine, and helped to reinforce that those agency reps are essential to have at the table when talking about addressing the critical needs of the country. But I wish I could have had more time to get more cross-fertilization happening regarding communications and to get more people pro-active instead of being so reactive and passive when it comes to communications, so that when one initiative launches something major, all of the UN communications staff at different initiatives see it and share it with their networks, and that no one waits to hear about news – they go out online and look for it. I wish I could have done a workshop on writing in plain English. I wish I could have worked with a few people one-on-one more. I wish I could have gotten everyone better using Flickr. I wish I could have done an analysis of current press relations.

I also really wish I could have done a workshop on the UN’s Online Volunteering service. I’m sorry to say that no one in the UN Volunteers office in Ukraine really knew what it was or why to use it. It wasn’t a part of my mandate to talk about it to anyone – but I tried anyway, specifically with UNV folks, squeezed in among several other topics. I would not only like to see UN Volunteers in Ukraine using the OV service, I would not only like to see all of the UN programs in Ukraine looking for ways to use the service to engage with online volunteers regarding their work, I would also love to see UNDP Ukraine launch, or help to launch, a Ukrainian and Russian-language version of the online volunteering site focused exclusively on Ukraine. Ukraine is still afire with civic engagement desires – so many civil society initiatives there are using the Internet to engage and support volunteers, without ever having heard the term virtual volunteering. Imagine what more could be done with Ukraine’s own online volunteering service for both Ukraine-based and Ukraine-focused civil society organizations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Oh well, I did what I did, and I think I did what most needed to be done.

What did I learn? Oh, that’s a whole ‘nother blog, thrice as long. I learned SO much, and re-learned so much. I think that’s what I’ll reflect on these next two weeks.

So, that was my work time in Ukraine, and my latest adventure with the United Nations, an organization that frustrates me greatly often times but, even so, I still believe is humanity’s best hope for getting every person equal access to education, safety, care for basic needs, a healthy environment, economic choices, and life choices, and for keeping us from killing each other and destroying everything. I’m proud to be a part of the United Nations, and while I hope this isn’t my last gig with the UN, if it is, wow, what a high note to end on!

Also see:

My photos from Ukraine (Kyiv and Korosten)

My photos from in and around Chornobyl (Chernobyl)

How to Pursue a Career with the United Nations or Other International Humanitarian or Development Organizations, Including Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)

Reality Check: Volunteering Abroad / Internationally

Initial feedback on UNV plan to integrate volunteerism in development

Leave a reply

United Nations Volunteers has proposed a plan to further integrate volunteering in peace and development action. UNV is now collecting feedback on the Zero Draft to revise it before submission to the UN General Assembly in 2015.

I’m still digesting the report, but at first read, the two recommendations that got me the most excited/agitated:

  • Strengthen the evidence base for the impact of volunteerism through concerted research…

and

  • Exchange practices in the areas of volunteer management, safety and security, innovative approaches such as online volunteering, inclusion of marginalized…

Regarding the research recommendation – hurrah! Research is so needed, particularly regarding what works, and what doesn’t, in

  • engaging groups of volunteers onsite in one-time, just show up activities – not just park cleanups, but hackathons and edit-a-thons
  • involving youth as volunteers,
  • involving teams of volunteers online
  • microvolunteering online
  • involving volunteers from other countries (organizations wanting to or expecting to host such volunteers need guidance on assignment development, necessary support for volunteers, training for those that will work with such volunteers, etc.)
  • measuring the impact of non-traditional volunteer engagement, such as hackathons and edit-a-thons, group volunteering, and episodic/microvolunteering (online or onsite), on the participating volunteers, on the organizations they support, on the causes they support, and on the communities in general
  • involving volunteers that represent a range of cultures and languages in group volunteering, online volunteering (particularly in teams), and traditional volunteering (commitment of more than just a few days, with a set time and place to be regularly)
  • recruiting volunteers from among ethnic and religious minority groups and creating a welcoming environment for such
  • using volunteering as a way to build cultural understanding among different religious, ethnic, economic or age groups
  • the costs of involving volunteers (because, of course, volunteers are never cost free; there are costs associated with engagement them)

I hope there can also be a promotion of the growing body of research regarding online volunteering  / virtual volunteering.

Regarding the volunteer management recommendation: I’m even more excited about that than the research recommendation. Without more promotion of the necessary systems and practices needed to support and engage volunteers, no other action recommended in this plan will work – every other recommendation will be doomed to failure. For too long, campaigns have focused on encouraging people to volunteer, rather than helping organizations to involve volunteers. I’ve been recommending this action since I first became involve in UNV back in February 2001, while directing the UN’s Online Volunteering Service and managing the online components of the United Nations Information Technology Service (UNITeS). I can’t take the credit for it finally being a priority, however.

That said, I STRONGLY disagree with the suggestion from the report that, as a part of the promotion of volunteer management, that we:

Advocate for the implementation of  the methods suggested in the ILO  Manual for Volunteerism  measurement; Member States to integrate the ILO  methodology in their household surveys.

The ILO Manual has NOT been agreed to as the measurement of volunteerism by most volunteer-involving organizations. Far from it; the ILO manual uses the old-fashioned, highly controversial method of measuring volunteerism by assigning a monetary value to volunteer hours. This kind of measurement for the value of volunteerism is something that has caused a tremendous backlash from unions and other working people, who see this as fuel for corporations and governments to say to nonprofits and non-governmental organizations, “Cut paid staff and replace them with volunteers.” Did UNV learn NOTHING from the backlash from the UK’s “Big Society” push which used a similar measurement for the value of volunteers?

There are much better ways to measure the value of volunteers. It’s time for UNV to promote those more modern ways.

Also, volunteers as are not free, I would have liked to have seen this statement explicitly in the report. It would have been nice to see an explicit statement saying, “Corporations and governments have to be prepared to help fund organizations in the engagement of volunteers.”

I’ll be reading the report more thoroughly in the coming days and formally responding via UNV’s mechanism for such. I encourage you to do the same.

Growing backlash against volunteerism?

Leave a reply

I first learned of people being against volunteerism back in 1997, when a three-day bipartisan presidential summit aimed at boosting volunteerism and community service efforts across the USA kicked off in Philadelphia.  I was directing the Virtual Volunteering Project at the time. There were arguments from both the far-right and the far-left, and I did my best to compile them. When I would bring up these arguments at various volunteerism conferences or on online groups, my colleagues usually just scoffed – it’s just extremists, it’s not something we need to worry about. 

Since then, I’ve kept an eye on these arguments against volunteerism, because I feel strongly that the arguments must be addressed. Organizations recruiting volunteers need to have these arguments in mind when they are crafting recruitment messages and when they are talking about the value of volunteers. When organizations ignore these arguments against volunteerism, or deny them, they end up with dysfunctional volunteer engagement programs, lack of support for volunteer engagement and, sometimes, very pad PR.

This came to mind over the weekend when I saw this comment in a friend’s Facebook feed:

I’d rather find the means of capitalization and pay people to do the work at hand than to bother with the volunteer work ethic or ability. I was never more personally insulted than as the president of the board of my church.

If you are talking about volunteer involvement as a way to save money, and volunteer contributions in terms of monetary value, then you are part of the problem – you are creating the fuel for these political arguments against volunteerism. And if you are not asking volunteers why they are leaving your organization, and addressing those reasons, you are creating ex-volunteers who are sharing their views with friends and colleagues and further creating a bad image not just for your organization, but for volunteering as a whole.

My other blogs and web pages on this controversy:

Note that the links within some blogs may not work, as I moved all of my blogs from Posterous to WordPress a few months ago, and it broke all of the internal links. Also, some web pages on other organization’s sites have moved since I linked to such, and I either don’t know or haven’t been able to find a new location for the material.

Anger motivates volunteers as much as sympathy

Leave a reply

For years, during my workshops on volunteer engagement, I have half-jokingly said I have never volunteered out of the goodness of my heart or to be nice – because I’m not at all a nice person – and have, instead, volunteered because I’m angry about something. I have used this as a way to introduce audiences to the plethora of motivations of volunteers, to help them create better recruitment and engagement schemes.

Now, I have some science to back me up!

Someone sent me this link today: “Anger motivates volunteers as much as sympathy.”  The authors of the study are Dr. Robert Bringle and his students Ashley Hedgepath and Elizabeth Wall at Appalachian State University.  

And it’s not the first study that’s said this: Ilana Silber published “The angry gift: A neglected facet of philanthropy” in 2012. 

It’s a mistake to think that all volunteers are motivated only by kindness or selflessness. There are all sorts of motivations for volunteering. People volunteer because they:

  • like the idea of being associated with the particular organization or activity
  • want experience to put on job applications
  • want to meet people, as friends or for their social or business connections
  • think the activity looks fun
  • like the people that have invited them to volunteer, or like the people volunteering
  • are curious
  • are bored

and, yes, because they are angry about something – about how many discarded pets are at shelters or women’s lack of access to reproductive health information or domestic violence or barriers to girls in STEM-related careers or the condition of the environment and on and on.

And all of these are GREAT reasons for volunteering. Do you welcome all of these volunteers at your organization?

Also see:

Making certain volunteers feel unwelcomed because of your language

Do you welcome people with your language?

Screening Volunteers for Attitude

Mission statements for your volunteer engagement

Welcoming immigrants as volunteers at your organization

global survey on volunteer management software

Leave a reply

Last year, Rob Jackson (robjacksonconsulting.com) and Jayne Cravens (coyotecommunications.com) — ME — drafted and circulated a survey regarding software used to manage volunteer information. The purpose of the survey was to gather some basic data that might help organizations that involve volunteers to make better-informed decisions when choosing software, and to help software designers to understand the needs of those organizations. We also wanted to get a sense of what organizations were thinking about volunteer management software.

We promoted the survey every way we knew how – emailing our contacts directly, posting to various online discussion groups, posting repeatedly to our social networks, and asking others to share the survey with their readers and networks. Then we published the results of the survey here (in PDF); it includes an executive summary of our findings, as well as the complete responses to questions and our analysis of such.

Software companies and designers: you can learn a LOT from this report to improve your products and your communications with customers!

We learned how much managers of volunteers love spreadsheets, even those that have specialized software for managing volunteers.

We also learned a lot from this report that has nothing to do with software. In the survey, we asked a lot of questions that didn’t relate directly to software, like about how many volunteers these organizations managed, as well as what volunteers did. And the answers about what volunteers do at various organizations were surprising.

Rob and I did not have time to analyze all of the comments made in answer to some questions; for all questions, we listed the comments made, but we did not always offer any observations about such, or group the responses into categories. We welcome the efforts of other researchers to offer their own analysis of the data provided.

Crowdsourcing & Microvolunteering: still not new, still takes a lot of work

1 Reply

Egads, another breathless story about crowdsourcing, one that says it’s new (it’s not) and that it’s all about doing work that nonprofits don’t have paid employees to do. Argh!

I’m not against crowdsourcing or microvolunteering or whatever we’re calling it these days. As I’ve said for many years, these can be very effective forms of virtual volunteering – perhaps not so much in getting critical work done for an organization, but, rather, for getting more people engaged with an organization such that they might be moved to volunteer more, in more substantial ways, to give a financial gift, and to tell their friends about their positive experience with the nonprofit.

My beef with the crowdsourcing bandwagon is three-fold:

  1. It’s not a new practice. Not at all. It’s the oldest forms of virtual volunteering, a practice that’s been around for more than 30 years. USENET newsgroup were my favorite place to find and post crowdsource opportunities for nonprofits and causes I supported back in the mid-1990s.
  2. Creating crowdsourcing opportunities, or microvolunteering tasks, or microtasks, or whatever we want to call them for volunteers (I called them “byte-sized” opportunities back in the 1990s – the name didn’t catch on), takes a LOT of work:
      • You (the nonprofit) have to create meaningful assignments that can be done in just a few seconds or minutes by dozens, even hundreds, of people – not just busy work that isn’t really going to have any value to the organization nor to the volunteer. As anyone that works at a nonprofit knows, that’s easier said than done!
      • You have to come up with some way to track what volunteers are contributing to the project, so you can review what’s been submitted in a timely manner and leverage such, as well as so volunteers can be thanked and further encouraged to engage with the organization.
      • You have to come up with some way to measure the impact of the project, beyond number of volunteers that participated, if you want to justify spending the time and resources to engage in this form of virtual volunteering.

    For instance, say you want volunteers to tag photos on Flickr: someone from the organization has to upload the photos, has to create written guidelines for how the photos are to be tagged in an easy-to-understand way, has to look over how volunteers are tagging the photos to make sure such is being done appropriately (and to delete those tags which aren’t appropriate), and has to track all of the volunteers that contributed so they can be thanked and invited to participate in something else, or to otherwise support the organization. The vast majority of nonprofits I know of do NOT have the resources to do that!

  3. Crowdsourcing often DOESN’T work. Nonprofits tend not to blog about failures. Yet, I hear from them after workshops frequently, telling me how their attempts to engage people in microvolunteering has failed: few people submitted logo ideas, or voted in the contest that might help them get funding, or provided advice on that tech question the nonprofit had. Those breathless media stories convinced them that hundreds, even thousands, would turn out online to help – and few, if any, actually did.

I created several crowdsourcing opportunities when I directed the Virtual Volunteering Project. One of my favorites was asking people to come up with tag lines for virtual volunteering itself – anyone could email in a slogan idea, and dozens of people did (that’s right – WE came up with “volunteer in your pajamas” – or pyjamas – YEARS before anyone else did!). But I didn’t do it because I really needed help getting a tag line; rather, I did it to get lots of people excited about the Virtual Volunteering Project, to get as many people involved in an online activity as I could on the project’s behalf, in order to encourage more people to work on more substantial activities with us and other organizations as online volunteers, and to get more people talking about virtual volunteering. And make no mistake: it took a lot of work on my part to make this successful: I had to think about where and how I was going to communicate the campaign, what the wording of the message would be, and how I would track and respond to submissions. It didn’t take tons of time – but it did take time, at least a few hours.

A misconception about microvolunteering — and, indeed, about all volunteering, not just virtual volunteering — is that the goal is to get work done, or to get work done for free. These are old paradigms regarding volunteering that so many of us have worked for a very long time to move away from. Volunteering is about so much more: it’s about building relationships with the community, increasing the number of people advocating for your organization and even supporting it financially, demonstrating transparency, and even targeting specific demographics for involvement in your work.

So, by all means, yes, let’s get excited about crowdsourcing, microvolunteering, and all other forms of virtual volunteering. Let’s keep talking about it. But let’s also stay realistic: it takes a LOT of time and expertise on the part of the nonprofit or other mission-based organization to create successful crowdsourcing opportunities. Let’s do a better job of detailing what it takes to create these type of opportunities, so organizations really can leverage crowdsourcing – rather than breaking hearts.

Also see:

What do NGOs understand that USA nonprofits don’t?

Leave a reply

Last week, I got to be a part of the program for a group visiting Portland through the US State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP). It was the fourth time I’ve gotten to be a part of the program over the years – the first time was in Austin, Texas, back in the 1990s. This time, visitors were from Egypt, Afghanistan, Liberia, Tunisia, Latvia, Greece, Mexico, El Salvador, Morocco, South Africa, Cameroon, the Philippines, Ethiopia, and more.

Talking with leaders of NGOs from all over the world is incredibly energizing – for me, it feels like coming home. Many are stunned that I’ve been to their countries – or that I even know where their countries are, what language they speak there, etc., in contrast to so many people in the USA. I’m sorry to sound the snob, but my fellow citizens are notorious worldwide for our ignorance about the rest of the planet, and not even having a passport, and I’m proud to be in contrast to that stereotype.

(just last week, I had to explain to a very close friend what the European Union was – she’s a very intelligent person, but if none of the news outlets ever mention the EU, how would she know what it is?).

This time with the IVLP, I was part of a small group of members from the Northwest Oregon Volunteer Administrators Association (NOVAA); instead of a traditional workshop, we divided up and each spent time with three people, for 20 minutes, talking about volunteer engagement, and would switch to a new group every 20 minutes. It allowed me to get one-on-one time with more than half the NGO representatives, and that’s always delightful. Many of the problems they face regarding volunteer engagement are the same as anywhere: trouble mainitaining volunteer motivation, volunteers not finishing assignments, too many volunteers one day and not enough another, etc. I hope they found my references helpful – hard to address everything in just 20 minutes!

One moment for me that I particularly loved: how integral social media is for many of these NGOs in working with volunteers. I loved hearing about all the ways they recruit, interact with and support volunteers using various social media tools, reaching volunteers via their phones as much, if not more, than via their computers – all said that, for the most part, email is dead for their young volunteers (people under 40) altogether. These NGOs haven’t needed workshops or conferences to convince them these tools are valuable; they’ve seen their value immediately. When I told them just how many nonprofits here in the USA refuse to use Facebook, Twitter, or other social media tools to work with volunteers, about how, if nonprofits here do decide to use such, they often give social media responsibilities to interns and senior management stays away from such, and how often I’ve had hostile reactions to the tech practices that these NGOs, by contrast, have fully embraced, they were floored. And they laughed. A lot. And when I told them that, in Oregon, in the supposedly oh-so-tech-savvy Portland area, I have had women younger than me say, “Oh, I don’t have email, so send that to my husband’s/daughter’s address, and he/she will print it out for me to read,” their jaws dropped.

True, many of these NGOs aren’t recruiting ethnic minorities, religious minorities and other marginalized groups as volunteers in their countries – and don’t see why they should have to make volunteering more accessible to such. They don’t see who they might be leaving out as volunteers by totally abandoning offline recruitment and support methods. In short, their volunteer engagement is not perfect and needs to further modernized, especially in terms of being inclusive – but what they are doing in terms of leveraging networked technologies in recruiting, involving and supporting volunteers is far, far ahead of what most nonprofits are doing in the USA. And all I can say is: WELL DONE. And keep teaching me!

Another big emphasis for these NGOs in particular is involving young people as volunteers – young people who are unemployed or under-employed, people under 40 with some education but who cannot find jobs. These NGOs see volunteer engagement with young people as a way not only to build the skills of those young people so that they can get jobs – or even start their own businesses – but also to give these young people a sense of civic responsibility and community connection beyond protesting in the streets. I was happy to help address some of these ideas in my very limited conversations, and welcomed their online inquiries so I can send them to further resources.

And, finally, I apologize to the guys from West Africa who were offended I hadn’t been to any of their countries yet (I’m trying!), and if the guy from the Philippines does not send me the photo he took of myself and the guy from Afghanistan wearing the cowboy that he bought in Texas, with both of us making the “hook ’em horns” sign, I will be DEVASTATED.

POSTSCRIPT: Not devastated.

For more information about my training.

Also see:

Hire me in 2013 – let me help make your organization even better!

Leave a reply

Blunt headline, I know, but it gets the point across: I’m available as a trainer for your organization or conference, or for short-term consulting, for long-term consulting, and, for the perfect opportunity, full-time employment in 2013!

As a consultant, I specialize in training, advising, capacity-building services and strategy development for not-for-profit organizations (NPOs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society, grass roots organizations, and public sector agencies, including government offices and educational institutions (altogether, these organizations comprise the mission-based sector).

Capacity-building is always central to any training or consulting work I do. Capacity-building means giving people the skills, information and other resources to most effectively and efficiently address the organization’s mission, and to help the organization be attractive to new and continuing support from donors, volunteers, community leaders and the general public. My training and consulting goal is to build the capacities of employees, consultants and volunteers to successfully engage in communications and community involvement efforts long after I have moved on.

My consulting services are detailed here. I can deliver both onsite and online services. Also, I love to travel (especially internationally!).

In 2013, I would love to create or co-create an entire course as a part-time or full-time instructor at a college university within any program training nonprofit managers, social workers, MBA students, aid and humanitarian workers, etc. I am most interested, and, I think, most qualified, to teach courses relating to:

  • public relations (basic public relations functions, outreach to particular audiences, crisis communications, how to address misinformation / misunderstandings, how to deal with public criticism, etc.)
  • strategic communications (systematic planning and utilization of a variety of information flows, internal and external to an organization or program, to deliver a message and build credibility or a brand)
  • cross-platform media and electronic media (using traditional print, synchronous and asynchronous online / digital communications, and emerging digital technologies effectively, and integrating the use of all information flows)
  • public speaking
  • community engagement (involving community members as volunteers, from program supporters to advisers, and creating ways for the community to see the work of an organization firsthand)

Would I consider giving up the consulting life and working just one job, either as a full-time consultant for a year or a full-time, regular employee? Yes! In that regard, I am looking for opportunities to:

  • manage/direct a program at a nonprofit, university or government agency.

or

  • direct the marketing, public relations or other communications activities for a major project or program at a nonprofit, university or government agency – a corporation that matches my professional values.

I have a profile at LinkedIn, as well as details on my own web site about my professional activities. I’m also happy to share my CV with you; email me with your request. If you have any specific questions about my profile, feel free to contact me as well. References available upon request as well!

Looking forward to hearing from you! Questions welcomed!

Striking a chord in 2012

Leave a reply

My most popular blogs in 2012, based on visitor numbers, were all focused the points of view of volunteers:

  • I’m a Frustrated Volunteer, my confession at just how many of my blogs from the points of view of people that were trying to volunteer and weren’t able to were actually about my own attempts to volunteer since moving back to the USA in 2009. Got a lot of comments as well.
  • A missed opportunity with volunteers, which included this quote from a colleague (not me this time!!) about her volunteering experience at an un-named organization: “No one ever asked me for my name. They didn’t have a sign in sheet. They didn’t capture any of my information. And I have no idea what all this work that I did means to them.”
  • I’m a volunteer & you should just be GRATEFUL I’m here!, which quoted entitlement volunteers, those folks who think organizations should take ANY volunteer and whatever that volunteer offers, and simply be grateful for what they get, should not have standards, quality control or performance measurements when it comes to volunteers, and that to demand quality from volunteers is insulting.

I expected some defensive comments on these blogs, about how over-worked managers of volunteers are, about how they can’t be expected to respond somehow to every person that wants to volunteer or to ask volunteers about their experience, etc. That’s what usually happens when I try to talk about these subjects on online discussion groups for managers of volunteers. That didn’t happen (progress!), but the visitor numbers show that these blogs really did strike a chord!

Being a volunteer – or trying to volunteer – and talking to others volunteering or trying to volunteer, has taught me more about the essentials of volunteer engagement than any book, article or workshop!

I’m quite surprised that the blogs regarding the results of the volunteer management software survey that Rob Jackson (robjacksonconsulting.com) and I did this year didn’t get much more attention than they did – I fully expected the blogs about this survey to be the most popular of the year, but they weren’t! The purpose of the survey was to gather some basic data that might help organizations that involve volunteers to make better-informed decisions when choosing software, and to help software designers to understand the needs of those organizations. We also wanted to get a sense of what organizations were thinking about volunteer management software. I think we more than met those expectations! In addition to the main blog announcing the results in July 2012, there was also a blog about What’s so fabulous about software tools for volunteer management?, a blog about just how much managers of volunteers love spreadsheets, and a blog about What do volunteers do? The answer may surprise you, as reported by survey respondents, that turned out to be much more wide ranging than many volunteer management consultants and books would have you believe. In short, our survey provided a lot of in-depth information about not just software, but volunteer engagement in general.

In case you missed a blog this year: I’m retweeting two or three of my blogs a few times a week between now and the end of the year (follow jcravens42 for more!), and I’ve created this index of all my my blogs (indexed by date).

2012 isn’t over – I’ll be writing a few more entries in the waning days of the year. Stay tuned!

 

Volunteer Engagement the Roller Derby Way

4 Replies

logoSunday, I did an intensive, advanced training (as opposed to an introductory/basic training) for representatives from the roller derby leagues in Portland (the Rose City Rollers) and Seattle (Rat City Rollers) regarding volunteer management. These leagues involve several hundred volunteers – and have done so, quite effectively, for a few years now. Volunteers don’t just help at games; women’s roller derby has a particular focus on empowering women and girls, and most meets include fundraising components for a charity, which means volunteers are engaged in a huge range of activities.

But the rapid growth of these leagues – which shows no signs of abating – means that they don’t always have the procedures and policies in place to handle volunteer management challenges as they arise, or even how to identify issues long before they become bigger problems for the organizations. I hope that my training helped them to be able to access the resources they need to deal with specialized volunteer recruitment, board recruitment, volunteer conflict, keeping volunteers motivated, tracking volunteer information and contributions, and anticipate and address issues regarding volunteer engagement long before such becomes a program killer.

But with a staff made up of paid employees and volunteers, most of whom have NO training in working with volunteers, these leagues have done a remarkable job of engaging volunteers already.

What are people at these roller derby organizations doing that many traditional organizations that involve volunteers are not?

  • They have organizational-wide commitments to volunteers being satisfied with their experiences. Supporting and honoring volunteers is EVERYONE’S job. It never dawned on them that this should be just one person’s job at an organization, or that an employee could refuse to work with volunteers.
  • All staff work with volunteers. ALL STAFF. That means all staff — every paid person and all volunteers — create assignments for volunteers and/or work with volunteers. That means, even though there were just two organizations represented at this training, I wasn’t speaking to just two people: the designated volunteer coordinators. Instead, I was also talking to paid staff, volunteer staff, players, event volunteers, committee chairs, skating officials and on and on.
  • It never dawned on them to value volunteers purely by an hourly monetary amount, and some of them were actually offended by the idea. They acknowledge that it’s sometimes necessary for a grant application, but otherwise, they have much better reasons for saying they involve volunteers, and why volunteers are necessary to the organization.
  • They use every Internet tool and software tool they can find to work with and support volunteers – the value of such is obvious to them, with no need for a virtual volunteering workshop to convince them (as is with most traditional organizations).
  • Volunteers go to the same meetings as employees, and take leadership roles in coordinating events, reaching out to sponsors, selling merchandise, and representing the organization. You can’t tell who is or isn’t a volunteer just by a person’s title!
  • They didn’t blink over the phrase, “If a task can be done by a human, it can be done by a volunteer.” When I use that statement in a training for traditional organizations, there is often an uproar (which is why I use it – how I love stirring things up!). The Roller Derby reps reaction: “yes, and?”
  • They don’t look for ways to thank volunteers with regards to mugs and pins, or posters that say things like, “Volunteers are our angels!” They know what their volunteers want: real, sincere appreciation that permeates the organization, that doesn’t happen just on a volunteer appreciation luncheon that, at many other organizations, the board nor the Executive Director would even bother attending.
  • While they want to be great at handling conflict among staff, including volunteers, they completely accept that conflict and criticisms happen and have no fear of such (most orgs I work with want to know how to prevent all conflict and criticism).
  • They embrace the idea of most volunteers joining up because they want to have fun. They don’t think that’s a bad idea for volunteering.
  • They have an organization that welcomes people of all ages and all walks of life, and these organizations could probably lead their own workshop on how to creating a welcoming environment for teen volunteers, LGBT volunteers, low-income volunteers, homeless volunteers, volunteers with disabilities and various other groups that are under-represented at so many other organizations. It’s a workshop I would LOVE to attend!
  • Not once did I ever hear, “Oh, we’re not allowed to do that.” I hear that at least twice during presentations to other organizations. Not that these organizations don’t know and follow rules, like how to screen and supervise volunteers that will work with teens – but when it comes to ideas about new ways to work with volunteers, they never come from a place of fear.
  • They laughed heartily at my story of a certain online discussion group for volunteer managers in the USA that shall remain nameless having constant discussions about where to find examples of forms and policies (“Don’t they know how to use Google?”) or how to ban volunteers that have tattoos (I can’t repeat what was said re: this).

I got this gig because I did a presentation earlier this year for the Northwest Oregon Volunteer Administrators Association (NOVAA) on trends in volunteer engagement. NOVAA serves the greater Portland metropolitan area, including Vancouver, Washington. Afterwards, a woman came up, handed me a card, lauded me for my presentation and said, “You are soooo roller derby.”

As I learned from attending two match nights, roller derby players leave everything on the track during a game, and I left everything in that conference room for this training on Sunday; I have never been more exhausted after a training, so determined was I to win these folks over and point them to the resources they need to be even more successful at engaging with volunteers. And one of my favorite comments afterwards was this:

“Srsly, this was awesome. I have a very low tolerance for BS facilitated meetings about hypothetical nonsense. This was none of that.”

Almost made me want to cry… a high compliment, indeed.

If you are putting together a volunteer management conference, listen up: I’m happy to train, and I really hope you will invite me to do so. But invite someone from a roller derby league too – I recommend the Portland league in particular, of course. Because it’s long overdue for these conferences to get a shake up. And I think roller derby may be just the org to do it!

I have seen the future of volunteer engagement and IT’S ROLLER DERBY.

Here’s a photo on Facebook that sums up just what an amazing experience matches can be, btw.