Tag Archives: ethics

Support Your Local Online Discussion Manager!

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logoI’ve dealt with a LOT of debates and conflict on a variety in online discussion groups, and that vast experience lead to creating this resource on how to deal with such, especially for nonprofits, NGOs, government agencies and other mission-based folks. It’s one of the most popular pages on my web site.

Recently, an experience made me realize there was a crucial piece of advice missing on that resource. Here it is:

Support Your Local Online Discussion Manager!

When you, the Executive Director or Marketing Manager or Program Director, see your online discussion manager facilitating an online debate about something your organization is or isn’t doing, the temptation may be for you, the senior person, to jump in and start posting.

That may or may not be a good idea.

It’s a good idea if there is something you need to clarify that you can say better than your online discussion manager, particularly if it might relieve pressure on that person and allow him or her to move the discussion forward. It’s also a good idea if you see the manager under fire – it can be wonderfully motivating for an online community manager that is bruised from an online virtual debate to see your public support for him or her, and it can help for discussion group members see your faith in that person.

However, it’s a bad idea if you are seen as “taking over;” your posting to the discussion can disempower your online discussion manager, reducing his or her importance to the community. Why should the community look to that person as their liaison with the organization online, when you’ve made it clear that YOU are higher up and in-charge, and you took over the discussion?

If you think there is a different way to handle an online situation than your online discussion manager is doing, talk with that person FIRST, and if at all possible, have the discussion  manager continue to be the lead in facilitating the discussion. If you must post something, be sure to add verbiage that shows you still have faith and trust in your online discussion manager, and that you fully support that person.

Read more about how to deal with online criticism / conflict.

February 2, 2021 update:

The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook: Fully Integrating Online Service Into Volunteer Involvement can help you better work with people online, including the manager of your online community, whether or not that person is a volunteer (unpaid). The book talks about building a supportive environment online for your team, how to be clear on roles and tasks, supervising remote staff and more. Also, this is the most comprehensive resource anywhere on working with online volunteers, and on using the Internet to support ALL volunteers, including those you might not think of as “online” volunteers. If you have an online community for any group – volunteers, clients, staff – you will find this book hepful.

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.

The volunteer as bully = the toxic volunteer

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This blog was originally posted 16 August 2010.

So many people — media and corporate people in particular — like to talk about volunteers in the most flowery language possible: volunteers as selfless and hard-working and nice and sweet and huggable. Gosh golly, don’t you love them?!?

I’m not fond of using fuzzy language to talk about volunteers, because I find it degrading and disrespectful. It devalues volunteers and their role in organizations.

While in Australia leading workshops on volunteer management earlier this year, one of the very hot-topics that volunteer managers wanted to talk about was volunteers as bullies. So many were facing a toxic volunteer at their organizations who used abusive language with other volunteers, paid staff and even clients, disrupted meetings and plans that other volunteers were leading or organizing, and were uncooperative regarding following policies and procedures. These toxic volunteers were capable of bringing meetings, planning, events, and even entire programs to a halt.

The volunteer managers felt powerless to deal with the bullies, because these volunteers had often been at the organization longer than the volunteer managers had, because the volunteers were also financial donors, because the volunteers had been honored in the past regarding their service, or because the staff was afraid of the volunteers and didn’t want to provoke them further. Volunteer managers told me that just one volunteer complaint — including complaints about being reprimanded for not following policy —  would result in senior leadership displeasure with the volunteer manager. One person said that her supervisor, in regards to complaints by a long-time volunteer who did not want to follow policy, “I just don’t want to hear it. Make her happy.”

One avoidance tactic upper management uses regarding bullies is to require everyone to go into a conflict management workshop. Those workshops can be really great for other issues, but don’t solve the problem of a bully. In fact, volunteer managers report to me that bullies either come up with a way to beg off attending such or are brilliant at hijacking such workshops, portraying themselves as victims and using the tactics they learn at the workshop to divert responsibility from themselves regarding bullying behavior. And I have to admit that I’ve seen it happen myself.

Since those workshops in Australia, I’ve kept my eye out for good resources regarding bullying in the workplace. One that I found was a blog from the Open University, Office conflict: the impact of workplace bullying. Another terrific resource is How to deal with workplace bullying and how to tackle bullying at work, also from the United Kingdom. My favorite resource, however, regarding petty tyranny in the workplace is the book The No Asshole Rule—Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t, which I’ve blogged about before. His book is about paid employees, but it most definitely applies to volunteers.

My own advice as well:

  • Document, document, document. Have dates, places and details about the actions of a toxic volunteer in writing. Have details in writing on the consequences of the bullying, such as other volunteers not participating in activities if the toxic volunteer will be there, volunteers dropping out of participation altogether, little or no new volunteers participating in certain activities, and complaints from other volunteers, paid staff and clients. Be ready to present these to your supervisor, the head of your human resources department, and even the head of your organization. Don’t wait to be asked to present this information, and don’t be discouraged if your initial presentation of such doesn’t prompt action; it may take several presentations to get the message across that the toxic volunteer must be let go.
  • Be consistent in applying the rules to all volunteers, so there is no possibility of a toxic volunteer claiming you are singling her or him out, something she or he will be tempted to claim to other volunteers and to paid staff she or he has a long-term relationship with. This starts to create an atmosphere where the toxic volunteer will start to feel unwelcomed and will indirectly encourage her or him to move on.
  • Be willing to lose the bully, as well as her or his allies among your volunteers, and to answer questions from staff or other volunteers who express displeasure at their departure. If you create an environment where the bully cannot engage in toxic behavior without having consequences for that behavior, that volunteer will probably leave your organization, but not without a dramatic exit, like a fiery letter or email or an emotional final meeting, and she or he may successfully encourage other volunteers to leave as well. Say goodbye and wish them well and calmly move on, focusing on your remaining volunteers, reaching out to volunteers who left because of the toxic volunteer, recruiting new volunteers, staying dispassionate and staying positive.
  • Never, ever trash talk the bully to other staff or volunteers, even if you consider those staff or volunteers sympathetic to you. Those words could come back to haunt you. Be above reproach in any comments you make about the toxic volunteer, even among allies. It’s fine for volunteers to share complaints with you regarding a bullying volunteer, but keep it dispassionate and don’t allow them to cross a line where they could be accused of being bullies themselves.

Be on the lookout for misinterpretations and misrepresentations of your actions, and ready to respond to such immediately, quickly and decisively.

Don’t think that the situation will somehow work itself out. It won’t.

Also see:

The blog you just read is one of the most popular I ever written and posted. If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site or my YouTube videos and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, the host for this web site, the domain name, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.

Can Komen recover?

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No matter how you feel about abortion services or Planned Parenthood, you have to agree that the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation handled its decision-making and communications regarding its defunding of Planned Parenthood very, very poorly:

  • They did not discuss the decision with their affiliates, let alone involve those affiliates in the decision. Some of the affiliates (Oregon and Connecticut, and perhaps more) even issued press releases after the Komen headquarters announcement asking for their HQ to reconsider. When your organization’s own affiliates are asking PUBLICLY for you to reconsider a decision, you have made a grave error.
  • They gave contradictory statements about why they were defunding Planned Parenthood. Sometimes they said it was because of a new policy not to fund any organization under investigation by state or federal authorities – yet they had no plans to discontinue funding for Penn State! They said the decision wasn’t political, nor because they had hired a dedicated, outspoken advocate against the right to abortion services – Karen Handel – who retweeted this on her Twitter account, contradicting Komen’s statements about this NOT being a political decision:

Scaled

The original image from Lisa McIntire

Today, Komen somewhat reversed its decision regarding Planned Parenthood, but left the door open to stop funding the organization after the current funding cycle. It has not gone unnoticed that Komen has also stopped funding stem cell research. It has also has not gone unnoticed that Karen Handel is still a senior vice president at the Komen foundation.

This PR nightmare is not over for the Komen foundation. Can the foundation rebuild trust with the thousands of women who are saying they will never support the organization again? Can it successfully make this switch in its work, avoiding any organization that garners criticisms from far-right religious advocates, and therefore be the target of women’s rights advocates?

How should have Komen handled both this decision and the communications of such? Or is there any way for them to have done this without suffering such massive fallout with so many (now) former supporters? Share in the comments section here.

Also see: How to Handle Online Criticism.

Requiring jobless to volunteer – reality check

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John Albers, a state lawmaker from the USA State of Georgia, wants people receiving government jobless benefits to have to put in 24 hours of community service a week (read more about the story here).

Did he talk to nonprofits and government programs that involve volunteers and ask if they could involve an influx of new volunteers, putting at least one person to work for 24 hours a week?

No.

Does he know how much staff time and resources are required for a program or agency to involve volunteers, that volunteers are never free – and, therefore, will the government be providing funding to nonprofits and other organizations in order to fund the staff time and resources to involve volunteers in such large blocks of time each week?

No.

Did he do any research on how difficult it is for people who want to volunteer to find opportunities, that people report applying for multiple assignments on web sites like VolunteerMatch, over a period of weeks , sometimes over a period of months, before they ever actually end up volunteering?

No.

I’m all for people who are unemployed looking into volunteering as a way to build their skills for employment, as a way to make contacts that might lead to employment, as a way to get some accomplishments under their belt that would look great on their résumé, and as a way to counter the negative emotional pressures of unemployment.

But finding volunteering activities is hard. VERY hard. Much of my web site has been primarily focused on the organizations that involve volunteers, but I had to create pages focused on people who want to volunteer because of the OVERWHELMING number of people that post again and again to places like YahooAnswers, people who are trying to find volunteering activities and cannot find such.

Why do I get hired again and again to do training on how to involve volunteers? Why does Susan Ellis keep writing and selling so many books on volunteer engagement? Because thousands and thousands of nonprofit organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), schools, government programs and many others do not know how to involve volunteers.

So, reality check, Mr. Albers. If you want organizations to involve more volunteers – and to involve volunteers in such huge chunks of time (24 hours a week – three full work days a week!), then start looking for money to give to these organizations – they will need it to fund the time (and perhaps even the training) of a full-time manager of volunteers who will screen, train, support and supervise all these thousands of volunteers you want to send their way.

It’s About Respect

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This is a followup to my blog A Stupid Name for a Service for Nonprofits, regarding the unbelievably-poorly-named online volunteering service, Pimp My Cause.

The issue isn’t just about a service using language that is anti-women and, indeed, anti-children. It isn’t just about this service using a phrase that means to market women and children for sex. The issue isn’t just about lack of respect for women and children.

The issue is about respect for the third sector.

The work of nonprofits, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), charities and other mission-based organizations – the third sector – isn’t a pastime. It isn’t a hobby. Indeed, sometimes a nonprofit cause does become fashionable – suddenly, the media and celebrities may want to talk about getting rid of landmines, or HIV/AIDS, or immunizations, or breast cancer, or returning war veterans, and lots of flavor-of-the-day social entrepreneurs want to jump on the band wagon, with everyone wearing a particularly-colored ribbon, with lots of bumper stickers for the cause showing up on cars and SUVs, lots of shirts or shoes sporting a particular logo… but that spotlight doesn’t last. Long after the high-profile campaign by the department store or the software company or the talk show host or the singer or the actor has ended, these organizations will still be working, day-in, day-out, on a variety of worthwhile, even vital, causes.

Often, the work of nonprofits not only doesn’t catch on as fashionable or hip – it may even make people uncomfortable, because it addresses a not-so-hip issue, like child sexual exploitation and human trafficking – but nonprofits, NGOs and other mission-based organizations keep working year-after-year, without big-time donations or media campaigns.

The third sector isn’t perfect, but it serves society and the environment in ways that the for-profit or public sector cannot. Some causes are best addressed by the for-profit sector, some are best addressed by governments, and some are best addressed by mission-based organizations – and many are best addressed by all of these sectors working in partnership.

People that work for nonprofits aren’t simply nice people who can’t get jobs in the private sector. They are often highly skilled and experienced experts in their field – child psychology, emergency logistics, crisis communications, theater and dance as tools for community education and empowerment, arts management, social media to build awareness about HIV/AIDS, maternal health, organic agriculture, and on and on. They deserve to be listened to and consulted on actions that are going to involve them or effect them – and that includes being consulted by donors about new programs and projects donors want to fund.

The third sector has its own jargon, its own lingo. And different fields within the third sector each have a jargon or lingo all their own. And when you are talking to the third sector, you had better know that lingo and that culture: For instance, when you are standing in front of Mothers Against Drunk Driving, you don’t talk about drunk driving accidents; you talk about drunk driving wrecks, crashes… deaths. To do otherwise is highly offensive. If you use the term SME, you need to know what it means to the organizations and third sector experts you are talking to: Small and medium enterprises? Subject matter expert? Social Market economy? A Linux firewall?

In summary: if you are going to work with or for mission-based organizations, whether as a volunteer or as someone marketing services to them, you need to do your homework about the sector’s work, it’s language and it’s culture. The third sector deserves respect from the for-profit sector, including corporations, from the media, from the government – from everyone. To not spend time researching the sector and consulting with its members shows profound disrespect for the people working in such, and the people being served by such.  

No one who respects nonprofits, NGOs or other mission-based organizations would ever name their service Pimp My Cause.

Also see: How to Do Market Research–The Basics. I hear there’s some really good books and classes on this subject as well.

Finally, a shout out to the nonprofit FAIR FUND, a leading girls empowerment and anti-human trafficking organization that works to keep girls safe from exploitation. When I let FAIR FUND know about “Pimp My Cause”, they were ALL OVER IT. Follow @FAIRFund on Twitter and consider supporting them with a donation!

 

A Stupid Name for a Service for Nonprofits

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Which one of the following is something that a company actually thought was a great name for a product, event or service?

  • Market to Kids Like an Internet Pedophile! Reach Any Kid With Your Message!
  • Women’s Shelter Wife Beater T-shirts (fundraiser!)
  • Pimp My Cause: Marketing a Better World
  • Nonprofit Marketing: How to Sell Yourself Like a Whore (but not get screwed over!)
  • Effective Volunteer Management: Learn Best Practices from Southern Slave Owners
  • Pole Dancing for Foster Kids (fundraising event)
  • Learn to Screw the Competition and Get That Foundation Grant!

The for real idea is #3, Pimp My Cause: Marketing a Better World.

Yes, some genius thought that naming an online volunteering service after people who enslave women and children and force them to have sex for money would be a great idea for a product name marketed to nonprofit organizations, non-governmental organizations and others – including NGOs working against human trafficking.

In addition to the makers of this service thinking it was a great name, the United Nations Volunteers program did too, tweeting about it to their followers via its @volunteerplus10 account. And i-volunteer, in the UK, wrote about it and never once mentioned anything in their article about the wildly-inappropriate name (but you can, in the comments section of the story, as I have).*

The last time a nonprofit, NGO or volunteerism-focused organization did this that got my attention was back in 2008, when NetSquared and OneWorld – both of whom should have known better – thought “OneWorld.net Gets ‘Pimped’ at NetSquared DC Meetup” was a splendid headline. When I called them on it, their defense was:

We’re really just trying to be a little lighthearted…we use it in the most recent mainstream definition of the word.

Were I to use a racial slur in a little lighthearted way, because in the most recent mainstream definition of the word, it just means friend or man of a particular ethnicity, I have a feeling use of that word would cause quite a bit of outrage. Or what if I’d greeted a female UN Volunteer in an equally lighthearted and mainstream way, calling her bitch or ho or the dreaded “c” word? After all, those terms are used just as freely as pimp these days, and all the singers and actors and comedians interviewed about their use of these words swear they aren’t being derogatory to women.

In the world in which I work — and in the world that nonprofits, NGOs, UN agencies and UN Volunteers work — the word pimp means a person who engages in human enslavement, trafficking and sexual exploitation, and a show on MTV and use by techno hipsters and rap stars doesn’t change that. And in this world, there are millions of people enslaved by pimps. For real.

This is wrong on every level. Shame on everyone who doesn’t think so.

For more information about the sex trafficking of enslaved women and girls, and to understand why there is NOTHING cool or hip about slave traders, also known as “pimps”, please see:

Be sure to let UN Volunteers, the comments section of the i-volunteer article and the makers of this outrageously-named service just how wrong this is. Or, if you don’t feel that way, then feel free to choose any of those name ideas at the start of your article yourself, so I can blog about it.

Update: See the followup to this blog: It’s About Respect – a lesson for all social entrepreneurs, corporations and other for-profit sector folks who want to help nonprofits, NGOs and other mission-based organizations.

* May 5, 2017 update:

I challenge you to go to Twitter and type in this phrase, pimp my cause, into the search function. Not only will the Twitter account for this reprehensibly-named organization come up, but look at the tweets and profiles that also come up. This is what any potential client would also see if they went looking. It shows all-too-well why the word pimp should not be used in a nonprofit’s name.

UNV’s @volunteerplus10 Twitter account has been discontinued, as have the IVO, i-volunteer, sagesf.org and againstourwill.org web sites , and the Against Our Will video, What is a Pimp, is no longer available online – at least that I can find. I managed to find the IVO/i-volunteer page originally referred to at archive.org, via this URL:
http://www.i-volunteer.org.uk:80/newshound/marketing-a-better-world-pimp-my-cause/

Photos & videos by & of volunteers online – privacy issues?

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Following up on the post from yesterday regarding why nonprofits, NGOs and other mission-based organizations shouldn’t use stock photos, let’s talk today about privacy issues with photos of volunteers, particularly children.

Back in 2010 on UKVPMs, a discussion group for volunteer managers in the United Kingdom, someone wrote:

I have vague memories of this issue being discussed before, but I’m looking into guidance (mainly for volunteers, but also for paid staff and service users) around people posting photo’s or video clips etc on You Tube and similar sites. If working with children and/or  other vulnerable groups, are there clear legal responsibilities we need to be aware of ? I don’t have a deal of experience in this area, so don’t know how much vetting the sites carry out themselves and how reliable this might be. Is data protection an issue

Video and photo-sharing sites do NOT vet any photos or videos submitted to their sites, just as the phone company isn’t responsible for what you are saying in a phone conversation.

It’s important to remember that, in most countries, you cannot legally control what people take photos of or film at a public event. Think of it as the picnic in the public park rule — you cannot control someone taking photos or film of you if you are having a picnic in a public park, regardless of whether or not kids are present.

That said, you should ask your staff and volunteers (same rule for all) to adhere to certain rules regarding taking photos or filming at any of your organization’s activities, public or not, and to adhere to certain rules regarding what they do with that film and video. You need to determine what those rules should be. You need to let volunteers know this includes whatever they do with their cell phones (so no one can say — “Oh, I thought you just meant cameras“).

Do all of your staff and volunteers already sign photo release forms, saying that photos may be taken of them at organization activities in which they participate and may be used in your own outreach activities (your web site, your blog, brochures, slide show presentations, posters, etc.)? Do parents of all children participating in your programs sign such a form? If not, you definitely should get busy getting such a form put together and signed by everyone now, and everyone who joins later. You can find lots of examples of photo release forms on Google.

I don’t know how much these releases would count in a court, but they do create awareness among participants that photos are sometimes taken. I haven’t lost any volunteers over the signing of such a policy — has anyone else? (I’d be interested to hear how you handled such in the comments section below — or did you lose the volunteer altogether?).

Do you already have a policy regarding how your organization identifies children in photos? (first name only, no names at all, etc.) Make sure all staff and volunteers know this policy. If you don’t have such a policy, again, look on Google — lots of organization’s share their policy. Some I found:

With the photo release and children-in-photos policies taken care of, talk with staff and volunteers and involve them in the development of further policies regarding taking photos and film during organization activities, and how they use these photos and videos. Reinforce your confidentiality policies and children-identification-in-photos policy during these conversations. Be clear about what cannot be filmed or posted under any circumstances (personnel discussions, staff meetings, counseling sessions, etc.). I find that involving people in the conversation about policy development (asking for their feedback in my online discussion group for volunteers, at onsite meetings, informally when we meet, etc.) better guarantees people will embrace it and make sure it is enforced.

If you are going to prohibit all such photo and video-taking, you need to have very clear reasons why (in writing and in conversations), and you need to talk about what the consequences will be to staff and volunteers if the prohibition is violated. You also need to consider the consequences of such a draconian ban — you will be losing out on a significant public outreach tool. Volunteers can create a LOT of interest among their friends, family and associates for your organization when they share photos and videos of their activities as a volunteer. Also, you will probably lose more volunteers over such a draconian ban than you will if you allow photos to be taken.

One of the guidelines I have is to ask staff and volunteers to always announce to their colleagues “I’m taking photos/video now!” before they start doing so, and to respect the wishes of people who say they do not want to be filmed. Ask staff and volunteers to respect the wishes of their fellow volunteers who may contact them and ask that an image that features them on their own Flickr account (or other photo-sharing site) or YouTube account to be removed (note that these accounts are owned by them, not you). Ask staff and volunteers to share links to videos and photos with the organization, as a courtesy. Talk with volunteers about what a photo dispute might look like and how such could be negotiated/mediated (you could give them two or three fictional scenarios for discussion). And, as noted above, ask for their own suggestions for policies.

For whatever you come up with in terms of guidelines, you will have to reinforce the message frequently — you can’t just deliver the message once and expect it to be heard.

Related blogs and sites:

Social media policies for mission-based organizations

Forget the stock photos; make your own photo archive

Photos of me at work

Tags: photos, communications, communicating, mission, outreach, story, news, volunteering, volunteers, community, engagement, volunteerism, smartphones, PDAs, camera, phone, cell

Don’t use stock photos; make your own photo archive

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One of the many online communities I’m on had a posting by someone from a nonprofit organization looking for stock photos of volunteers to use in a brochure they were producing.

And I cringed.

Stock photos are professionally-produced photos made available for companies and organizations to use to express a certain notion or idea. Stock photos are also of people who have no affiliation with the company or organization that uses them on their web sites, in their brochures, etc. You see stock photos in picture frames for sale.

A stock photo used by a nonprofit organization on its web site, in its brochure, or on a poster is obvious — and dishonest. To me, it screams, “These are professional models who don’t actually volunteer here/aren’t actually clients here!”

Unless the identity of your volunteers or clients needs to be protected (and that certainly does happen — for instance, with domestic violence shelters), you should have a folder on your computer system (on your local network, in the cloud, whatever) filled with digital photos showing genuine volunteers, clients, staff and others, ready for use in your marketing materials and fund-raising proposals.

The good news is that you can easily compile such a stock photo archive!

Begin by ensuring that you have a signed photo release for every volunteer at your organization. Volunteers should be asked to sign such a form at the time they attend the first orientation or volunteering session or with their completed volunteer application. If you intend to take photos at an activity or event where clients will be present, you will also need to get a photo release form for any clients (or anyone else) who might be photographed. You can find samples of photo release forms by typing in this phrase into Google.com or your favorite online search tool:
photo release form

Next, make sure every paid staff member, every unpaid volunteer, every client and every parent or guardian of a client knows your organization’s policies regarding taking photos in association with your organization’s activities (again, just type photo policy into Google.com or your favorite online search tool to find examples of such), and within the boundaries of those policies, invite them to take photos in association with your organization’s activities and to share these photos with your organization. With most smart phones and other handheld tech coming with a camera, your volunteers and clients may already be taking photos. Remind everyone associated with your organization, via regular meetings or regular online or print communications, both of these policies and that you would like such photos shared with you (people need to hear messages more than once in order to have them in mind).

Note in your event or activity announcements if photos might be taken. Whoever takes photos should identify him or herself to those being photographed. This should be a part of your photography policies that you have communicated organization-wide.

When photographing at events where people may not know me, I ask that whomever kicks off the meeting to announce that I’m taking photos that could appear on our web site or in printed materials, and that if anyone does not want their photo used, they should raise their hand any time they see me taking a photo they might be a part of so that later, when going through photos later, I will delete any photo of a person who is raising their hand, or crop them out of the photo. This worked really well when I took photos at community meetings in Afghanistan (more about Taking Photos in the Developing World, a resource I developed while working in Afghanistan in 2007).

Frequently encourage volunteers, employees and clients to share photos they have taken at your events or during volunteering activities with your organization (they need to hear this message more than once!). The best way to share photos is, IMO, via Flickr (photos can be shared with just your organization, without sharing them with the entire world) or via Drop Box (don’t accept photos via email – it uses too much bandwidth and will slow your emails down!).

As photos come in to you, create a folder on your computer or drive for photos you might want to use on your web site, in a brochure, in a fundraising proposal, etc. Look for photos that have at least one of these qualities:

  • shows action
  • shows smiles
  • shows diversity
  • teens
  • seniors

If you don’t have software or an operating system that allows you to organize and search photos easily, create a naming system for photos, sub-folders and files on your computer so you can easily find photos for certain kinds of images, such as photos that show:

  • female participation
  • senior/elder participation
  • multi-cultural participation
  • physical action
  • enjoyment/happiness
  • caring
  • etc.

If you can afford to use a professional photographer and have photo setups, where volunteers pretend to be in the middle of a service activity, or where staff pretend to be engaged in their work, great! It’s okay to set up a photo — just use your own folks, not professional models.

Stay genuine! That attracts people much more than even the slickest of stock images.

March 26, 2018 update: I was working on a very large PR campaign with a colleague. I wanted to solicit photos from various sources to use in our campaign, photos of people engaged in an activity that related to our campaign. She wanted to use stock photos. I relented for various reasons. A year later, I stopped at a gas station in Kentucky, and while inside, looked up at a poster about job opportunities with this particular company. There was a series of photos that I guess were meant to represent people that work for the company. And among that series of photos was one that we had used prominently in our own campaign, which had nothing to do with gas stations… I realize it’s unlikely that anyone else made the connection, and I certainly don’t dislike gas stations – I’m quite fond of their services. But it was a reminder of why using stock photos is often a very bad idea.

March 8, 2021 update: Here is a fantastic blog about a company that created its own photo stock library, using its own assets (it’s own offices). I think going round your building with a smartphone, taking snaps and adding insta filters will always trump purchasing stock images. What a great task for volunteers to undertake for your organization!

It’s okay to say “no” to an online connection

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When the popularity of the World Wide Web exploded in the late 1990s and every individual and organization decided they each needed a web site, requests abounded for link exchanges:

I’ll link to your web site if you will link to mine.

At first, it was an always-say-yes proposition. But nonprofit organizations in particular realized quickly that it wasn’t a good idea to link to anyone who asked: what if the request was from a corporation engaged in activities that went against the mission of the nonprofit? or if the request came from an individual who had material on his or her web site that insults particular groups of people, or encourages people to break the law? Many organizations developed web link policies; for instance, a nonprofit would link to a web page only if its content was directly, obviously related to the mission of the organization.

Now, the popularity of online networking sites permeates our culture, with everyone, including many nonprofits, in a rush to build up their online profiles on various platforms and to build a high number of online friends. But is it really appropriate for you to accept every invitation to connect to your profile on an online networking site?

It’s not only your nonprofit that needs to think strategically its online networking presence – you, as a volunteer or employee at a nonprofit organization, need to think about the purpose of your own online networking as well. If you link to anyone, anytime, on any platform, with no criteria for what connections mean to you, don’t be surprised if you find yourself over time lacking motivation to network online, as linking becomes mechanical instead of influential, without any meaning behind your connections. Your links become just numbers, rather than real connections to with which to share and collaborate.

LinkedIn is a professional networking site. My Linkin connections are real connections: they are current and former co-workers and clients, volunteers I’ve supervised or worked with, people who have attended a workshop I’ve presented, classmates, and various other people I’ve worked with in such a way that I would be able to say something about them, people whose work I’m very familiar with, or people who are familiar with my work. That keeps LinkedIn connections of real value to me, rather than the online equivalent of a stack of business cards. My connections can view each other and know that these aren’t just a long list of names and email addresses I have no real connection to — these are my colleagues, in every sense of the word, and my colleagues are welcomed to leverage my connections for their own professional reasons.

By contrast, I’m not always comfortable with professional colleagues and fellow volunteers wanting to connect to me via social networking profiles. Do I really want former supervisors to get regular, automatic updates about my vacations, political causes with which I’m involved, and which Buffy: The Vampire Slayer character I’m most like? Of course, with sites like Google, it’s quite easy for anyone, including potential employers, to find out just about anything about anyone – but, IMO, there’s a difference in being able to find information about me if you go looking for it and are willing to dig awhile, versus getting an automatic electronic update about my political views.

Consider developing your own linking policy for your online networking activities – both those you do as an organization and those you do as an individual. What do you want your links on professional sites like LinkedIn to see about you, versus your connections on make-a-difference networks like Change.org, versus your online social networking on FaceBook? There have never been absolute lines in our lives where work and volunteering ends and social activities begin, of course, and you will always have gray areas, but it’s still worth thinking about, to keep your online connections true connections, with some kind of real value to them.

When you say no to an online connection, consider offering an alternative. For instance, to people who ask to link to me on Linkedin whom I don’t know, I offer the alternative of getting to know each other online professionally, inviting the person to:

  • friend me on my professional Facebook profile (as opposed to my personal one)
  • Follow me Twitter at @jcravens42
  • subscribe to my email newsletter, Tech4Impact, which gives nonprofits and other mission-based organizations byte-sized tips for getting the most out of tech tools, as well as offering a list of my most-recent blog posts.
  • Subscribe to my blog via RSS (not necessary if they do any of the above)
  • Share his or her blog address with me

As I’ve said many times before, the biggest value from the Internet is, and has always been, the ability to connect with people interested in an area similar to what you are interested in, and to be able to collaborate with and learn from these people no matter where you are on Earth. But when I say connect, I don’t mean just marking someone as a connection on LinkedIn or as a friend on FaceBook or whatever. When I want to actually connect with someone online:

  • I send the person an email or make a post to his or her blog, commenting on something that person has written or said. 
  • I post questions, answers and resources on an online discussion group with a membership that includes people I would very much like to know, and that I want to know me (and I still get way more value out of YahooGroups and GoogleGroups than I do LinkedIn or FaceBook).
  • I invite people to post comments on my own network in reply to my blog.
  • I refer someone to a person or resource, in response to something they have written online.
  • etc.

This does lead to real connections — people I end up collaborating with, recommending to others, co-presenting with, even working with or for, or hiring.

And one more thing: accept that there are two yous. Maybe even three yous. Maybe even more.

There is your professional, public you: the one that works at such-and-such company, went to such-and-such university, serves on such-and-such board of directors, lives in such-and-such city and uses your first and last name in your emails and online profiles, etc. This is the you that is easy to find by co-workers, potential employers, even the media. The public you is the one that comes up in the first pages of a Google search.

There is also your personal you: the one that engages in activities you wouldn’t necessarily want all of your co-workers or potential employers to know about in a readily-easy manner, the one that writes Harry Potter fan fiction, the one that is overtly politically-opinionated, and doesn’t use your first and last name in your emails and online profiles, etc. These activities may be easy to find online, but aren’t so easy to associate with you by co-workers, potential employers or the media even if they find it, because you don’t use your full first and last name, because you don’t list the city where you are, because you never mention your employer, etc.

You have to decide where each of your activities, online or offline, fall among these two — or more — yous.

Maybe you want to keep your volunteering activities and books you’ve read and so on in your personal you online activities. Or maybe you want to share even more in your public you profiles. The point is: you have control of the information you share online. Be deliberate, or at least thoughtful, in what you share and how you share information.

Tags: communications, personal, private, outreach, networking, connections, friends, connect, network, volunteering, volunteers, community, engagement, volunteerism, social, business

Volunteer Centers not involving volunteers?!?

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Colleague Martin Cowling recently did a training with a group of volunteer centers (he’s being coy about which country he was in, but I have my suspicions…) and he asked how many of them utilize volunteers in their own operations.  

The majority of these volunteer centers did not not involve volunteers themselves.

As he says in his blog on this subject:

The reasons these guys had for not engaging volunteers in their own work were jaw dropping when you consider these were Volunteer Centres:

  • “the roles are too complex”
  • “we don’t have time to train volunteers”
  • “we know we should have volunteers”
  • “we have one volunteer”
  • “we have found volunteers to be unreliable“

Martin concludes:

The very institutions charged with promoting volunteerism should be the ones who engage volunteers first.

For those of you in the USA of a certain age: remember how on Saturday Night Live, Prymaat Conehead would suddenly start saying, “Unacceptable! Unacceptable!” when he was really upset? That’s how I feel right now. I think the shape of my head alters as well as I hear about volunteer centers that don’t involve volunteers.

Why would anyone trust a volunteer center, or a nonprofit that runs an online database of volunteering opportunities, that does not involve volunteers themselves?!

If your organization promotes volunteerism, you had better have volunteers at your organization – short-term volunteers/micro-volunteers, leadership volunteers, and everything in between! And you had better note that involvement on your web site!

And I’ll go further:

If you are a volunteer manager, a volunteer resources manager, or anyone else responsible for recruiting and placing volunteers at your organization, you had better involve volunteers yourself in your own work, in all the ways you are wanting other staff to involve volunteers!

and

If you are a volunteer management/community engagement consultant, you had better volunteered yourself, worked with other volunteers, volunteers online, and otherwise engaged in volunteer management-related activities in at least the last six months!

How can you call yourself a credible volunteer center, a credible promoter of volunteerism, or a credible volunteer management trainer otherwise?!

Also see

UK Volunteering Tsar Doesn’t Have Time to Volunteer

Jayne Cravens: As a Volunteer

Tags: volunteering, volunteers, community, engagement, international, volunteerism, volunteering, training, trainer