Tag Archives: Jayne Cravens

free/discounted apps/tech tools that every nonprofit should know about

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images meant to look like cave drawings, one of a woman using a smartphone and one at a desktop computer.

I use to regularly write about this subject – about what I thought were the best free/discounted apps/tech tools that most nonprofits should know about, especially the small ones, the ones under 20 people who barely had tech budgets. But honestly, I can barely keep up with things, plus, there’s such a need for highly-specialized software by specific type of nonprofits. Just take a gander into the various software used by nonprofits that run food banks, or what’s used by animal shelters, or what’s used by museums, and you will see what I mean.

But there was a recent thread on the nonprofit subreddit and I found myself wanting to join in. Here is how I answer the question:

  • Google Drive (word processing, spread sheets, presentations, forms, calendar, photos, shared work features, etc.)
  • Gmail, including Gmail chat
  • LibreOffice (word processing, spread sheets, presentations – great alternative to Microsoft, and works with Microsoft tools)
  • Cyberduck – for FTP
  • Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram.
  • VolunteerMatch for volunteer recruitment
  • Canva
  • Grammarly
  • WordPress for blogs and websites (many web hosts provide free templates as well)

I’ll also give a shoutout to two tools that have gone away: YahooGroups, which was an AMAZING online collaboration tool that I miss beyond measure, and BlueGriffon, an amazing HTML editor that stopped being updated in 2019 and no longer works on my laptop. I have never found the equal of these wonderful tools.

Have a look at the thread on the nonprofit subreddit and this related thread on TechSoup for more. And add your own on those conversations and in the comments below! But it’s helpful if you don’t just list the software: say what kind of nonprofit uses it, what your role is, the size of your staff (including volunteers), etc.

If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, 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. 

Remote work makes who does & doesn’t actually do work way more obvious

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For many years, in promoting virtual volunteering, I’ve talked about how it’s very hard to fake it when you volunteer online: if you say you have web design skills, and I get you started on a project, I find out very quickly if you really do have web design skills or not. If you say that you can translate something from English to Spanish because of your language fluency, I find out very quickly if that’s true or not. With online volunteers, I’m experiencing people based on their work and productivity almost immediately.

By contrast, I have been fooled many times by onsite volunteers: they come in on time, they are oh-so-nice, I see them onsite, walking in the halls or sitting at a desk, we chat here and there, and I just assume they are doing what they are supposed to be doing. I mean, they are THERE, right? I can see them and, therefore, they are volunteering, right? And later, I find out they haven’t done most, or any, of what they signed up to do, or they haven’t been doing it well.

That isn’t to say that I prefer online volunteers to onsite volunteers, but it certainly has changed how I manage people, volunteer and employee alike, onsite or online: I require onsite staff I am managing to check-in and report on what they are doing as often as online volunteers, and in the same way: in writing, via email or an online system I’ve set up. I want to know very quickly if a volunteer or employee is doing what they’ve signed up to do, what I NEED them to do. Weekly or bi-weekly check-ins are a must – it can be as simple as an email, but I have to have an update, something more than “I’m working on that.” And I do the same: my direct reports know what I’m working on as well, what is challenging me, what my priorities are, what my deadlines are, etc.

I’ve also said many times that organizations that start employing virtual volunteering – using the Internet to support and engage volunteers – may find out, as a result, that their manager of volunteers isn’t a very good manager. That person may have also have been judged by being seen walking in the halls, talking to volunteers and sitting at a desk, and always having a smile for everyone, rather than on abilities to create tasks and roles for volunteers, guiding staff who work with volunteers, tracking successes with volunteers, identifying challenges and addressing them, etc.

Similar thoughts can be found in this essay in The Atlantic by Ed Zitron. He’s writing about how companies need to let go of the idea that employees and consultants need to always be onsite:

Remote work lays bare many brutal inefficiencies and problems that executives don’t want to deal with because they reflect poorly on leaders and those they’ve hired. Remote work empowers those who produce and disempowers those who have succeeded by being excellent diplomats and poor workers, along with those who have succeeded by always finding someone to blame for their failures. It removes the ability to seem productive (by sitting at your desk looking stressed or always being on the phone), and also, crucially, may reveal how many bosses and managers simply don’t contribute to the bottom line… I have known so many people within my industry (and in others) who have built careers on “playing nice” rather than on producing something. I have seen examples within companies I’ve worked with of people who have clearly stuck around because they’re well liked versus productive…Remote work makes who does and doesn’t actually do work way more obvious.

How nice to see the corporate world once again catching up with the nonprofit world (grin).

I’m never going to want to entirely stop working with people in same place, at the same time. I do think there are some things that can happen in an office that just cannot happen remotely. An example: at a nonprofit that produced an event with more than 150 online volunteers in an eight-week period, the night before the launch, myself and another staff member sat at the same table, in the same place and time in Austin, Texas, with our laptops, a massive whiteboard and some yummy snacks, rapidly putting together all of the things that had to be in place. It was hours of frantic, at-times stressful, incredibly energizing work, and there’s an efficiency and clarity in having the person right there, at the table across from you, reacting in real-time, that can never be matched by Slack or Zoom. By the time we were finished from this marathon work session, we were mentally spent but oh-so-celebratory, and we broke out our favorite live musical moments on YouTube and all sang along at the top of our lungs. That wouldn’t have been at all the same at home. It wouldn’t have been as productive or as fun. But I carried that experience, and the onsite event launch, back with me when I returned to my home office in Oregon, and it fueled my remote work for the next several weeks. I felt oh-so-close to co-workers I’d spent those intense days with. Our incredible productivity and teamwork continued for the eight weeks of the project when we all went back to working remotely, and we were a stronger team for that onsite, face-to-face experience, no question – but working remotely after that was not just fine, but much more appropriate for the bulk of the project.

I was the chair of a board of directors last year, for a program that gives away small grants to nonprofits. We asked the county government agency a few times three years ago if we could have at least some meetings remotely, and were told, absolutely, NO. When the pandemic came along, suddenly, that thing we were not allowed to do, that could not be done, was permissible and possible. And I think our board meetings have been much more efficient as a result, with much better attendance, and much more productive. Do I want to get together face-to-face eventually? Sometimes, yes. But there’s no question: the norm for these board meetings should be online.

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

If you are a manager of volunteers and you want a better way to support and engage all of your volunteers, even if all of their service is onsite at your organization, The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook is worth your time. And if you want to create more tasks and roles for volunteers online – and you should, no matter the focus of your organization, even if your volunteers do things that must be done onsite, like care for animals in a shelter, repair roofs on homes where elderly people live, plant trees, whatever – this is the book for you. It’s available both as a traditional print publication and as a digital book.

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.

Nine plus four emerging volunteer engagement trends (a VERY different list than you will read elsewhere)

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graphic by Jayne Cravens representing volunteers

Lots of people public predictions of upcoming trends in volunteer engagement – and often, these are people who are not managers of volunteers nor researchers regarding volunteerism. Their lists are things like People want micro tasks! – something many have said year after year, and something that, in practice, never seems to be what people are actually looking for, no matter what they might say in surveys. In other words, most of the lists seem to be focus on a casual, perfunctory view of volunteer engagement, not one based on reality, on actual experience.

Below is MY list of growing trends in volunteer management. It’s based on:

  • what I’ve seen on online communities like the volunteer subreddit and various other regionally-based subreddits, as well as on Twitter and on TechSoup,
  • what I’ve seen in the comments on Facebook posts by various nonprofits requesting volunteers,
  • what I’ve seen in emails and DMs sent to me (people like to share things with me, which I very much appreciate),
  • conversations with oh-so-many volunteers, wanna-be volunteers, and managers of volunteers,
  • my own work with volunteers and in volunteer management.

And after my own list, I post four more points from another organization that I agree with very much (hence why I called my blog “Nine plus four emerging volunteer engagement trends.”

  1. People want to know why a position is unpaid & don’t always like the answer.

Especially for positions that require particular skills, like web development, video editing, graphic design, translation, online community management, accounting/financial management or social media management, people want to know why the role is unpaid instead of a paid position – and “we can’t afford to pay someone” is NOT the answer they accept. They are also pushing back against unpaid internships at nonprofits. Also, labor unions, professional associations and people with disabilities are asking why people who are experts in something are being asked to donate their services, without being paid for their time (groups that are experiencing high unemployment are particularly angry).

Most organizations don’t have a mission statement for their volunteer engagement, one that could help guide the organization on when a role should or should not be an unpaid role. Most organizations also haven’t thought about ethical issues, like the inappropriateness and disrespect to people with hearing issues of having a student studying American Sign Language trying to interpret a live event rather than someone with this particular skillset and credentials, specifically.

The result of this trend if it’s not addressed properly: a continuing backlash against ALL volunteering.

2. People want much more support as volunteers.

Especially true of public-facing volunteers, like members of school boards and people expected to support youth or at-risk populations. These volunteers are being asked to recognize and report child abuse, deal with extremely angry parents and navigate potentially violent situations. They need specific training on these issues and they need continued support regarding such – and that training and support costs money that most governments and corporations balk at funding.

The result of this trend if it’s not addressed properly: fewer people volunteering for community, city and county government advisory boards, more people with specific political agendas doing so. Fewer people volunteering for critical volunteering roles with children, or with people who might be experiencing mental health issues, meaning many programs, like youth sports leagues or programs to support homeless people, have to be canceled.

3. Volunteers want to know why their service matters.

A mug, a t-shirt, a thank you event via zoom – it’s just not enough of a “thank you” to volunteers, not anymore, and maybe it never was. Volunteers want to know WHY their service mattered. That does not mean saying the monetary value of their hours. It does not mean saying platitudes like, “We just couldn’t function without you!” Rather, it means talking regularly on social media, in the organization’s non-volunteer-focused events, and in board meetings about how what volunteers did made some kind of difference regarding the organization’s mission. It means integrating talk about the value of volunteers – and NOT monetary value – into all communications by the organization, public and internal.

4. Volunteers want to have fun, and/or an enlightening experience.

So many organizations that involve volunteers have forgotten that volunteers aren’t just laborers working for free, who show up, do what needs to be done and leave. For instance, firehouses that involve volunteer first responders seem to have forgotten the social aspects that many people seek through volunteering, and that interacting with fellow first responders outside of official duties – a sporting event, a picnic, a campout, a training or event not related specifically to their service, etc. – can help everyone recognize strengths in each other they may not have seen otherwise, further build a sense of team, and further build a connection to the community they serve.

Focusing on activities and events that are fun and that further build a sense of team and a stronger commitment to an organization and its cause is not just a good thing to do for volunteer recruitment and retainment: societies are becoming increasingly polarized. We all need to care about each other and our overall communities more, and that kind of caring comes from being around a diversity of people in contexts outside of professional work and standing in lines to buy something.

I was on a board for a nonprofit that gives away grants to arts organizations. I thought this would be a great experience to celebrate and learn about the arts in my community, but for most of the time, it’s been just work. A TON of work. In one year, I received more than 1000 emails just from fellow board members. After three years, I left, because there’s no fun. There’s no enlightenment. I was getting resentful about the arts instead of being inspired by them. The county government our organizations supported also was silent about our hours and hours of work.

5. People want “heart” from volunteering

I’ve struggled with the word to use here – personal doesn’t feel quite right. So I went with heart. What I mean is this: I think many people are just so, so hungry for very human experiences, where they hear voices, look into people’s eyes, feel like they are having a sincere, human interaction. They want to feel like they are in a community. Once it is safe to do so, people are going to fill concert halls, theaters, crafts classes, dance classes, sports events – I know this is happening in some places already, despite it spreading the deadly novel coronavirus every time, but in other places, where the culture is one more focused on personal safety and community, it’s not. Once hospitalizations finally go down, after years of a global pandemic, very personal experiences are going to be like a balm for the soul. No, that does NOT mean virtual volunteering is going away. Let me say it again: virtual volunteering can be a highly personal, even emotional experience.

Volunteers, more and more, are wanting to feel connected to other humans, and they want their volunteering service to provide some of that.

6. Managers of volunteers must master tech tools.

Not all of the tools – that’s impossible – but definitely social media (and not just Facebook), online community platforms and volunteer management software – beyond spreadsheets. The managers of volunteers that prosper – that are able to recruit and engage a diversity of volunteers in a diversity of projects and are valued within their organizations – will understand basic web design and be able to update the text on a web page, be able to edit a simple video and share it on YouTube and know how the audio software works on their laptop or phone so they can record things – like a conversation for a podcast.

7. An increasing number of traditional volunteering programs that refuse to evolve will disappear.

The town where I live no longer has an Optimist Club. Most of the remaining service clubs in town have seen dramatic drops in membership. Why? Those service clubs refuse to change: they don’t have social media channels or, if they do, they don’t update them regularly with event information, recognition of volunteers, information about how to volunteer, etc. They don’t post to the subreddit for their town. They don’t reach out to new residents. Their web site, if they have one, hasn’t been updated in years. They don’t invite the members of the high school Key Club or anyone from the high school or university newspaper to their events. They over-rely on Facebook as a way to advertise activities – and even then, don’t use it very well.

People under 40 really want to volunteer – just spend a few minutes on Reddit and you will see just how hungry young people are to volunteer. But they don’t know about service clubs, so they try to start their own. They don’t know about Meals on Wheels – that’s why they all tried to start their own meal and grocery delivery programs when the COVID-19 pandemic started. They don’t know about existing mentoring and tutoring programs, like Junior Achievement – so they try to start their own.

If your nonprofit is struggling to attract members, program participants or volunteers, here’s my challenge to you: try to find your information about such online, via a search engine or on Facebook, WITHOUT using your program’s name. Try to find it just using the name of your city and the word volunteer or community service, for instance. Here’s more on diagnosing the causes of volunteer recruitment problems (one of the most popular blogs I’ve ever written).

8. Trying to please corporate donors will further hurt volunteerism

Corporations say we want more microvolunteering, so nonprofits pour resources into creating micro tasks, something inefficient, time-consuming, and often more about creating busywork than getting things done that a nonprofit actually needs done. Also, corporations want a monetary value for volunteer time, so organizations will continue to focus on that, which will create more hostility with labor unions and the unemployed, who see it as more fuel for their argument that volunteer engagement is an effort to cut costs by cutting paid positions.

The pushback against corporations who say this is what they want is so overdue. Nonprofits have got to start saying “no” to corporations demanding volunteer engagement that is, in fact, creating conflict and more, and unnecessary, work for nonprofits.

9. Virtual volunteering will continue to become so mainstream that we stop talking about it.

Online roles and tasks for volunteers have not been unusual nor innovative for a few years now. Virtual volunteering was already widespread long before the COVID-19 global pandemic, and calling an online role virtual volunteering often isn’t even done anymore – it’s simply volunteering. Not that there isn’t going to continue to be a need to talk about creating virtual volunteering roles, managing virtual teams, supporting online volunteers, etc. – just as there is always going to be a need to talk about other volunteering modalities, like creating volunteering roles for families or corporate groups, and how best to support those groups. But that hard wall so many put up in talking about virtual volunteering as something entirely separate from traditional, onsite volunteering – that’s long been crumbling.

On a related note: back in 2017, the UK-based Association of Volunteer Managers published a blog, Ten Ten: How Does The Next Decade Look For Volunteering. These four points stood out to me then and still stand out to me now, four years later, because I think this is absolutely where volunteer engagement is going – or, at least, where it MUST go:

  • The potential for volunteering will go on growing. Whether its volunteers in schools, welcoming refugees, campaigning against government cuts, or helping neighbours, we haven’t begun to reach saturation in the ways that volunteering can change society.

It’s absolutely true: we haven’t begun to reach anywhere near the saturation in the ways, the potential in the ways, that volunteering can be leveraged to improve our world. When I talk about all of the ways organizations are involving just online volunteers, I watch people’s eyebrows raise – they start to realize just how much more volunteers could be doing at their organizations. And when I talk about volunteers engaged in delivering mission-based programming, I have seen mouths start to gape as it dawns on people that volunteers are so much more than people who get tasks done.

  • Volunteer managers will have specialisms just like fundraisers do. There are over 15 types of fundraising expertise. Expect volunteering management to become more and more specialist as it matures, just as fundraising has.

This is already happening, as predicted! There are volunteer managers who specialize in one-time, just-show-up group volunteering events, those who specialize in hack-a-thons and edit-a-thons, those who specialize in online transcription-based projects mobilizing hundreds of volunteers at once, those who specialize in volunteers as mentors for at-risk youth, those who specialize in volunteer activities for teens or for seniors or for immigrants or for people on parole or are incarcerated, and on and on.

  • Intertwining specific audiences by demographics (eg working parents) and product (eg micro-volunteering) will be the breakfast of volunteering champions. In other words, the best organisations will understand exactly who their volunteers are, or could be, and create the volunteering products to encourage, entice and engage them ever more into giving their time.

A thousand times this! Those who manage programs for volunteer engagement will be at the table with those that manage fundraising, those that manage marketing, those that manage program, and the HR Director (because HR and volunteer engagement are NOT the same thing!).

I would word this point differently. It says originally:

  • The most far-sighted charities will invest in volunteer recruitment the way they do donor recruitment. Typically they may invest several hundred pounds in donor recruitment and the total budget may amount to millions of pounds in the biggest charities. I wonder how many volunteer managers even have a recruitment budget.

Change it to this and it’s accurate:

The most far-sighted charities will invest in volunteer engagement the way they do donor recruitment. Typically they may invest several hundred pounds in donor recruitment and the total budget may amount to millions of pounds in the biggest charities. I wonder how many volunteer managers even have a budget for every aspect of their volunteer engagement, from recruitment to support to recognition to results-tracking?

And those are my predictions about trends in volunteerism. What are yours?

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.

Most popular blogs of 2021

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It’s the end of a calendar year, and that means it’s time to look at what were my most popular blogs of 2021 – and to try to figure out why. It’s an exercise I do not so much for YOU, my readers, but for me. It’s the kind of self-analysis every nonprofit, NGO, government agency, or consultant for such should do.

One seismic shift this year: not one blog I published this year made it to the list of top 11 blogs of all time. Usually, I knock off at least one blog from the top 11 spot – but not this year.

My top 11 blogs for 2021 – the ones that got the most clicks:

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

It was also another good year for The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook – lots of sales (though not as many as in 2020). If you want to learn how to avoid the common pitfalls in virtual volunteering and to dig far deeper into the factors for success in creating assignments for online volunteers, supporting online volunteers, and keeping virtual volunteering a worthwhile endeavor for everyone involved, you will not find a more detailed guide anywhere than The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. It’s available both as a traditional print publication and as a digital book. And if you buy it directly from me, the last two boxes in my closet will soon go away! I also get a bit more money than if you buy it from Amazon (and it’s slightly cheaper to buy from me as well).

Also see Reflections on Virtual Volunteering in 2020 (& My Most Popular Blogs for the Year).

Here’s to 2022!

If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, 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. 

25 years ago: launch of the Virtual Volunteering Project

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25 years ago, give or take a week or two, I started my first day as director of the Virtual Volunteering Project, a then-new initiative that had been founded by a nonprofit organization, Impact Online (Impact Online was later absorbed by VolunteerMatch).

More than a year before the launch of the Virtual Volunteering Project, Impact Online had begun promoting the idea of virtual volunteering, a phrase that was probably first used by one of Impact Online’s co-founders, Steve Glikbarg. In early 1996, Impact Online received a grant from the James Irvine Foundation to launch an initiative to research the practice of virtual volunteering and to promote the practice to nonprofit organizations in the USA. This new initiative was dubbed the Virtual Volunteering Project.

The New York Times, on 13 May 1996, published Taking in the Sites; Now, It’s Philanthropy Surfing on the Internet, an article about the proliferation of web sites that facilitated online giving or online volunteering in some way. The article included this part:

One nonprofit group, Impact Online, was created to help charities use the Web. The group, in Palo Alto, Calif., uses its site to match what it calls ‘virtual volunteers’ with organizations that need them, and has begun a data base of group logos and missions.

This might be the first use of the term virtual volunteers in a newspaper, but any article about Project Gutenberg in the 1990s would also be about virtual volunteering, even if it doesn’t use the term (I believe that Project Gutenberg is the first initiative created specifically to involve online volunteers). 

After a few months of preparation and drafting web pages, I launched the first Virtual Volunteering Project web site in early 1997. After one year, I moved the Virtual Volunteering Project, and its funding, to the Charles A. Dana Center at The University of Texas at Austin, and Impact Online became fully absorbed by VolunteerMatch and discontinued its promotion of virtual volunteering (at least for several years).

My first two years of the Virtual Volunteering Project were spent reviewing and adapting telecommuting manuals and existing volunteer management recommendations to apply to virtual volunteering, as well as identifying organizations that were already involving online volunteers. When I started the project, I thought there were just a handful of initiatives involving online volunteers, but I was wrong: in less than a year, I had found almost 100 organizations involving online volunteers, and I had to eventually stop listing every initiative I found on the VV Project web site because there were just too many!

I also spent a lot of time in 1998, 1999 and 2000 presenting at conferences around the USA, trying to convince nonprofits that virtual volunteering was a viable, worthwhile practice and already well established at a good number of agencies. The amount of skepticism and even hostility I encountered regarding virtual volunteering in the late 1990s was, at times, overwhelming. In particular, established organizations like United Way agencies and volunteer centers were quite hostile to virtually volunteering. I did a workshop about virtual volunteering for the Corporation for National Service and Points of Light Foundation in 1997 and when I called them in 1998 to ask about presenting at their upcoming conference, the response was, “Oh, but you did that last year.”

World-renowned volunteer management expert Susan Ellis was key in getting me in front of nonprofits who needed to hear about virtual volunteering. Susan was unflinching in her support for the concept and her chastisement of traditional organizations balking at the idea of working with volunteers online was crucial in getting people to let go of outdated ideas about what volunteering could look like.

The Virtual Volunteering Project used research about organizations leveraging virtual volunteering, as well as testimonials from online volunteers themselves, to continually create and refine guidelines for engaging and supporting online volunteers. And I made a point of creating meaningful roles and activities for online volunteers to help the Project, so I could gain more experience supporting online volunteers myself. Those online volunteers were vital to the project, not only for their service, but their testing of methodologies and their feedback.

I’m also very proud that from the moment of the project’s launch, we had a commitment to showing how virtual volunteering could create more inclusion for people with disabilities in volunteering – and I have a conference in 1994 in San Diego by Computer Professionals For Social Responsibility (CPSR) – and speaker Deborah Kaplan specifically, for awakening me to that possibility long before I heard the term virtual volunteering.

You can see the 1998 version of the Virtual Volunteering Project web site by searching for http://www.impactonline.org/vv/ at the Internet WayBack machine, choosing archived web sites, and clicking on 1998. You can also see the last version of the Virtual Volunteering Project web site here, from 2001.

I left the Virtual Volunteering Project in January 2001, to work for the United Nations Volunteers program at its headquarters in Bonn, Germany, to revamp NetAid, the UN’s online volunteering matching service, and to help manage a new initiative, the United Nations Information Technology Service (UNITeS). The Virtual Volunteering Project folded soon after – there just wasn’t interest anymore in funding it.

If you were a volunteer with the Virtual Volunteering Project, or attended a workshop on VV back in the 90s, or just talked with me back in those days, I hope you will comment below and talk about how virtual volunteering has been a part of your life.

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

If you want to learn about virtual volunteering in-depth – how to create a range of assignments to appeal to many different people, from micro volunteering to online mentoring, how to use online tools to support and engage ALL volunteers, including those that provide onsite service, and to dig far deeper into the factors for success in keeping virtual volunteering a worthwhile endeavor for everyone involved – you will not find a more detailed guide anywhere than The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. It’s available both as a traditional print publication and as a digital book.

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:

Blog on hiatus until end of September

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I have a commitment to blogging something worthwhile every week, and publishing that new, worthwhile blog every Monday. But to stay fresh and worthwile, I take breaks. And I’m doing that again now.

Until the end of September, I won’t be blogging. During that time, I will first be grading papers for my class at Gratz College, and then I will be on an epic road trip via motorcycle. I will also not be checking my email. And I won’t return calls unless they are urgent. As this blog is moderated, no new comments sent while I’m gone will be posted until I’m back and can moderate them.

In addition, I will not be able to fill orders for The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook while I am gone.

If you are from the press and need to reach me urgently for an interview, DM my Twitter account. I cannot guarantee I’ll see it immediately, but it’s the most likely way.

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. 

Me as a volunteer? More frustrated than ever.

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I’m a consultant regarding volunteer engagement (among other things). And one of the ways I keep my skills sharp and I keep learning and evolving, is by volunteering myself, both online and in traditional, face-to-face assignments.

In October 2011, I wrote a blog called How to get rid of volunteers, based on a really bad experience I had as a volunteer.

In February 2012, I wrote a blog called I’m a Frustrated Volunteer., based on more bad experiences as a volunteer.

In May 2018, I wrote a blog called Still trying to volunteer, still frustrated, based on even more bad experiences I’ve had as a volunteer.

And now, in 2021… I’m still here and still frustrated. The upside is that it helps me to keep creating what I think are practical, highly-relevant guidance for successfully engaging volunteers. The downside is… I don’t like being repeatedly frustrated, and it’s a reminder that volunteering is NOT always the uplifting, inspiring experience so many say it is.

I saw this meme and it hit so close to home regarding my own volunteering experiences in 2021 I almost burst into tears.

Never push a loyal person to the point where they no longer care.

When I express interest in volunteering with a nonprofit or program, I’m excited. I’m energized. I’m inspired. I’m highly motivated. I’m ready to help regarding a cause that I’m feeling strongly about. And very often, I’m hoping for a long-term experience. I’m hoping to volunteer for months, maybe even years, not just a few times. I’m hoping to enjoy myself.

Too often, I leave a volunteering experience that I’ve wanted to be a long-haul after a year or less, feeling overwhelmed, taken advantage of, ignored and/or under-appreciated. And I haven’t enjoyed myself. At all.

As I read the message in that image, I immediately thought not just about my own experiences as a volunteer, but also how many programs have lost fantastic volunteers because of not being clear about expectations, or changing those expectations, or asking too much of a volunteer’s time, or not welcoming and showing appreciation for a new, enthused, passionate volunteer, or otherwise “pushing.”

For this latest experience, I joined a county advisory board regarding the arts. It was a really nice experience the first year, though quarterly meetings were always in-person and held in places that were extremely difficult to get to via public transport (that’s how I get around weekdays, pre-COVID). The second year of my volunteering service was dominated by the global pandemic, and suddenly, we were allowed to do something our host organization assured us was absolutely impossible and not allowed: have meetings online. At the end of 2020, I was asked if I would consider being chair and thought, hey, what the heck, I should step up and do this for one year.

At my first meeting as chair, the bomb was dropped: our government host organization was dropping our board as a responsibility and we would move under the fiscal sponsorship of a nonprofit. At that first meeting, it was said several times, “Things won’t really be changing.” That proved to be a gross misstatement: my required time commitment skyrocketed as I realized a whole host of new processes would have to be researched, developed, proposed and voted on by the board members in a very, very tight timeframe. I went from meetings once a quarter to two or three times a month, and dozens of emails a week – sometimes dozens of emails in one day. Lots of steps in the transition hadn’t been identified by the previous host and the new host, and as I asked questions for clarification, more and more work to do got revealed. I was no longer a part of an advisory group; I was a full-fledged board member of a brand new nonprofit that the board had not asked to be a part of. And I was the chair. And that is NOT what I signed up for when I agreed to volunteer.

My passion wained quickly. My excitement evaporated. My energy and motivation have been squashed.

How did this happen? The people who created this substantial change:

  • did not consult with the volunteers who would be told to take on the responsibility.
  • were in denial that it was a substantial change.
  • have not taken a volunteer management 101 workshop or read any of Susan Ellis’ books.

Yes, I’m still a frustrated volunteer. I still haven’t found a volunteering experience since returning to the USA that’s been what I’m looking for. I still haven’t really had fun volunteering since 2009. But I’m so happy to have yet another experience that will help me as a consultant regarding volunteer management.

Other blogs inspired by my volunteering:

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

My 2021 summer teaching gig at Gratz College

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I am so pleased to announce that I will be teaching a course for Gratz College this summer: MGT 553 Using Technology to Build Community and Grow Your Organization. It is part of the college’s MS in Nonprofit Management. 

The 553 course will examine online networking tools that can be used to foster connectivity, communication, and collaboration in order to strengthen nonprofit and religious-based organizations. As someone that has been online since the early 1990s and still believes that online communities are the heart of the Internet, I could not be more excited to teach this course! I will use a mix of books, online readings, podcasts and my own audiovisual materials to explore how mission-based initiatives can use online tools to create a sense of community among donors, volunteers, clients, neighbors and partners, and how to attract new people to be a part of those communities. It’s a class about facilitation, trust-building, outreach, and working with humans – online. 

The original course was designed in 2016 by Dr. Deborah Kantor Nagler, who passed away because of COVID-19 in April 2020. It has been bittersweet to have this opportunity because of the global pandemic, and I have dedicated this revised course to Dr. Kantor, who I’m so sorry I never met.

Much has changed since this course was last taught and, of course, I have my own approach to the subject, so I’ve spent a LOT of time creating new lectures and lessons. Online community has gotten buried under ad-ridden web sites with questionable content, memes and hate speech. I hope my course helps students see the potential of online communities for the nonprofits they are affiliated with and plays even a small part in bringing back civility to the Internet.

Gratz College is based in Philadelphia. It just celebrated its 125th anniversary. The College’s historic focus is on Jewish studies and education, and it continues to be internationally recognized as a leader in developing effective educators, professionals, leaders and scholars, both within and beyond the Jewish community, with a broad commitment to the intellectual and professional growth of diverse constituencies, grounded in Jewish values. The college is renowned for its Holocaust and Genocide Studies. They also offer an M.A. in Human Rights, with courses in areas such as Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, Children’s Rights, Sexual Identity and Gender Rights and Refugee Rights.

Per the emphasis of the college, some of my examples of effectively using online tools to engage and build community will be from programs focused on historic genocides and prevention of genocide – you can see a list of Twitter accounts I will be featuring here (additions are welcomed).

I love teaching at the university level. It is one of my very favorite things to do, right up there with riding my motorcycle. My experience to date? I was the Fall 2015 Duvall Leader in Residence at the University of Kentucky’s Center for Leadership Development, teaching sessions on online leadership. I have also guest lectured at classes at Portland State University, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Texas at Arlington School of Social Work and St. Edward’s University on both volunteer management-related topics, usually virtual volunteering, and on using online tools as a part of nonprofit service delivery and outreach. And I regularly train professionals in these and other topics: in 2020 alone, I created and delivered workshops for the University College Dublin Volunteers Overseas program, Centre d’étude et de coopération internationale / Centre for International Studies and Cooperation—CECI, the Iowa Commission on Volunteer Service, the USA Office of Healthcare Information & Counseling, the Points of Light Foundation / Corporation for National Service, America’s Service Commissions (ASC), and the Community Foundation of Henderson, Kentucky, among others (my busiest year as a trainer ever).

For the time being, I’ll also be continuing my very part-time role with TechSoup, helping to manage the TechSoup online community – introducing topics, answering community questions, trying to attract new participants and helping to move the community to a new platform before summer. Yes, joining and participating in the TechSoup community is going to be one of the assignments for my Gratz College students!

So, if you want to book me for a training or consultation, know that my schedule is very tight now and through August! And it’s also that time of year when I start getting contacted about leading workshops in the Fall, so it’s not too early to talk to me about my schedule after this class is done.

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

Of course, you can have on-demand training from me regarding virtual volunteering anytime, through my free videos on m YouTube channel and via my book, The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. If you want to deeply integrate virtual volunteering into your program and expand your engagement of online volunteers, such as in an online mentoring program or other scheme where online volunteers will interact with clients, 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. And purchasing the book is far, far cheaper than hiring me as a consultant or trainer regarding virtual volunteering – though you can still do that!

Online Community Management as Volunteer Management

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I’m preparing to teach a class on online community management for nonprofits, through a college back East in the USA (details in the coming weeks), and I realized recently I had done a presentation that I can use in class. The presentation is from 2014 for a group called OCTribe, a monthly in-person meeting in San Francisco. It was a meetup for online community managers, enthusiasts and innovators interested in social networking applications, social media and online group collaboration. “We discuss tools and strategies to enhance participation in the various online communities we support.” The event was hosted at the TechSoup offices.

My presentation, which was also live-streamed on YouTube, is exactly as it is titled: online community management as volunteer management. I look at participants in an online community, especially when I’m the moderator or facilitator of that community, as volunteers – they aren’t paid to participate, they aren’t paid to contribute, and yet, they do. I think cultivating new community members is a lot like cultivating new volunteers, I think supporting and keeping community members is a lot like supporting and keeping new volunteers, and on and on.

I have the presentation available both as a podcast (about 40 minutes) that you can live stream from my web site or download, however you like, and in a video that I have edited. The video isn’t very good, but don’t worry about seeing the slides – I say out loud during the presentation most everything that is on them. I also repeat the questions and comments people ask.

The video is now a part of my playlist of trainings – I have more than two hours of free training by video on my own YouTube channel, plus links to trainings I’ve provided on other YouTube channels. I would so appreciate it if you could “like” my latest video on YouTube, as well as to subscribe to my channel.

There’s no question that contributing to online communities can help you professionally – I know because it’s how I’ve landed full-time jobs and consultancies for more than 25 years.

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

Also, the Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook: Fully Integrating Online Service Into Volunteer Involvement can help you better work with people online – specifically volunteers, and including participants in an online community that relates to the work of a nonprofit, NGO, library, environmental issue, humanitarian concern, and on and on. This book was helpful long before the global pandemic spurred so many organizations to, at last, embrace virtual volunteering. 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. It’s available both as a traditional paperback book and in electronic format.

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

Reflections on Virtual Volunteering in 2020 (& My Most Popular Blogs for the Year)

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When the end of a year approaches, I look over my visitor statistics for my blog and my web pages to see which of my resources were the most popular in the last 12 months. It helps me to know what topics resonated in that year – it’s always something different – and what promotion is most effective. It’s something your nonprofit or government agency should do as well, regarding your online resources (your web site, your blogs, etc.). It’s not just looking at numbers – it’s looking at when pages launched, what people clicked on to get to a resource, etc.

As is true every year, my blogs that got the most traffic are the ones that other people amplified, posting about them on their own social media channels, or referring to them in workshops they did, so if that’s you, THANK YOU. I hope my sharing of others’ material on my social media accounts was also helpful to colleagues and many people I admire as well.

In 2019, I wrote about communications, community relations and ethics in nonprofits far more than volunteer engagement. I had intended to do the same in 2020 – it’s not that I want to downplay volunteer engagement, or not to explore it anymore, but I find those other subjects just as interesting, maybe more, and I work professionally in those fields even more than I do regarding volunteer management. Plus, I just wasn’t sure what else there was to say about virtual volunteering, a subject I have researched and talked about since the mid-1990s.

But then came the novel coronavirus and the massive pivot by thousands of organizations for the first time to virtual volunteering – and suddenly, I was reviving lots of my previous work, filling lots of orders for my book on virtual volunteering, trying to keep up with requests to lead trainings and producing a lot of videos on YouTube to bring everyone up-to-speed about the history and basics of virtual volunteering.

I promote my blog, web site and videos through my Twitter account, my Facebook account, my LinkedIn account, some Subreddits, and some LinkedIn groups. I’m a one-person shop and create and promote these resources entirely on my own – and it’s getting harder and harder to get my voice out there amid a growing sea of competition for attention. Even in the area of virtual volunteering, lots of new “experts” have emerged (please remember that, to be an expert, someone should have experience engaging volunteers online and being an online volunteer themselves).

As I say each year, the blog visitor numbers are great – but the emails and comments on resources are what really keep me going, so please keep them coming!

What did I write that got people’s attention in 2020? Here’s (almost) all of my top 11 blogs for 2020:

How to Immediately Introduce Virtual Volunteering at Your Program: roles & activities a nonprofit, charity or other program could launch immediately to involve online volunteers.

Free training in virtual volunteering (involving & supporting volunteers using online tools): a list of my videos on virtual volunteering in 2020.

Ethics of Paying to Volunteer Online.

Systemic Exclusion in Volunteer Engagement and More: systemic racism in volunteer engagement.

Why qualified people get passed over for jobs.

Saying “no” to recruiting volunteers for certain tasks.

Three resources for your COVID-19-related volunteering.

You do not need to meet via video conference with every potential volunteer.

21 simple things to do while your programs are on hold during COVID-19 quarantines.

I also had a look at my most popular web pages. Some were quite a surprise. These aren’t in the exact order of popularity:

But the two big news items regarding virtual volunteering for 2020 aren’t necessarily reflected in these stats:

  1. I’ve now identified more than 100 research and academic articles on virtual volunteering (the announcement got shared and retweeted a LOT) and
  2. virtual volunteering becoming a necessity because of the novel coronavirus, surging in popularity and being embraced by organizations that have shunned it for decades.

Over the years, and until this year, I’ve made and appeared in many videos about working with online volunteers for nonprofits I’ve been working or volunteering with, but just one about virtual volunteering that wasn’t on behalf of someone else, back in 2012. By contrast, this year, 2020, I’ve made seven videos for my own channel, including a 36-minute introduction to virtual volunteering. In fact, I made 11 additional, private videos for a consultancy I did regarding a user experience related to online volunteering. You can see all my free trainings on my YouTube channel.

It’s been exhausting to say, over and over in 2020: virtual volunteering is not new, it’s more than 35 years old. I’ve said it in my book. I’ve said it on the Virtual Volunteering Wiki. I’ve said it in a video. I’m exhausted from saying it. What I haven’t said is that I’m stunned that so many people from both the nonprofit and corporate world seem to have never heard of involving volunteers remotely, of using the Internet to engage volunteers, a WIDESPREAD, popular practice that’s more than 35 years old. It’s been disheartening to see just how many nonprofits, foundations and corporate social responsibility programs have kept themselves in the dark about virtual volunteering for decades – and I say kept themselves in the dark, because I know just how much, how often, the practice has been talked about in publications, at conferences and in presentations by nonprofits. It has taken a lot of effort on the part of these folks to ignore this well-established practice over the years. I hope that, at last, that has changed.

I’ve also had a very traumatic, challenging time professionally, one that I’m not ready to talk openly about yet. But I will say: please ask colleagues – co-workers, staff at partner organizations, volunteers you work with, etc. – how they are doing. Ask them what challenges they are facing. And ask about safety issues – bluntly ask, “Are you feeling safe in your work? Are you feeling safe online?” Be prepared to eventually hear, “No, I’m not okay. I don’t feel safe. And here’s what I’m facing…” And for anyone you know who isn’t feeling safe online, I have this page of resources regarding online harassment, defamation & libel. 

And thank you to everyone who has supported me this year – I learned this year just how many people have my back. My gratitude to you knows no bounds.

May you have a safe, prosperous, healthy transition into 2021.

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

A reminder yet again that The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook provides detailed advice on creating assignments for online volunteers, for working with online volunteers, for using the Internet to support and involve ALL volunteers, including volunteers that provide service onsite, for ensuring success in virtual volunteering, and for using the Internet to build awareness and support for all volunteering at your program. Tech tools come and go, but certain community engagement principles never change, and those principles are detailed in this comprehensive guide. You will not find a more detailed guide anywhere for working with online volunteers and using the Internet to support and involve all volunteers – 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 or my YouTube videos and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.