Tag Archives: management

Crowdsourcing / Hive Mind – it’s been happening since at least 1849!

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Crowdsourcing is an open, public call for contributions from anyone to talk about a pressing issue, offer advice or data or to help solve a problem or challenge. It’s an open-call brainstorming session. While the term crowdsourcing was popularized online to describe Internet-based activities, there are examples of projects that, in retrospect, can also be described as crowdsourcing, without the Internet.

For instance, in, 1848 Matthew Fontaine Maury, an American astronomer, United States Navy officer, historian, oceanographer, meteorologist, cartographer and more, distributed 5000 copies of his Wind and Current Charts free of charge on the condition that sailors returned a standardized log of their voyage to the U.S. Naval Observatory. By 1861, he had distributed 200,000 copies free of charge, on the same conditions. The data the sailors provided was used to develop charts for all the major trade routes.

The Smithsonian Meteorological Project was started by the Smithsonian’s first Secretary, Joseph Henry, and in 1849 he set up a network of some 150 volunteer weather observers all over the USA. Henry used the telegraph to gather volunteers’ data and create a large weather map, making new information available to the public daily. For instance, volunteers tracked a tornado passing through Wisconsin and sent the findings via telegraph to the Smithsonian. Henry’s project is considered the origin of what later became the National Weather Service. Within a decade, the project had more than 600 volunteer observers and had spread to Canada, Mexico, Latin America, and the Caribbean. These remote volunteers submitted monthly reports that were then analyzed by a professor at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, and published in 1861 in the first of a two- volume compilation of climatic data and storm observations based on the volunteers’ reports.

The Smithsonian information in this blog is from a 2011 article “Smithsonian Crowdsourcing Since 1849!” by Elena Bruno, a Smithsonian intern who conducted research into how crowdsourcing could be integrated into mobile applications and making the Smithsonian experience, for those inside our Institution and beyond, more valuable and engaging.

I miss the crowdsourcing feel of the 1990s Internet, particularly via USENET newsgroups. My favorite was soc.org.nonprofit, for the discussion of nonprofit organization management issues. It was amazing to see someone post a question about how to reach a particular audience or databases or whatever and see knowledgeable people offer helpful advice on the subject within days, sometimes hours. There was lots of help and very little posturing – or trolls. Good times. Read more about the Early History of Nonprofits and the Internet (before 1996).

 

vvbooklittleOnline crowdsourcing is one example of virtual volunteering. Wikipedia is probably the most well-known example of online crowdsourcing, but there are many more. For advice on working with remote volunteers, or using the Internet to support and involve volunteers, whether in crowdsourcing initiatives or in more formal, higher-responsibility volunteering, check out The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. It’s written by myself and Susan J. Ellis, and is the result of many, many years of research and experience.

the first steps for a nonprofit dream

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Some years ago, I worked with a very specific community – I prefer not to say which one nor where it was – that wanted its own cultural center. The community members envisioned a place where they and their families could celebrate their unique culture, host activities that could help address the needs of community members (job training, skills development, counseling, etc.), host events that could educate people about their culture’s history and challenges, offer low-cost childcare for pre-K children, offer after-school activities for teen members of their community, offer activities for elders in their community, offer legal clinics, and on and on.

The challenge I faced in trying to help this community reach their goal is that, in talking about the community center, they wanted to focus only on what the building would look like. They wanted to talk about the kinds of rooms it would have, how it would look on the outside, the murals that would be drawn inside, etc. They even spent time talking about what the logo would look like. And, indeed, those conversations were important, but what was so much more important in starting to talk about the center was their answering these questions:

  • What documented data do we have that shows who makes up our community, in terms of their ages, their backgrounds, their most critical needs and their desires regarding the programs offered via a cultural center? What data do we still need to gather and how might we gather that information?
  • What programs might we launch at first, and which might we want to have later? What data do we have that shows we are prioritizing our initial programming correctly?
  • How do we envision the staffing for our initial programs – by volunteers? If so, what tasks might these volunteers do? Could the tasks be divided into different roles: leadership roles, one-time group activities, short-term individual roles, online volunteering, university classwork, etc.? And what might the costs be to involve such volunteers (recruitment, screening, support, etc.)? Or will we staff these initial programs by paid employees or consultants? If so, what might these roles look and what would the costs be?
  • What will the decision-making and leadership of the center look like? How will the board of directors be chosen? How long will each member serve? How will their fiscal responsibilities and other oversight responsibilities be defined? Will there also be an advisory board?
  • What could we do in terms of programming without our own physical space? Could we leverage church fellowship halls, library meeting rooms, other cultural centers, arts spaces and other existing facilities to offer our own programming until we get a physical space of our own?
  • What would success look like in the first year of our operations? How would we collect data that proves our success?
  • How much would all of the above cost for the first two-five years?
  • What would we need to have in place to get fiscal sponsorship or become an independent nonprofit, and how would we get those things in place? What would the timeline look like?
  • When would we be ready to start accepting financial donations for our efforts and what avenues could we accept those donations (how would we accept and track checks, online donations, even cash donations)?

Altogether, the answers to these questions create both a business plan and all of the information a group needs for a funding proposal. All of these activities create a cultural center without anything having to wait for a building to be built or a rented and, at the same time, make funding an actual building all the more attractive.

Sadly, the cultural center, as a building, didn’t happen, and efforts to offer these programs in other spaces have come and gone over the years. I think community members still dream of a magical mega donor descending into the area and offering them millions of dollars to make this happen.

I think about this situation frequently as I am asked by so many people, “How do I start the nonprofit of my dreams?” The steps are all neatly listed in my blog, but the reality is that it’s messy in execution. None of these steps are easy, but I regularly see new nonprofits flourish after diligently completing each.

If you have an idea for a new organization, a new program or a new project, I recommend you have a look at this UNESCO project planning tool. It’s developed for youth and the projects they want to undertake, but it’s something that a lot of adults could use as well. This can be a good tool to use in a group exercise with the core leadership of your effort to establish a new program or organization.

Also helpful is this free NGO Capacity Assessment Supporting Tool. It can be used to identify an NGO’s strengths and weaknesses and help to establish a unified, coherent vision of what an NGO can be. The tool provides a step-by-step way to map where an organization is and can help those working with the NGO, including consultants, board members, employees, volunteers, clients, and others, to decide which functional areas need to be strengthened and how to go about to strengthen them. Share the results of your using this tool in your funding proposals – even on your web site. The tool was compiled by Europe Foundation (EPF) in the country of Georgia, and is based on various resources, including USAID – an NGO Capacity Assessment Supporting Tool from USAID (2000), the NGO Sustainability Index 2004-2008, the Civil Society Index (2009) from CIVICUS, and Peace Corps/Slovakia NGO Characteristics Assessment for Recommended Development (NGO CARD) 1996-1997.

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can volunteer engagement cultivate innovation?

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Can volunteer engagement cultivate innovation within an organization where volunteers serve? And what conditions are necessary for such innovation by volunteers to happen? This paper explores that question: Beyond Service Production: Volunteering for Social Innovation by Arjen de Wit of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Wouter Mensink of The Netherlands Institute for Social Research, The Hague, The Netherlands, Torbjörn Einarsson of Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden, and René Bekkers of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

It was first published online on October 12, 2017 and was published on paper in the Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly by ARNOVA.

Abstract:

Building on theories from different fields, we discuss the roles that volunteers can play in the generation, implementation, and diffusion of social innovations. We present a study relying on 26 interviews with volunteer managers, other professionals, volunteers, and one former volunteer in 17 (branches of) third sector organizations in eight European countries. We identify organizational factors that help and hinder volunteer contributions to social innovation… This rich, explorative study makes it a fruitful start for further research on the relationship between volunteering and social innovation.

In short, their research question was: Which organizational factors help and hinder volunteers to contribute to social innovations in third sector organizations?

You can download the paper for free.

I found the paper because I’m quoted in it. And if you are a manager of volunteers, this is one of those rare academic papers on volunteerism that is actually worth your time to read (sorry, academics, but so often, your papers aren’t what practioners need).

By social innovation, the paper’s authors mean new solutions – products, markets, services, methods, models, processes – that lead to new or improved capabilities and better use of assets and resources by a nonprofit, NGO or other volunteer hosting organization that address its mission and serve its cause, directly. I define social innovation as something that is transformative for the organization and those it serves. Certainly volunteers that introduced mission-based organizations to the Internet were social innovators. Volunteers connecting an organization to new communities and people very different from those the nonprofit usually works with can be seen as social innovators as well.

Here are “a few illustrative examples” the paper identifies as social innovations introduced to nonprofits by volunteers:

a telephone service in a nonnative language (Swedish Red Cross), a School of Civic Initiative where people are educated to make them more active in public life (Hnutí Duha, Czech Republic), first aid education for partially sighted and blind people (German Red Cross), a bicycle campaign (Greenpeace Denmark), and a shelter for illegal male immigrants (Salvation Army Netherlands).

Examples of innovations occurring on a larger scale and introducing system-level changes that the paper cites are:

the lobby for new government policies (Czech branch of the Salvation Army) and a network to connect entrepreneurs in the field of environment with investors, publish their innovative work, and promote a financing network (Fundación Biodiversidad, Spain).

The paper delivers on identifying organizational factors that help and hinder volunteer contributions to social innovation. From the paper’s conclusion:

Organizational factors that may enhance volunteer contributions to social innovations include a decentralized organizational structure, the “scaling up” of ideas, providing training and giving volunteers a sense of ownership. Factors that may hinder volunteer contributions to innovations include a lack of resources and a reluctant attitude within the organization, for example, when a new project does not fit within the organization’s strategy. By identifying and exploring these mechanisms, this article adds insights on a new perspective for third sector research and offers useful tools for volunteer managers to improve the innovative capacity of their organization.

Terrific stuff. Kudos to the authors. This paper is worth your time.

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List of my books, papers, citations in other publications

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I have no idea why I haven’t done this before: I’ve made a list of my own publications (many available for purchase, as well as books, white papers, academic papers, etc. that quote me or cite my work, going back to 1999.

vvbooklittleMy most well-known traditional publication is The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. This book, which I co-wrote with Susan J. Ellis, is our attempt to document all of the best practices for using the Internet to support and involve volunteers from the more than three decades that this has been happening. Whether the volunteers are working in groups onsite, in traditional face-to-face roles, in remote locations, or any other way, anyone working with volunteers will find The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook helpful. The book is available both in traditional print form and in a digital version.

 

Grumpy Jayne

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I’m grumpy.

I need a vacation.

What’s making me grumpy these days?

Here’s a partial list:

Conferences that want to charge presenters to attend. Never mind that the presenters are a significant reason why most people attend the conference.

Corporations and for-profit businesses that want advice from me by email or phone about a new product they want to launch – but they don’t want to pay me.

Digital inclusion efforts that don’t talk about web and app accessibility.

Any inclusion efforts that don’t talk about web and app accessibility.

Digital divide initiatives that don’t talk about web and app accessibility.

Popularity contests disguised as “crowdsourcing.” You know: crowdsource who should get a special volunteering award! Such an award isn’t based on merit – it’s based on how well someone or an organization can market itself.

Crowdsourcing efforts actually being about harvesting email addresses / subscribers for something. Example: crowdsource answers to questions from nonprofits on our platform! But register first! (and be added to our newsletter where we will endlessly pitch our products to you) 

Organizations, especially schools, complaining that they don’t have enough volunteers, but then making it impossible to find information about how to volunteer, and what opportunities are available on their web site, etc.

Firefighters complaining that they don’t have enough volunteers, but having a lousy web site regarding volunteer information, refusing to use social media beyond “We posted to Facebook once last year!”, refusing to recruit in any ways that are different than “this is how we’ve always done it,” and targeting their recruitment measures to only those who might want to become career firefighters (volunteering is only a stepping stone).

People who say, upon hearing that their website isn’t accessible for people with disabilities, “Well, I don’t think we have that many people with disabilities trying to access our web site.”

Corporations and government officials who whine about nonprofits not being innovative or risk taking, but then balk at funding overhead costs, including staff training, computer technology, Internet access, etc.

People who never replied to my requests during a process I’m involved with regarding ways to improve or my questions on where to find something but then, when the event or campaign is over, are suddenly are brimming with ideas of how things should have been done.

People who don’t answer my questions and then are stunned when I don’t do work that matches their expectations.

People who post endlessly on Facebook about injustices or various social causes but never come to city council meetings, or citizens’ advisory committees, never attend public meetings to talk to police officers one-on-one, don’t attend candidate debates or town halls by elected officials, don’t vote, etc.

Consultants who make all sorts of suggestions about what an agency should be doing, but have never employed those suggestions first hand themselves. (“Here’s how you should be recruiting volunteers! Oh, no, I’ve never employed these methods myself… I don’t work with volunteers…”)

Consultants that promote themselves as social media experts and have just a few followers on Twitter.

Managers who believe lack of complaints means things are going really well (rather than, perhaps, complaints aren’t being heard).

Organizations that say they need volunteers but turn people away who try – including me.

Can’t get enough? Here are other blogs of frustration:

The cost of my greatest weakness

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logoIf you have ever been interviewed for a job, you are familiar with some version of the question “What’s your greatest weakness?”

My greatest weakness is the couch and a great day’s lineup on the classic movie channel here in the USA. But I know that’s not what someone in a job interview is wanting to know. Rather, they want to know what my greatest weakness is in the workplace.

Of course, so many people answer this question with, “I love to work! I’m a workaholic!” Spoiler alert: I don’t say that and saying it doesn’t make a person a good candidate. A workaholic is unhealthy for both employee and employer.

The reality is that “What’s your greatest weakness?” is a bad job interview question. All it does is make interviewees nervous and set them up for failure later. The potential hire is declaring to a potential employer, “Here’s what you need to be on the lookout for if you hire me!” And the employer WILL remember the declaration and be on the lookout for it – and probably be hypersensitive to any hint of a new employee showing it, in fact. Were it to be a truly fair question, everyone in the room would share their biggest weakness with each other, so the potential employee could decide if it’s the right office culture for him or her.

When I am interviewing candidates, I never ask that question. Instead, I ask “What frustrates you most in the workplace and how did you address it?” I’m not looking for a “Oh, nothing frustrates me, I love work!” answer. I’m not looking for a red flag either. What I’m trying to do is to see how self-aware someone is and trying to just get a feel for what kind of person they are. A red flag would be “I’m never frustrated in the workplace!”

But, with all that said, when I’m asked that “What’s your greatest weakness?” question in a job interview, I am honest. And my answer is this:

I ask a lot of questions and, often, this really frustrates my co-workers. 

When someone introduces a new project, or when I join an initiative, even one that I’m familiar with, I ask a lot of questions. I’m not trying to be critical and I’m not trying to play “gotcha” – I trying to understand an activity as completely as possible. I don’t just ask if something happens, but how it happens and who is responsible for different pieces of a project. The answers help me be clearer in my communications, help me know my own responsibilities and help me to be able to better support co-workers. It also keeps me from making a lot of mistakes that can hurt a project later.

Unfortunately for me, people often find my questions annoying. So many people see questions as criticism, even as a personal attack, especially if they cannot answer all of the questions. People starting new projects or people who haven’t introduced someone new to a project in a long while often haven’t thought about some of the issues I raise, and I think they feel called out when I ask my questions. People managing established projects are often shocked that I have questions, especially if it’s a project that has existed for several years. Again, I’m just trying to understand so that I can do the best job possible and prevent avoidable mistakes on my part.

In an effort to not seem critical, I often find myself prefacing my questions with apologies, something so many women do in order to try to head off any feelings that we’re “too aggressive.” Apologies I find myself making are statements like “I’m so sorry to bother everyone with this, but…” or “I’m sorry if the answer to this is already on your project web site but…” or “I hope everyone can be patient with me, but I don’t think I’m clear on some things…”  These kinds of self-depreciating apologies that women are conditioned to do are not something most men are conditioned to do. Women are conditioned to want to be liked and to assume responsibility for others’ feelings. Women apologize for being direct in an effort to somehow justify our questions, even our opinions. Professional women are told in so many ways: be assertive, but only if it doesn’t upset anyone else. It doesn’t matter how calm a woman remains, how civil a woman’s demeanor, how cool and collected she remains: it DOES hurt to ask when you’re female in the workplace.

Dr. Robert Alberti and Michael Emmons, authors of Your Perfect Right, provide a few questions to consider before choosing to be assertive, as quoted in the blog “Quit Being a Pushover: How to Be Assertive“:

  • How much does it matter to you?
  • Are you looking for a specific outcome or just to express yourself?
  • Are you looking for a positive outcome? Might asserting yourself make things worse?
  • Will you kick yourself if you don’t take action?
  • What are the probable consequences and realistic risks from your possible assertion?

Note that this blog is from the blog The Art of Manliness, not from an article to help women… the advice for women trying to be assertive is far, far different. Google it for yourself if you don’t believe me.

Still, I find these questions helpful to me. These qeustions have often kept me from asking a question I really wanted to, but didn’t, because the political cost will be too great. It hurts not only to bite my tongue, but weeks or months later, watch someone have to deal with something that could have been prevented, and perhaps my question could have prevented it – but I chose not to speak up because the consequences for me in terms of hostility or defensiveness by co-workers just wasn’t worth it.

The other frustrating thing I do in the work place is to take notes. Later, I sometimes refer to those notes when there is some disagreement on what was said or decided. Again, I’m not trying to be hurtful or critical but, rather, to be clear. And, to be honest, I’m often trying to cover my butt, as we say in American English. If I’ve done something wrong, I will absolutely take responsibility for it, but if I’ve been directed to do it that way – sorry, but I’m giving credit where it’s due. It’s not an easy strategy because no matter how diplomatically or gently I try to reference decisions from a previous meeting, my thorough note-taking does sometimes end up making people angry – they feel called out. And, let’s face it, who likes to be proven wrong?

Perhaps my weakness is that I like things explicit and transparent.

I offer this blog both as sympathy and encouragement to others like me, as well as a warning to potential employers of me. But before you shrink away in horror, I also ask this: wouldn’t you rather it was me, someone on your team, asking tough questions, rather than a potential funder or member of the press? Bridges are supposed to be stressed tested. Think of your project as the bridge and me the test…

Also see:

Frank description of what it’s like to work in communications in the UN

Letting Fear Prevent Volunteer Involvement is Too Risky

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I was honored to guest blog the Energize, Inc. Hot Topic for December. The topic I chose to write about: “Letting Fear Prevent Volunteer Involvement is Too Risky.” If you can’t tell from the title, it’s about how the risks around involving volunteers often aren’t as great as NOT involving them – to NOT involve volunteers puts your organization at risks that I consider far greater than by involving them.

There is a podcast version, in case you would prefer to hear me blabble.

 

 

Updated: list of research on virtual volunteering

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I don’t have funding to research virtual volunteering, but in my spare, unpaid time, I try to track academic studies and evaluation reports on virtual volunteering by others. At least twice a year, I search for published research regarding online volunteering / virtual volunteering, including studies on the various different activities that are a part of online volunteering such as online activism, online civic engagement, online mentoring, micro volunteering, remote citizen scientists, remote volunteers, crowd-sourcing, etc. I’m not looking for newsletter articles, press releases or no newspaper articles; rather, I’m looking for scholarly reports providing qualitative and quantitative data, case studies, comparisons, etc.

I have just uploaded the list of such research articles on the Virtual Volunteering Wiki, a free online resource I maintain with Susan Ellis. I was surprised at how many I found published in 2017. Note that sometimes research articles do not call the unpaid contributors “volunteers.” Included on this list are also research articles on virtual teams, which often involved paid staff; that’s because these research studies are especially applicable to virtual volunteering scenarios. These mostly go in reverse publishing or research date order.

If you are interested in researching virtual volunteering, this blog can give you guidance before you get started.

I also maintain a list of the latest news about virtual volunteering. You will find a long list, in reverse date order, of news articles and blogs about virtual volunteering, focusing on especially innovative or news-worthy pieces. I also have a list of articles from 1996 to 2011, including the oldest article I can find about virtual volunteering.

vvbooklittleResearch about virtual volunteering and related subject played a major role in writing find The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. This book, which I co-wrote with Susan J. Ellis, is our attempt to document all of the best practices for using the Internet to support and involve volunteers from the more than three decades that this has been happening. Want to know more about how to create assignments for online volunteers, how to support online volunteers, how to recruit, screen and and train online volunteers, and how to ensure quality in their contributions? This book is for you. In fact, whether the volunteers are working in groups onsite, in traditional face-to-face roles, in remote locations, or any other way, anyone working with volunteers will find The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook helpful. The book is available both in traditional print form and in a digital version.

If you read the book, or have already read it, I would so appreciate it if you could write and post a review of it on the Amazon and Barnes and Noble web sites (you can write the same review on both sites). If you could also review it on GoodReads as well, that would be terrific!

I won’t help you recruit a receptionist/volunteer coordinator

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graphic by Jayne Cravens representing volunteersRecently, I got asked if I would share a job opening at a PDX (Portland, Oregon)-area nonprofit. It was for a receptionist / volunteer coordinator. I responded:

I actually have a policy not to promote receptionist/volunteer coordinator jobs. Sorry. It’s a matter of my perspective about the importance of both positions.

It wasn’t the first time I had to tell someone this.

I will not promote receptionist / volunteer coordinator jobs. I will not promote receptionist / donor manager jobs, receptionist / marketing manager jobs, nor receptionist / legal council jobs. Not that I have ever seen those last three jobs advertised. Because such a combination of jobs would be preposterous. Just as preposterous as combining receptionist and volunteer coordinator, or volunteer manager, or director of volunteer services into one position.

I could write a long blog about why but, honestly, if you don’t get it, I just don’t have the time…

See also:

Civil Society Capacity Building: Why?

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logoMy favorite kind of professional work is building the capacities of civil society organizations, especially in transitional and developing countries, to communicate, to change minds and to engage a variety of people and communities, through communications, dialogue and volunteering. But the term civil society isn’t used in USA as commonly as it is elsewhere, and many don’t understand exactly what I mean when I talk about my favorite type of work.

Civil society is a term commonly heard outside the USA when discussing community development. Civil society is a term for the assortment of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), nonprofit organizations, activist groups and institutions that, together, demonstrate the interests and will of residents of a particular area. Note, however, that these interests do not have to be the will of a majority of residents.

Civil society organizations include:

  • academia
  • activist groups
  • charities
  • clubs (sports, social, etc.)
  • community foundations
  • community organizations
  • consumer organizations
  • cooperatives / co-ops
  • foundations
  • non-governmental organizations (NGOs)
  • non-profit organizations (NPOs)
  • political parties
  • professional associations
  • religious groups
  • social enterprises (an organization that applies commercial strategies to maximize improvements in human and environmental well-being)
  • support groups
  • trade unions
  • voluntary associations
  • foundations, government funders and international agencies have been supporting civil society for many years in developing countries. The goals with such support is to:
  • foster social equality (access to civil rights, freedom of speech, property rights, health, economic prosperity, education, social engagement, etc.)
  • foster civic engagement, including volunteerism
  • create a greater sense of ownership of what happens within a community by those that live there
  • create greater participation in addressing critical community and environmental needs
  • ensure a diversity of voices are represented in community decision-making
  • act as a counter to negative forces such as corruption, extremism, anarchy, etc.
  • ensure that civil society can work within the range of actors required for a country’s development.

This new resource explores why is it important for a country to have a robust, sustainable civil society, what is meant by the phrase civil society capacity building, and how capacities of civil society are strengthened.

Also see: