Tag Archives: microtasks

Announcement regarding the Virtual Volunteering Wiki

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At the end of 2022, I will no longer update the news section nor the research section of the Virtual Volunteering Wiki.

The wiki has been an unfunded project since it was launched a decade ago, in association with the publication of The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. It’s a project that I have struggled to keep up-to-date because my paid work has to be my priority. I had intended to stop updating it back in 2020, but the start of the COVID pandemic in the USA in 2020 meant a surge in news and, months later, a surge in research, so I spent many, many hours – all without funding – reading through the news and research summaries and updating as appropriate.

But the surge in news and research regarding virtual volunteering has died down significantly. Therefore, I’ve decided that the end of 2022 is a good time to stop updating those two sections. The reasons:

  • Virtual volunteering is no longer new, innovative nor experimental. Virtual volunteering is mainstream. When this wiki was launched, there were already thousands of nonprofits, NGOs, charities, community groups and government agencies involving online volunteers, but there was a need to prove it. There was also an ongoing need to show the varied ways organizations involve online volunteers. But now, virtual volunteering is a commonplace term and new but not-so-unique initiatives are launched at least weekly. It’s the opposite problem regarding research: there are so many research articles related to virtual volunteering now, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s impossible to keep up with them in my spare time – again, my paid work has to take priority.
      
  • I don’t have the time nor the funding to continue. Without funding, I can’t afford to subscribe to news outlets so I can read all of the stories, and since I have no funding to continue the wiki or research virtual volunteering, I pursue other professional pursuits where I can get funding (so I can pay for things like my mortgage, my motorcycle insurance, my health care costs, etc.).

I’ve been trying to find a university to host the wiki and incorporate its updating into a class curriculum for years, but have never had any interest at all. And so I’ve given up.

The wiki will stay online as long as my own web site stays online, and I may update other less time-intensive sections if a particularly outstanding resource comes my way.

And, of course, The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook remains available for purchase!

This is probably my last blog of 2022, so here’s to a happy, prosperous, healthy 2023 for all of us.

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Virtual Volunteering Wiki has moved

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The Virtual Volunteering Wiki was developed in association with The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, a book available from Energize, Inc.

The purpose of this wiki is to share resources regarding virtual volunteering beyond what is available in the guidebook. The wiki is maintained by Jayne Cravens and Susan Ellis, the authors of the guidebook.

The wiki was launched originally in 2013 at http://virtualvolunteering.wikispaces.com, a year before the book was published, and it has been updated regularly since then. Unfortunately, as of September 2018, Wikispaces will be discontinued by its parent company. So the material has been relocated here, at www.coyotecommunications.com/vvwiki/.

Although it will no longer be, officially, a wiki – it will no longer allow all of the organizers to directly edit the pages – it will maintain its neutral tone, be updated regularly and will welcome contributions from anyone who has information about virtual volunteering – though, since I have no funding for this, I have to give my funded projects priority over updating it, so your patience is appreciated.

This wiki is still being refined at its new home – sorry for any issues with broken links. I hope these can all be resolved by August.

Some of the most popular pages on the Virtual Volunteering Wiki:

Al Gore Campaign Pioneered Virtual Volunteering

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algoreweblaunch
Back in 2000, when Al Gore ran for President of the USA, his campaign championed virtual volunteering, including microvolunteering, by recruiting online volunteers to help online with his election efforts. I was getting ready to leave the Virtual Volunteering Project at the time, to work for UNDP/UNV in Germany, and was not able to document these pioneering efforts at the time. I remembered this effort recently, per the current (and seemingly never-ending) Presidential campaign in the USA, and went digging on archive.org to find the original materials from that campaign regarding this work with online volunteers. They are worth looking at – they are still an excellent example of how to clarify expectations for a virtual volunteering role, something I emphasize again and again in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. They also show that virtual volunteering, including microvlunteering, is NOT a new idea.

He even had an “app” for people with personal digital assistants (PDAs), the precursor to the smart phone.

Somewhere on the archived Gore-for-President site is also a mention of either online volunteering or virtual volunteering, but I can’t find it anymore…

And by the way: Al Gore never claimed he invented the Internet. But he was most certainly one of the visionaries responsible for helping to bring it into being, by fostering its development in a legislative sense.

cover of Virtual Volunteering book with hands raising up various Internet connected devicesFor the present day: the Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook: Fully Integrating Online Service Into Volunteer Involvement can help your nonprofit, NGO, charity, government program or other group introduce virtual volunteering, expand your virtual volunteering, and improve how you use the Internet to support ALL volunteers. These can can be volunteers in short-term, “microvolunteering” tasks or longer-term, more high-responsibility roles, and everything in between. These can be volunteers who do some or most of their service onsite, at your organization or volunteers who do most or all of their service remotely, rarely or ever onsite and in-person with you. 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 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:

Research needs re: virtual volunteering

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I get contacted regularly by university students doing a Master’s degree research project that relates to virtual volunteering and, unfortunately, their research subject is almost always the same: the motivations of people to be online volunteers.

I’m blunt in my response to them: please don’t. This subject is not one that nonprofits or NGOs are asking for. In fact, it has become a joke among managers of volunteers: oh, look, *another* paper about people’s motivations for volunteering… ARGH!

This article by Susan Ellis and Rob Jackson well explains why the idea of yet another survey project about volunteer motivations is not something most nonprofits or NGOs are interested in. Read in particular the part called “A Preoccupation with the Motivations to Volunteer.”

What would NGOs and nonprofits love to know about virtual volunteering? What would be great, even ground-breaking research regarding virtual volunteering? Here are some digital volunteering research topics in dire need of exploration (and that really need to be undertaken by people that are NOT me):

  • factors for success in keeping online volunteers productive and engaged long-term at an organization or within a program
  • how online volunteers and/or those that involve them define a successful virtual volunteering experience, and exploring if these are in conflict
  • if online microvolunteering really does lead to longer-term virtual volunteering/higher responsibility roles at an organization, and/or if it leads to greater numbers of donors
  • expectations of people that sign up for online volunteer assignments before they begin versus the reality of the assignments/relationships/benefits
  • are the advantages that are promoted regarding virtual volunteering – that it allows for people to be more involved in an organization they already volunteer with onsite, that it allows for the participation of people as volunteers who might not be able to otherwise, that it can be a form of accommodation for people who have disabilities, that it frees up staff to undertake other activities, etc. – realized most of the time? some of the time? what factors are necessary for those benefits to be realized – or preventing them from becoming realities?
  • what causes people to quit volunteering online, and are the reasons similar or different than what causes people to quit traditional, onsite volunteering?
  • comparative case studies of online volunteer engagement and support for such at a variety of organizations, looking at factors for successful management, budgets for such, number of people working directly with the online volunteers, etc.
  • comparative case studies of screening of people that want to volunteer online at a variety of organizations, looking for factors that may lead to greater completion of tasks and longer-term commitments by online volunteers or may lead to greater drop out rates of accepted volunteers that receive assignments.
  • comparative case studies of organizations involving online volunteers, regarding what percentage of volunteers are using a laptop or desktop computer for completing assignments, versus those using smart phones and tablets. And is there a difference in the kinds of assignments being done on laptops and desktops versus smart phones and tablets? Is there a difference in the kinds of volunteers using laptops and desktops versus smart phones and tablets?
  • comparative case studies of online mentoring programs that involve online volunteers as mentors, regarding why some last more than two years and why others end early, or immediately after the pilot phase
  • comparative case of online mentoring programs that involve online volunteers as mentors, regarding their meeting of stated education, self-esteem, career exploration or other goals
  • comparative case of online mentoring programsthat involve online volunteers as mentors, on mentors or on participants five years after participation
  • how much does involving online volunteers cost for the host organization – a comparison of at least 20 organizations in the USA (or any one country, for that matter)
  • are there management needs that are different for online volunteers representing different groups (by age, by geographic region, by profession, by education level, etc.) to complete assignments and to be inspired to continue supporting an organization over months rather than just days or weeks
  • what differences are there in the success of involving online volunteers in non-English-speaking countries in Europe or elsewhere in comparison with North America?
  • what differences are there in the success of involving online volunteers in developing or transitional countries where Internet access is available to large portions of the population (India, Nigeria, South Africa, Pakistan, Poland, etc.) in comparison with North America?
  • how does satisfaction with volunteering among online volunteers compare to satisfaction with volunteering undertaking onsite administrative roles that do NOT involve interactions with clients (onsite volunteers that help with mailings, help with inventory, help prepare a room for an event later, file papers, provide IT support to staff, etc.). Do these two groups of volunteers feel similar isolation? Do any feelings of isolation or support relate to being online or is it because of lack of regular staff interaction, online or face-to-face? Or lack of access to seeing the impact of direct service with clients?

Tackle any of those research projects and I will promote your research everywhere online I possibly can. I may even dance in the streets.

Four cautions for researchers of virtual volunteering:

  • During your literature review, you will need to look at research articles and case studies that never use the word volunteers. or the term virtual volunteering. For instance, people that contribute their time and talent, online, to nonprofit open source projects may never be called volunteers. Those that contribute their time and knowledge to Wikipedia online are usually called Wikipedians rather than volunteers. Yet, research literature on these subjects is vital for informing any researcher wanting to do an academic study regarding virtual volunteering.
  • If you interview people, you will also not be able to use the phrase virtual volunteering without fully explaining it and ensuring people understand your definition; otherwise, you will find people saying they don’t volunteer online or do not involve volunteers online when, in fact, they do – they just didn’t understand the meaning so they said no.
  • Read this list of myths regarding virtual volunteering before you begin. If you start your research from an assumption that online volunteers are more isolated and less supported than onsite volunteers, for instance, or that virtual volunteering is great for people that don’t have time for onsite volunteering, or that people that volunteer online don’t do so onsite, face-to-face, then you are starting from a false premise that is not supported by any research to date. And if you want your research to test one of these myths, by all means, go for it!
  • You will be hard pressed to find anyone volunteering exclusively online; the vast majority of people that volunteer online ALSO volunteer onsite (and if you have research that says otherwise, let’s hear about it!). That’s why it’s impossible to measure things like if the health benefits associated with volunteering are exclusive for onsite volunteering.

All of the research I know related to virtual volunteering, by the way, is listed here on the virtual volunteering wiki. I try to update this list at least once a year. Note that, as of a few years ago, most of it is NOT by me! Hurrah!

Other blogs I’ve written on the subject of research and volunteering, including virtual volunteering, that should be helpful to anyone researching any aspect of virtual volunteering:

vvbooklittleWhy don’t I do at least some of the aforementioned research? Three reasons: One: I’m burnt out regarding virtual volunteering research. I poured so many years and effort into researching and writing The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, as well as managing various virtual volunteering initiatives since the 1990s, and I need a break. Two: I would really like to read research by OTHER PEOPLE. I think fresh eyes and fresh minds could bring to light things all of my many years researching this subject has made me blind to. I’m so ready to be enlightened on this subject by other people! Three: I don’t have the resources. I would need funding and I would want my research associated with a university, preferably in association with my obtaining a PhD.

So, those are the research needs regarding virtual volunteering, at least as far as I can see. What are YOUR ideas?

Request to all those training re: volunteer management

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Are you teaching a volunteer management 101 class, where you talk about the basics of successfully managing volunteers?

Are you going to teach a workshop on how to identify tasks for volunteers?

Are you going to teach a workshop on how to recruit volunteers?

Are you going to teach a workshop on how to keep volunteers engaged/volunteer retainment?

Are you going to teach a workshop on how to recognize/honor volunteers?

If you said yes to any of these questions, then here’s a thought. Actually, it’s a very strong suggestion: you absolutely should include virtual volunteering, whether or not you ever say the phrase virtual volunteering. You absolutely should talk about how to use the Internet – email, a web site, social media, third-party web sites – in each and every aspect of those basics of volunteer management. No exceptions. No excuses.

Consider this: no high-quality marketing workshop about event promotion would not talk about the Internet. No high-quality HR seminar or webinar would talk about worker recruitment and not talk about the Internet. No high-quality management class about better-supporting large numbers of employees in their work would not talk about digital networking tools. So why do those that work with volunteers settle for volunteer management workshops, even on the most basic subject, that don’t integrate into the class the Internet use regarding supporting and involving volunteers?

I hear a lot of excuses for consultants and other workshop leaders who don’t talk about Internet tools in a course regarding the management of volunteers:

  • The volunteer managers I’m working with don’t work with volunteers that use the Internet or text messaging
  • The volunteer managers I’m working with are at organizations focused on the arts or the environment or animals or homelessness and therefore don’t need to talk about the Internet or text messaging
  • There’s a separate workshop for talking about digital tools
  • The volunteer managers I’m working with have volunteers that are over 55

ARGH! Not one of those excuses is valid for not integrating talk of the Internet throughout any volunteer workshop addressing basic topics like recruitment, retainment, task identification, etc. NOT ONE. In fact, I think anyone who attends a workshop on working with volunteers, especially a volunteer management 101 course, whether hosted by a volunteer center, a nonprofit support center, or a college or university, whether online or onsite, should ask for at least a partial refund if virtual volunteering is not fully integrated into the course (it’s either not mentioned at all or is briefly mentioned at the end of the class). There is NO excuse for this, it shows a lack of competency on the part of the workshop leader and it’s time to demand better!

As Susan Ellis and I note in The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, virtual volunteering should not be a separate topic amid discussions about volunteer engagement and management. Instead, virtual volunteering needs to be fully integrated into all such discussions and trainings. No more segregation at the end of the book or workshop! The consequences of not integrating Internet use into volunteer management 101 workshops? It ill-prepares people for working with volunteers. It also immediately contributes to the stereotype that nonprofits are out-of-touch and old-fashioned.

vvbooklittleWe called it The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook not because we don’t think there will be more to say about virtual volunteering in the future, not because we don’t think there will be new developments on the subject, but because we really hope it’s the last book focused only on virtual volunteering, because we hope all books written about working with volunteers, whether in general or regarding a very specific part of the management of volunteers, like mentoring or risk management or recruitment or board member support or whatever, will now fully integrate the use of the Internet/digital tools in their suggestions. We hope that every workshop on any aspect of volunteer management, and every certificate regarding the management of volunteers, will fully integrate the various uses of the Internet in their suggestions. There’s no excuse not to!

Keeping volunteers safe – & keeping everyone safe with volunteers

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I am thrilled to have just discovered that some of my favorite resources for helping to keep volunteers safe, and keeping everyone safe with volunteers, are now available for FREE – just download them!

One is Kidding Around? Be Serious! A Commitment to Safe Service Opportunities for Young People. It discussed “risk relevant characteristics” of adolescents and children – knowledge that was especially helpful when I was creating and advising on online mentoring programs -, offers a realistic, effective risk management process for dealing with young people, and reviews how to approach different service scenarios involving young participants. If you have young volunteers working together in particular, this book is a MUST read.

Another resource that is now free to download is Screening Volunteers to Prevent Child Sexual Abuse: A Community Guide for Youth Organizations. There are explicit guidelines on interactions between individuals, detailed guidance on monitoring behavior, advice on training staff, volunteers and youth themselves about child sexual abuse prevention, and exactly how to respond to inappropriate behavior, breaches in policy, and allegations and suspicions of child sexual abuse. I really can’t say enough fantastic things about this book.

And still another resource is Safe to Compete: An Introduction to Sound Practices for Keeping Children Safer in Youth-Serving Organizations. This document from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, published in 2013, is a framework for youth-serving organizations to guide their development of a sexual abuse prevention program.

Combine these three books with Beyond Police Checks: The Definitive Volunteer & Employee Screening Guidebook by Linda Graff, available from Energize, Inc. (but not for free), and you’ve got a solid, more-than-basic understanding of risk management in volunteer engagement activities. I really can’t say enough fantastic things about Graff’s book. It completely changed my view of safety in volunteering programs, both for clients and for volunteers themselves – the over-reliance on police checks for safety continues, sometimes with tragic consequences.

Three of these resources are “old”, however, I have had no trouble whatsoever easily adapting their recommendations to online scenarios with volunteers (virtual volunteering). The “old” books were a wake-up call for me regarding the vulnerability of teens, women and people with disabilities, and I carried that new knowledge into my recommendations regarding virtual volunteering, starting in the 1990s and continuing to this day.

And if you are promoting virtual volunteering, digital volunteering, micro volunteering, whatever, these books are a MUST read before you utter another word!

July 16, 2020 update: Prepared by Volunteer Canada for Public Safety Canada Community Safety and Partnerships Branch, The Screening Handbook (to screen volunteers) from March 2012 is a free online publication that provides “a comprehensive resource to help organizations revise and develop screening policies and practices. Screening is considered to be an essential component of sound human resource management. It is broadly defined as an ongoing process that helps better match people and organizations, improves the safety and quality of programs, and reduces risks and liability… Screening practices play a critical role for organizations in fulfilling their moral, legal, and ethical responsibilities to all those they reach, including members, clients, participants, employees, and volunteers. This obligation is even greater when they are working with vulnerable people, including children, youth, people with disabilities, and senior adults… Organizations should have comprehensive and ongoing screening practices in place that recognize the importance and value of all the relevant steps in determining the right fi t for an assignment. To rely solely on Police Checks as the only screening protocol is to ignore other important and valuable sources of relevant information.

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UNV announces Online Volunteering Award 2015

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UNLogoToday – 30 November 2015 – the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) program announced winners of the UNV Online Volunteering Award 2015, celebrating both volunteers and volunteer hosting organizations on the UN’s Online Volunteering Service, and launched a global voting campaign for the public’s favorite, to be announced on December 5.

Profiles of the five organizations chosen for the award, and their online volunteers, are here (and this is where you vote as well). The organizations are Association des Agriculteurs Professionels du Cameroun (AGRIPO), Fundación de Comunidades Vulnerables de Colombia (FUNCOVULC), Hunger Reduction International, Seeds Performing Arts Theatre Group in Papua New Guinea, and a digital media campaign run by UN Women. Each effort also has a tag regarding which sustainable development goals it supports.

If you know me, then you know which one of the winners immediately jumped out at me and what I voted for: Seeds Performing Arts Theatre Group in Papua New Guinea. The group uses live theatre performance to raise awareness on issues affecting the local rural population, including violence against women, and to inspire and implement social change. Seeds teamed up with a group of online volunteers via the UN’s Online Volunteering service to develop a screenplay for a video about the specific gender-based violence associated with witch hunting. The traditional belief in sorcery is used to justify violence against women in Papua New Guinea, and inhumane treatment of innocent women accused of sorcery is common in rural parts of the island as sorcery is thought to account for unexplained deaths or misfortunes in a family or village.

After voting, you are encouraged to copy the following message to your profile on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn or whatever social media channel you use:

Just voted for my favourite Online #VolunteeringAward winner. You can, too! https://goo.gl/CTGVfS #ActionCounts #GlobalGoals” and encourage others to recognize the true value and worth of online volunteers!

In 2014, according to UNV, more than 11,000 online volunteers undertook more than 17,000 online volunteering assignments through the service, and 60 percent of these online volunteers come from developing countries. I had the pleasure of directing the service at UNV for four years, from February 2001 to February 2014, successfully moving the platform from NetAid to UNV entirely, engaging in various activities that made the service the first link when searching the term online volunteering on Google (I also made it #1 when searching the term virtual volunteering, but that’s no longer true), vastly increasing the number of online opportunities available for organizations on the platform and authoring materials to support organizations engaging online volunteers that are still used by UNV. I still promote the site to any organizations working in or for regions in the developing world as the best way to recruit online volunteers.

Also see:

The Virtual Volunteering Wiki

The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook

My research on Theater as a Tool for Development/Theatre as a Tool for Development

hey, corporations: time to put your money where your mouth is re: nonprofits & innovation

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logoI started talking about virtual volunteering – without knowing it was called that – as early as 1994, more than 30 years ago. Soon after I started babbling about it, I directed The Virtual Volunteering Project, based at the University of Texas, back in the late 1990s. Back then, I thought that, by now, well into the 21st century, there would be corporations clamoring to sponsor virtual volunteering activities and events. I could see back in the 1990s that this wasn’t just a fun idea – it was an effective one for nonprofits, NGOs, and volunteers themselves – and that it would become a widespread practice. I just knew corporations would want to be seen as leaders in the movement and, therefore, fund it.

Yet, 30 years later, while thousands of nonprofits all over the world have embraced using the Internet to support and involve volunteers, corporations remain largely silent in their involvement and support. I am frequently contacted by nonprofits and NGOs looking to expand their involvement of online volunteers, or that want to do something particularly interesting or innovative regarding virtual volunteering, but they need funding, and they want to know if I can help. And I can’t. Because corporations clamoring to be a part of virtual volunteering just hasn’t happened.

It’s not true of all corporations: the international telecommunications company Orange seems to get it, to a degree: Fundacja Orange (the Polish branch) partially funds the ground-breaking Discover E-Volunteering competition, the best showcase of new virtual volunteering initiatives on the planet. But, sadly, the UK branch of Orange seems to have already discontinued its Do Some Good smart phone app to help people volunteer through their mobile phone, launched in 2012 – less than three years ago. Hewlett-Packard used to have a pioneering e-mentoring program, bringing together their employees, as mentors, with high school students, and the program is frequently referenced in academic literature 20 years ago about the promise of e-mentoring – but that program is long gone, and I can’t find any association between HP and virtual volunteering anymore. Rolex seemed somewhat interested in microvolunteering, a version of virtual volunteering that engages online volunteers in micro tasks, but that initial interest seems to have quickly, completely waned. Cisco was a key financial and in-kind supporter of NetAid, a part of which became the UN’s Online Volunteering service, but that support ended in 2001.1

You’ve heard it and read it so many times: corporate folks chastising nonprofits and NGOs, saying those mission-based initiatives need to be more innovative, saying they need to embrace the latest network technologies and revolutionary management styles and on and on. Yet these same corporations demanding nonprofit innovation aren’t funding virtual volunteering-related initiatives.

Time to put your money where your mouth is, corporations: there are some terrific virtual volunteering activities out there. There are outstanding innovations happening at nonprofits and NGOs all over the world. You say you want more risk-taking, more innovations, more tech-use by mission-based organizations – okay, they stand ready to do it. All they need is the investment. Are YOU ready to put your money where your mouth is?

vvbooklittleAnd also… why haven’t you bought The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook?

😉

1: The last sentence of this paragraph, regarding Cisco and NetAid, was added on July 24, 2015

Nov. 11, 2015 update:  Nonprofit leaders are not focusing enough attention on innovation, measuring the impact of their efforts, and creating funding structures that encourage risk-taking, according to a new report from Independent Sector. Great – who is going to FUND THOSE ACTIVITIES?!

Microvolunteering: beyond the hype

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The buzz about microvolunteering continues – but, IMO, this form of virtual volunteering is still being talked about it terms of hype, rather than practicalities and concrete benefits. It’s being talked about by bloggers and consultants more than organizations creating microvolunteering activities. The vast majority of blogs and articles about microvolunteering are focused entirely on supposed benefits for volunteers, with not even anecdotal information to support assertions (not even testimonials from online volunteers, for instance, about why they undertook such activities, what exactly they did, etc.), and often without providing actual examples of what online volunteers do in microvolunteering activities, or details on how organizations benefit in such a way that the return on investment is clear. An example: this article from the Institute for Volunteering Research: “Micro-volunteering: doing some good through smartphones?“, about users of the Orange’s Do Some Good smartphone App.

Having promoted this form of online volunteering since 1997 – back when I gave it the not-at-all catchy name of byte-sized volunteering – having created such assignments for volunteers and, even now, managing a microvolunteering initiative, I offer the following:

My experience managing the Donate Your Brain initiatives for TechSoup. In this blog, I try to show just how much work it takes to provide meaningful microvolunteering opportunities. This isn’t a blog to discourage organizations from creating online microtasks for volunteers, but it is insight from a manager of volunteers point of view – and I would love to see many more such testimonials from the people that are actually creating these assignments and supervising the contributions made by volunteers.

A very long list of examples of microvolunteering really looks like. You won’t find a longer list anywhere of what microvolunteering assignments can look like. This web page also provides lots of advice on how to create such assignments and make the program worth doing.

For you researchers out there: it would be so refreshing if, instead of only focusing on the motivations of volunteers to engage in microvolunteering, you did some research on the organizations that involve volunteers in microvolunteering assignments:

  • What ultimately prompts them to start creating these assignments?
  • What type of microvolunteering assignments are the most common to start with at an organization?
  • What type of microvolunteering assignments are the most common across organizations?
  • Do most organizations start with a formal microvolunteering program – using that name, getting approval from senior staff to engage volunteers in this way, having a web page and blog announcing such, having an official launch of such activities, etc. – or do they just start offering such assignments without fanfare, even without calling them “microvolunteering”?
  • Do most organizations have just one person, or multiple people, creating microvolunteering activities and supervising volunteers?
  • What percentage of volunteers engaged in microvolunteering became longer-term volunteers, or became financial donors?
  • If an organization’s engagement of volunteers through microvolunteering went away tomorrow, what would be the impact?

And, yes, microvolunteering is talked about in the upcoming Virtual Volunteering Guidebook – just like it was in the last one back in 1999, but this time, we use the snazzy new name.

What I learned from researching virtual volunteering in Europe

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As I’ve blogged about 7 times already (and now, 8!): Since early April 2013, I’ve been researching Internet-mediated volunteering (virtual volunteering, online volunteering, microvolunteering, online mentoring, etc.) in European Union (EU) countries. This research is for the ICT4EMPL Future Work project being undertaken by the Information Society Unit of the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. As part of this project, I created a wiki of all of the various resources I used for my research, and it includes a list of online volunteering-related recruitment or matching web sites that are either focused on or allow for the recruitment of online volunteers from EU-countries, and a list of more than 60 organisations in EU countries that involve online volunteers in some way, either through a formal virtual volunteering or microvolunteering program, or just as a part of their volunteer engagement, without calling it virtual volunteering or any other associated name.

The research and analysis for this project is pretty much done. The overall ICT4EMPL project is focused on employability and social inclusion, so all of my analysis in the narrative for the EU ties back to those goals. The final paper should be available before the end of the year from the Information Society Unit of the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, and may be published in a journal by the University of Hertfordshire.

But here’s some analysis about what I found in my research that either aren’t in the paper I’ve submitted, but I think they should be out in public for discussion, or, that are in the paper, but I wanted to highlight them in particular for discussion:

  • Virtual volunteering is happening all over Europe. It’s not a new practice in Europe, just as it isn’t in North America. There are thousands of people in Europe that are engaged in virtual volunteering – and as I found 60 organizations involving online volunteers in a very short time, I image there are far, far more that I didn’t find, just because of my lack of skills in languages other than English. True, virtual volunteering still isn’t as widespread in Europe as it is in the USA, but its well-established and seems to be growing.
  • Traditional volunteer centers in Europe are ignoring virtual volunteering. The web sites of volunteer centers in European capitals, as well as most national web sites focused on volunteering in Europe by Europeans, were of little help in this research – they rarely mentioned online volunteers, virtual volunteering, microvolunteering, etc. Also, many of their online search engines for volunteering opportunities offer no way to list virtual opportunities. What is it going to take for this to change?
  • Spain is the European leader regarding virtual volunteering. Organizations involving online volunteers and web sites talking about voluntarios virtuales, voluntarios en línea, voluntarios digitales, voluntarios en red, microvoluntarios, voluntariat virtual, voluntaris digitals, voluntariat virtual abound in Spain. I could have done this report JUST on Spanish virtual volunteering and had 50 pages of narrative! Fundación Hazloposible, an NGO established in 1999 in Spain, launched HacesFalta.org the following year, an online portal for the promotion of volunteerism, including virtual volunteering, and its been growing ever since. Academic articles about this and other online efforts are plentiful. But why did Spain embrace virtual volunteering so early, and why did it spread so quickly, compared to other European countries? I would love to hear your thoughts as to why.
  • Lack of French virtual volunteering efforts. French is spoken by 74 million people, including in 31 francophone countries of Africa. It’s one of the official working languages of the United Nations. And, yet, information about virtual volunteering in French is sparse; even when the France-based France Bénévolat, talks about it, they just mention the phrase and then link to Canadian materials. Why the lack of information in French – and the apparent lack of interest in France regarding virtual volunteering, compared to Spain and England in particular?
  • Where are the online discussion groups for managers of volunteers in European countries? The United Kingdom has the wonderful UKVPMs, which brings together hundreds of people that work with volunteers, regularly discussing everything from legislation to day-to-day challenges in working with volunteers. There’s E-Voluntas, un canal para compartir experiencias de intervención e investigación sobre voluntariado. But where are the discussion groups in French, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan, German, Czech, Polish, Estonian, Swedish and on and on? In fact, where are the associations of managers of volunteers in these countries – not the volunteer centres, that promote volunteerism, but the associations that talk about effective management and support of volunteers? I found nothing on the International Association for Volunteer Effort (IAVE) site nor on the European Volunteer Centre (CEV) about such groups. Without such associations/communities of practice, there’s little chance of volunteering be elevated to the level of importance many of us believe it deserves, far beyond “feel good” activities. What will it take to change this?
  • Where are materials in languages other than English to help organizations involve online volunteers? I don’t mean just the Guía de voluntariado virtual, the translation of the Virtual Volunteering Guidebook I co-authored with Susan Ellis back in the 1990s, or translations of web materials I’ve written. I don’t mean just the UN’s Online Volunteering service English materials translated into French. I mean advice written in Spanish about Spanish experiences for a Spanish audience, or advice written in French about Francophone African experiences for a Francophone African audience, regarding how to identify tasks that might be undertaken by online volunteers, how to screen online candidates for volunteering, how to keep online volunteers motivated, how to supervise and support online volunteers, how to create an online mentoring program, how to create microvolunteering opportunities how to work with virtual teams of online volunteers, and on and on? I am so hungry to read a non-USA perspective about how to create online volunteering tasks, how to support online volunteers, the benefits of such engagement for organizations (not just the volunteers), etc. Are these out there and I’ve missed them? And I am ready to write an impassioned endorsement for anyone who wants to undertake such an endeavor for his or her respective country/region.
  • There are far, far, far more efforts in Europe to promote virtual volunteering, including microvolunteering, to potential volunteers than to volunteer hosting organizations. I found lots of material geared towards potential online volunteers, or talking about online volunteers and how they benefit, but scant information about why organizations in Europe involve volunteers, and why they should. Without focusing much, much more on hosting organizations, Europe is in danger of creating many thousands of disappointed people – people that wanted to volunteer online but couldn’t find tasks to do.

Those are some the findings I think might be of most interest to those that work with volunteers. Would love to hear your thoughts about these findings.