A montage of four photos, each representing one of the NGOs that is highlighted below. The first photo is of a gift shop, the second is of an adorable puppy, the next is of children in a library, and the last is of a natural spring swimming hole in Belize.
Tomorrow is Valentine’s Day, and in honor of love, I’m going to show some love for the NGOs I interacted with or noticed while on my recent two-week trip to Belize.
I was not volunteering in Belize; I was vacationing. But when I travel, I always do so with a mind to transire benefaciendo: “to travel along while doing good.” So here’s a thread to highlight some awesome NGOs I encountered as a tourist in Belize:
The Belize Audubon Society. They staffed some of the sanctuaries and parks we visited. And staff was always AWESOME. Note: they have volunteering opportunities!
Cayo Animal Welfare Society. It’s the Humane Society serving San Ignacio / Santa Elena and the Cayo District of Belize. I wrote them about a disturbing incident of dog abuse by the people operating a snack shack at Cahal Pech & they promptly wrote back.
Maya Center Women’s Group. They have a cultural center & gift shop at the entrance of Cockscomb Basin Wildlife Sanctuary. They are local artisans & by purchasing from them, you help sustain their families. They are lovely to talk to.
Miss Bertie’s Hopkins Community Library. We walked by it every day we were in Hopkins, Belize. But I never went in, because it was either closed or OH so busy & I didn’t want to be a bother. But what an important resource!
Please show them some love as well: go like some of their Facebook posts. If you can, make a financial donation to any or all of them!
Why did these groups get my attention? Because I encountered them while visiting a site and they were particularly helpful, because they had a great presence wherever they were located and that presence jumped out at me when I went by, and/or because I asked them a question online and they responded. Does YOUR nonprofit or NGO meet all of that criteria, wherever it is in the world?
And next time you travel, I hope you will consider keeping in mind transire benefaciendo.
In November 2021, I wrote a blog that warned nonprofits, NGOs, community groups, etc. not to over-invest in one social media tool – specifically Facebook. I wrote that blog because, when Facebook went offline in October of that year for about six hours, many organizations panicked: Facebook was their primary, even only, way of sharing up-to-date information with clients, volunteers and the general public – the organizations had either abandoned their own web sites and weren’t updating such much anymore and they used no other social media tools. That blog was a companion to another I’d written in 2019 exploring whether or not nonprofits should delete their Facebook accounts per Facebook’s reprehensible data mining, selling of data and unfettered spreading of misinformation and hate speech.
With the news that an extremely rich man who spreads medical misinformation, eschews philanthropy and efforts to address poverty and inequity, doesn’t treat his factory workers well, etc., has bought Twitter and will make it a “free speech” zone, removing its current community standards and probably restoring suspended accounts, many are thinking of deleting their personal or company Twitter accounts. And many folks are reeling from losing Twitter as we know it now, because they rely hugely on Twitter to get the word out about their work, to engage with others doing similar work, to network for jobs, etc. I am one of those people: while Facebook has been relatively useless for me professionally, Twitter has helped me sell my book, gotten me consulting gigs, gotten me invitations to speak at conferences and introduced me to so many amazing people I now call professional colleagues. It’s been more helpful to me professionally than any onsite, traditional conference I have ever attended in terms of networking, job leads and professional development. It’s been way more fun than Facebook personally as well: I have loved the social media challenges among museums on Twitter, the spontaneous poetry-writing events, and more very fun trending topics than I can count.
What to do regarding the Twitter dilemma? To stay could be seen as supporting the new owner, something that makes me very uncomfortable – and I’m not alone in that sentiment. And the reality is that, if he follows through on his plans, Twitter just isn’t going to be of value to me anymore.
Here’s what I’m doing in response to the potential changes at Twitter:
I acknowledge that, right now, stopping my participation on Twitter would be disastrous for me professionally. While Facebook has been largely useless for me professionally, Twitter has been a hugely important tool, for the reasons I’ve already stated, so I’m going to continue to try to squeeze some benefit from it until the changes come.
If Twitter goes in the direction that everyone is predicting – longer messages, adding suspended accounts back onto the platform (accounts that have spread misinformation, harassed people, etc.), not having rules about content, being a complete “free speech” zone, etc. – I’ll have to stop participating. I’m not sure if I will delete my Twitter account or just freeze it (just a last post to say where to find me).
Over the last three years, I’ve been investing more time in my YouTube channel and Reddit, as well as following my own advice and making sure my web site is always up-to-date, so that no one social media is my only outlet. I’m active on several LinkedIn groups as well, like the virtual volunteering group (which I own, actually) and ALIVE (a national group for managers of volunteers). You can follow me on LinkedIn (but note that I link only to those that I know professionally, that I could say something about you and your work) and join me on any of those groups. So, I’m already diversified, and will continue to do so, and hope that one of those platforms, at last, proves even half as valuable to me as Twitter has.
I’m always exploring other social media platforms. However, so far, the audience I want to reach professionally isn’t on TikTok, SnapChat, Instagram, etc. I’m on Signal, WhatsApp and Telegram, but I use those mostly for one-to-one communications, especially with folks overseas – the one group I’m on, for a nonprofit I volunteer for, is overwhelming and I’m not at all liking it. MeWe has never caught on with my colleagues (but you are welcomed to friend/follow me there).
I have a blog, which you are reading now. That blog is on my own web site, not on someone else’s web site. Twitter has been the primary of driver of readers to this blog (I post to Facebook and LinkedIn too, but those bring very little traffic to my blog). I’ll need to look for new ways to drive subscribers. Before you recommend RSS feeds – I would say 90% of the people that are my professional audience have no idea what that is.
I have a barely-used email distribution list (it died when I had to move it from YahooGroups because that platform went away) and a barely-used Google Group. I’ll be exploring how to leverage those better, but I’m not holding out much hope.
I’m redoubling efforts to make sure anyone who visits me on any online platform knows where else to find me. This blog is one part of that effort. I’ve put in links to all of my other sites on social media – please subscribe / follow / and like if you are there too.
I’ll be watching what the people that I follow on Twitter do, as well as the people and organizations on each of my many wonderful, informative Twitter lists do, as far as posting about their work other than Twitter. I rely on my Twitter lists more than anything else to know who is doing what in my professional worlds – I have yet to find anything that even comes close to a substitution for that (I’m NOT gonig to subscribe to hundreds of email newsletters!).
What about going back to traditional avenues for networking and outreach: writing one-to-one emails, attending onsite conferences, buying advertising, etc. I don’t have the financial resources to attend onsite conferences, and as I’ve mentioned earlier, attendance has rarely lead to a book sale or a new gig. I don’t have the financial resources to buy advertising – and quite honestly, I can’t figure out Google Ads. As for email, I barely read email I receive – I know that what I send also often doesn’t get read (if it makes it past a spam filter).
Am I disappointed about Twitter? Hugely. If the changes that the new owner has threatened do come to fruition, I am going to lose one of the most effective and easy-to-use outreach tools in my toolbox, and I’m going to lose touch with so many, many people and organizations whose viewpoints and resources I value in my work.
News about the Twitter sale is hitting me hard. What’s going to happen to #a11y and #DisabilityTwitter communities? Or the committed team at @TwitterA11y? I always say accessibility is global and some of that is because of this platform. Plus @twitter pals and chats Cheer me up!
But I’ve been here before:
Back in the early part of the new millennium, when USENET newsgroups started becoming overwhelmed with off-topic advertising messages. Soc.org.nonprofit was an incredibly important outreach tool for me for almost a decade, and ALL of my professional successes since 1994 can be traced back to my participation in that online community. I hated losing it. In some ways, I feel like Twitter was a return to those wonderful, well-connected days.
At about the same time, people started abandoning YahooGroups, which was a huge blow to many professionally-focused online communities like associations of managers of volunteers in particular: CYBERVPM, UKVPMs and OzVPM. I lost touch with many people altogether, people I’d known for years. And as I mentioned earlier, I had to move my email newsletter distribution group as a result and most of those folks did not follow me to the new platform.
I’ve been on America Online, MySpace, GooglePlus and GoogleWave – those are all gone, at least in the form I used them. I left each of those because something better came along. I should be used to this situation by now… but I also have to say that, other than YahooGroups, no platform has ever been the powerhouse for my professional work that Twitter has been. And nothing better seems to be coming along.
So, this is yet another cautionary tale about over-relying on a social media platform. While you cannot use everything out there, you absolutely need to use a diversity of outreach tools. And remember: there are people who are going to interact online with your initiative only via Facebook, or only via Twitter, or even only via email. None of those audiences are more important than another for your nonprofit, NGO, etc. Make sure all of your clients, volunteers, donors and others are reminded regularly of all of your various online communications channels, including your online communities – and your web address!
What are you or what is your organization doing about impending changes at Twitter? Please share in the comments below.
May 3 update: A tweet worth sharing:
Tweet from Eoghan Beecher: Elon Musk’s taking over twitter has serious ramifications for nonprofits who’s role is to challenge power. Not because he’s cozy with the establishment – they all are, but because he’s proven to be incredibly petty, and that is a huge threat to activist community.
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.
A coalition of nonprofits in my hometown in Kentucky asked me to put together a two-hour webinar on risk management in social media. And I did. I delivered it in early November 2020.
When I put together a new training on a subject I’ve not trained on before, I do a lot of research on the subject, to make sure my recommendations are timely and accurate. While I can base a lot of my trainings and blogs on my own experiences, I want to see what others are saying and doing as well.
For instance, for this workshop, I researched who “owns” a person’s online activities – when is a social media account the property of an individual and when is it the property of their workplace? The answer is different now than it was back in the 1990s when I directed The Virtual Volunteering Project. When are you speaking online such that it could bring your employer or program where you volunteer into disrepute – and can you be fired for that – and when is it your personal, individual opinion that your employer cannot take into consideration regarding your employment or volunteering? There have been a fair number of controversies about this over the years, and I was surprised at what I found.
I also researched people being fired for social media posts on their own, personal social media accounts and found that, often, those accounts were NOT public. How common is it? It’s very common. Here’s a sampling of what I found:
A Virginia car company fired an employee in 2014 for posting what it considered “racist and other inappropriate posts,” noting in its apology that the company “does not condone nor does it tolerate racism, bigotry or any other expression of prejudice or discrimination against anyone of any race, gender or religion.”
Justine Sacco, the PR executive fired in 2013 over her racist and inappropriate tweets (there was more than one) just before she boarded a plane.
Anthony David Weiner, who represented New York’s 9th congressional district from January 1999 until June 2011, winning seven terms as a Democrat and never receiving less than 60% of the vote – and then resigned from Congress in June 2011 after he sent a sexually suggestive photo to a woman via Twitter and it was publicized.
Employees, consultants and volunteers being fired, or having their contracts not renewed, because of posts they made to social media that disparaged certain groups or advocated violence, even via their own, personal, not public social media accounts, is something I’ve been paying attention to since 2011, via this thread on the TechSoup online community forum.
It’s not a black or white issue regarding firing someone for social media posts: while employers can and do fire employees over social media issues, there are also instances where it would potentially be illegal to do so and employees have been reinstated or been awarded financial compensation. This article from 2018 does the best job, IMO, of explaining when you may, and may not, fire someone for a social media post. This 2020 article from the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) is also excellent.
But I really didn’t want to get bogged down in my training on whether or not someone should be fired regarding a social media post, not only because I’m not a lawyer, but because I don’t think that’s what’s needed in such a training for nonprofits, libraries, etc. Instead, I focused on how to prevent or, at least, reduce the likelihood of such posts from happening at all and what to do when they do happen, from a PR perspective in terms of response.
The reality is that the most common problems nonprofits, charities, NGOs, schools and other mission-based programs will face from social media use by employees won’t relate to a lawsuit – they will relate to public reaction to something posted or “liked” or followed by an employee, consultant, volunteer or client from the program. And I believe the program’s body of work and body of social media posts, as well as that organization’s relationship with the community, are the greatest counter to negative fallout from a social media mistake or from one staff person who turns out to have a deeply-ceded prejudice that could affect their work with others.
I had a four-pronged approach to suggest to the audience about risk management in using social media:
You want to create and promote a culture that better discourages, even prevents, social media missteps.
You want to create and promote written policies that better discourage and prevent social media missteps.
You need to talk to employees, consultants and volunteers frankly about social media use, because conversations reinforce to staff that they need to be thoughtful about what they are posting and “liking” or following online, at all times, even when they are “off the clock.”
You want to have a strategy for how you will respond to when an employee or volunteer violates your social media policies and/or makes statements or likes or follows something online, even “off the clock”, that bring your organization or program into disrepute.
I spent a LOT of time emphasizing how to prevent inappropriate social media posts by employees, consultants and volunteers from happening in the first place and what to do to now so that it will mitigate damage when an inappropriate social media post surfaces. I think the most important strategy for a nonprofit, charity, government program, etc. on both of these points is establishing and reinforcing an agency’s culture regarding being a welcoming place, onsite and online, for all people, regardless of their age, race, gender identification, citizenship or residency status, disabilities, religion (or lack there of) or sexual preference.
You need to say, bluntly, in writing, in interviews, in new employee and new volunteer orientations, etc., that you are an organization that recognizes deep-ceded historic inequities and systematic racism in society, including the local community, and that your program is committed to evaluating its activities through the lense of equity and social justice and inclusion.
The more you emphasize this culture, the more some candidates for employment or volunteering will screen themselves out of your organization – someone who cherishes the activity of insulting and demeaning others or denies social inequities or who follows people who promote prejudice and conspiracy theories is not going to want to volunteer nor work with you otherwise if you are so upfront about your agency’s commitments.
Social media is worthwhile and even necessary for a nonprofit, NGO, charity, school, government agency or any mission-based program to use. You harm your organization or program and exclude vast numbers of donors, volunteers, clients and other supporters by not using it.
Agencies can’t come from a place of fear in using social media. If they do, they’ll never realize the wonderful potential of social media to connect with audiences.
Programs must realize that there is no way to prevent any bad thing from ever happening via something an employee, consultant or volunteer says or writes or likes or follows online, and that they cannot completely control employee, consultant and volunteer behavior, online and off.
An agency should engage in activities regularly that emphasize its values to employees, consultants and volunteers.
An agency should have written policies regarding confidentiality (not just online), privacy (not just online), and the program’s official online and print communications.
An agency should have written suggestions & other communications regarding “using common sense” online.
Employees, consultants, volunteers & maybe clients need training in social media.
There are ways to effectively address social media messages or other activities by employees, consultants and volunteers that reflect poorly on your agency or even bring it into disrepute.
Would you like for me to do a training for your organization? Here’s more about my online trainings / webinars. I can create, and have created, trainings on a variety of subjects, and trainings on communications tools and techniques for nonprofits, particularly small nonprofits, are my favorite. My trainings are based on practice and real-world experience: I am a manager of volunteers and a volunteer myself, I have a great deal of experience in communications for nonprofits and international aid agencies, and I continually keep up-to-date on what various programs, large and small, are doing with regard to community engagement.
If you are looking for training on virtual volunteering, I highly recommend you first view this series of online videos I prepared that, in around one hour, will give you a clear understanding of virtual volunteering and how you can pursue it at your organization.
Couple viewing these free videos with purchasing and reading my book, The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, and you will have all that you need for launching or expanding a robust virtual volunteering scheme at your nonprofit, charity, school, etc. 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 it’s far, far cheaper than hiring me as a consultant or trainer regarding virtual volunteering – though you can still do that, particularly if it’s regarding some specific aspect of virtual volunteering, let setting up an online mentoring program.
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.
Wow. The Ellis Archive has released a bunch of volunteer management books for FREE. These are books that Susan Ellis sold for years through her company, Energize, Inc.
If you don’t know: Susan was the world’s expert on the effective management of volunteers, and her company, Energize, was the world’s largest publisher of books on volunteer management. I was her disciple when it came to volunteer management, one of many. And she was the first promoters of virtual volunteering. We wrote The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook together (it’s not free, however).
If you are a person that works with volunteers, or wants to, all of these books are worth your time to read (don’t just download them!)
Beyond Police Checks, by Linda Graff (this book is THE book regarding safety in programs involving volunteers. I don’t think any program should involve volunteers with children or the general public without reading this book. It’s life-changing).
Building Staff Volunteer Relations, by Ivan H. Scheier (Mr. Scheier was the first person who compiled information about the management of volunteers in any kind of meaningful, substantial way – Susan constantly promoted his work, which never lost its relevance).
Funded by the Susan J. Ellis Foundation, the Ellis Archive primarily consists of digitized documents from Susan J. Ellis‘ personal resource library. The Ellis Archive is searchable by title, source, year, author, and keyword topic. Special tags also exist for Research, Non-US/International, and AVA history items.Items in the archive are organized into 32 keyword topics, with some cross-referencing. These topics also represent a broad range of mission-focused areas, such as the arts, criminal justice, social services, the environment, healthcare, government, education, etc. Most content originates from 1970 through 2004. However, there are seminal works dated as early as 1947, and a few documents as recent as 2010. Also included are numerous items from the private libraries of two pioneer volunteer leaders – Harriet Naylor and Ivan Scheier, prodigious writers and highly respected mentors to Susan. Much of Scheier’s work was originally digitized by Regis University and now continues to be accessible as part of this Archive. In addition, the Minnesota Office of Volunteer Services Resource Library gave a few of its publications to Susan when that office closed in 2002; these publications are now a part of this Archive. The Archive also includes historical items documenting some of the history of the Association for Volunteer Administration (AVA).
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.
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:
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:
How to find virtual volunteering opportunities. It’s not a surprise that this was the most popular page on my web site this year, given what 2020 has been like, but this page was quite popular early in the year, before the global pandemic.
Mission statements for your volunteer engagement (Saying WHY your program involves volunteers). That this page was so popular has been a huge shock. I have no idea why it’s so popular – but I am glad it is.
Finding Community Service To Fulfill a Court-Order or School Obligation. I created this page specifically because of all of the “nonprofits” out there that, for a fee, will give someone who has been assigned community service a letter saying they have completed such. I’m pleased that it is reaching the intended audience.
For Those That Want To Help – the index of all of the online resources I’ve developed to help people that are looking for volunteering opportunities or ways to somehow engage in service to the community – or communities abroad.
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.
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.
If you are a nonprofit focused on helping the homeless, addressing hunger or nutrition, helping people with a chronic illness or children or seniors, helping people with addiction issues, your services are still hugely in demand and it’s easy for people to see how your nonprofit is relevant during COVID19 and all that it’s bringing to individuals and the community-at-large, like unemployment, social isolation and being homebound without onsite visits. I’ve noticed many nonprofits trying to address domestic violence have done an excellent job at messaging these days, noting that the requirements to stay at home have created a very dangerous scenario for those they try to serve and what they are trying to do to address that. If you represent such a nonprofit, you may even have seen a spike in donations as a result.
But if you are a nonprofit focused on live theater, artwork, dance, history, recycling or some other thing that isn’t directly, obviously related to the consequences of COVID19, it can feel like you are being lost amid all the calls for continuing to support nonprofits and addressing this pandemic.
ALL NONPROFIT ORGANIZATIONS MATTER to SOMEONE, at the very least. If a nonprofit doesn’t matter, it shouldn’t exist.
This is not the time to pause your nonprofit’s communications, wait for things to get better and hope people will remember your nonprofit when we’re through this, or to think that relaunching your public activities once public gatherings can happen again will immediately bring people back to engaging with your program and supporting it financially. Instead, your nonprofit, no matter its focus, needs to be thinking about what messages it can send out on its blog and social media channels, linked from its web site, about its work that will be relevant in these times. It needs to strategize about how to get those messages out and how to invite digital engagement on them as well.
Here are some ideas:
Historical societies and history museums need to be posting about what the culture or community they are focused on did in the past regarding an epidemic, a pandemic or other widespread hardship, with photos, any first-person stories they have on file or accounts by others. Did your city experience the so-called Spanish Flu and, if so, what happened in that time? Share stories of hope, courage, sorry, and with each message, remind people what your organization does to preserve local culture. This doesn’t have to be one major online publication – you can publish just one thing once a week, even twice a week. Always invite feedback on such – some people may have photos and diaries they would like to share with you from that time.
Historical societies should be finding free broadcasts of history-related topics (such as on public television) and encouraging home-based live-watch parties, and for everyone in their own community that’s watching to share thoughts as they watch on a Facebook thread or Tweet chat designed for them to share such. At least some of these quotes will demonstrate the power of learning about history and be great in a grant proposal.
History societies and groups focused on specific ethnic cultures should be sharing how people can get started on their own family history and ancestry projects: how to ask for info from family members, how to record that information (scanning, how to use a smart phone to record, etc.,), options for sharing that information with just family, or with the public, etc.
Community theaters should be posting stories about places and pieces related to any discussion of disease, or noting the ways past epidemics or pandemics have affected live theater in the past. Share these stories with the intent to say, “And live theater SURVIVED!” A group of online volunteers, recruited from your current home-bound volunteers or newly recruited, could help you compile enough information to share something every week – even twice a week. Maybe even every day.
There are art museums that are having a field day with social media during this crisis, such as the Getty, which has asked people to recreate famous painting scenes using whatever they can find in their own house. Check out a few of the Getty’s picks on its Instagram, and don’t forget to take a peek this hashtag. It’s a campaign that’s not only gone viral, it’s reminded people of just how images from art influence our lives and kept that museum relevant.
Operas could post people performing songs in operas, like La Traviata or La bohème, where a character is singing while dying and talk about how the performing arts have never flinched from portraying human suffering, and how that art can help people handle the horrors around them.
All performing arts groups – theaters, operas, dance companies, choirs, etc. – should be finding free broadcasts of performances by ANY group related to whatever art they themselves produce and encouraging home-based live-watch parties, and for everyone in their own community that’s watching to share thoughts as they watch on a Facebook thread or Tweet chat designed for them to share such. At least some of these quotes will demonstrate the power of performing art and be great in a grant proposal.
All arts groups should be posting messages regularly now about the links between producing art and experiencing art and the positive effects on such regarding mental health.
A nonprofit that produces a farmer’s market or artisan market should ask its clients to make short videos about what they are doing now – both challenges they are facing and what they are still producing and ways people might be able to order it online or pay for it in a safe exchange that involves a lot of physical distancing and no close contact whatsoever.
Many animal shelters and rescue agencies have done a brilliant job promoting now as a great time to foster an animal from the shelter, since families and individuals are homebound anyway, and it’s resulted in a windfall of great foster families for many shelters.
If your nonprofit promotes sports, the outdoors or an outdoor activity, this is a time to be interviewing people online who have benefited from your programs over the years, and sharing those stories online, to say, “This is why sports / this activity matters. This is how we have impact.” If you don’t need to do fundraising for activities, you could fundraise for equipment you will use once your operations resume. You could also be sharing with people how to clean and repair whatever equipment is associated with the sport or outdoor activity, or an at-home exercise that could help build strength or balance to help in engaging in that sport or outdoor activity.
Your volunteers would love to come up with their own ideas about what your nonprofit should be saying and doing to stay relevant now. You can bring them all together in a conference call or put one volunteer in charge of gathering their ideas, calling and emailing each one. Emailing is great – but calling someone is even better, in most scenarios. This doesn’t have to be a one-time ask: they should be given multiple opportunities to share their ideas with you, and opportunities to help bring those ideas to fruition.
Always invite feedback on what you are sharing, and track this feedback. You can use this to show the impact of your COVID19-related activities to potential funders.
And a reminder that there has never been a better time for your organization to launch activities and roles for online volunteers. How they could help you with the aforementioned activities should be obvious. Here are even more ideas, from my last blog.
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.
I asked this back in 2011, but it’s time to ask it again:
I would like to know YOUR favorite online resources regarding volunteerism / volunteers (especially the support and management of such), nonprofits or NGOs (non-governmental organizations), including Tweeters, in languages OTHER than English.
Spanish, French or German are most desired, but any language – Arabic, Persian Farsi / Dari / Tajik /, Hindi, whatever – would be welcomed.
Please send the name of the resource, the URL of the resource, and a summary of what the resource is – does it focus on volunteer management? On nonprofits / NGOs / charities using the Internet? Or helping organizations recruit volunteers? Or fundraising / resource mobilization? Or any aspect of management? Is it a web site? A database? A Twitter feed?
I have some of these resources already, but I would like to have more. Plus, mine need updating:
I will share what I’ve compiled already and what’s submitted – and is what I’m looking for – on my web site, and announce the page here on my blog, as well as my Twitter feed and my Facebook page.
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.
In the winter of 1996, I started a new job, directing The Virtual Volunteering Project. I was based in Austin, Texas, and I flew to Washington, DC to meet one of the advisors of the project, Susan J. Ellis.
She terrified me.
She seemed to know absolutely everything there is to know about volunteerism. She had thought about virtual volunteering far, far more than I ever had. She was absolutely sure of the impact online volunteers could have on the world and had already envisioned specific examples of possibilities. She wasn’t surprised at all by anything I told her regarding what I knew about working with online volunteers or what I knew about organizations engaged in virtual volunteering. She was five steps ahead of me no matter what I was saying or thinking. It was one of the most intimidating meetings I’ve ever had.
I have remained in awe of Susan’s expertise and ways of thinking and strategizing every day since that meeting, but I also am so happy that, since then, Susan became a frequent collaborator and good friend. Back in those early days, we would do workshops together at various volunteer management and volunteerism conferences and ask the room, “How many of you have an email address?” Maybe a quarter of the room would raise their hands. I wanted to be tentative and gentle about introducing virtual volunteering – she didn’t, and would challenge the room with statements about how they had better get ahead of this because, if they didn’t, tech-savvy volunteers would create their own efforts and leave them behind. Over the four years I directed the Virtual Volunteering Project, I became far bolder in my statements and advice as well, and it was because of her. She never officially consulted on the United Nation’s Online Volunteering Service when I directed the project at UNV, but so much of what I did in managing that service was because of what she taught me, and any success regarding that service is, in part, because of her.
Her book From the Top Down: The Executive Role in Successful Volunteer Involvement changed everything I had been thinking about volunteerism, and I still refer to it regularly when trying to create a presentation or a research paper or write a blog post. When she told me she had suggested the authors writing the book What We Learned (the Hard Way) about Supervising Volunteers to contact me for a contribution, I was floored – what did I know?!? She had so much more faith in me than I ever did in myself. I read her oh-so-provocative Hot Topics, her monthly blog series, and was inspired for months to come with new questions and comments for colleagues – and always checked it whenever I had what I thought was a new idea because, very often, Susan had the same questions or comments months or even years before me.
The first time I visited the Energize, Inc. office in Philadelphia in 1998, we were both active participants on CyberVPM, a then very popular and pioneering online group to discuss volunteer management. Sitting in her office, we decided to author a joint post and propose a discussion that the President Bill Clinton intern/sex scandal was, in fact, a volunteer management issue, since the intern was unpaid and, therefore, a volunteer. Many on the group balked at the idea of discussing “politics”, but Susan didn’t back down: she asked point blank how these organizations would handle the same situation in their own organizations, what policies they had in place to address it, etc.
Susan was disruptive long before it became fashionable to be such.
Let’s be clear: there is no person on Earth who has done as much to promote volunteerism and the best practices for engaging and support volunteers than Susan J. Ellis. Her contributions cannot be overstated. That any academic paper regarding any aspect of volunteerim can be written without quoting Susan at some point is beyond me. I have not done a presentation on volunteer engagement in the last 22 years that I did not reference Susan Ellis.
Susan wasn’t just a pioneer regarding the identification and promotion of volunteer management best practices and innovations, she wasn’t just a guru regarding all things volunteerism: Susan J. Ellis was a pioneer geek fan girl. Her company, Energize, Inc., was named for the term “energize” in Star Trek, and she had fantastic stories about being a Trekker in the earliest days of the show. She also was a huge fan of David McCallum and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and a few years ago, over a huge sandwich at a Schlesinger’s, a legendary traditional Jewish deli in Philadelphia, she told me a wonderful story of waiting outside a stage door as a starry-eyed young fan girl so she could show McCallum, who was appearing in a stage production, the scrapbook she’d put together for years watching his show. She did, indeed, meet him and show him her work, and he had seemed quite impressed. Many years later, she decided to wait outside another stage door for him in a different show, just to get another autograph, and he said upon seeing her, “You’re the girl with the scrapbook.” She beamed at that story, as any fangirl does, to be remembered by someone whose career you have followed and promoted with such passion.
Susan also wrote a Master’s thesis on the history of scrapple, a traditional and not-at-all kosher food of Pennsylvania, and I not only read it when I last stayed at her house, I also delighted in playing for her the scrapple song by one of my favorite performers, Robbie Fulks. I had intended to get him to autograph something for her in March when i see him perform, to honor her scrapple research.
In 2005, Susan and I were at yet another volunteerism conference together – I had been living in Germany for four years. And we sat at a table and had a conversation in German. She was so delighted to hear me stumble through the language of her parents and to be able to have a bit of back and forth in it. It’s one of MANY moments I cherish with her.
The blanket on my couch is the one Susan gave me as a wedding present. One of my favorite outfits is one I bought when I met up with her in London to tell her I had started a completely revising our book on virtual volunteering. And, of course, so many of the books she wrote and published are on my bookshelves.
You have probably noticed by now that I’m talking about Susan in the past tense. Susan passed away yesterday morning, Sunday, February 25. I wanted to wait a day before posting my tribute online because I wanted to make sure that those who were closest to her would know this news by now and wouldn’t learn it by reading this blog or any social media posts I made.
Seven years ago, Susan was diagnosed with cancer. She made a remarkable recovery from that initial diagnosis and the toll the initial treatment took on her, but never quite a full one: the cancer kept showing up in other places and the treatments greatly affected her health in a myriad of ways. She handled her health challenges with remarkable grace and humor, even coming back from the brink in late 2017 – her friends, of course, dubbed her Susan Ellis: hard to kill. But ultimately, the fight became too much. I’m so glad that her final days were peaceful and surrounded by friends.
Please check the Energize, Inc. web site for details about Susan’s funeral and burial, which will be happening quite quickly, as well as the memorial in Philadelphia next weekend. Any other plans for remembering Susan will be posted there as well.
SO many of us are having trouble thinking about a world without Susan. I’m so grateful to have been mentored by her – and to have been able to call her my friend.
Update: her official obituary from her company. Also, the newly formed Susan J. Ellis Foundation will, in the coming months, “provide grants or support programs that will expand volunteer administration and support education and research activities in volunteerism” and contributions are being accepted for it.
So often – TOO OFTEN – I hear nonprofits, government initiatives, NGOs, charities and other mission-based programs complaining that they aren’t getting good attendance at their events or program activities, or aren’t getting any press coverage, or don’t have enough volunteers, and so they are looking for something innovative and new in marketing.
But is something innovative and newreally what they need?
In my junior year at Western Kentucky University, a million years ago, one of my professors proposed an idea to me: for one of my senior year classes, to fulfill my minor in theater, I could be in charge of marketing the Fall Children’s Theatre series, a then-annual event where three to four student-directed productions were presented, all focused on children audiences. I would get credit for a full senior-level class for such. I had also been working at the local arts center as a marketing intern outside of classes and had a wonderful mentor there who had taught me a lot about getting press coverage – combining this experience with my journalism major and newspaper experience, it was an offer I couldn’t refuse!
I was oh-so-successful at getting kids and their parents to the plays. One performance had to be delayed a few minutes because there were so many kids pouring in from an area kindergarten. We consistently sold out of intermission snacks, filling the coffers of our student theater society. Of course, I got an “A” for my efforts: my professor said they had never had so many full houses for the Fall Children’s Theater series.
Was I innovative in my approach to marketing these shows? No. All I did was the basics:
Sent press releases in a timely manner, with complete information, to area newspapers, and the one local TV station, in time to get into their calendar sections.
Sent press releases to local schools and kindergartens as early as possible.
That’s it. That’s all I did. And I sent these by mail – there was no Internet in my world back in those days. I had no budget to do anything else. All I did to be so wildly successful was the basics of marketing. And I did the basics WELL. Before my involvement, press releases were never sent, or were sent too late for information to be included in a local newspaper or on TV, or didn’t have complete information.
Before you start looking for something innovative to improve attendance at your events, increase program participants, recruit more volunteers, increase your visibility, etc., look at your current communications:
Is information on your web site up-to-date and complete, with answers to Who?, What?, Where?, Why? and When? right in the first paragraph of any information about events?
When you post about information on social media, do you make sure it includes Who?, What?, Where? and When? (you may not have enough room on Twitter for Why?)
Are you sending press releases and announcements to every area media outlet in your area, including newspapers, radio stations and TV stations watched in your area, in a TIMELY manner?
If you have a poster or brochure about the event, are the answers to Who?, What?, Where?, Why? and When? obvious and easy to find/easy to see?
Has your up-to-date, complete information been emailed directly to every employee, every consultant and every volunteer at your organization, in a timely manner?
There’s nothing innovative about any of that – but these steps are absolutely fundamental to successful marketing by nonprofits. And often, it’s all that’s needed.
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).
Online 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.
In the winter of 1996, I started a new job, directing 
So often – TOO OFTEN – I hear nonprofits, government initiatives, NGOs, charities and other mission-based programs complaining that they aren’t getting good attendance at their events or program activities, or aren’t getting any press coverage, or don’t have enough volunteers, and so they are looking for something innovative and new in marketing.