Tag Archives: nonprofits

Keynote speaking in South Carolina & Washington state!

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logoCome here me speak this month or next!

Me in South Carolina Jan. 27 – 29, 2016
I’ll be the keynote speaker and presenting workshops at the South Carolina Association for Volunteer Administration (SCAVA) annual conference, January 27-29, 2016 in North Myrtle Beach! You do not have to be a member of SCAVA to attend. Join me!

Me in Vancouver, Washington (state – USA) Feb. 11, 2016
I’ll be the keynote speaker at the Nonprofit Network Southwest Washington / Directors of Volunteer Programs Association (DVPA) conference on Thurs., February 11 in Vancouver, Washington (state), USA.

You can book me for your conference or workshop! After February 2016, my consulting schedule is wide open. I am available for presentations, short-term consultations, long-term projects, part-time positions, and, for the right role, a full-time permanent position. Here’s what I can do for your organization/initiative.

There are free online workshops by me which you can view anytime, if you want to know more about my presentation style. Most are more than 45 minutes long:

I’m available for interviews on Skype or your preferred video conferencing tool, and, of course, by phone – I’m on West Coast time (the same as Los Angeles). I’m available for in-person, onsite interviews in and around Portland, Oregon (the area where I live), and am willing to travel most anywhere for an interview or as part of a short-term consultation.

I love FOSS software!

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For more than seven years, I’ve been using FOSS software for all my office software needs:

  • I use LibreOffice and OpenOffice for all word-processing needs on my laptop, including opening and editing Microsoft Word documents sent to me by other, for creating slide show/presentation/stacks and editing Microsoft PowerPoint files sent to me by others, for all spreadsheets, simple databases)
  • I use Thunderbird, from Mozilla, for my on-my-computer email client and Roundcube for my webmail needs via my laptop.

Open source software allows users (including online volunteers!) to study, change, and improve the software at the code level, rights normally reserved for the copyright holder – usually, a large corporation. Free software usually refers to software that grants you the freedom to copy and re-use the software, rather than to the price of the software, and is often referred to as FOSS (Free and Open Source Software). But in this case, I’m talking about cost-free-for-the-user software: it doesn’t cost a user money to use it.

It bothers me when I see people in countries where I work or visit – Afghanistan, Ukraine, Egypt, etc. – using pirated Microsoft software rather than LibreOffice or OpenOffice. Or when I see nonprofits struggling with expenses and spending huge amounts of money on proprietary software from multi-billion dollar companies rather than FOSS software. FOSS proves again and again to be just as secure, stable, frequently-updated, feature-rich and reliable as proprietary software. FOSS products are powerful, constantly debugged and upgraded, and feature-rich. The support forums for them are as good as anything large software corporations provide.

Sure, there are the occasional file translation issues — sometimes the fonts don’t translate ideally between FOSS and Microsoft Powerpoint, for instance, or the bullets in a word-processing document sometimes goes wonky from one software to another — you know, the same problems that happen between different versions of the same software from large, well-known corporations.

As I’ve said before, you evaluate and choose free software the same way you choose fee-based software:

  • how long has the software been around?
  • how often is the software upgraded?
  • how much documentation for the software is provided?
  • is there an online forum where users freely post questions and offer support to each other?
  • look for reviews of the software (these are very easy to find online). Read many different reviews from many different sources, not just one or two, and not just the “official” review from the software’s manufacturer(s).
  • is the software talked about by users on the TechSoup forum?

Beware of unsolicited email offers or web page pop-ups for free software. These are often associated with malicious software, viruses, and scams.

As I’ve said before, what’s most important in being able to work in the modern office is not a certain number of years using a particular office software. Rather, it’s for you to understand all that office software should be able to do, such as in a document:

  • using fonts appropriately and changing them as necessary
  • setting tabs and margins
  • creating and editing tables
  • adding headers and footers, page numbers, etc.
  • adding and editing tables
  • adding graphics and integrating them into a page’s design
  • recording and showing, or hiding or accepting, edits by other people
  • creating an automatically-updated table of contents based on headings and subheadings within a document
  • creating mail merges for customized text
  • etc.

What’s MOST important is that you understand the capabilities of word processing software, spreadsheet software, presentation software, web page creation software, etc. – having that understanding means you will be able to learn to use future versions of the software or any software produced by a different company that is designed to do what you want done, whether it’s to create a document or a web page or a database, whatever. The most important software skill you can have is the ability to learn new functions on upgraded software or ability to learn new software quickly or ability to figure out new software/upgrades, because software changes. And changes and changes. It gets upgraded. The IT manager decides to use something different. A board member can get a special deal on something different. The head of the organization has a personal preference. Whatever.

In short, don’t marry software. Because your relationship won’t last a lifetime. It just won’t. And it WILL break your heart at some point. Date it – and enjoy it while it lasts!

For more information, see these previous blogs and other web pages, where I talk more about FOSS options, including about entire country governments that have converted to FOSS use, and more about software choices:

University of Kentucky Duvall followup

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logos for u of kentucky programsThe last week in October, I was the Fall 2015 Duvall Leader in Residence at the University of Kentucky’s Center for Leadership Development (CFLD), part of UK’s College of Agriculture,Food and Environment, in Lexington. CFLD supports leadership related activities within the UK College of Agriculture, the University of Kentucky campus, the local Lexington community and counties statewide. My visit was sponsored by the W. Norris Duvall Leadership Endowment Fund and the CFLD, and focused on leadership development and community development and engagement as both relate to the use of online media.

It was a fantastic experience! I just can’t say enough about how well the residency was put together, how well my time was utilized. My time and knowledge were fully exploited – exactly as it should be! Thanks, Lissa and Dakota!

Here is a list of topics for all the workshops and consultations I created and delivered for such:

I cover all of these topics throughout my web site and in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, but I will be blogging in detail about a few of the aforementioned individual topics in the coming weeks, because there’s more to say – particularly “Democratizing engagement: leading in a virtual world,” which proved to be a fascinating project and discussion. 

1028151154This consultancy got off to a rocky start, so I’m very glad it ended up working out so very well. My favorite part was getting to talk with the university students: they ask fantastic questions, they make me think, and they are so fearless when it comes to just about everything (except asking questions in class). AND THEY USE SOCIAL MEDIA: they were tweeting about what I was doing, replying to things I was posting, inviting people to later workshops – loved it! I want to give a shoutout to the University of Kentucky football team in particularly, as two of its players provided some key input in three of my classes that really helped move things along – and as one of those players went on to score a touchdown a few days later against Tennessee, perhaps I should be brought in to address the entire team?

They say that, to be a great at a sport, you have to “leave it all on the court” or “all on the field.” I tried to do the consultancy version of that in Kentucky last month. Proud of my work but, wow, I’m still exhausted!

Here are some more photos from this fantastic experience.

And I’ll say it again: oh how I dream to teach an entire university course (or two!)

Valuing volunteer engagement: an imaginary case study

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Imagine a nonprofit theater showing the value of its volunteer usher program by saying:

We involved 40 ushers in 2015, and they provided 100 hours of service, and since the Independent Sector says the value of a volunteer hour is $23.07, the value of our volunteer usher program in 2013 was $2,307.00.

Here’s what such a statement shows:
moneysigns

  • The value of volunteers is that the organization doesn’t have to pay them
  • Volunteers save money, because they do work for free.
  • Volunteer time, hour per hour, is more valuable than that of all the staff members that aren’t directors, because they are all paid far less than $23.07 an hour.
  • The organization could get even more value for its volunteer program if it could get more volunteers doing things it is currently paying staff to do.
  • The greater the number of volunteer hours, the greater the value of the volunteer engagement.

How would such a stated value of the volunteer usher program make the ushers feel? Make the receptionist feel? Make donors that are union members feel?

It’s an obviously awful idea. Yet, this is how so many consultants and organizations want nonprofits to state the value of volunteer engagement.

By contrast, I would find the value of a volunteer usher program through collecting data that could be measured against both the mission of the organization and the mission of the volunteer program. Let’s say the mission of the organization is “to provide theatrical works that entertain, enlighten, and have a transformative impact on our audiences, and build an appreciation of the arts in our community.” Yes, I just made that up. I have examples of mission statements for volunteer engagement programs here. Here’s how I would collect that data:

I would find out what impact being a volunteer at the theater had for the ushers. I would find this out through interviews and surveys, asking things like “Why did you want to be an usher at our organization?” and “What have you learned as an usher that you might not have known otherwise about our theater? Or about putting on theater productions?” I would also ask why they think volunteer ushers might be preferable for the theater to paying people to do the work.

I would survey new ushers before they began their volunteering, and then survey them after they had served a certain number of hours, asking them the same questions, to see if their perceptions about theater in general, and our theater, specifically, had changed.

I would ask audience members how ushers help their experience at our theater. I’d do this through surveys and interviews.

I would ask staff members how they believe hosting ushers benefits them, the audience, and the theater as a whole. I would also ask why they think volunteer ushers might be preferable to paying people to do the work.

I would look at the profiles of the ushers, and see what range of age groups were represented, what range of zip codes were represented (based on residencies), and if possible, look at the range of ethnicities represented, and other data, that could show how representative of our community the volunteer ushers are.

If I didn’t have time to do all of this data gathering and interviewing myself, I would talk to faculty members at area universities and colleges that teach classes in nonprofit management, sociology, psychology or sociology, to see if students in one of their classes could do the data collection as part of an assignment, or a PhD student who might want to oversee the project as part of his or her doctorate work. The students would get practical experience and I would get people who, perhaps, people would be willing to give more honest answers to than me, someone they know from the theater.

None of this is vague, feel-good data; it’s data that can be used not only to show the organization is meeting its mission through its volunteer engagement, but also testimonials that can be used in funding proposals and volunteer recruitment messages. It would also be data that could help the organization improve its volunteer engagement activities – something that monetary value also cannot do.

Whether your organization is a domestic violence shelter, an after-school tutoring program, a center serving the homeless, an animal rescue group, a community garden – whatever – there is always a better way to demonstrate volunteer value than a monetary value for hours worked. What a great assignment for a nonprofit management or volunteer management class…

For more on the subject of the value of volunteer or community engagement:

Adopt a dog. And Don’t Just Ask for Money.

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Lucy next to my blueberry bush
This is Lucinda. We adopted her in December of last year. She’s just 18 months – a lean greyhoundish brindle at 40 pounds or so.

One of the joys of working from home: my pre-work morning has been spent watching Harry, a little 10-year-old dog that I’m dog-sitting for a few days for a friend – he’s not even 20 pounds – playing with Lucinda, and it’s been absolutely hilarious. I love my still-a-puppy for adjusting her play for a smaller, slower dog, and I love Harry for being oh-so feisty. And I wonder yet again why more people don’t adopt older dogs.

Lucy is my first puppy – I got her at seven-months old. But she’s my fourth dog. My first dog, Buster, was probably two when I adopted him off the streets of a town in Massachusetts, my second dog, Wiley, was almost six and been shuffled around and neglected in three homes before me, and my third dog, Albi, was almost seven, rescued from the streets of a small town in Hungary. Adopting those older dogs was actually much easier in many respects than adopting a puppy: they were already house-trained, they were grateful for absolutely every milligram of love that came their way, and they had personalities that had allowed them to survive all those years before. They were each groovy, and happy to learn new tricks. I’ll never forget when my second dog, Wiley, had to go to another room with a vet without me, and he started to cry – big loud wails – because he didn’t want to leave me. And the vet said, “Wow, I haven’t seen a dog this bonded to an owner in a while.” And I thought, yeah, there’s that whole older-dogs-can’t-bond-with-new-families myth going down in flames.

Families with children that are concerned about introducing a new dog should really look into adopting an older dog. So many rescue groups know the personalities of the dogs in their care – do they like children? do they like other dogs? do they get along with cats? do they enjoy long walks or just need a few short ones? do you want a dog that’s quiet and sleeps a lot or that’s really active and needs play time every day? – and can match you with an older dog that would be perfect for your particular family and home. The big pet stores now have dogs from these rescue groups for adoption – they don’t use puppy mills anymore – and the volunteers there will be happy to answer your questions.

And with all that said… I’m really disappointed in the ASPCA TV advertisements. They never encourage you to adopt a pet from a shelter, they never encourage you to get your pet spayed or neutered – they only ask that you give them money. Just as volunteer engagement shouldn’t be only about getting work done (it should be about cause awareness-building, building trust in the community, etc.), TV advertisements for nonprofits shouldn’t be only about “give us money.”

Also see: Don’t just ask for money

Don’t shoot the questioner

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logoGovernment agencies and nonprofits HATE my questions on social media. I ask them publicly because, often, I don’t get a response via email – or because I want my exchange with the organization to be public. Questions like:

  • Where is the list on your web site of your board of directors?
  • Where is the bio on your web site of your executive director/program director, etc.?
  • Where is your latest annual report of finances (income and expenditures) on your web site?
  • I saw your quote in the newspaper, and wondered: where is the evaluation that says your program lead to a 30% drop in juvenile crime? Is there a link on your web site to this study?
  • You have a form on your web site for people who want to volunteer to fill out/an email address for people that want to volunteer, but you never say what volunteers actually do. What do volunteers at your organization do?

Responses, if they come at all, rarely thank me for pointing out missing information on the web site, or apologize for not having such. Rather, most responses are one of these:

  • We’re not required by law to provide that. 
  • Our web site is being redesigned. It will be a part of the new web site. (no date is provided on when the web site will be re-launched)
  • That information is confidential. 
  • That information is on our web site (with no link to where it is).
  • Why are you asking?

I admit that I sometimes ask a question because I’m annoyed that the organization isn’t being transparent, or because a newspaper reporter wrote a glowing story I read about the organization or program didn’t ask these questions – just took every quote from the representative as fact. But I also ask the questions because I’ve sometimes considered donating to an organization, or volunteering with such – and I’m then stunned at the lack of transparency.

None of these questions should bother any organization or agency. None. They are all legitimate questions. Often, they are questions you yourself invite, by talking at civic groups or in the press about the quality of your leadership, the impact your organization is having, the services your organization provides and your value to the community.

If you say you don’t have time to provide this basic information on your web site, one has to ask: what is it that you are spending your time on?

Also see:

Use Tech to Show Your Accountability and To Teach Others About the Nonprofit Sector!
Mission-Based groups are under growing scrutiny. What you put on your web site can help counter the onslaught of “news” stories regarding mission-based organizations and how they spent charitable contributions.

How to help Baltimore

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I’ve written about how to help Nepal. So… what about Baltimore, site of so much violence, civil unrest, economic injustice, mistrust and lack of opportunity ?

Just like with Nepal, my first comment is going to be: do not go to Baltimore to help. Not yet. Not without a formal affiliation with a LOCAL nonprofit. If you want to help any of these nonprofits, FIRST, you must contact them and tell them what you want to do as a volunteer, onsite in Baltimore or online and offer references that can confirm your abilities and character. If you want to travel to Baltimore,  you need to say when you will be in Baltimore, and state that you will pay for your own transportation, housing, food and all other needs, that you are not, in any way, expecting the nonprofit to provide you any funding or support for your travel or accommodations. And you need to be ready for rejection: most of these nonprofits are completely overwhelmed and may not have the resources and funding to involve an influx of outside volunteers.

Here are some credible nonprofit organizations that are based in Baltimore and are focused on economic empowerment, helping economically disadvantaged people, and/or building stronger, more empathetic, compassionate environments.  I haven’t fully vetted them beyond knowing they exist and are appropriately registered – I haven’t typed the name of each nonprofit into Google or Bing with words like “complaint” and “fraud” and “sued,” to see if anything came up, for instance. But if I had a lot of money to give, I wouldn’t hesitate to give to each of them:

Enoch Pratt Free Library
Serves the residents of Baltimore with locations throughout the city. In addition to being a traditional lending library, it also provides accessibility services, online tutors,
Internet access, classes and events, and kids and teens services.

Community College of Baltimore County
Provide undergraduate education, workforce development, technology training, and lifelong learning/life enrichment in the Baltimore Metropolitan area.

Maryland New Directions, Inc.
Mission: To provide comphrensive career counseling, employment assistance, and post-employment support to people who are in life and career transition. Since 1973, Maryland New Directions has served over 130,000 individuals looking to become self-sustaining through employment.

Public Justice Center, Inc.
Nonprofit legal advocacy organization. We work with people and communities to confront the laws, practices, and institutions that cause injustice, poverty, and discrimination. We advocate in the courts, legislatures, and government agencies, educate the public, and build coalitions, all to advance our mission of “pursuing systemic change to build a just society.”

The Baltimore Station, Inc.
Concentrates on helping veterans that have fallen on hard times. We know that they suffer a special kind of hell, returning to society with the effects of combat (including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), often turning to drugs to silence the trauma. We know the cycle that can spin out of control, leading to poverty, estrangement and homelessness. We know what it takes to break that cycle – a highly structured environment – because most of our staff is in recovery themselves and half are veterans. Recovery is not a “quick fix” battle. It’s a long tough war.

Baltimore Cash Campaign
Connects clients to asset building resources, including financial education classes, one-on-one financial coaching, mainstream banking opportunities (instead of for-profit cash-advance and check-cashing companies), and credit counseling (debt is a major challenge to severely economically disadvantaged people), conducts marketing and outreach about the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and other relevant tax credits for low-income workers, provides free volunteer income tax assistance (VITA), and advocates for issues impacting working families

Win Family Services
Target demographics: at-risk youth and their families. Programs: treatment foster care, community mental health, therapy, and a talent development after-school program

Baltimore Humane Society
I believe with all my heart that encouraging compassion and care for animals cultivates compassion and care for humans.

St. Ambrose Housing Aid Center
Works to create and maintain equal housing opportunities for low- and moderate-income people, primarily in Baltimore City, and to encourage and support strong and diverse neighborhoods. (this was added after the blog’s original publication – thanks, Kate Bladow, for the rec)

Maryland New Directions
a non-profit dedicated to improving lives in Baltimore through employment. (this was added after the blog’s original publication)

Don’t stop there: look for nonprofits in Baltimore that are focused on giving all people access to the arts, such as dance and theatre, or that are focused on sports, or senior services, or whatever activity you think could help the people of the city. Look at Volunteer Central Baltimore and VolunteerMatch as well for nonprofits seeking volunteers in Baltimore.

It was a beautiful thing to see all of those local people in Baltimore spontaneously volunteering in their community, starting to clean up even DURING the riots. So many people, so many photos. Just go to Twitter and search for Baltimore and volunteers, and you will see what I mean. Wouldn’t it be great if all of those people, as well as those that were rioting, volunteered with even one of these nonprofits? And wouldn’t it be great if those nonprofits had the training and resources to involve that influx of volunteers?

Also see:

Research: Immunity under the Volunteer Protection Act (USA)

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graphic by Jayne Cravens representing work of volunteersVolume 6, Issue 1 (Apr 2015) of the Nonprofit Policy Forum features research by Patricia Groble and Jeffrey L. Brudney, “When Good Intentions Go Wrong: Immunity under the Volunteer Protection Act.” It’s research about a law in the USA. The abstract says:

The Volunteer Protection Act (VPA) was enacted in 1997 to encourage volunteerism by protecting individuals from liability for their negligent actions while volunteering. Proponents intended to provide legal safeguards for volunteers, whom they claimed were deterred from volunteering by fears of liability. Little attention has been paid to this legislation since its enactment, however. This article examines the implementation and interpretation of the VPA through the lens of case law to determine whether the act has had its intended effects for volunteers. Our analysis of all court cases in which the VPA has been cited shows that volunteers are at risk for lawsuits over a variety of actions during the course of their volunteer activities. This analysis also demonstrates that although volunteers can avail themselves of the VPA’s protection, their success in invoking this defense is mixed.

A must read for managers of volunteers… however, it’s cost-prohibitive for most of them: the article costs $42.00 / 30,00 € / £23.00 to access (the entire issue of the journal is $235.00 / 172,00 € / £129.00. I’ll be heading to my local library to see if I can access it through them (I suspect I’ll have to schlep 100 minutes by mass transit one-way, all the way to downtown Portland via the bus and train to read it, in order to read it). The Nonprofit Policy Forum is an international journal that publishes original research and analysis on public policy issues and the public policy process related to the work of nonprofit organizations.

Also see: List of

List of research and evaluations of virtual volunteering, as a practice in general or focused on specific projects (much of the research is free to access).

Could a Twitter exchange lead to change in a Kentucky nonprofit law?

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Could an exchange on Twitter lead to a change in a law in Kentucky?

My tribal homeland of Kentucky has finally made it legal for boards of nonprofits to vote online; it’s an issue I have been talking about since the 1990s, as a part of virtual volunteering, so I’m glad Kentucky got around to it at last. According to this article in the Nonprofit Quarterly, “Boards of directors can now take action outside of a meeting through means of electronic voting, unless the organization’s bylaws prohibit such action. If that vote is taken, and the directors vote for it unanimously, the action passes and is effective just as if a vote had been taken in a regular meeting.”

Sadly, the laws has some flaws: “Similarly, board directors are now allowed to telecommute into a meeting. If a director is using a method of communication whereby they can hear all the other participants in the meeting, they are allowed to be deemed ‘present’ in the meeting and, therefore, count towards quorum. It is probably unintended that this precludes people who are deaf from taking advantage of this newly acceptable way of participating in a meeting. Interestingly, the law also does not require a director who is telecommuting to have the same materials as all of the other directors, a stipulation that has been included in laws in other states.”

Why the state didn’t simply use the laws already in other states – California has allowed online board meetings and votes since the 1990s – so that it didn’t leave anyone out, I don’t know.

I tweeted several times about the law, including one tweet about not being happy about leaving out people with hearing impairments. Below is that Tweet and the conversation it lead to. Could it also lead to real change? (transcript of the conversation after the screen capture). Kudos to@kynonprofits for not getting defensive but, instead, ENGAGING with us on Twitter:
kylaw twitter exchange

 

Transcript:

Me, @jcravens42: Kentucky Updates Rules For Nonprofits – but excludes people who are deaf from taking advantage of new rules  link

David J. Neff ‏(to me): Ouch. Why such a big mistake?

Me, replying to David: No idea. It’s quite shameful. @kynonprofits ? Ideas?

@kynonprofits, to me and David: we not finished working on these laws! Would love your input on what technology might be used to address!

Me, replying to both @kynonprofits @daveiam : Contact the nonprofit org @knowbility – they are experts in accessible tech (& dear friends of mine).

@kynonprofits to everyone: will do. We’re just getting started with improving these laws. Thanks!

Corporate volunteers can be a burden for nonprofits

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Back in 2011, I asked if group volunteering was really all its cracked up to be.

The sentiment has gone mainstream: the Boston Globe published this yesterday: Corporate volunteers can be a burden for nonprofits.

Corporate social responsibility folks, managers of employee volunteerism programs: are you listening?