Tag Archives: reddit

An old subreddit revived after seven years, now a place to discuss volunteerism.

Leave a reply

After seven years of no activity, the subreddit r/Volunteerism, an online discussion group on Reddit, is back, but with a new purpose, one that makes it starkly different than other subreddits: r/Volunteerism is not a subreddit for recruiting volunteers. It is also not a subreddit to ask “Where can I volunteer.” There are PLENTY of places to post those questions and pleas on Reddit. There are at least 25 different subreddits that exists so that people can ask for volunteers or ask where to volunteer.

Instead, r/Volunteerism is a place to discuss volunteerism philosophies, ethics &, debates, discuss support for volunteers & all aspects of volunteer engagement/management.

Want to recommend your book or blog on volunteer management? Go for it! Want to promote volunteerism – as in “I think volunteerism is necessary for a prosperous society”? Yes. Want to criticize volunteerism, as in “I think volunteerism is a scam and exists primarily so governments and corporations don’t have to pay people for necessary work and here’s why I think that…”? Yes. Testimonials regarding volunteer experience are also welcomed on r/Volunteerism, but not for the primary purpose of recruiting volunteers for one organization.

NO RECRUITING VOLUNTEERS &

NO “WHERE DO I FIND VOLUNTEERING”.

Reddit4Good is a list I made more than 10 years ago and have updated regularly, of subreddits focused on some aspect of volunteerism, community service, philanthropy or doing good for a cause. It includes a list of places on reddit that allow you to recruit volunteers or to ask “Where can I volunteer?” As you will see when you look at it, there are PLENTY of places to on Reddit to recruit volunteers or ask where to find volunteering.

But there is – or was – no where on Reddit that has a focus like r/Volunteerism. And there needs to be.

You may recall that, for many years, I moderated another subreddit, r/volunteer, and that I rebuilt that subreddit over more than a decade into one of the most popular online communities on Reddit. I noted in this blog all of the effort I undertook to turn the community into something of value, particularly for young people who wanted to volunteer and, no matter how many volunteer matching platforms and apps get launched, still need a great deal of guidance about volunteering. I think that via that online community I’ve finally gotten through in a big way to lots more people regarding why trying to be a volunteer can be so hard (because most organizations have zero volunteer management training, don’t have a person dedicated to volunteer engagement, and can’t get funding for such because foundations and corporations refuse to fund “overhead”). But, sadly, a small, angry, vocal group of new members on that subreddit wanted the community to have minimal rules and minimal rules enforcement – never mind that it was that strict moderation that vastly improved the quality of the content over the years and made the subreddit so popular. I wrote why I decided to walk away as moderator from that subreddit without a fight. And I have no regrets that I quit a project that I had made so, so popular.

But I am still on Reddit. Reddit is MUCH more than one community. After having left the other subreddit for about two months, I went back to have a look at how things were going. And it was so sad: the same “where do I volunteer” posts over and over and over. Unvetted organizations with questionable credentials recruiting international “volunteers.” And worst of all: no more posts or debates about volunteerism ethics, voluntourism ethics, volunteerism trends, volunteer management policies and tools, safety, and on and on. It’s now a subreddit just like the more than 20 others that are focused somehow on volunteering – nothing special about it all, and very little of value.

Well, it’s now just like all those other subreddits except one: a silent group called r/Volunteerism. I had put this subreddit on an early version of Reddit4Good, and had described it as an “anything goes” subreddit, just like most other volunteerism-related groups. And then I didn’t look at it for years. When I did, as 2025 ended, I realized that it hadn’t had a new post in seven years and that it didn’t have a moderator listed. After a week of thinking about it, I followed the steps to claim the subreddit and, voilá, the group is mine. Well, moderation is mine. It belongs to Reddit. But I claimed it for one specific purpose: to restore a place on Reddit to discuss volunteerism beyond the FAQs.

Another reason I wanted there to be a place to discuss volunteerism, not just “Where do I volunteer?”: I have been hired three times as a consultant, twice with a mega large, well known social media company, because of my participation on Reddit, specifically because of how I moderated and facilitated r/volunteer. Not going to lie: I would love for it to happen again.

And so, all of you volunteer management researchers and consultants out there, all you leaders of volunteer management associations, all you program managers at the volunteerism-promoting organizations like Points of Light and the Corporation for National Service, here is your chance at redemption. You ignored r/volunteer, probably the largest community focused on volunteering, for years, and now I’m not sure your posts would be welcomed there, given its new focus. But you could post your press releases and event announcements and conference results to r/Volunteerism. Not much of an audience there now, but give me time… I’m awesome at growing Reddit audiences.

FYI, I also moderate other subreddits (r/communityservice, r/inclusion, r/philanthropy, r/OregonVolunteers, r/Tech4Causes, etc.). And participate in far more.

Also see:

Fun way to recognize a year’s worth of participation

Leave a reply
Reddit Logo

I’m a Reddit user, and in addition to being a part of a LOT of Reddit communities, I also moderate four subreddits, as a volunteer: one regarding volunteerism, one regarding inclusion, a subreddit to discuss community service, and the TechSoup subreddit. I’ve also joined a LOT of Reddit communities and spend way too much time reading them (and sometimes commenting).

So I was one of many reddit users that got a customized slide show “year in review” that Reddit sends to users (community members). And it’s a super fun way to recognize program participants.

Among the slides is one that shows that, in 2021, I scrolled the length of 35,495 bananas lying end-to-end:

A slide noting that in 2021, I scrolled the length of 35,494 bananas lying end-to-end, and proclaiing "The amount you scrolled is bananas."

There’s also a slide showing my most popular post in 2021 – it was to a subreddit I don’t frequent, the one for Portland, Oregon, and was how volunteers were urgently needed at cooling stations set up to help people deal with our 116 degree days (it got 218 “up votes”):

There was also a slide that showed how many hours I spent in 2021 in various subreddits – yes, I really did spend 123 hours, at LEAST, in the volunteers subreddit. The TwoXriders subreddit noted is for women motorcyclists, in case you were wondering, and the Malicious Compliance subreddit – that you will have to check out yourself:

There’s also a slide showing how many new communities I joined in 2021, how many user awards I got, and how many karma points (as Reddit calls it, fake Internet points) I got (pictured below):

What a fun way to recognize participation! Good ideas for honoring program participants and volunteers as well.

And note: they never said, “Your volunteering hours were the equivalent of this much money!” Because that’s a really, really bad idea.

Also see:

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.

The Nonprofit & NGO Guide to Using Reddit

Leave a reply

A new resource from me: The Nonprofit & NGO Guide to Using Reddit

As of July 2019, Reddit ranked as the No. 5 most visited web site in the USA and No. 13 in the world. Reddit is a community of communities, and its communities are called subreddits. Statistics suggest that 74% of Reddit users are male. Users tend to be significantly younger than other online communities like Facebook with less than 1% of users being 65 or over.

If you want to reach a younger demographic regarding your volunteering opportunities, your awareness messages, your data that shows your value to the community and more, you need to build posts to Reddit into your marketing strategy, no matter what your nonprofit’s size or focus. This resource tells you how to do it. It covers how to find subreddits to join or read regularly based on your nonprofit or NGO mission, how to choose a user name, how to guide staff who may already have a Reddit user account, whether or not you should create your own subreddit and more.

And note: manging your Reddit presence and monitoring Reddit for discussions about your organization or program is a terrific role for an online volunteer!

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. 

Reddit controversy is a lesson in working with volunteers

4 Replies

redditReddit is a very high-profile online community that has been in the news a lot lately. It’s in the style of an old-fashioned online bulletin board – a very popular, simple, low-graphics platform on the early days of the Internet that I miss very much. On Reddit, members can submit content, such as text posts or direct links, and can vote submissions up or down – voting determines the position of posts on the site’s pages. Content entries are organized by areas of interest called subreddits.

The community membership has created a strong, outspoken, high-intelligent culture that can be, at times, aggressive regarding its belief in free speech, and there are very few rules about the types of content that may be posted. This has led to the creation of several subreddits that have been perceived as offensive, including forums dedicated to jailbait (since banned) and pictures of dead bodies. On the other hand, the Reddit community’s philanthropic efforts are some of my favorites to highlight in my workshops.

Reddit employee Victoria Taylor helped organize citizen-led interviews on Reddit with famous people on the very popular “Ask me Anything” (AMA) subreddit, including interviews with Benedict Cumberbatch (sigh), USA President Obama, Bill Nye, Madonna, and Eric Idle –  and these sessions often ended up landing on the news for some especially funny or outlandish answer given. She was very popular with the volunteer online moderators. But recently, Taylor was fired. Reddit moderators have said they were “blindsided” by Taylor’s firing and that she was “an essential lifeline” for them and Reddit employees. Many Reddit users have demanded answers from Reddit’s interim CEO Ellen Pao regarding why Taylor was dismissed. In protest of her dismissal, moderators on several of the site’s largest subreddits locked users out. Pao is now scrambling to calm hostilities, and says it’s all just a result of miscommunication.

This mutiny by the online moderators is actually an all-too-common problem for organizations that involve large numbers of very dedicated volunteers, online or onsite. Reddit forgot that its volunteers aren’t just free labor; they feel personally invested in this organization, they feel ownership, and while those characteristics make them excellent moderators, it also means that, if they feel taken advantage of or that they aren’t being listened to, they will rebel, very publicly.

Reddit leadership needs to immediately read America Online volunteers : Lessons from an early co-production community, by Hector Postigo, in the International Journal of Cultural Studies 2009. This article analyzes the case of America Online (AOL) volunteers, specifically when company changes resulted in the rise of a labor consciousness among many volunteers, which in turn made the “free distributed workforce” impossible to sustain – and invited intervention by the US Department of Labor. They also need to each buy a copy of The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, and READ IT. And maybe hire Susan Ellis and I to help them fix this mess…

Update, July 7: the Wall Street Journal has also blogged about this issue from a volunteer management perspective. I’ve added a comment on it.