Tag Archives: scam

How to avoid scams in volunteering

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Images, in the style of petroglyphs, of people doing various activities, like writing or construction.

It’s a sad reality that there are people that use nonprofits and charities to try to make money for themselves, and that recruit volunteers to “help”.

Here are some red flags to look for when signing up to volunteer, so that you can avoid being financially exploited – or worse:

  • The organization wants a large fee for you to volunteer. Involving volunteers is not free, and it’s not unusual for organizations to ask volunteers to pay a small fee to cover some costs – up to, say, $50 – but most organizations will offer to waive a fee for any applicant that says the fee will be cost prohibitive to volunteer. If an organization is asking for a fee, but doesn’t say what that fee pays for, ask.
  • The organization has volunteers working with children or other vulnerable people, but does no screening of volunteers, has no policies regarding behavior and grounds for dismissal, etc. Even if the work is done online, if children or other vulnerable people are involved, screening and policies need to be in place. If they aren’t on the web site, ask for such.
  • The organization doesn’t have its board of directors listed on the web site. This is always a red flag. A one-person nonprofit – a web site that has lots about the founder but not about other volunteers or the board – or that doesn’t list any board members or staff, is a nonprofit to steer clear of.
  • The organization talks a lot about “We can give hours!” That doesn’t mean anything. It’s a completely meaningless statement. If you are volunteering to meet a high school graduation requirement, any volunteering for a nonprofit organization should qualify. If you are volunteering to meet a court order, you have to clear the volunteering with the court contact BEFORE you volunteer. If you are volunteering in hopes of getting admitted to a university or to get a scholarship, the number of hours does NOT matter – what you did, what you learned, what you accomplished, the leadership you exhibited, etc. are what matter.
  • The organization’s web site is awash with photos from photo-sharing sites, rather than photos of their own actual volunteers, staff and clients.
  • The organization never says why volunteers are in these roles it is recruiting for, or just says, “We can’t pay people, so we recruit volunteers.” The organization should have a reason it reserves certain roles for volunteers, and the web site should give this reason.
  • The organization emphasizes repeatedly that you can use the volunteering to fulfill a court order, in exchange for a fee. There are nonprofits that have been sued for this practice by State Attorneys General.

And in addition to these, for volunteering abroad (in a country different from your own), look for these red flags:

  • The organization wants short-term volunteers, for just a few weeks, and no specialized skills are necessary. There are zero credible organizations in other countries that need foreign volunteers with no specialized skills to come to their site and do something that local people are perfectly capable of doing themselves. If you encounter such, you will find that they are asking for a great deal of money for you to come and do this “volunteering.” That’s a vacation, not volunteering.
  • The organization has no local people on its board or leadership team.
  • The organization wants these short-term, unskilled volunteers to do something highly unethical, like interact with children, work in an orphanage or interact with wildlife.
  • The organization does no screening at all, doesn’t check references, etc. – you pay a fee and you get to “volunteer.”

Please be cautious before signing up to volunteer. Look at the web site carefully. Ask questions. Ask to speak with a current or previous volunteer. Type the name of the organization into Google or Duck Duck Go along with words like ripoff or scam or beware and see if anything comes up.

Here are all of my blogs about some aspect of court-ordered community service.

Here are my voluntourism-related & ethics-related blogs.

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.

Ethics of paying to volunteer online

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It is not unusual, nor automatically unethical, for a program to charge people who want to participate as a volunteer in a program. Even the Girl Scouts of the USA asks volunteers to pay a very small fee to become an official member (but will waive that fee for anyone who says they cannot afford it), and some Habitat for Humanity chapters and food banks asks groups coming from one organization, particularly from the corporate world, to pay a fee to help cover the costs of staff that set up the site for their feel-good-for-a-few-hours volunteering gig.

Volunteers are not free: people have to screen applicants (and even if a program has an automated system that screens applicants, someone has to be paid to build that system), train those volunteers (again, even if this is an automated system, someone usually has to be paid to build it), support the volunteers, track their progress, etc. Volunteers might be asked to pay for their own criminal background checks or a uniform as well. Most programs that have a cost they ask volunteers to pay will waive that cost for any qualified applicant who says they cannot afford it.

There are also online programs that ask volunteers to pay a fee in order to participate in their virtual volunteering activities. There are the programs I consider ethical, like Business Council for Peace (BPEACE), a USA-based nonprofit that recruits business professionals to help entrepreneurs in countries emerging from conflict to create and expand businesses and employment (particularly for women), like El Salvador and Guatemala. Bpeace asks its Skillanthropists to make a monthly donation during their participation, which both helps cover just a bit of BPEACE’s costs and which makes the volunteers financial investors as well, which can help with retainment. There are also university programs that have pivoted their student volunteering programs abroad to online versions because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the tuition that students pay to participate helps cover the substantial administrative costs of converting these programs online (including hiring me sometimes – I’ve done workshops for two universities to prepare their administrative staff, partner NGOs and students for virtual volunteering – that work earlier this year lead me to create this robust list of high-impact virtual volunteering projects).

But there are the online programs I consider highly unethical for asking volunteers to “donate.” For instance, there’s a nonprofit that has no list of board of directors or staff – just lots of information about its founder (and, apparently, sole employee), who wants to charge people $250 “to initiate” a request to volunteer with the initiatives it says it has created, like a “teen hackathon” that has no dates of actual hackathons and stock photos (not photos of its supposed events – probably because there haven’t been any). This “organization” also has an emphasis on recruiting volunteers who can develop iOS Mobile Apps so the nonprofit to accept donations, and to “conduct a fundraiser for your app development” for its program. And it wants volunteers to, on its behalf conduct “outreach to employees of matching gift companies” to donate to the “nonprofit” – thereby doubling the gift.

There are also programs, many of which that used to regularly post to the volunteer sections of Craigslist, claiming that if you will “fundraise” (pay) a certain amount for a nonprofit with a dubious, vague mission statement, the nonprofit will provide a letter saying you did a certain amount of community service (volunteering) hours for them – how many hours they will say depends on how much “fundraising” you did (how much you pay them). There’s also “nonprofits” that say you can pay to “take courses online” and then get a certificate asserting how many hours you spent in those “community service” classes.

I first blogged about such scams in 2011, and kept blogging throughout the years about such:

One person got so frustrated with me outing their “nonprofit” for being a scam that they created a Quora question specifically about me.

My advice: NEVER make a donation in order to volunteer online unless the program:

  • is a 501 c 3 listed on Guidestar (if in the USA) or is a long-established, credible PUBLIC university.
  • lists its board of directors, staff members (and their credentials), and yearly financials/annual reports.
  • lists events and program it has undertaken, with dates, number of participants, measures of success, etc. – if it says they do teen hackathons, what were the dates of those hackathons, how many teens participated in each, where were they and where is the list of apps that were developed?
  • will put you in touch with an actual, long-term online volunteer with the program who will answer your questions via phone or video conference.
  • will say, in writing, that the photos on its web site are NOT stock photos but are, in fact, photos of volunteers, clients or other participants (or, if not, has an excellent reason for using a stock photo).

If any news reporter wants to do a story specifically about these virtual volunteering scams and wants the names of actual programs I consider unethical and, possibly, illegal, email me at jayne @ coyotebroad.com (note spaces) and I will be happy to pass over the list I maintain. And I’m happy to be interviewed about these programs and how people can know the difference between legitimate virtual volunteering programs online, like these, and those that are there primarily to take your money.

vvbooklittle

For very detailed information about the qualities of a credible virtual volunteering program, including online mentoring programs, there is The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, available for purchase as a traditional print book or as a digital book. You will not find a more detailed, realistic guide anywhere for working with online volunteers, for using the Internet to support and involve all volunteers, and for evaluating the effectiveness and results of virtual volunteering activities. It’s a book written for those managing programs that want to involve online volunteers or to better support traditional volunteers with online tools, for those that want to improve their existing virtual volunteering programs, and for those undertaking research regarding virtual volunteering for any reason. If you are a consultant that wants to train others regarding virtual volunteering, this is your guide on how to become an expert (along with volunteering online and engaging volunteers yourself, which is essential to be a credible trainer).

August 24, 2020 update: here are four articles from other organizations and consultants that talk about how to evaluate the credibility of a nonprofit or charity before you donate or volunteer:

Also see, from, my web site, these resources on evaluating a nonprofit’s credibility:

  • The Information About & For Volunteers You Should Have on Your Web Site: If your program involves volunteers, or wants to involve volunteers, there are certain things your organization or department must have on its web site. To not have this information says that your organization or department takes volunteers for granted, does not value volunteers beyond money saved in salaries, or is not really ready to involve volunteers.

July 12, 2022 update: I just found a company promoting virtual volunteering to support communities in the developing world – and it requires online volunteers to pay to participate: the one-month fee is $800 and the six-month fee is $2300. These fees are absolutely outrageous and entirely uncalled for. I’m not linking to them, just as I don’t link to other unethical programs, because I don’t want to promote them, but if you want to know the name of such, especially if you are from the media, feel free to contact me.

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. 

Consequences for faking community service

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Various online forums are packed with questions by people looking to fake their community service required as part of a court sentence, probation or graduation requirement. Community service is so easy to accumulate, and actually doing the hours gets a person all the benefits of any volunteering: references and skills for paid work, accomplishments that can look great on a résumé, a LinkedIn profile or a university application, etc. It’s not just unethical and, in some cases, a violation of court orders that leads to additional charges – it’s stupid to fake community service hours.

Are there ever consequences for faking community service for the courts? Yes. Often, it’s a felony charge from the court and a revocation of probation.

Here’s a sampling of the consequences for getting caught faking community service:

Two women, Kendricia Shaylon Tate and Jordan Lynn Brown, ordered to perform community service, went to jail in Floyd County, Georgia without bond in February 2019, charged with felonies for faking documentation for their court-ordered community service.

In September 2017, the former treasurer of the Wichita County GOP, Jonathan Paul Lyne, on probation for drug and tampering charges, was accused of faking his community supervision. He had to serve 180 days in the county jail before being transferred to a substance abuse felony punishment facility.

Illinois resident Russell Phillip was sentenced to 2 1/2 years of probation and 25 days in the sheriff’s work program in April 2017 for creating a charity that sold letters claiming completion of court-ordered community service hours. In addition to the work program, Phillip was ordered by the judge to pay about $900 in costs and pay the probation department $25 a month for the next 30 months. He operated a flower shop and also ran a program called “Flowers for Heroes” that was registered with the probation department as a place where people could do court-ordered community service.

Courts getting tougher re: online community service, a review of some of the actions courts are taking to prevent the faking of commuity service. 2017 January 12

Selling community service leads to arrest, conviction, a blog about the legal action that lead the demise of the unscrupulous Community Service Help, and about how the owner of the notorious the Caffeine Awareness Association pled guilty to a false-filing felony. 2016 July 01

A central New York woman was jailed in January 2015 for allegedly providing forged paperwork to Chester Town Court indicating she had completed community service that she had been directed to do for an earlier misdemeanor attempted criminal possession of stolen property conviction, police said. Kristen L. Kozerski, 33, of Newfield was charged with second-degree forgery and first-degree offering a false instrument for filing, both felonies, after an investigation by State Police. The arrest was the second in less than a year of someone who filed a forged community service form in Chester Town Court. Richard D. Didelot, 40, of Columbia, South Carolina, was charged in May with counts of falsifying business records and offering a false instrument for filing after Chester Town Justice James McDermott became suspicious of forms he filed and checked whether he performed community service. He pleaded guilty to second-degree offering a false instrument for filing, a misdemeanor and was fined $250 and sentenced to a conditional discharge.

Sandy Springs, Georgia Parks and Recreation Director Ronnie Young is out of a job after he admitted forging a signature on his son’s court-ordered community service form. His son, Reid Young, was sentenced to 60 hours of community service after he was arrested for underage alcohol violations. A secretary in the county probation discovered the fraud while reviewing time from Reid Young, who was ordered by the judge to redo the hours elsewhere.

Musician Chris Brown was given 1,000 hours of community labor for faking his community service in 2013.

Dominick Iervasi, an 18-year-old New City, New York resident, was first sentenced in 2010 over a motor vehicle incident, but then he faked documents, claiming he had completed 25 hours of court-ordered community service, and was charged in 2012 with two counts of first-degree offering a false instrument for filing, a felony.

Here are resources if you have been assigned community service by a court or as a requirement for graduation. And here are resources if you want community service / volunteering for university applications or just to establish yourself as a leader in your community, for whatever reason.

I blog about this issue a lot, FYI.

cover of Virtual Volunteering book with hands raising up various Internet connected devices

The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook offers detailed advice that would help any court understand how to evaluate the legitimacy of an online volunteering program. It’s geared towards nonprofits, charities, government programs, schools and others that want to involve online volunteers and to use the Internet to support ALL volunteers, including onsite volunteers, but any court or probation officer would find it helpful, as more and more people assigned community service need and seek legitimate, credible online volunteering options. If you are worried about how such volunteering is “real” and how you would verify such community service, this is the resource that will help you.

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. 

The dark side of the Internet for mission-based organizations

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handstopOnline criticism – criticism of you, or your organization, is unavoidable. Even if your organization or program foolishly decides not to use any social media at all, in a futile effort to avoid criticism, others WILL talk about your organization online, some to criticize it, and perhaps even to spread misinformation. Your organization, no matter how small, needs to know how to address online criticism.

NTEN has a good blog on addressing online criticism and trolls: Navigating Naysayers: Managing Difficult Social Media Interactions, by Charrosé King, Senior Social Media Specialist, American Psychiatric Association. “Social media can feel like an incredibly dark place, but don’t let hate silence you or your organization’s messages that other people need to hear.”

My own resource: How to Handle Online Criticism / Conflict. How a nonprofit organization, government office or community initiative handles online criticism and conflict speaks volumes about that organization or initiative, for weeks, months, and maybe even years to come. It can even cause discord offline, among volunteers and employees. There is no way to avoid criticism, but there are ways to address criticism that can actually help an organization to be perceived as even more trustworthy and worth supporting. An organization MUST be able to honestly and openly deal with online criticism, particularly from supporters and participants. Otherwise, the organization puts itself in a position to lose the trust of supporters and clients, and even generate negative publicity — and, once lost, trust and credibility can be extremely difficult to win back.

And it brings to mind a thread I started on TechSoup called It’s not always Tech For Good. The first story is about how a VSO Volunteer from Britain working in Kenya persuaded two leaders from the Maasai tribe, a seminomadic people living in Western Kenya, to do an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit. To persuade the village chiefs to do the interview, the volunteer said that people across the world wanted to know more about the Maasai community and may even be willing to offer help. Sadly, the online event got hijacked by porn pushers. The next post, also by me, is about how location services on a smartphone can be grossly misused by others, such as an anti-abortion campaigner that uses such to push services to reach women who check-in at fundraisers for pro-choice events. the thread is still open and additional stories are welcomed.

And on a somewhat related note: Yes, Nonprofits Get Scammed, Too: Security Tips to Avoid Phishing, Pretexting, and Baiting is worth your time to read and share with your staff. “While the technology we depend on has changed over the years, people’s social behavior hasn’t. This leaves us at risk of having our goodwill exploited. In security circles we call this scheming activity social engineering. It’s an attempt to acquire sensitive information for malicious reasons through deception… Awareness and vigilance will go a long way towards protecting yourself.”

Also see:

Courts getting tougher re: online community service

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justiceFor years, I’ve railed against companies that, for a fee, provide a letter claiming that someone has completed community service as part of a court order or probation requirement. The person that pays for that letter has NOT done any community service – that person may or may not have watched some videos – but there’s been no actual volunteering done.

My blog from November 9, 2011 about one of the biggest fraudsters promoting pay-for-a-community-service-letter remains my most popular blog ever. It often gets more hits in a day – yesterday, for instance – than a blog I’ve just published. The comments on my first blog about these companies earlier that same year has statements from both people who feel this fraud is just fine (and who have participated in it themselves), managers of volunteers who are outraged about the practice and even from someone from a court who knew immediately this was a scam when it came to his attention through someone assigned community service.

I’m so proud that the web site of the company Community Service Help, one of the biggest perpetrators of this racket, went away sometime in January 2016, and all posts to its Facebook page are now GONE. I hope I played a role in that company’s demise, which seemed to be at the hands of a court in Washington State, per this Consumer Protection Division civil complaint and subsequent consent decree. I was also thrilled to learn in July 2016 that selling community service letters lead to an arrest and a conviction in New York state of another “nonprofit”.

I remain angry, however, that there are still companies out there selling community service letters. These companies are giving people a way out of actually doing court-ordered community service – you can easily find them on any city’s Craigslist volunteer section, or by just searching Bing or Google for pay for community service, and there are people that are proud to fool courts regarding their community service.

I’m just as angry that these companies are giving virtual volunteering a bad reputation. Virtual volunteering – editing documents, translating text, designing graphics, managing social media, researching and gathering data for a report, mentoring someone, training someone, and on and on – is real volunteering. But because of these companies selling letters that claim someone did online service when they really didn’t, many courts are looking at virtual volunteering with skepticism, and more than 20 years of virtual volunteering examples and a book and a United Nations program aren’t enough to change their minds.

I’m thrilled that the Kirkland Municipal Court in Washington State has a community service verification form that is trying to prevent people from paying for a letter that says they have completed community service when, in fact, they have not. I’m thrilled because it means that at least some courts in the USA are on to these fraudsters and are actively trying to deny them customers. Here is the wording from Kirkland’s form:

The Court will not accept community service performed for a prior or current employer, family member or an agency for which you have management responsibility. This court does not accept community service hours from online agencies or from agencies in which you must pay a fee to get credit for your hours (some examples of this include, but are not limited to: Terra Research, Community Service Help, Fast Community Service, American Angel Works, Caffeine Awareness Association).

Readers of my blog will recognize those names of companies selling community service – many have been mentioned by me on my blogs.

But I really hope Kirkland Municipal Court will change the wording on their form to:

This court will accept online volunteering only if it is with an established, verifiable, credible nonprofit organization, and only with prior permission from the court before volunteering begins. This court does not accept community service hours from agencies in which you must pay…

vvbooklittleI also wish that this court, and all others, realized that it is possible to supervise online volunteers in court-ordered settings. I want court-ordered folks to have the option to volunteer online. I’ve said it before: I’ve had great experiences involving court-ordered community service folks as volunteers, onsite and online. True, I have a rather tough screening process for any volunteer engagement program I manage, and it’s probably screened out people I would have NOT liked as volunteers. But those that have made it through my screening process have been terrific (and you can create your own screening process for online volunteers using The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook.

I also wish states’ attorney generals would get busy shutting down these pay-for-a-community-service-letter companies!

Finally, if you are looking for legitimate virtual volunteering opportunities, see this page. It features a long list – the longest you will find anywhere – of nonprofit organizations that have opportunities for online volunteers. But always – ALWAYS – let the organization know first that you need community service hours and what documentation you will need from them to show your service hours, because they may say no. And once you get their agreement, you may also need approval from the court or your probation officer.

Update: In September 2017, the former treasurer of the Wichita County GOP, Jonathan Paul Lyne, on probation for drug and tampering charges, was accused of faking his community supervision. He had to serve 180 days in the county jail before being transferred to a substance abuse felony punishment facility.

Proud to fool courts re: community service

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justice“Jay” of this IP address: 68.37.81.189 (he didn’t give a real email address) commented on the most popular blog I’ve ever written, one where I exposed a company called Community Service Help, Inc. and its affiliated nonprofit, Terra Research Foundation:

I completed approx. 300 hours of community service online with some site and it was affiliated with the Terra Research Foundation back in about 2013. I work full-time and have far better things to do than complete community service and jump through the endless hoops the court system makes you go through in their attempt to “fix” me over a minor violation. I presented the hours sheet to my Probation Officer and he never asked what I was doing for community service exactly, and guess what, I never felt the need to tell him either. That’s his job to find out if it’s legit or not, not mine. He approved it once I completed all the hours and that was the end of it, I haven’t felt a single ounce of remorse for it either. We all moved on with our lives. So, kudos to anyone who has “fooled” the court system by completing online community service by watching videos. You made the right decision.

I’m so glad Jay wrote. Like others who regularly write to insult me regarding this blog, Jay really wanted to mock me for my hardline advocacy over the years against Community Service Help and Terra Research Foundation – both of which have taken down their websites and, apparently, have gone out of business (hurrah!). But instead, he provided a perfect comment that shows exactly why these organizations are unethical and even illegal: here’s a person admitting that it wasn’t really community service. He’s admitting it was a lie. He got away with it but, of course not everyone does. And, thankfully, at least some companies are getting targetted by law enforcement and paying a steep price for what the courts are seeing as not just inappropriate activities, but illegal activities.

The other downside of organizations selling letters affirming community service when, really, none has been done, is that this will make courts and probation officers all the more suspicious of virtual volunteering. As I’ve blogged before, I’ve worked with some people as online volunteers who needed community service hours for the courts, and they’ve all been terrific volunteers. Virtual volunteering is real volunteering. Organizations selling community service harm that message.

So, thanks Jay, for the great comment!

My other blogs on these companies that sell virtual volunteering and other community service in order to fool probation officers and courts, which include links to the various media articles about these companies:

Selling community service leads to arrest, conviction, July 2016 update on how Community Service Help has gone away, and the owner of the notorious the Caffeine Awareness Association pled guilty to a false-filing felony.

Haters gonna hate, November 2014 update on Community Service Help and other similar, unethical companies

Community Service Help Cons Another Person – a first-person account by someone who paid for online community service and had it rejected by the court.

Online community service company tries to seem legit, a November 2013 update about efforts these companies are making to seem legitimate

Update on a virtual volunteering scam, from November 2012.

What online community service is – and is not – the very first blog I wrote exposing this company, back in January 2011, that resulted in the founder of the company calling me at home to beg me to take the blog down

Online volunteer scam goes global, a July 2011 update with links to TV stories trying to expose these scam companies

Courts being fooled by online community service scams, an update from November 2011 that is the most popular blog I’ve ever published

Update: In September 2017, the former treasurer of the Wichita County GOP, Jonathan Paul Lyne, on probation for drug and tampering charges, was accused of faking his community supervision. He had to serve 180 days in the county jail before being transferred to a substance abuse felony punishment facility.

The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook offers detailed advice that would help any court understand how to evaluate the legitimacy of an online volunteering program. It’s geared towards nonprofits who want to involve volunteers, but any court or probation officer would find it helpful, as more and more people assigned community service need legitimate, credible online volunteering options.

Selling community service leads to arrest, conviction

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justiceThe most popular blog I’ve ever published, by far, is an exposé of a for-profit company based in Florida, called Community Service Help, Inc., that claimed it could match people have been assigned court-ordered community service “with a charity that is currently accepting online volunteers” – for a fee, payable by the person in need of community service. But the community service was watching videos. The company was selling paperwork saying people have completed virtual volunteering, that those people then turn into probation officers and the courts. The practice is at least unethical, and, according to at least one state, illegal.

While I have no issue with a nonprofit organization, or even a government agency, charging a volunteer to cover expenses (materials, training, staff time to supervise and support the volunteer, criminal background check, etc.), I have a real problem with companies charging people to fake community service. And as a promoter of virtual volunteering since 1994, before I even knew it was called virtual volunteering, I also have a real problem with someone claiming watching videos is online volunteering. And, for those that might not know, here’s what real, legitimate virtual volunteering looks like. And here’s a wiki about virtual volunteering with even more detailed information.

Community Service Help isn’t the only company selling paperwork to people that need community service hours for the courts, and I’ve mentioned some of the other companies that are pulling off this scam in several blogs (all linked from the end of this one). Actually, I should it wasn’t the only company – its web site went offline in January 2016 and is now for sale. Hurrah! I hope I played a role in that company’s demise, which seemed to be at the hands of a court in Washington State, per this Consumer Protection Division civil complaint and subsequent consent decree.

Companies like Community Service Help post frequently to Craigslist, and I try to keep up on these folks, especially news stories about them, but somehow, I missed this story from 2014!

Caffeine group admits community-service scam

By JENNIFER PELTZ – Associated Press – Thursday, August 7, 2014

NEW YORK (AP) – An anti-caffeine activist pleaded guilty Thursday in a scheme to make court-ordered community service as easy as taking an online quiz.

Marina Kushner and the Caffeine Awareness Association, a group she founded, each pleaded guilty to a false-filing felony. Kushner’s promised sentence includes a $5,000 fine – and 300 hours of legitimate community service.

“A community service sentence is a public and personal responsibility,” Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. said last week in unveiling the case. Kushner’s lawyer, Peter Schaffer, declined to comment Thursday.

Kushner, 47, was arrested recently in Delray Beach, Florida. While Manhattan prosecutors became suspicious after a local defendant filed a letter from the caffeine association to satisfy a community service sentence, questions also had arisen in Washington state and Oregon about a “fast community service” website linked to the group.

The association still exists, offering debunked claims about caffeine, but there’s no page anymore on its web site, at least that I can find, called “quick community service.”

I’ve written and sent a letter to Mr. Vance, thanking him for his pursuit of this company. I’m hoping other prosecutors all over the USA  will take similar action. These companies damage nonprofits, damage courts, damage the idea of community service.

Is it possible, or even appropriate, for people that have been assigned community service hours by the court to do some or all of those hours online? Are they eligible for virtual volunteering? Yes, they are. Here’s detailed advice on supervising online volunteers in court-ordered settings, which I hope nonprofits, probation officers and court representatives will read. And note that Community Service Help and other similar companies would not hold up to the scrutiny recommended in this blog.

My other blogs on these companies that sell virtual volunteering and other community service in order to fool probation officers and courts, which include links to the various media articles about these companies:

Haters gonna hate, November 2014 update on Community Service Help and other similar, unethical companies

Community Service Help Cons Another Person – a first-person account by someone who paid for online community service and had it rejected by the court.

Online community service company tries to seem legit, a November 2013 update about efforts these companies are making to seem legitimate

Update on a virtual volunteering scam, from November 2012.

What online community service is – and is not – the very first blog I wrote exposing this company, back in January 2011, that resulted in the founder of the company calling me at home to beg me to take the blog down

Online volunteer scam goes global, a July 2011 update with links to TV stories trying to expose these scam companies

Courts being fooled by online community service scams, an update from November 2011 that is the most popular blog I’ve ever published

Supervising online volunteers in court-ordered settings

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graphic by Jayne Cravens representing volunteersA comment was submitted on one of the most popular blogs I’ve ever written, What online community service is and is not. That blog called out a company that is selling what it calls online community service hours, but which is, in fact, a ruse: customers pay a fee and receive access to videos, which they are supposed to watch, and in return for claiming to watch them, the company gives the “volunteers” a letter from a nonprofit saying they performed online community service. As someone that has been promoting virtual volunteering since the 1990s – and quality standards in all kinds of volunteer engagement – it continues to have me outraged.

I no longer approve comments on that blog, which has more than two dozen, because, for the last three years, most of the comments I get about this blog are from trolls affiliated with the company, ranting about how I hate hard-working people that don’t have time to do traditional onsite service (a rant that can come only from someone who has not actually read the blog) or name-calling such as this:

fanmail

Yes, really. Welcome to my world.

But a recent comment from Mark Waterson wasn’t either of those. I didn’t want his comment, and my response, to get buried in the sea of comments on that blog, so the blog entry you are reading now is devoted to this comment.

Mark says in his blog comment:

“This article points out online community service options that are legitimate, but really misses the point of why those other organizations exist. If you are doing community service for court, you need an official signed letter of someone in the nonprofit organization who “supervised” you saying you have completed X hours of community service. Your alternatives, while more legitimate, do not offer this, even at a price, and so no one doing court ordered community service can even consider your suggestions as possible alternatives for their purposes.”

Mark is incorrect, however, on this issue. Many of the online volunteering options I recommend on this page DO provide an official signed letter by the nonprofit organization who was assisted by the volunteer, stating how many hours the person gave as an online volunteer. And I have been one of those nonprofit representatives that wrote and signed such a letter for someone doing court-ordered community service through virtual volunteering. As I state on many of my pages for volunteers, a person needs to ask the nonprofit he or she wants to help – whether that nonprofit is down the street or across the country – BEFORE volunteering if staff would be willing to write and sign such a letter. Indeed, many will say no – even for onsite, face-to-face volunteers – but you will find some that will say yes if you keep looking, as I suggest on my pages.

As volunteerism expert Susan Ellis frequently points out, there are very few onsite, traditional volunteering activities where a volunteer is supervised the entire time he or she is performing service. Instead, the volunteers is trained, then given a desk, or a work space and materials, or a phone, or a garbage bag and some gloves, and then they do MOST of their volunteering largely unsupervised. As someone who has been fooled more than a few times by a volunteer sitting at a desk, looking at a computer screen for hours, and pretending to work – and after a day or two, I find out nothing is getting done – I’ve realized that volunteer supervision is much more than eyes-on-the-volunteer, or sign-in sheets at the door.

vvbooklittleAs Susan and I discuss in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, there are many ways to supervise online volunteers, to ensure the work is getting done, that the quality of the work is up-to-snuff, and that the volunteer is getting the support he or she needs, such as regular Skype calls, regular emails back and forth, shared work spaces, regular reviews of work to date, etc. In taking those steps, you are going to know very quickly if you are talking to the person actually doing the work.

Could someone fake online volunteering service? Sure, just as people can fake onsite service: hand the volunteer the plastic bag and the gloves, send them down the road to pick up trash, and when they are out-of-sight, a friend brings them a full bag of trash to return to you. Ta da! Or put three volunteers at your information booth, walk away for five hours, and return, not knowing that one of the volunteers paid the others to lie about her time at the table.

Let’s imagine a volunteering scenario: a father gets a DUI and has to do a certain number of hours of community service. He finds a nonprofit that needs 400 photos on Flickr that each need to be tagged with a unique set of keywords, and because each set of keywords is different, it has to be done manually. He signs up to do the work, is accepted to do the work, but his son actually does the work. But here’s the thing: he could also do that as an onsite volunteer: he could go onsite, sit at a desk, and play Tetris until someone passes by, then switch to the Flickr screen and pretend to work until they are gone; meanwhile, his son back at home is actually doing all the work. Here’s a similar scenario: a mom gets assigned court-ordered community service and she signs up to help a nonprofit translate brochures and speeches into Spanish from English. She comes into the nonprofit, sits at a desk, but she plays Scrabble whilst her daughter back home does all the translating.

I think that any volunteer manager of quality would sniff out these scams quickly, through their discussions with the volunteer, review of work, etc. And that would be true of onsite or online volunteers.  TMZ implied that Lindsay Lohan faked her virtual volunteering to fulfill court-ordered community service (be sure to scroll down to the comments – yes, I commented) – it would have been so easy for the nonprofit to know if she did the work or not, through basic volunteer management 101 principles.

Does the tiny possibility that a volunteer can fake work done on a computer mean volunteers fulfilling online community service shouldn’t be allowed to do any online work even if it’s supposed to be done onsite at the organization, rather than via their own computer? No more volunteer web site designers, database data inputters, app designers, translators, editors, podcast producers, photo taggers, and on and on, if they are assigned service by the courts? Of course not. Whether this kind of work is being done onsite or online from the volunteers’ home or a nearby library, the likelihood that a volunteer is pretending to do the work while it’s actually a relative or roommate is so tiny, and so easy to sniff out. Fear of what might happen, in this case, isn’t at all justification of not allowing people assigned court-ordered community service to engage in virtual volunteering.

The biggest challenge to court-ordered folks finding virtual volunteering isn’t fear that they will fake their service by having someone else do it; rather, it’s finding virtual volunteering at all. And many nonprofits refuse to work with court-ordered community service folks period, onsite or online. They just don’t love ’em like I love ’em.

Even though I disagree with Mark, I thank him for writing – I’ve been wanting to expand on this issue for a while now.

Also see:

July 6, 2016 update: the web site of the company Community Service Help went away sometime in January 2016, and all posts to its Facebook page are now GONE. More info at this July 2016 blog: Selling community service leads to arrest, conviction

What online community service is – and is not – the very first blog I wrote exposing this company, back in January 2011, that resulted in the founder of the company calling me at home to beg me to take the blog down.

Haters gonna hate, the latest update on Community Service Help and other similar, unethical companies

Community Service Help Cons Another Person, a first-person account by someone who paid for online community service and had it rejected by the court.

Update on a virtual volunteering scam, from November 2012.

Courts being fooled by online community service scams

Online community service company tries to seem legit.

Online volunteer scam goes global

Which nonprofits serving military veterans are worthwhile?

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logoI get asked this question now and again, and I see this question posted in various places:

I want to donate money to help USA military veterans and their families. Which nonprofits are really worthwhile?

Sadly, I have trouble answering the question, because there are just too many news articles about very shady happenings by organizations claiming to help military veterans, such as this story from CNN’s Anderson Cooper, another one from Cooper, this one from the Daily Beast, this one from Veterans Today, and this from the Tampa Bay Times. I also find the TV commercials of several of these organizations emotionally-manipulative, as though donating to their organization proves your patriotism.

I’m not going to name any of the organizations in question, but it’s worth it to click on those previously-mentioned links and see the organization names yourself – some will be very recognizable.

Here are some questions you can use as you look at a web site to help you evaluate an organization that claims to help military veterans and their families:

  • Does this organization have a prominent link right on the home page for veterans or families of such in need of services – a link as prominent as its links for financial donors? If not, then it’s a red flag: how can an organization say it serves veterans or families of such but not have an obvious way for people to seek services? If it does have a link, click on it. Does the organization have just one page that talks about vague benefits – events, discounts, camaraderie, etc. – rather than concrete service information like mental health services / counseling, rehabilitation resources, accommodation adjustments in housing, debt management, help with government paperwork, job re-training, etc.? In short: pretend you are a veteran or family member in need and look at the web site from that perspective, then ask yourself this question: are you able to find information about services you urgently need?
  • Does the organization list its services as, primarily, directing veterans and their families to other agencies to help with health services, rehabilitation, job placement, etc. – or does the organization actually provide those services directly? If the former, your donation might be better going directly to those organizations that actually provide the services, since the organization is just referring people other organizations.
  • Does the organization say, right on the home page, that it involves volunteers? If no, that’s a red flag – why would a nonprofit not involve volunteers? Are they hiding something? If they do have such a link to volunteering information, do volunteers help in direct service, or do volunteers help just with fundraising? If the former, that’s a good sign that this is a legitimate organization, as they have a commitment to members of the public seeing their work firsthand – they value that kind of investment in their work. If the latter, then that’s a red flag: this organization sees volunteers only as fundraisers, as money-makers. There’s nothing wrong with volunteers being fundraisers, but if that’s the ONLY way the organization involves volunteers, it may mean the organization is concerned only with raising large amounts of money.
  • Does the organization provide an accounting of how it spends money, beyond saying, “80% of money raised goes to services”? For instance, what percentage of the organization’s staff is working in direct support to veterans and their families, versus staff working to raise funds, manage volunteers that raise funds, marketing staff, etc.?

Those are my suggestions of questions to ask before you donate financially to an organization that claims to help veterans and their families.

So, can I recommend any organization myself as one I would donate to (and maybe I have donated to)? Yes. I recommend the USO.

Community Service Help Cons Another Person

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It’s happened AGAIN – the shady company Community Service Help – communityservicehelp.com – has conned another person.

I just approved this comment on one of my blogs about this deceptive company. The comment says, in part:

“I wish I would have read this article before wasting my time using the community service help website. Of course the court did not accept it and now I have been put in a real bind trying to complete my hours… I have PTSD and social anxiety from my military service and was searching for a way to complete my hours when I stumbled across the website which seemed perfect for me due to my disabilities should have known it was too good to be true. I wish I could leave a review somewhere to prevent people from making the same mistake I did.”

I’m so sorry for this person’s experience – as an advocate for virtual volunteering since the early 1990s, it makes my physically ill that this company, as well as many others, are ripping people off with their scheme to charge people money to watch videos and call it “volunteering”, and to claim it will be accepted by courts. I’ve encouraged this person to contact this company and demand his money back. I also have asked him if he would be willing to talk to someone from the media about his experience with this fraud – there have been at least two local TV news stories about this shady company, and I would love to see many more.

Back in November 2012, I got an email from a TV reporter in Atlanta, Georgia who used my blogs about this racket to create this excellent, DETAILED video about this scam and the people behind it. Thanks again, Atlanta Fox 5! Of course, after an NBC affiliate in Columbus, Atlanta did a similar, shorter story, this scam company put a tag on its web site noting as featured on NBC news!

I would love to know this deceptive company’s response to the court refusing his community service hours – it’s a response they have to make regularly to people who find out the court will not accept “community service” that consists of watching videos rather than actual volunteering.

I’ve also told this person that most recently commented on my blog that, if he still needs community service, and he wants to do it online, there are MANY places to find such, with legitimate nonprofit organizations that won’t charge the volunteer, and where the volunteering will be *real* – it will actually help the organization, which is what volunteering should be.

Here are other blogs I’ve written about this deceptive company:

Back in 2011, and again at least once since then, I wrote the Florida State Attorney General’s cyberfraud division, the Consumer Services Department of Miami-Dade County, numerous parole and probation associations, the Corporation for National Service and AL!VE to PLEASE investigate or, at least, take a stand regarding these scam companies – to date, they still have done nothing.

And, yes, I still get harassing emails and blog comments from people who supposedly are satisfied customers of this company. The commenters never use their names or location, the messages are packed with misspellings and grammar errors, they ramble on and on about how watching videos really is community service, and they call me some rather vile names. I’ve been deleting those comments – but I think I’m going to compile some and make a blog post just about those, to show you the caliber of support for this company.

2014 update: The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook offers detailed advice that would help any court understand how to evaluate the legitimacy of an online volunteering program. It’s geared towards nonprofits who want to involve volunteers, but any court or probation officer would find it helpful, as more and more people assigned community service need legitimate, credible online volunteering options.

12.March.2014 Update: Just found this story from Portland TV stations KATU about a similar scam in Seattle. Another example of a judge rejecting watching videos as community service.

July 6, 2016 update: the web site of the company Community Service Help went away sometime in January 2016, and all posts to its Facebook page are now GONE. More info at this July 2016 blog: Selling community service leads to arrest, conviction

My voluntourism-related & ethics-related blogs (and how I define scam)