At the end of 2022, I will no longer update the news section nor the research section of the Virtual Volunteering Wiki.
The wiki has been an unfunded project since it was launched a decade ago, in association with the publication of The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. It’s a project that I have struggled to keep up-to-date because my paid workhas to be my priority. I had intended to stop updating it back in 2020, but the start of the COVID pandemic in the USA in 2020 meant a surge in news and, months later, a surge in research, so I spent many, many hours – all without funding – reading through the news and research summaries and updating as appropriate.
But the surge in news and research regarding virtual volunteering has died down significantly. Therefore, I’ve decided that the end of 2022 is a good time to stop updating those two sections. The reasons:
Virtual volunteering is no longer new, innovative nor experimental. Virtual volunteering is mainstream. When this wiki was launched, there were already thousands of nonprofits, NGOs, charities, community groups and government agencies involving online volunteers, but there was a need to prove it. There was also an ongoing need to show the varied ways organizations involve online volunteers. But now, virtual volunteering is a commonplace term and new but not-so-unique initiatives are launched at least weekly. It’s the opposite problem regarding research: there are so many research articles related to virtual volunteering now, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s impossible to keep up with them in my spare time – again, my paid work has to take priority.
I don’t have the time nor the funding to continue. Without funding, I can’t afford to subscribe to news outlets so I can read all of the stories, and since I have no funding to continue the wiki or research virtual volunteering, I pursue other professional pursuits where I can get funding (so I can pay for things like my mortgage, my motorcycle insurance, my health care costs, etc.).
I’ve been trying to find a university to host the wiki and incorporate its updating into a class curriculum for years, but have never had any interest at all. And so I’ve given up.
The wiki will stay online as long as my own web site stays online, and I may update other less time-intensive sections if a particularly outstanding resource comes my way.
Back in 2012 and 2013, I was one of many researchers in the ICT4EMPL Future Work project, focused on the countries of the European Union and funded by the European Commission. The overall project aimed to inform policy regarding “new forms of work” and pathways to employability that involved online technologies. For this project, I researched and mapped the prevalence of virtual volunteering in Europe and explored how virtual volunteering could support people’s employability. Here my complete final paper. And here is the Wiki I created for the project.
It is time for a new effort to research and map the prevalence of virtual volunteering in Europe. Because now, more than 10 years later, I’m sure the conclusions I found about virtual volunteering in Europe have changed, and it would be great to see what’s the same, what’s evolved, what’s reversed and what new insights have emerged – and see how this compares with past research.
Some of those conclusions from 10 years ago about virtual volunteering in Europe:
Organizations using the Internet to support volunteers, or that had roles and tasks for online volunteers, usually never used the term virtual volunteering. For instance, Germany hosted the FIFA World Cup in 2006 and recruited, trained and supported hundreds of volunteers all across Germany to help with the event; no doubt the Internet played an important role in the screening, training and support for volunteers, however, I could find no reference to activities related to Internet-mediated volunteering for the World Cup (and they also never responded to my emails).
Services where charities could recruit traditional volunteers might have talked about virtual volunteering 10 years ago, yet often did not allow for searches of just online roles and tasks opportunities on their platforms.
Online volunteering schemes come and go; for instance, while Samaritans was profiled for its involvement of online volunteers in the 1990s, as of the time of this paper’s writing, the web site did not note this past involvement, and a page on the site said that such an online program was “coming in the future.” Virtual volunteering activities were cited at a dozen European organizations in the paper – are they still happening?
10 years ago, there was no organization tracking the practice in Europe – or in any country outside of Europe, for that matter. Has that changed?
The research 10 years ago found at least 60 specific examples of organizations in the EU involving online volunteers, or involving online volunteers in the EU. The number of online volunteering opportunities, using a search of the services, was more than 1000, in total. And the research noted that Wikipedia already had contributors from every European country at that time. Excluding Wikipedia, a conclusion can be drawn from the research cited in this paper that there are at least a few thousand online volunteering opportunities available from organisations in Europe.
Spain was, by far, the country with the most virtual volunteering roles and tasks for volunteers, across a few hundred NGOs, and had a deeper history regarding digital volunteering than any other European country, by far. The UK, which was in the EU at the time, came in a distant second.
Far in the distance in terms of virtual volunteering, and well behind rates in Eastern European countries, was France – in fact, the lack of virtual volunteering materials in French was particularly shocking to me. I could find NO such materials in Europe – the few I found were in Canada. I so hope that’s changed in 10 years!
If you are looking for a research project idea, I highly recommend you take a stab at researching and mapping the prevalence of virtual volunteering in Europe – or even just one country in Europe. Or break entirely new ground: India? Certain countries in Africa? I will be happy to turn over all of my materials to you to help you in your research. I’m also happy to write a letter of endorsement if you want to shop this project around for funding. Contact me and let me know your full name, share your LinkedIn profile or another online profile where I can see your professional connections and research to date, let me know the kind of research you have in mind, etc.
Why am I not interested in doing this research myself? Both because I lack any funding to do this and also, I would really like to read someone else’s research!
If you are doing any research regarding virtual volunteering, or if your agency or organization is considering virtual volunteering as a path to helping people become more employable, check out the Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook: Fully Integrating Online Service Into Volunteer Involvement. This is the most comprehensive resource anywhere on working with online volunteers, and on using the Internet to support ALL volunteers, including those you might not think of as “online” volunteers.
If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site 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.
Well before the COVID-19 pandemic, nonprofits, NGOs and other organizations that involve volunteers were leveraging a variety of tools to communicate with those volunteers, and understood that ALL volunteers are, at some point, remote: even if all of their volunteering service is provided onsite, much of the communications with them happens when they are in their homes or work places. For organizations that were relying solely on onsite meetings, physical bulletin boards in the break room and paper letters and paper newsletters, the pandemic meant they had to quickly catch up and implement new ways of keeping volunteers informed (not to mention engaged) and to hear back from those volunteers regularly.
How do you effectively communicate with volunteers remotely? It takes much more than email – though email remains oh-so-important:
Have a web site that has all the info current volunteers need. Absolutely, you need information on your web site to entice new volunteers and a way for candidates to express interest in volunteering via that web site, whether via an application they can submit online or an email address of your manager of volunteers. But current volunteers also need information from your web site: the list of current staff members, the profile of your executive director, the history of your organization, evaluations of your programs, the latest news about your organization, etc. Volunteers need to have that central place they can go to for reliable, complete information about the program they support.
Keep your social media up-to-date & encourage volunteers to follow your accounts Your Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and other accounts shouldn’t be focused on just encouraging people to donate money; your social media channels should have regularly-updated information about upcoming events, the results of events that just happened, breaking news about your organization, etc. Your social media audience includes your CURRENT volunteers, and they need to be kept up-to-date about what’s going on so they can properly represent your organization while they are volunteering. Your social media should also talk about the cause: a nonprofit theater should be posting about how students involved in performing do better in school, a nonprofit animal shelter should be posting about studies that show how a family’s health can improve if they have a dog, etc. Again, this helps volunteers become better advocates for your organization, including in casual conversations with friends and colleagues.
Building a team culture among remote workers Coming together face-to-face, in the same room, does not automatically create team cohesion and a strong sense of team. Yet, many people think having online meetings automatically means it’s difficult for staff to have a strong sense of team. People feel a part of a team if they feel heard and included, whether online or off. And they will attend meetings and pay attention to those meetings if they feel the meeting is relevant to their work – on or offline. This resource offers ideas for live events, asynchronous events & activities that can build a sense of team among remote workers.
Recognizing Online Volunteers & Using the Internet to Honor ALL Volunteers Recognition helps volunteers stay committed to your organization, and gets the attention of potential volunteers — and donors — as well. With the Internet, the Cloud, cyberspace, whatever you want to call it, it’s never been easier to show volunteers — and the world — that volunteers are a key part of your organization’s successes. This resource provides a long list of suggestions for both honoring online volunteers and using the Internet to recognize ALL volunteers that contribute to your organization.
If you want to learn even more about how to leverage online tools to communicate with and support volunteers, whether those volunteers are mostly online (virtual volunteering) or they provide service mostly onsite at your organization, and to dig far deeper into the factors for success in supporting online volunteers and keeping virtual volunteering a worthwhile endeavor for everyone involved, you will not find a more detailed guide anywhere than The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. It’s based on many years of experience, from a variety of organizations. It’s available both as a traditional print publication and as a digital book.
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.
Rob Jackson is a volunteer engagement consultant based in the United Kingdom. Rob was a manager of volunteers himself for many years, and his training and writing is based in reality and practicality. We met online back in the 1990s when he started UKVPMs, an online community for managers of volunteers in the UK, and have been colleagues (and good friends) ever since.
Rob wrote this on his Facebook page, and with permission, I’m reprinting it here on my blog:
It’s time for a new way to think about local volunteering infrastructure.
In recent months I’ve read stories of how lockdown volunteering was especially effective where local groups (formal and informal) were connected to their local volunteering infrastructure organisations (Volunteer Centres).
This comes as no surprise to me. For six years I worked closely with Volunteer Centres as part of the team at Volunteering England. I’ve been a trustee of two Volunteer Centres in my time. I know their value and importance.
Yet too often local infrastructure is seen as either an encumbrance or an irrelevance. Why fund a Volunteer Centre when people can volunteer without them? Surely technology can do the work of a Volunteer Centre better than a human? Who needs a Volunteer Centre when we have the internet?
These arguments miss a crucial point. Volunteering infrastructure isn’t a building or office, a snazzy website or matching software.
Volunteering infrastructure is people. It is connections. It is relationships.
Cuts to Volunteer Centres may realise a quick financial saving, but it’s far more expensive to have to rebuild them down the line.
Volunteering infrastructure is a valuable investment in the underlying and enabling fabric of a thriving, vibrant local community.
It’s time we saw it that way and supported it properly.
Perfectly said, Rob. And not just for the UK. You can comment here, but please also comment on Rob’s original post if you are on Facebook.
If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.
An online multimedia platform that allows people to create an avatar for themselves and “live” in an online virtual world. Avatars interact with places, objects and other avatars, exploring the virtual world, meeting other residents, socializing, having business meetings, hosting events, participating in group activities, building, creating, shopping, collaborating, even trading virtual property and services with one another.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Metaverse? No! I’m talking about Second Life, which launched back in 2003. The image at the top of this blog, and the image below, are of me, as an avatar, leading an event in Second Life for TechSoup back in 2014:
TechSoup was an early and passionate adopter of Second Life, hosting numerous online events there. If you do a search for Second Life on the TechSoup forum, you would find numerous references to the platform and TechSoup activities there over the years.
Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook (now Meta), said to much fanfare that he wanted to launch his own metaverse. The new virtual-reality app Horizon Worlds is Facebook’s first foray into the much-hyped “metaverse” for Facebook parent company Meta. Horizon Worlds, a beta version of which featured prominently in Zuckerberg’s announcement, launched Dec. 9 in the United States and Canada on the company’s Oculus virtual-reality platform and represents its first major attempt to deliver on his vision.
Were you on Second Life? Are you still on Second Life? Did you participate in TechSoup’s events on Second Life, or any other nonprofit-related activities? What do you think emerging virtual worlds, including Meta’s projects, can learn from Second Life? Comment below!
Second Life is so thoroughly steeped in conditions that have impeded the development of successful social norms in other communities that any system of social norms in Second Life will ultimately fail. Because social norms will likely fail to successfully maximize resident welfare, regulatory schemes imposed both by the operators of the virtual world and by real-world governing institutions are needed to enhance the functioning of this particular alternative reality inhabited by millions.
Do you think Meta’s virtual world is addressing this issue? Do you think they need to plan for how to address such?And are you worried about safety at all with any online platforms? Comment below!
Nina Jane Patel was targeted with sexual harassment in Facebook/Meta’s platforms. “Within 60 seconds of joining — I was verbally & sexually harassed — 3–4 male avatars, with male voices, essentially, but virtually gang-raped my avatar & took photos…” The 43-year-old mother said it was such a “horrible experience that happened so fast” before she even had a chance to think about using “the safety barrier,” adding that she “froze.” She continued by confessing how both her “physiological and psychological” reaction was similar to it happening in real life. “Virtual reality has essentially been designed so the mind and body can’t differentiate virtual/digital experiences from real,” Patel wrote.
This is similar to assaults that happened in Second LIfe. Examples:
Horizon Worlds is supposed to be limited to adults 18 and older. In practice, however, very young kids appear to be among its earliest adopters. Some say the presence of children in Meta’s fledgling metaverse raises a grave concern: that by mixing children with adult strangers in a largely self-moderated virtual world, the company is inadvertently creating a hunting ground for sexual predators.
When new online forums arise that attract kids, sexual predators “are often among the first to arrive,” said Sarah Gardner, vice president of external affairs at Thorn, a tech nonprofit that focuses on protecting children from online sexual abuse. “They see an environment that is not well protected and does not have clear systems of reporting. They’ll go there first to take advantage of the fact that it is a safe ground for them to abuse or groom kids.”
Could nonprofits that engage in an online metaverse be putting their clients or others at risk by asking them to be there too? Comment below!
There’s one more consideration: accessibility. If you engage with people in a graphics-based environment, you are leaving out people who have sight-impairments. How will auditory displays work for graphics-based environments to address accessibility issues (I’m asking because I really don’t know)? Or is it a matter of ensuring you never limit your service delivery and volunteer engagement to only a graphics-based environment?
There is section devoted to virtual volunteering and avatar-based environments in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. The section offers some examples of nonprofits using Second Life to engage with clients and volunteers, and offers specific advice on how a nonprofit should get started using such environments, considerations to explore and pitfalls to avoid – all of which is relevant for any graphics-based virtual world. The rest of the book is easily adaptable to engaging with volunteers in graphics-based/avatar-based virtual worlds as well.
Looking forward to hearing your comments!
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.
Lots of people public predictions of upcoming trends in volunteer engagement – and often, these are people who are not managers of volunteers nor researchers regarding volunteerism. Their lists are things like People want micro tasks! – something many have said year after year, and something that, in practice, never seems to be what people are actually looking for, no matter what they might say in surveys. In other words, most of the lists seem to be focus on a casual, perfunctory view of volunteer engagement, not one based on reality, on actual experience.
Below is MY list of growing trends in volunteer management. It’s based on:
what I’ve seen on online communities like the volunteer subreddit and various other regionally-based subreddits, as well as on Twitter and on TechSoup,
what I’ve seen in the comments on Facebook posts by various nonprofits requesting volunteers,
what I’ve seen in emails and DMs sent to me (people like to share things with me, which I very much appreciate),
conversations with oh-so-many volunteers, wanna-be volunteers, and managers of volunteers,
my own work with volunteers and in volunteer management.
And after my own list, I post four more points from another organization that I agree with very much (hence why I called my blog “Nine plus four emerging volunteer engagement trends.”
People want to know why a position is unpaid & don’t always like the answer.
Especially for positions that require particular skills, like web development, video editing, graphic design, translation, online community management, accounting/financial management or social media management, people want to know why the role is unpaid instead of a paid position – and “we can’t afford to pay someone” is NOT the answer they accept. They are also pushing back against unpaid internships at nonprofits. Also, labor unions, professional associations and people with disabilities are asking why people who are experts in something are being asked to donate their services, without being paid for their time (groups that are experiencing high unemployment are particularly angry).
Most organizations don’t have a mission statement for their volunteer engagement, one that could help guide the organization on when a role should or should not be an unpaid role. Most organizations also haven’t thought about ethical issues, like the inappropriateness and disrespect to people with hearing issues of having a student studying American Sign Language trying to interpret a live event rather than someone with this particular skillset and credentials, specifically.
The result of this trend if it’s not addressed properly: a continuing backlash against ALL volunteering.
2. People want much more support as volunteers.
Especially true of public-facing volunteers, like members of school boards and people expected to support youth or at-risk populations. These volunteers are being asked to recognize and report child abuse, deal with extremely angry parents and navigate potentially violent situations. They need specific training on these issues and they need continued support regarding such – and that training and support costs money that most governments and corporations balk at funding.
The result of this trend if it’s not addressed properly: fewer people volunteering for community, city and county government advisory boards, more people with specific political agendas doing so. Fewer people volunteering for critical volunteering roles with children, or with people who might be experiencing mental health issues, meaning many programs, like youth sports leagues or programs to support homeless people, have to be canceled.
3. Volunteers want to know why their service matters.
A mug, a t-shirt, a thank you event via zoom – it’s just not enough of a “thank you” to volunteers, not anymore, and maybe it never was. Volunteers want to know WHY their service mattered. That does not mean saying the monetary value of their hours. It does not mean saying platitudes like, “We just couldn’t function without you!” Rather, it means talking regularly on social media, in the organization’s non-volunteer-focused events, and in board meetings about how what volunteers did made some kind of difference regarding the organization’s mission. It means integrating talk about the value of volunteers – and NOT monetary value – into all communications by the organization, public and internal.
4. Volunteers want to have fun, and/or an enlightening experience.
So many organizations that involve volunteers have forgotten that volunteers aren’t just laborers working for free, who show up, do what needs to be done and leave. For instance, firehouses that involve volunteer first responders seem to have forgotten the social aspects that many people seek through volunteering, and that interacting with fellow first responders outside of official duties – a sporting event, a picnic, a campout, a training or event not related specifically to their service, etc. – can help everyone recognize strengths in each other they may not have seen otherwise, further build a sense of team, and further build a connection to the community they serve.
Focusing on activities and events that are fun and that further build a sense of team and a stronger commitment to an organization and its cause is not just a good thing to do for volunteer recruitment and retainment: societies are becoming increasingly polarized. We all need to care about each other and our overall communities more, and that kind of caring comes from being around a diversity of people in contexts outside of professional work and standing in lines to buy something.
I was on a board for a nonprofit that gives away grants to arts organizations. I thought this would be a great experience to celebrate and learn about the arts in my community, but for most of the time, it’s been just work. A TON of work. In one year, I received more than 1000 emails just from fellow board members. After three years, I left, because there’s no fun. There’s no enlightenment. I was getting resentful about the arts instead of being inspired by them. The county government our organizations supported also was silent about our hours and hours of work.
5. People want “heart” from volunteering
I’ve struggled with the word to use here – personal doesn’t feel quite right. So I went with heart. What I mean is this: I think many people are just so, so hungry for very human experiences, where they hear voices, look into people’s eyes, feel like they are having a sincere, human interaction. They want to feel like they are in a community. Once it is safe to do so, people are going to fill concert halls, theaters, crafts classes, dance classes, sports events – I know this is happening in some places already, despite it spreading the deadly novel coronavirus every time, but in other places, where the culture is one more focused on personal safety and community, it’s not. Once hospitalizations finally go down, after years of a global pandemic, very personal experiences are going to be like a balm for the soul. No, that does NOT mean virtual volunteering is going away. Let me say it again: virtual volunteering can be a highly personal, even emotional experience.
Volunteers, more and more, are wanting to feel connected to other humans, and they want their volunteering service to provide some of that.
6. Managers of volunteers must master tech tools.
Not all of the tools – that’s impossible – but definitely social media (and not just Facebook), online community platforms and volunteer management software – beyond spreadsheets. The managers of volunteers that prosper – that are able to recruit and engage a diversity of volunteers in a diversity of projects and are valued within their organizations – will understand basic web design and be able to update the text on a web page, be able to edit a simple video and share it on YouTube and know how the audio software works on their laptop or phone so they can record things – like a conversation for a podcast.
7. An increasing number of traditional volunteering programs that refuse to evolve will disappear.
The town where I live no longer has an Optimist Club. Most of the remaining service clubs in town have seen dramatic drops in membership. Why? Those service clubs refuse to change: they don’t have social media channels or, if they do, they don’t update them regularly with event information, recognition of volunteers, information about how to volunteer, etc. They don’t post to the subreddit for their town. They don’t reach out to new residents. Their web site, if they have one, hasn’t been updated in years. They don’t invite the members of the high school Key Club or anyone from the high school or university newspaper to their events. They over-rely on Facebook as a way to advertise activities – and even then, don’t use it very well.
People under 40 really want to volunteer – just spend a few minutes on Reddit and you will see just how hungry young people are to volunteer. But they don’t know about service clubs, so they try to start their own. They don’t know about Meals on Wheels – that’s why they all tried to start their own meal and grocery delivery programs when the COVID-19 pandemic started. They don’t know about existing mentoring and tutoring programs, like Junior Achievement – so they try to start their own.
If your nonprofit is struggling to attract members, program participants or volunteers, here’s my challenge to you: try to find your information about such online, via a search engine or on Facebook, WITHOUT using your program’s name. Try to find it just using the name of your city and the word volunteer or community service, for instance. Here’s more on diagnosing the causes of volunteer recruitment problems (one of the most popular blogs I’ve ever written).
8. Trying to please corporate donors will further hurt volunteerism
The pushback against corporations who say this is what they want is so overdue. Nonprofits have got to start saying “no” to corporations demanding volunteer engagement that is, in fact, creating conflict and more, and unnecessary, work for nonprofits.
9. Virtual volunteering will continue to become so mainstream that we stop talking about it.
Online roles and tasks for volunteers have not been unusual nor innovative for a few years now. Virtual volunteering was already widespread long before the COVID-19 global pandemic, and calling an online role virtual volunteering often isn’t even done anymore – it’s simply volunteering. Not that there isn’t going to continue to be a need to talk about creating virtual volunteering roles, managing virtual teams, supporting online volunteers, etc. – just as there is always going to be a need to talk about other volunteering modalities, like creating volunteering roles for families or corporate groups, and how best to support those groups. But that hard wall so many put up in talking about virtual volunteering as something entirely separate from traditional, onsite volunteering – that’s long been crumbling.
On a related note: back in 2017, the UK-based Association of Volunteer Managers published a blog, Ten Ten: How Does The Next Decade Look For Volunteering. These four points stood out to me then and still stand out to me now, four years later, because I think this is absolutely where volunteer engagement is going – or, at least, where it MUST go:
The potential for volunteering will go on growing. Whether its volunteers in schools, welcoming refugees, campaigning against government cuts, or helping neighbours, we haven’t begun to reach saturation in the ways that volunteering can change society.
It’s absolutely true: we haven’t begun to reach anywhere near the saturation in the ways, the potential in the ways, that volunteering can be leveraged to improve our world. When I talk about all of the ways organizations are involving just online volunteers, I watch people’s eyebrows raise – they start to realize just how much more volunteers could be doing at their organizations. And when I talk about volunteers engaged in delivering mission-based programming, I have seen mouths start to gape as it dawns on people that volunteers are so much more than people who get tasks done.
Volunteer managers will have specialisms just like fundraisers do. There are over 15 types of fundraising expertise. Expect volunteering management to become more and more specialist as it matures, just as fundraising has.
This is already happening, as predicted! There are volunteer managers who specialize in one-time, just-show-up group volunteering events, those who specialize in hack-a-thons and edit-a-thons, those who specialize in online transcription-based projects mobilizing hundreds of volunteers at once, those who specialize in volunteers as mentors for at-risk youth, those who specialize in volunteer activities for teens or for seniors or for immigrants or for people on parole or are incarcerated, and on and on.
Intertwining specific audiences by demographics (eg working parents) and product (eg micro-volunteering) will be the breakfast of volunteering champions. In other words, the best organisations will understand exactly who their volunteers are, or could be, and create the volunteering products to encourage, entice and engage them ever more into giving their time.
A thousand times this! Those who manage programs for volunteer engagement will be at the table with those that manage fundraising, those that manage marketing, those that manage program, and the HR Director (because HR and volunteer engagement are NOT the same thing!).
I would word this point differently. It says originally:
The most far-sighted charities will invest in volunteer recruitment the way they do donor recruitment. Typically they may invest several hundred pounds in donor recruitment and the total budget may amount to millions of pounds in the biggest charities. I wonder how many volunteer managers even have a recruitment budget.
Change it to this and it’s accurate:
The most far-sighted charities will invest in volunteer engagement the way they do donor recruitment. Typically they may invest several hundred pounds in donor recruitment and the total budget may amount to millions of pounds in the biggest charities. I wonder how many volunteer managers even have a budget for every aspect of their volunteer engagement, from recruitment to support to recognition to results-tracking?
And those are my predictions about trends in volunteerism. What are yours?
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.
It’s the end of a calendar year, and that means it’s time to look at what were my most popular blogs of 2021 – and to try to figure out why. It’s an exercise I do not so much for YOU, my readers, but for me. It’s the kind of self-analysis every nonprofit, NGO, government agency, or consultant for such should do.
One seismic shift this year: not one blog I published this year made it to the list of top 11 blogs of all time. Usually, I knock off at least one blog from the top 11 spot – but not this year.
My top 11 blogs for 2021 – the ones that got the most clicks:
Free books on management of volunteers. If you are in charge of creating assignments for volunteers or supporting volunteers, there are terrific, free resources for you.
Can volunteerism repair a nation? And is the government, corporations and foundations all ready to fund the effort to bring civility and cohesion back to communities?
High Impact Virtual Volunteering. In contrast to microvolunteering, this is a list of high-responsibility, time-intensive volulnteering that has a BIG impact.
It was also another good year for The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook – lots of sales (though not as many as in 2020). If you want to learn how to avoid the common pitfalls in virtual volunteering and to dig far deeper into the factors for success in creating assignments for online volunteers, supporting online volunteers, and keeping virtual volunteering a worthwhile endeavor for everyone involved, you will not find a more detailed guide anywhere than The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. It’s available both as a traditional print publication and as a digital book. And if you buy it directly from me, the last two boxes in my closet will soon go away! I also get a bit more money than if you buy it from Amazon (and it’s slightly cheaper to buy from me as well).
If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.
All around the world, particularly in the USA, online volunteers, most working on their own, independent of any formal group, have been trying to put together SIV, P-1 and P-2 visa applications for Afghans who helped the USA military, USA programs and USA citizens working in Afghanistan. SIV folks worked with USA Armed Forces as translators or interpreters in Iraq or Afghanistan. The P-2 visa is for Afghans who helped in USAID-funded projects, participated in US State Department programs, or helped women start businesses, access education and health care and promote women’s rights – all things that will make them the target of the Taliban.
For 20 years, these Afghans completely embraced ideas that the Taliban finds abhorrent: women in most workplaces and professions, a free, questioning press, sports for everyone, music, art, movies, social media, travel abroad, and a vibrant, active civil society. Western reporters interviewed these Afghans, profiled them in heart-warming stories on TV and in online news sites, with quotes and photos. I worked alongside some of these Afghans in 2007, mostly in Kabul, but also briefly in the Pansjir Valley and Kandahar. I took photos with them, I blogged about them, and after I left the country, we stayed in touch, I edited press releases and reports they wrote in their jobs, we met up when they visited the USA.
And now, that work, those travels, those photos, those public pats on the back over two decades, may get them killed. That cherished certificate of recognition from the US State Department or some other foreign government has suddenly become a potential death sentence.
This effort, which is largely taking place on WhatsApp and Signal, has been called a “digital Dunkirk.” – The Atlantic, “Escape From Afghanistan,” August 23, 2021.
For the last two weeks of August and most of September, I’ve been part of this global virtual volunteering endeavor, this “digital Dunkirk.” And we’ve largely been a failure.
We’ve stay up late with and gotten up early for our desperate, terrified Afghan colleagues, messaging back and forth in those hours when the time difference has us all up at the same time, giving them updates on what we’ve found out and what we’ve done, reading their updates about what they are seeing, debunking rumors they’ve heard (and there are SO MANY rumors), offering sympathy and encouragement while trying to not sound glib or shallow. We’ve spent hours and hours on visa applications, reading the guidelines over and over, making sure that absolutely every bit of essential info the State Department might want is there, exercising the bits they don’t but that Afghans feel so proud of, like a declaration of honorary citizenship for some US city they visited. Part of the trouble with helping many Afghans stems from having trouble getting contact info for former employers that they worked for five to 10 or 15 years ago – work that could still get them killed now, under the Taliban. For Afghans we didn’t work with directly, we research former employers, track down the names of staff, write them, beg them. We continue to track down US staff who used to work at the Afghanistan embassy, people who have carefully hidden their email addresses because they are, no doubt, overwhelmed with strangers emailing them – including buying a subscription to LinkedIn just so we can message these people – and we ask, could you sign off on this P2 application I prepared for so-and-so? Only you can do it, because I didn’t work with him. It has to be you. Won’t you please? We’ve written our US Representatives and US Senators, telling them what we’re doing, asking if they can look into the matter for this person, specifically. We wonder just how far we can stretch the definition of de facto family in an application, to include nieces, nephews, adult brothers, in-laws… We look at the revised visa requirements for other countries and do the best we can in putting together applications for them, too.
We write, and research, and re-write, and research, and answer texts all morning and all night. We sometimes believe that if we slept, if we stepped away from our phones, we might miss an opportunity to help someone escape the country. We also scrub our social media accounts and web sites and blogs of photos and identifying info for all the Afghans we’ve worked with, both back in Afghanistan and right here in the USA.
The last two weeks of the US at the Kabul airport were horrific. One Afghan colleague never got her US paperwork – she still hasn’t, despite my US Senator’s staff assuring me that they had looked into the matter and it’s “in process” – but she did get visas for herself and her whole family for Australia. They rapidly packed and drove to the airport. They never got close to the gate – they never even got out of the car. It was a terrifying experience, and when they finally realized the Taliban would not let them through, even by foot, they returned home, defeated, despondent. A few hours later, the bomb went off. They were safe, for the moment – but we knew they weren’t getting out any time soon. It was like hearing a massive door slam shut.
The vast majority of the people that the Digital Dunkirk volunteers have tried to help have not gotten out of Afghanistan. Those people, those US and Australian and UK and French and German allies, are hiding at home, wondering when they will run out of money for Internet access, when they will run out of food, when a landlord will turn on them for not paying rent, and when a neighbor will turn them in, knowing they could win favor with the Taliban for doing so.
And we tremble when a social media account of an Afghan colleague goes silent.
When people say volunteering feeds the soul, that it lifts you up, that it’s oh-so-healthy, they are leaving out the volunteering, onsite or online, that is soul-draining, that it can leave you feeling helpless and distraught despite pouring so much into it. I’ve always bristled when people say, “Virtual volunteering is great for people who don’t have a lot of time to volunteer” or “virtual volunteering is impersonal!” Neither statement is true – not of any virtual volunteering I’ve ever researched, and especially not for the virtual volunteering I’ve most recently been a part of.
Per my virtual volunteering experience in this Digital Dunkirk: I’m exhausted. I’m frustrated. I’m angry. And I’m out of tears some days. And if you tell me the value of this volunteering in terms of the number of hours I contributed and the dollar value of those hours, I will probably want to hit you in the face as hard as I possibly can. I won’t, because I am committed to non-violence, but I’ll want to.
I’m not alone in this virtual volunteering – I’m in contact with folks at an NGO that are trying to get more than a dozen families out, and it’s been wonderful to share information, advice and frustrations. There’s also:
Task Force Pineapple, a high-profile effort by US military personnel and others that successfully evacuated more than 1000 Afghan allies and their families.
More than 40 volunteers at the University of Pittsburgh‘s Center for Governance and Markets are (were?) helping too. And then there are people like me, alone, trying to help Afghans they worked with: I see the posts all over Twitter and my LinkedIn account by people asking for advice, reporting their own progress, linking to some resource they’ve found.
There’s Special Operations Association of America (SOAA) is comprised of USA volunteers that says it is working side-by-side with the US government “to bring home our wartime brothers and sisters. Our mission is to safely provide humanitarian support in direct support of US policy.”
In this incredible 50 minute podcast, “Roamings and Reflections,” humanitarian assistance and international development expert Sasha Ghosh-Siminoff joins host Nicholas Heras to recount the massive effort to evacuate Afghans as the Taliban seized Kabul. It really captures what those days in Afghanistan were like for the online volunteers in the USA and elsewhere trying desperately to get people on those last flights. Many US government workers were risking their jobs by helping volunteers trying to get Afghans out of the country on those last flights. At one point, Ghosh-Siminoff says that, rather than digital Dunkirk, the effort, “was more of a digital Schindler’s List.”
This Stars and Stripes story, Afghan evacuation took hidden toll on mental health of volunteers who tried to help, notes that many of the volunteers in Digital Dunkirk efforts are military veterans who served in Afghanistan Veterans who had unresolved trauma from their time at war and thought helping to evacuate people would “make things right,” according to Amy Williams, the chief clinical officer at Headstrong. The story notes that members of an online support group for such volunteers said they didn’t think they could complain about their stress when Afghans have far worse situations, or they they didn’t think others would understand what they had gone through. Some volunteers, though, said they did not feel any adverse effects from their unsuccessful efforts to help Afghans. On the contrary, they said they feel better for having tried.
Of course, the stress and frustration of online volunteers in this effort is nothing compared to the Afghans we’re trying to help. In addition to being terrified of the knock at the door that means the Taliban is there, to search the home, to take away boys and young men to fight, to take away girls for rape (there’s no such thing as “child marriage” – please stop saying that), to find files and data that could prove someone in the family worked with the USA, the UK, Australia, or some European country, Afghans are also running out of money and food.
All this volunteering may be for naught. The visa applications may never come through, and even if they do, these many thousands of Afghans may never get out of the country. Many may be murdered. The women, in particular, will suffer horribly.
For the online volunteers trying to help, no certificate, no statistic on the monetary value of the time they contributed, no t-shirt, is going to serve as appropriate recognition for what they’ve done. There’s just one way we’re going to feel good about our virtual volunteering: getting people out of Afghanistan.
It’s been so worthwhile to connect with other volunteers, sharing resources and feeding off of each other to maintain hope. And a shoutout to the friend that isn’t involved in any of this, but listens to me rant and gives me words of encouragement – she’s helping to, as an online volunteer, even if she doesn’t know it. Thank you to everyone out there that’s volunteering online to help Afghanistan, whether it’s to help people get out, pressure their own governments to, in turn, pressure the Taliban to keep their promises (which they mostly have NOT so far, in case you aren’t paying attention), or to help Afghan refugees in their own country. I see you. I value you. Others do too. Keeping doing what you can.
Also, don’t you dare tell me that virtual volunteering is impersonal.
I have an Afghanistan Twitter list that I use to stay abreast of what’s happening in the country – it’s public – you can use it too. I’ve put together this list of ways Afghans can keep their computers and phones safe, and I’ve put together this list of online resources for Afghans trying to teach girls at home (frustrating, as most Afghans don’t have Internet access, most Afghans don’t read English, and all these are in English – there really needs to be a site in Dari and Pashto, but I can’t find such). You can feel free to share these resources with anyone you think could benefit from such, and your suggestions for additions to these resources would be helpful.
A sad turn of events has many of us feeling especially pessimistic: the State Department sent an email on September 9th to at least some Afghans who had applied for the P-1 visa, that said, in part:
Please note that case processing cannot begin until/unless you relocate to an eligible processing country. Processing is not feasible in Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Turkey, and Yemen. Once you have relocated to a country where refugee processing can occur, you will need to inform the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration… of your current location and contact information for your referral to be assigned to a U.S.-funded overseas Resettlement Support Center for case processing… The United States is unable to provide protection or support to you while you await a decision on your refugee case. Case processing can be lengthy (potentially 12-14 months), so please be aware that this process could require living in and supporting yourself and your family in a third country for a substantial amount of time until case processing is complete. Even if you qualify for the P-1 or P-2 program and travel outside of Afghanistan, there is no guarantee that you will be approved for resettlement to the United States.
The information has been a gut punch to the Afghans I’m working with. Do I tell them now to get out of Afghanistan, anyway they can, even illegally, and once in that country, follow what the US State Department has said? What do I say now? I have no idea. And neither do all the other online volunteers I work with.
But Digital Dunkirk continues.
If you are helping people who are still in Afghanistan and are trying to get out, I have a Google Shared drive where I am sharing all of the information and links I have found helpful. If you see something in the drive that is inaccurate or outdated, or you have resources that I could add to such, please email me at jcravens42 “at” yahoo.com, putting “helping Afghans” in the subject line.
And in case you are wondering: I am working to support five Afghans and their families to leave the country.
Two are women I worked with when I was there in 2007. Their P-1 and P-2 applications, which I submitted since I worked directly with them in work that was funded in part by USAID, have been flagged by one of my US Senators, Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon. One women needs to get out by herself, but another needs to get her sister, her mother and four nieces out. Next steps? Finding a way for them to get to another country to live for 12 – 18 months (see earlier US State Department communications).
One is a man, who did some work for the US Embassy. I have the names of the US Embassy staff who signed off on his payment paperwork. Only they can submit his paperwork. And they won’t reply to my emails. I now need to find someone who worked at the US Embassy who will be willing to submit his P-2 paperwork.
One got out of the country with his immediate family and is now, supposedly, in process for his P-2 – and since this is being handled by a US-based nonprofit I did not work with, there’s not much I can do other than share hopeful info.
One is someone who was a part of a USA-based nonprofit that I have volunteered with – that nonprofit has submitted his application for a P-2 application, but he’s stuck in Afghanistan, like my two colleagues. One staff member at the nonprofit was trying to communicate with 14 people that was associated with this nonprofit, and it just became way too much, so she’s creating teams of volunteers to be the primary contact for each of the 14 people. I’m on a team for a man who is a journalist. Next steps? Finding a way for him and his family to get to another country to live for 12 – 18 months (see earlier US State Department communications) and any associations of journalists abroad who might care about his situation and want to help in some way.
If you can help with any of the aforementioned four situations, contact me.
Update: One of the people I have been helping made it to Pakistan with her four nieces and mother, and then was able to go on to Australia, because she attended university there many years ago and that network has been working to get alumni out. Her sister was unable to go too – she could not get a visa for her. I continue to try to help her sister and others.
Update: Another perspective on being a part of the online #DigitalDunkirk, to get our endangered allies, the people we put into this precarious position, out of Afghanistan. This is not the warm and fuzzy just-show-up-when-you-feel-like virtual volunteering story you will find elsewhere. The emotional toll is real.
Update: One of the people I was trying to help got out, no thanks to me nor the USA. She’s now in Australia with her nieces and mother, and she wrote this account of why she fled and what her final weeks in Kabul were like. Her sister, her brother and her brother’s family remains. One of my co-workers also remains there. The USA is their only hope – and the USA offers no help to get them out.
This study explored the experiences of mentors to youth during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Six online focus groups (OFGs) were conducted with 39 mentors. Using Facebook groups, moderators posted questions and prompts, and mentor participants responded using textual comments. Mentor help involved routinely connecting with mentees and providing academic support.
Some things that stood out to me:
The success of the online mentoring program came largely because these mentors and mentees were already interacting offsite, they already had a relationship, and the mentors were trained about what a meaningful mentoring relationship looked like and about the issues mentees might be facing at home (witnessing domestic violence, substance abuse, etc.). The research found that virtually connecting with mentees can be difficult for mentors without prior, organized planning. All of this is something I learned in researching online mentoring programs for the Virtual Volunteering Project.
Mentor concerns for their mentees varied, including mental health, school, family finances, and access to instrumental support and food. In short: mentoring requires much more than uplifting messages.
Just as I learned in researching online mentoring programs for the Virtual Volunteering Project and, later, The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, online mentors need specific and ongoing ideas for things to do online with their mentees. One of the most popular pages on the old VV Project web site was a list of ideas for online mentors to do with youth.
The digital divide is still VERY much an issue for mentees and their families. Mentees’ access to technology and privacy were the biggest challenges faced.
And then there was this, which was also not surprising: members of the focus groups used for this research said they really wanted an online community to help them learn from each other, give each other support, etc. Excerpt:
Mentor Support Groups
Across the board, participants agreed that an online support group for mentors would be incredibly helpful. Sharing ideas, discussing experiences, and connecting with other mentors about their own stress and anxiety would provide a much-needed outlet and resource during such unprecedented times. Some participants stated the OFGs felt helpful in this way:
Seeing everyone’s responses here has reminded me that we’re not alone in our work/struggles in being a mentor. (female, Illinois)
Others expressed that continuous collaboration with others could provide encouragement and strength, contributing to their own health as well as their effectiveness as mentors.
A support group where we can join together to share thoughts and experiences with one another. What if the group included mastermind sessions where, as a team, we examined our experiences to identify possible solutions and to be reminded that we are not alone?(female, Maryland)
I haven’t been shy about sharing how much I loathe thrown-together online mentoring programs during COVID: most that I’ve seen spent lots of time creating a web site that celebrates the program’s founders, but have scant information on how mentors will be trained, how success will be measured, what mentoring resources they are relying on to guide them, etc. – and nothing on safety. It’s nice to see research that backs up we (Susan Ellis and I) learned back in the 1990s, and continued to promote for decades.
If you want to dig far deeper into the factors for success in online mentoring programs, those establish meaningful relationships with mentees – not just feel-good quickly “cheer up” messaging for a few minutes ever week but are, rather, based on the proven practices of traditional, face-to-face mentoring initiatives – you will not find a more detailed guide anywhere than The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. It’s available both as a traditional print publication and as a digital book.
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Back in the 1990s, I noticed online communities of fans for the X-Files, Xena, Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, other TV shows and various entertainers and sports teams engaging in volunteering, activism and philanthropy. It was more than virtual volunteering: it was the creation of intentional communities, where fans used their passion and sense of fellowship to support a variety of good causes. I noted that many of these online groups weren’t directed by any formal organization to engage in philanthropy; the fans decided to engage in these activities on their own.
I wrote and published an online article about it in July 1999: Fan-Based Online Groups Use the Internet to Make a Difference. My article includes examples of such groups at that time, with comments from members regarding their online philanthropic activities and what makes them successful.
That DIY fandom-for-good spirit has continued online, and I’ve paid attention to one of those more recent efforts in particular: The Harry Potter Alliance. The HPA has raised money for various causes and lead campaigns to create awareness about hunger, bullying, child slavery and more. The group also has the Granger Leadership Academy, named for the Harry Potter character Hermione Granger, and the Wizard Activist School, which create programming and workshops aimed to inspire and train members in a variety of topics, including feminism, environmental issues, fighting racism, social justice, conflict resolution, leadership styles, goal-setting, and on and on.
We founded the HPA in 2005 with a simple idea: what if fans used their passion and creativity to make activism more fun and the world a more loving, equitable place? For almost sixteen years that idea has driven hundreds of thousands of fan activists to organize protests and charity drives, to write letters and make calls, to donate books and time and money to make their communities better for all.
The Harry Potter Alliance is changing its name to Fandom Forward, and it’s now for fans of Avatar, Star Wars, Percy Jackson, Doctor Who, Marvel, DC and, of course, Harry Potter – and most everything else out there in the sci-fi / fantasy / superhero world. Its purpose is to turn fans into “heroes.”
We use the power of story and popular culture to make activism accessible and sustainable. Through experiential training and real life campaigns, we develop compassionate, skillful leaders who learn to approach our world’s problems with joy, creativity, and commitment to equity.
As it became more and more clear that our community had grown even bigger than the boy who lived, we started talking to friends from all corners of fan organizing about how to move forward together. We talked to you, our community members, about what you wanted to see next. Over 1,000 of you weighed in, and the answer was overwhelmingly consistent: this place we’ve built? It doesn’t belong to just one fandom. It’s for anyone who believes in the power of stories and fans to change the world. It’s for everyone, and our name should reflect that.
Fandom Forward even offers its own virtual volunteering management guide. My favorite advice from the guide is section 4, on cultivating leadership among volunteers. The entire section is terrific. I like this especially:
Default to trusting volunteers. This is a big one, and something that is hard for a lot of people to grasp. After doing this for 15+ years, however, we whole-heartedly believe in the idea that you can and should default to trusting your volunteers. Of course, this doesn’t mean you should give anyone access to your organization’s most sensitive information. But if you have a task that needs to be done that involves giving a volunteer an organizational log-in to a website, give it a try! We’ve found that most people can be trusted. If anything goes wrong, you simply remove the volunteer from that task or the organization. However, most times it will go right.
I’m fascinated by this and other fan-based efforts for many reasons: because I’m a fan myself of many of these stories, because I love seeing the Internet used for good, because there are frequent stories and studies claiming that there is a decline in young people wanting to volunteer – stories and studies that ignore these efforts – and because of complaints that younger generations aren’t joining traditional civic groups like Rotary, Optimist, Lion’s, etc. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: younger generations ARE volunteering, ARE getting involved in their communities – but they are doing it in different ways. Maybe the local civic group didn’t bother to create any social media channels to talk about their work, haven’t updated their web site in years, and have spent more time complaining about declining numbers than trying to do an honest assessment of why that is happening. Maybe the local fire station makes it clear that only career first responders are the superheroes and volunteers are just there to roll hoses and serve coffee, or doesn’t make it crystal clear how a person would become a volunteer first responder. Maybe these groups need to pay more attention to Harry Potter fans.
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