Tag Archives: volunteering

The question I get asked again & again

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I often feel that most letters to Dear Abby and other advice columnists can be summed up thusly:

There is this thing I need to do or say, because I’m suffering per the behavior of someone else, but I don’t want to address it because it’s going to make me uncomfortable to say or do what I need to say or do, it’s going to make other people uncomfortable, and the people I’m speaking about/to may end up not liking me, have their feelings hurt, etc. So how can I do or say this thing that I really need to do in such a way that no one will be angry, I won’t be uncomfortable, everyone will listen, all is well afterwards with no resentment or hostility, and I get the change in behavior I need?

And I realized over the course of the four presentations I did in the last two weeks that most questions asked by managers of volunteers can be summed up thusly as well.

Two of my most popular blogs are about how managers of volunteers are under pressure to always please volunteers  and The volunteer as bully = the toxic volunteer. Both of these blogs reflect the aversion of managers of volunteers to conflict, complaints and uncomfortable conversations.

This aversion comes from a misplaced notion that managers of volunteers must be:

  • always nice
  • never confrontational
  • always welcoming of all volunteers no matter what those volunteers might say or how they may act
  • make everyone happy at all times

How do we change that expectation of managers of volunteers – both from others and by ourselves?

Also see this oh-so-popular blog, the Volunteer Manager Fight Club.

No complaints means success?

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Back in April 2010, I published the following blog. It became one of my most popular entries. Later that year, my blog home moved – and then, just two years later, it moved again. I managed to recover this via archive.org, and am republishing it here on what I hope will be my blog home for a long, long time:

——-

During my workshops in Australia last month, I asked managers of volunteers how their executive leadership at their organizations define success regarding volunteer involvement. And one of the answers really disturbed me:

“It’s successful if no one complains.”

The person who made this statement didn’t think this was a good measure of volunteer involvement at her organization; she was acknowledging a reality at her organization, but did not like it. And at least two other people said similar things about their organizations — that senior management did not want to hear about any problems with volunteers and, if they did, it meant the volunteer manager wasn’t doing her (or his) job.

It means that just one volunteer complaint — including complaints about being reprimanded for not following policy —  would result in senior leadership displeasure with the volunteer manager. One person said that her supervisor, in regards to complaints by a long-time volunteer who did not want to follow policy, “I just don’t want to hear it. Make her happy.”

I heard this theme a few times, in fact: that senior management was more displeased about getting a complaint from a volunteer than they were that the volunteer had violated a policy and been given a verbal or written reprimand.

If you are facing this, confront it head on:

  • Consider meeting one-on-one with the senior leader who thinks this way, to discuss why a complaint from a volunteer isn’t a sign of a failure in the program, why it’s often necessary to do something that upsets a volunteer (just as it’s sometimes necessary to do something that upsets an employee), etc. Talk about the consequences of not addressing problems with volunteers. Even if you walk away thinking you haven’t changed his or her mind, you’ve at least planted a seed of doubt in the senior manager’s mind about his or her thinking about volunteer management.
  • While volunteer management is not exactly the same as HR management, volunteer management does involve HR management, and reprimanding volunteers because of policy violations is an example of that. Meet with the HR manager to make sure your policies and procedures — and enforcement — are in line with each other, and that he or she endorse your practices at a staff meeting or a meeting with senior management.
  • Consider conducting a brief workshop for staff (over lunch is a great time) about how and why volunteers may be disciplined, why following policies and procedures is vitally important for the organization’s credibility and for staff and volunteer safety, the consequences of not addressing policy violations, how complaints from volunteers are handled, etc.
  • Include information about problems you face as the volunteer manager in your regular reporting and how you systematically, dispassionately address such.

And on a related note, here is my interview with OzVPM Director Andy Fryar, talking about the trainings in Australia last month.

Also see

The volunteer as bully = the toxic volunteer.

With Volunteers, See No Evil?

Microvolunteering: beyond the hype

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The buzz about microvolunteering continues – but, IMO, this form of virtual volunteering is still being talked about it terms of hype, rather than practicalities and concrete benefits. It’s being talked about by bloggers and consultants more than organizations creating microvolunteering activities. The vast majority of blogs and articles about microvolunteering are focused entirely on supposed benefits for volunteers, with not even anecdotal information to support assertions (not even testimonials from online volunteers, for instance, about why they undertook such activities, what exactly they did, etc.), and often without providing actual examples of what online volunteers do in microvolunteering activities, or details on how organizations benefit in such a way that the return on investment is clear. An example: this article from the Institute for Volunteering Research: “Micro-volunteering: doing some good through smartphones?“, about users of the Orange’s Do Some Good smartphone App.

Having promoted this form of online volunteering since 1997 – back when I gave it the not-at-all catchy name of byte-sized volunteering – having created such assignments for volunteers and, even now, managing a microvolunteering initiative, I offer the following:

My experience managing the Donate Your Brain initiatives for TechSoup. In this blog, I try to show just how much work it takes to provide meaningful microvolunteering opportunities. This isn’t a blog to discourage organizations from creating online microtasks for volunteers, but it is insight from a manager of volunteers point of view – and I would love to see many more such testimonials from the people that are actually creating these assignments and supervising the contributions made by volunteers.

A very long list of examples of microvolunteering really looks like. You won’t find a longer list anywhere of what microvolunteering assignments can look like. This web page also provides lots of advice on how to create such assignments and make the program worth doing.

For you researchers out there: it would be so refreshing if, instead of only focusing on the motivations of volunteers to engage in microvolunteering, you did some research on the organizations that involve volunteers in microvolunteering assignments:

  • What ultimately prompts them to start creating these assignments?
  • What type of microvolunteering assignments are the most common to start with at an organization?
  • What type of microvolunteering assignments are the most common across organizations?
  • Do most organizations start with a formal microvolunteering program – using that name, getting approval from senior staff to engage volunteers in this way, having a web page and blog announcing such, having an official launch of such activities, etc. – or do they just start offering such assignments without fanfare, even without calling them “microvolunteering”?
  • Do most organizations have just one person, or multiple people, creating microvolunteering activities and supervising volunteers?
  • What percentage of volunteers engaged in microvolunteering became longer-term volunteers, or became financial donors?
  • If an organization’s engagement of volunteers through microvolunteering went away tomorrow, what would be the impact?

And, yes, microvolunteering is talked about in the upcoming Virtual Volunteering Guidebook – just like it was in the last one back in 1999, but this time, we use the snazzy new name.

One (-ish) Day “Tech” Activities for Volunteers

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A new resource on my web site:
One(-ish) Day “Tech” Activities for Volunteers
Volunteers are getting together for intense, one-day events, or events of just a few days, to build web pages, to write code, to edit Wikipedia pages, and more. These are gatherings of onsite volunteers, where everyone is in one location, together, to do an online-related project in one day, or a few days. It’s a form of episodic volunteering, because volunteers don’t have to make an ongoing commitment – they can come to the event, contribute their services, and then leave and never volunteer again. Because computers are involved, these events are often called hackathons, even if coding isn’t involved. They also sometimes get called edit-a-thons. This page provides advice on how to put together a one-day event, or just-a-few-days-of activity, for a group of tech volunteers onsite, working together, for a nonprofit, non-governmental organization (NGO), community-focused government program, school or other mission-based organization – or association of such.

Volunteer engagement is MUCH more than just HR management

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Back in 2010, when my blog was somewhere else other than WordPress, I blogged about how the then new Reimagining Service initiative promoted the idea of applying private sector human resources practices to nonprofit organizations. Per some recent online discussions I’ve seen where this issue is rearing up again, I am reposting those two original blogs, which detail why I (and so many other managers of volunteers) believe that volunteer engagement is so much more than just HR management.

All links are on archived on archive.org.

Part 1: Don’t let them equate volunteer management with HR management
(08:15, 6 April 2010)

Human Resources (HR) management and volunteer management are NOT the same thing. It’s not just that one deals with paid staff and one with unpaid staff. The bigger difference is that HR is about getting the work that needs to be done in the most efficient way possible with paid staff. And that’s great. That’s absolutely necessary. But volunteer management is NOT getting the work that needs to be done completed by unpaid staff, in order to save as much money as possible. That’s old paradigm. That’s an idea the modern volunteer manager or “service leader” is trying to shed.

My favorite question to ask people who think HR management and volunteer management are the same thing is this: if I gave a nonprofit all the money in the world to hire all the staff needed for absolutely every possible position, to get absolutely all the work done that needs to be done, would that nonprofit still involve volunteers? If their answer is “no”, or “Yes, because nonprofits always need to be looking for ways to save money” or “Yes, because nonprofits will always have more work to be done than paid staff can do”, I know they don’t really understand the true value of involving volunteers.

If you see volunteer management as just HR management, then you will love Reimagining Service, which promotes the idea of applying private sector human resources practices to nonprofit organizations. It’s all about “there’s a lot of work to be done; let’s get volunteers to do it!” It ignores emerging trends regarding volunteer management and takes us several steps back. Don’t get me wrong – “Reimagining Service” is not without some good ideas; it’s nice that it says that volunteers aren’t free (something the nonprofit sector has been saying for many years). It’s nice that the people behind it see a need to fund volunteer management.

But I hope that some folks will crash the Reimagining Service Forum, to be held on Tuesday, June 29th, from 10:30am – noon, in New York City at the National Conference on Volunteerism and Service and try as much as you can to educate the HR professionals and corporate representatives there about the new paradigms regarding volunteer management and the realities of the nonprofit sector.

  • Do your best to help the panelists and speakers understand that there are better reasons to involve volunteers far beyond “there’s work to be done.”
  • Explain to them that some tasks are actually best done by volunteers — because that’s what the clients want, or because of the nature of the task. Explain to them that some organizations remain volunteer-only not to save money, but because of the nature of the organization’s mission.
  • Explain to them that organizations involve volunteers when it’s not always cost-effective to do so — it may be because the organization wants the community to be involved in their work, or because they organization wants to be more transparent to the community regarding its operations, or because the organization must address criticism or misconceptions about the organization. That’s why many organizations reserve certain assignments for volunteers, even if there might be funding for paid staff.
  • HR management is most certainly a part of the responsibilities of volunteer managers — ensuring policies and procedures are being followed, recording the service volunteers are providing, overseeing the performance review process, etc. But volunteer managers are also entrepreneurs and program managers, looking for ways to involve volunteers not based entirely on the work that needs to be done but, rather, based on the mission the organization is trying to achieve, and reporting on the results of volunteer involvement far beyond number of hours donated, number of volunteers involved and amount of money saved.

I wonder how these folks are going to respond to union representatives who, based on the message of Reimagining Service, are worried that volunteers replace paid staff to save money? Or paid nonprofit professionals who see this as an effort to replace them with with corporate employees on-loan and other volunteers — why pay for qualified, trained nonprofit professionals when you can get corporate folks acting as paraprofessionals “for free”?

Let’s stop letting the corporate sector define what’s best for the nonprofit sector. Let’s start advocating for ourselves!

PART 2: Victory! Volunteer management is, indeed, something more than HR!!
(07:17, 15 July 2010)

You may recall that myself (and more than a few others, I’ve since learned), were none-too-happy with the Reimagining Service report, issued earlier this year, which promoted the idea of applying private sector human resources practices to nonprofit organizations. The original report is all about “there’s a lot of work to be done; let’s get volunteers to do it!” It ignored emerging trends regarding volunteer management and, in my opinion as well many others, takes volunteer management / volunteer engagement several steps back.

The report equated volunteer management with human resources repeatedly in the report, and implied that what we need is more corporate HR folks in charge of volunteer management at nonprofits. While there are elements of human resources management in volunteer management, the latter is SO much more. As I blogged back in April: Human Resources (HR) management and volunteer management are NOT the same thing. It’s not just that one deals with paid staff and one with unpaid staff. The bigger difference is that HR is about getting the work that needs to be done in the most efficient way possible with paid staff. And that’s great. That’s absolutely necessary. But volunteer management is NOT getting the work that needs to be done completed by unpaid staff, in order to save as much money as possible. That’s old paradigm. That’s an idea the modern volunteer manager or “service leader” is trying to shed.

I wondered in my blog back in April how the Reimagining Service folks were going to respond to union representatives who, based on the message of Reimagining Service, are worried that volunteers replace paid staff to save money? Or paid nonprofit professionals who see this as an effort to replace them with with corporate employees on-loan and other volunteers — why pay for qualified, trained nonprofit professionals when you can get corporate folks acting as paraprofessionals “for free”?

I emailed the authors of the report, via their web site, to cite my concerns and to beg that they talk to actual volunteer managers. I got no reply other than an automated thank you. I found out that others had also written and gotten no reply as well.

So I encouraged anyone attending the National Conference on Volunteerism and Service in New York CIty last month to crash the Reimagining Service Forum and try to educate the HR professionals and corporate representatives there about the new paradigms regarding volunteer management and the realities of the nonprofit sector.

I didn’t get any updates from attendees to the Reimagining Service Forum. But I did get an email the Reimagining Service on 13 Jul 2010, and imagine my STUNNED surprise: not one mention of human resources management. Not one implication that volunteer management is only about getting free labor in the face of budget gaps (though volunteers-as-free-labor is, indeed, still there). There is still a lot of very corporate language, and no call for corporations and the government to pay for all these resources that volunteer management needs in order to be successful (how many times do we get told by granters that they won’t pay for administrative costs when we ask them to fund volunteer management?!).

Even so — I’m calling VICTORY! The pressure of many people, not just me, has altered the message of Reimagining Service in very good ways! Bravo, everyone who made their voices heard, via email or in face-to-face conversations! Pressure DOES work! Keep it up! Let them know what you think, especially if you manage/support volunteers in any capacity!

Here’s the text of the July 13 Reimagining Service email:

Dear Reimagining Service Community,

We enjoyed seeing so many of you at the National Conference on Volunteering and Service a few weeks ago.  To those of you who attended the Conference and came to the Reimagining Service Forum, thanks for your interest and participation, and a special thanks to everyone who participated in the Forum discussion session.   We appreciate that you took the time to share your valuable insights and expertise.  This work will be better due to your many contributions.

If you were not able to attend the Reimagining Service Forum, here are a few headlines to bring everyone up-to-date (all of the tools and resources referenced below are available at www.reimaginingservice.org):

  • Reimagining Service is a self-organized community of individuals from nonprofits, the government, and private sector.  We are inspired by the renewed call to service and believe that volunteerism can help solve some of society’s most pressing problems.  In order to maximize the potential of service, we seek to convert good intentions into greater impact.
  • Reimagining Service believes that one way to increase the impact of volunteering is to encourage the creation of more Service Enterprises.
  • What is a Service Enterprise?  It is a nonprofit or for-profit organization that fundamentally leverages volunteers and their skills to successfully deliver on the social mission of the organization.  Research summaries and tools about both nonprofit and corporate Service Enterprises are available on the Reimagining Service website.
  • Much of the thinking behind Reimagining Service stems from new research conducted by the TCC Group that quantifiably demonstrates that nonprofit Service Enterprises outperform their peers on all measures of organizational effectiveness.  The TCC Group research also shows that strong volunteer management practices are essential to becoming a Service Enterprise.
  • Recognizing that volunteer management and infrastructure require financial resources, the Reimagining Service Funding Action Team has created a resource guide with two objectives: 1) to help nonprofits make the case for funding to support volunteer management; and 2) to share information with funders on the value and need for providing this type of financial support to nonprofits.  The resource guide is available on the website, and the Funding Action Team is also pursuing other strategies to direct more funding to volunteer management and infrastructure support.
  • Reimagining Service is looking at both the supply of and demand for volunteers.  Many of the ideas proposed by Reimagining Service are directed toward businesses and corporate volunteer managers.  To deepen the impact of service, we believe we need to look at the entire “volunteer ecosystem,” not just at nonprofit’s practices.
  • For the past 15 months, Reimagining Service has been entirely volunteer driven, but we have determined that this effort now needs dedicated staff to lead the work on a day-to-day basis.  Instead of creating a new nonprofit, Reimagining Service will “live” at the Points of Light Institute.  Under this new structure, Reimagining Service will continue to function as a multi-sector coalition and maintain an open-source model of operation: all research, learnings, and tools will be posted on our website as they are created, and will be available free of charge.  More detail on this next phase of Reimagining Service will be shared later this summer.
  • We have articulated four Reimagining Service principles (see below), and encourage you to become a signatory to the principles to demonstrate your commitment to bringing these ideas to life.  Please visit www.reimaginingservice.org to sign on.

Well hope you’ll review the materials on the website, and, if you find them useful, please encourage others in your network to do the same and to sign on to the Reimagining Service principles.  If you have questions, feedback, or suggestions about anything on the website, please email us at reimaginingservice@gmail.org.  Please remember that Reimagining Service is still 100% volunteer driven, and it make take a little time for us to reply.  We appreciate your patience.

Many thanks and we hope to hear from you,

Reimagining Service

REIMAGINING SERVICE PRINCIPLES

Principle 1:  Make volunteering fundamental, not an add-on.  Service Enterprises use volunteers to fundamentally increase their ability to achieve their strategic objectives and advance the social mission of their organizations.  Nonprofit Service Enterprises leverage volunteers to deliver programs as well as administrative, fundraising and volunteer management support.  Corporate Service Enterprises align their service model with their business model which allows them to leverage their core competencies to create the most community impact while they inspire, engage and develop their talent.

Principle 2:  Volunteering changes the core economics of organizations.  Service Enterprises have impact beyond what their cash resources allow.  Nonprofit Service Enterprises use volunteers to reach more constituents with quality services at the same level of resources.  Business Service Enterprises deploy employee volunteers and their skills as a multiplier for their philanthropic strategy, greatly increasing their impact on strategic community issues.  In both instances, volunteers partner with paid staff to multiply the impact of the organization.

Principle 3:  Don’t let supply dictate your volunteer programs.  Service Enterprises don’t let the supply of volunteers drive what gets done, they focus on their strategic priorities.  They match those priorities with the core skills that are resident in the community €“ from businesses to professionals to educators to the trades.  They clearly communicate what they need to recruit volunteers and build the required infrastructure to manage them.  Business Service Enterprises identify their company’s core skills, then put them to use to address community priorities.  With this, Service Enterprises have begun to shift the metrics from hours to impact.

Principle 4:  In order to get a return, you have to invest.  Service Enterprises are able to get as much as three to six times the value out of volunteers as the cost to manage them.  This is tremendous leverage for the community, but does require an upfront and ongoing investment.  Both nonprofit and business Service Enterprises invest in people, plans and programs to enable volunteers to create critical impact.

What I learned from researching virtual volunteering in Europe

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As I’ve blogged about 7 times already (and now, 8!): Since early April 2013, I’ve been researching Internet-mediated volunteering (virtual volunteering, online volunteering, microvolunteering, online mentoring, etc.) in European Union (EU) countries. This research is for the ICT4EMPL Future Work project being undertaken by the Information Society Unit of the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre. As part of this project, I created a wiki of all of the various resources I used for my research, and it includes a list of online volunteering-related recruitment or matching web sites that are either focused on or allow for the recruitment of online volunteers from EU-countries, and a list of more than 60 organisations in EU countries that involve online volunteers in some way, either through a formal virtual volunteering or microvolunteering program, or just as a part of their volunteer engagement, without calling it virtual volunteering or any other associated name.

The research and analysis for this project is pretty much done. The overall ICT4EMPL project is focused on employability and social inclusion, so all of my analysis in the narrative for the EU ties back to those goals. The final paper should be available before the end of the year from the Information Society Unit of the Institute for Prospective Technological Studies, and may be published in a journal by the University of Hertfordshire.

But here’s some analysis about what I found in my research that either aren’t in the paper I’ve submitted, but I think they should be out in public for discussion, or, that are in the paper, but I wanted to highlight them in particular for discussion:

  • Virtual volunteering is happening all over Europe. It’s not a new practice in Europe, just as it isn’t in North America. There are thousands of people in Europe that are engaged in virtual volunteering – and as I found 60 organizations involving online volunteers in a very short time, I image there are far, far more that I didn’t find, just because of my lack of skills in languages other than English. True, virtual volunteering still isn’t as widespread in Europe as it is in the USA, but its well-established and seems to be growing.
  • Traditional volunteer centers in Europe are ignoring virtual volunteering. The web sites of volunteer centers in European capitals, as well as most national web sites focused on volunteering in Europe by Europeans, were of little help in this research – they rarely mentioned online volunteers, virtual volunteering, microvolunteering, etc. Also, many of their online search engines for volunteering opportunities offer no way to list virtual opportunities. What is it going to take for this to change?
  • Spain is the European leader regarding virtual volunteering. Organizations involving online volunteers and web sites talking about voluntarios virtuales, voluntarios en línea, voluntarios digitales, voluntarios en red, microvoluntarios, voluntariat virtual, voluntaris digitals, voluntariat virtual abound in Spain. I could have done this report JUST on Spanish virtual volunteering and had 50 pages of narrative! Fundación Hazloposible, an NGO established in 1999 in Spain, launched HacesFalta.org the following year, an online portal for the promotion of volunteerism, including virtual volunteering, and its been growing ever since. Academic articles about this and other online efforts are plentiful. But why did Spain embrace virtual volunteering so early, and why did it spread so quickly, compared to other European countries? I would love to hear your thoughts as to why.
  • Lack of French virtual volunteering efforts. French is spoken by 74 million people, including in 31 francophone countries of Africa. It’s one of the official working languages of the United Nations. And, yet, information about virtual volunteering in French is sparse; even when the France-based France Bénévolat, talks about it, they just mention the phrase and then link to Canadian materials. Why the lack of information in French – and the apparent lack of interest in France regarding virtual volunteering, compared to Spain and England in particular?
  • Where are the online discussion groups for managers of volunteers in European countries? The United Kingdom has the wonderful UKVPMs, which brings together hundreds of people that work with volunteers, regularly discussing everything from legislation to day-to-day challenges in working with volunteers. There’s E-Voluntas, un canal para compartir experiencias de intervención e investigación sobre voluntariado. But where are the discussion groups in French, Portuguese, Italian, Catalan, German, Czech, Polish, Estonian, Swedish and on and on? In fact, where are the associations of managers of volunteers in these countries – not the volunteer centres, that promote volunteerism, but the associations that talk about effective management and support of volunteers? I found nothing on the International Association for Volunteer Effort (IAVE) site nor on the European Volunteer Centre (CEV) about such groups. Without such associations/communities of practice, there’s little chance of volunteering be elevated to the level of importance many of us believe it deserves, far beyond “feel good” activities. What will it take to change this?
  • Where are materials in languages other than English to help organizations involve online volunteers? I don’t mean just the Guía de voluntariado virtual, the translation of the Virtual Volunteering Guidebook I co-authored with Susan Ellis back in the 1990s, or translations of web materials I’ve written. I don’t mean just the UN’s Online Volunteering service English materials translated into French. I mean advice written in Spanish about Spanish experiences for a Spanish audience, or advice written in French about Francophone African experiences for a Francophone African audience, regarding how to identify tasks that might be undertaken by online volunteers, how to screen online candidates for volunteering, how to keep online volunteers motivated, how to supervise and support online volunteers, how to create an online mentoring program, how to create microvolunteering opportunities how to work with virtual teams of online volunteers, and on and on? I am so hungry to read a non-USA perspective about how to create online volunteering tasks, how to support online volunteers, the benefits of such engagement for organizations (not just the volunteers), etc. Are these out there and I’ve missed them? And I am ready to write an impassioned endorsement for anyone who wants to undertake such an endeavor for his or her respective country/region.
  • There are far, far, far more efforts in Europe to promote virtual volunteering, including microvolunteering, to potential volunteers than to volunteer hosting organizations. I found lots of material geared towards potential online volunteers, or talking about online volunteers and how they benefit, but scant information about why organizations in Europe involve volunteers, and why they should. Without focusing much, much more on hosting organizations, Europe is in danger of creating many thousands of disappointed people – people that wanted to volunteer online but couldn’t find tasks to do.

Those are some the findings I think might be of most interest to those that work with volunteers. Would love to hear your thoughts about these findings. 

Open Air Hackathon – Nonprofits Get Web Sites, Designers Get Accessibility Training

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The Accessibility Internet Rally is a community hackathon with a unique twist – Internet accessible for everyone, including people with disabilities.

AIR benefits nonprofit organizations and schools in any community by providing them with free, professionally designed, accessible websites.

AIR benefits participating volunteers, who are web designers, by providing them with increased awareness of the tools and techniques that make the Internet accessible to everyone – including people with disabilities – thereby increasing skills they can take back to their work places.

The result: dozens of professionally designed, accessible websites for nonprofit groups, and web designers with new skills and understanding regarding accessible design and usability.

Open AIR Registration for both nonprofits that want web sites and teams is NOW.

The competition – the hackathon — begins October 23, 2013 (& and lasts a month).

If you are a web developer, professional or aspiring (but with the needed skills), sign up a team of three to six members via the online developer registration. Besides helping nonprofits and learning new skills, you will also get the opportunity to win tickets to SXSW Interactive 2015 in Austin, Texas.

As a participant and competitor you will:

  • Be matched with a non-profit organization, budding artist, or worthy community organization (though you can also help a nonprofit register and be asked to be matched with that particular nonprofit)
  • Create an exciting, interactive web experience that is accessible to everyone.
  • Network with area artists, web professionals, and other really cool people.
  • Get to complete your development project in a more relaxed time frame – unlike past events that happened in one day, onsite, the development cycle is 30 days for Open AIR and can be done from your own location, giving your team the opportunity to create something really special fromanywhere.
  • Have access to training worth over $4,000

Don’t have a team to register with? Submit an individual registration and we will work to place you on a great team. Knowbility recommends a $25.00 donation to support the Open AIR program in lieu of a team registration fee for individual registrants.

Fees are $100 for the first 4 team members, $125 for teams of five, $150 for teams of six.

For nonprofits: register for free and if you are selected, a $100 registration fee will be due.

The Accessibility Internet Rally is open to participants in three categories:

  • Community Organizations: to qualify in this category, entities must be either a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization or an entity that exists for community benefit such as a church group, an arts organization, or a performance organization, to be decided at the discretion of the Organizer.
  • Web design team: to participate in this category, a group of up to 6 web and related professionals sign on as a team. Each web design team shall be considered a single Entrant. No person may enter more than once, either individually or as part of any team. If an Entrant uses the name of a corporation, partnership or other legal entity, the Entrant certifies it has the permission of the entity to do so.
  • Individual web professional: Individuals may sign on to participate and will be matched to other individuals at the discretion of the Organizaer to create a Web Design Team.

All Entrants must be officially registered to participate in the competition.

Entrants will be given access to a collection of online resources (training) to help them build accessible Web sites. Entrants will be expected to read and familiarize themselves with these resources prior to the Rally.

Entrants are required to submit their Entries in accordance with a mechanism determined by the Organizer This mechanism shall include instructions for preparing files for upload, file specifications including file type and file size and location for uploading.

Here are the complete details of participation, including team commitments.

Here is registration info for both teams and nonprofits.

pro vs. volunteer firefighters

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Back in 2010, I blogged about how the firefighter union in the USA is anti-volunteer – and my feelings about such as a manager of volunteers, a trainer of such managers, an advocate for volunteerism and an advocate AGAINST volunteers being used to replace paid staff.

To stay up-to-date on this issue, check out the National Volunteer Fire Council‘s excellent Right to Volunteer campaign. They post updates about this struggle after the narrative. I’ll try to do a better job of staying up-to-date as well.

Also see this: NVFC Asks FEMA to Examine Whether Anti-volunteer Provision in Labor Agreement Violates Federal Law, from March 2012.

Also see:

Volunteers needed, but are they wanted?

Fire station turns away volunteers – & how it could be different

Volunteers needed, but are they wanted?

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This isn’t just a lesson regarding volunteer fire fighters; it’s a lesson for any organization that involves volunteers. Your organization might need volunteers, but does it really want them? Is this want expressed in the attitude and action of everyone that interacts with potential volunteers, and in all of your procedures regarding potential volunteers?

Yesterday, I reposted a blog from 2010 that was inspired by my husband’s frustration at trying to be a volunteer firefighter in the USA since moving here in 2009. As I noted in yesterday’s blog, my husband is German, he’s been a volunteer firefighter for most of his adult life in Germany, and he wants to remain such here in the USA. He has no interest in a professional firefighting career — he already has a career. He’s fluent in English, and ready to start out from the very beginning with training and certifications.

Since moving to Oregon in 2009, he has visited at least six fire stations in the state that involve volunteers, trying to find a place to volunteer. I was with him on most of those visits, and talked to him at length about all of his visits. And I am astounded by how differently each of these fire stations talks about volunteers and to potential applicants.

Take Silverton, a small, picturesque town outside of Salem. We happened to be passing by the fire station while on our motorcycles just a few weeks after arriving in Oregon, and thought we would stop by just to see if anyone was around. Indeed, there was someone – one of the paid, career firefighters, who, after hearing our story, said, “Volunteers are the backbone of this fire station!” He took us immediately on the tour of the station, told us all there was to know about becoming a fire fighter, detailed what volunteers get to do, which includes fighting fires, gave my husband an application to print out, and said that, while there were no guarantees, he would love for us to move to Silverton.

Another station that was excellent was Estacada, which we happened upon while it was having an open house. All of the firefighters were friendly, and we met one who was oh-so-proud to have volunteered for more than 10 years and enthusiastic about showing us the protocol for going on a call. After hearing my husband’s situation, he said, “Oh, please move to Estacada!” Had it been closer to Portland, we would have!

Unfortunately, both Silverton and Estacada were too far from Portland, where my husband works and where I travel to frequently for work. So we moved elsewhere, to a town with a fire station with a sign out in front saying, “Volunteers Needed.” My husband went in during regular business hours. According to my husband, the chief seemed annoyed to have to talk to him, wasn’t very forthcoming with information, gave short answers, and was vague about what the exact steps would be to become a volunteer. He also made statements that made it clear his preference for paid career firefighters rather than volunteers. Nevertheless, my husband filled out the application and turned it in in-person at the station. In the next few months, the fire station never called my husband – so he called them, two or three times. Each time, he felt the person on the phone didn’t really want to talk to him. In those calls, he was told that:

  • someone from the fire station had tried to call him but the number had been wrong (my husband confirmed the phone number they had on record was correct)
  • someone from the fire station had sent emails but my husband never responded (he never received such, and he confirmed the email they had on record was correct)
  • the academy for new volunteers was canceled, the next one wouldn’t happen for 10 months, and my husband could not go to another fire station’s academy as a substitute (later, we found out that the station had sent a small group of applicants to the academy in Silverton, in contrast to what they had told my husband)

He checked the web site and this fire station’s Facebook page regularly, but no information on volunteering was every posted or updated. As my husband put it, “Volunteers are needed, but they aren’t wanted.”

On his own, my husband visited another fire district during an open house, where he was told, for the most part, volunteers don’t do any fire fighting or emergency responding; they clean up the hoses or other equipment after a call. By contrast, another city’s firehouse staff invited him to view a training and said that, while volunteers were never first responders, they were often second responders, and in those cases, might undertake firefighting or emergency treatment responsibilities.

We ended up moving to Forest Grove, Oregon this year. We live two blocks from the fire station. The application process to be a volunteer is online, and my husband filled it out almost immediately after we moved into our home in January. Since then, he’s passed the physical test and the interview, and he will begin the academy next month. One of the leaders at the station saw us at a local event and approached us, asking if he had received the official offer yet and if he was excited. He was also proud to tell my husband, “Our volunteers aren’t just hose-rollers. They’re essential.”

What is your organization’s attitude regarding volunteers? Do your words, actions and procedures say, “Volunteers are essential, we value them, and we’re transparent and explicit about how to volunteer!”? Or do your words, actions and procedures say, “Volunteers are needed here, but we don’t really want them. They aren’t essential. If we didn’t have to involve them, we wouldn’t.”?

Also see: International Association of Fire Fighters is anti-volunteer

Fire station turns away volunteers – & how it could be different

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This blog was originally published on 12 April 2010 on my blog platform at the time. More than three years later, I finally have an update on this situation, which I will post tomorrow. But first, let’s revisit this blog:

A fire station turns away volunteers – and how it could be different

My husband is an experienced, highly-trained, highly-skilled firefighter. He’s been a volunteer firefighter for most of his adult life, and wants to remain such (he has no interest in a professional career — he already has a career). Imagine our shock when we moved to a small town in Oregon with signs outside all of the area fire houses proclaiming Volunteers Needed but upon asking about volunteering, were told, “We only bring in new volunteers once a year. We won’t be talking to new candidates until June. If you are still interested in 10 months, we’ll talk to you then.”

This isn’t just the policy of many fire stations or emergency response agencies that need volunteers. There are other organizations, such as domestic violence shelters, that also have only a once-a-year new volunteer training or induction.

If your organization has just one window of opportunity for new volunteers to join, you are regularly turning away potential volunteers for most of the year.

Most people who are interested in volunteering are not going to wait around for months for your once-a-year training. You need to explore ways to keep those candidates involved until the once-a-year induction rolls around.

Here are actions you can take to either alter your program or to keep potential candidates engaged until your once-a-year window comes around:

  • Ask anyone interested in volunteering to immediately fill out either your full application to volunteer or a special one-page pre-volunteering application that asks for just basic information (full name, email address, mailing address, note about why the person wants to volunteer). Keep track of this information so that you always have an up-to-date list of everyone interested in volunteering with your organization; you do not ever want to say to a potential volunteer “We lost your information.” Have a rock-solid system for making sure all applications or pre-volunteering applications are accounted for.
  • Invite everyone on your list of people interested in volunteering to a meeting or event at least once-a-month at your organization. This can be a training event (allowing candidates to observe but **not** to participate), a celebration, an open-house, a presentation, etc. Have a sign-in sheet for candidates at the onsite event. Ask staff and current volunteers to greet these candidates at each event. Your goal is to build relationships between the potential volunteers and current volunteers and staff, which better ensures the potential volunteers will be around for your once-a-year induction of new volunteers.
  • Create an email distribution list for all those interested in volunteering with your organization. This can be a YahooGroup or GoogleGroup that you configure so that only you can post to the list. Ask anyone interested in volunteering to join this group. Use this group to post
    • a notice about new information on your web site that might be of interest to potential volunteers (photos, a new program that’s been launched, a message from the Executive Director, an evaluation report — the material does not have to be specific to volunteers)
    • a request for potential volunteers to complete an online survey (such as via zoomerang or surveymonkey)
    • a reminder of a deadline
    • an invitation to join an organizing or exploratory committee
    • an offer from another organization (an invitation to an event, for instance)
    • a link to an article online about your organization, or that relates to the mission of your organization and that you think volunteers would find helpful
    • an essay or testimonials by one of your current volunteers
    • a link to photos of volunteers in action at Flickr or Picasa
    • a reminder about training activities at other organizations that could be helpful to a potential volunteer (for instance, for potential firefighters, classes offered by the American Red Cross or the state agency that oversees firefighter training)
  • Look for ways to offer your induction/training for volunteers more than once-a-year. If you absolutely cannot offer it at least twice a year, look for an organization within a 50 mile radius that has the same induction/training for new volunteers as your organization, but that offers such at a different time of year. Sit down with that organization and look for ways to create a reciprocal agreement so that you can send potential volunteers to their volunteer induction/training, and vice versa. It may mean adjustments to both of your induction/trainings so that they meet each others’ needs. Talk with your legal adviser to make sure insurance covers volunteers trained at another facility. You can still require these volunteers to go through parts of your own induction/training when the time comes, to take a mini-induction/training so that they are familiar with all equipment and unique procedures at your organization, or to be limited in their volunteering activities until they go through your own induction/training.
  • Could volunteers-in-waiting help with events that honor current volunteers, or their training activities? Could they staff sign-in tables, hand out food and drinks at training events, help prepare a venue for an event or training, etc.? If they do any of these activities, they need to thanked very publicly by the current volunteers.

The goal is that potential volunteers start to feel a part of the organization as soon as possible, even though they are not yet active volunteers. You have a much better chance that these candidates will be around for your once-a-year induction for new volunteers if you create ways for potential volunteers to be involved in some way right away. This process will help volunteer candidates learn the culture of your organization — the language you use, the vibe of your work place, etc. This process will also help you screen out people who will realize volunteering at your organization isn’t really for them, and screen in people who are a good fit to your program. And isn’t it better that people realize this before they go through your actual full training/induction?

If all of this seems like too much work, you need to take a hard look at your commitment to involving volunteers. What is behind your reluctance to involve volunteers? What value do you see in volunteer involvement at your organization? Is it time for you to go to your supervisor and be honest and ask for help to overcome your reluctance to involve volunteers?

Also see:

International Association of Fire Fighters is anti-volunteer