Tag Archives: volunteering

Requiring jobless to volunteer – reality check

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John Albers, a state lawmaker from the USA State of Georgia, wants people receiving government jobless benefits to have to put in 24 hours of community service a week (read more about the story here).

Did he talk to nonprofits and government programs that involve volunteers and ask if they could involve an influx of new volunteers, putting at least one person to work for 24 hours a week?

No.

Does he know how much staff time and resources are required for a program or agency to involve volunteers, that volunteers are never free – and, therefore, will the government be providing funding to nonprofits and other organizations in order to fund the staff time and resources to involve volunteers in such large blocks of time each week?

No.

Did he do any research on how difficult it is for people who want to volunteer to find opportunities, that people report applying for multiple assignments on web sites like VolunteerMatch, over a period of weeks , sometimes over a period of months, before they ever actually end up volunteering?

No.

I’m all for people who are unemployed looking into volunteering as a way to build their skills for employment, as a way to make contacts that might lead to employment, as a way to get some accomplishments under their belt that would look great on their résumé, and as a way to counter the negative emotional pressures of unemployment.

But finding volunteering activities is hard. VERY hard. Much of my web site has been primarily focused on the organizations that involve volunteers, but I had to create pages focused on people who want to volunteer because of the OVERWHELMING number of people that post again and again to places like YahooAnswers, people who are trying to find volunteering activities and cannot find such.

Why do I get hired again and again to do training on how to involve volunteers? Why does Susan Ellis keep writing and selling so many books on volunteer engagement? Because thousands and thousands of nonprofit organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), schools, government programs and many others do not know how to involve volunteers.

So, reality check, Mr. Albers. If you want organizations to involve more volunteers – and to involve volunteers in such huge chunks of time (24 hours a week – three full work days a week!), then start looking for money to give to these organizations – they will need it to fund the time (and perhaps even the training) of a full-time manager of volunteers who will screen, train, support and supervise all these thousands of volunteers you want to send their way.

Dec. 5: International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development

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December 5 is International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development, as declared by the United Nations General Assembly per its resolution 40/212 in 1985.

This is not a day to honor only international volunteers; the international in the title describes the day, not the volunteer. It’s a day to honor, specifically, those volunteers who contribute to economic and social development. Such volunteers deserve their own day. Such volunteers are part of the reason I bristle at all the warm and fuzzy language used about volunteers.

What does it mean – volunteers contributing to economic and social development? It means volunteers who help create and support activities that help:

  • poor or economically at-risk people access microfinance programs or get out of debt or better manage their money
  • poor or economically at-risk people become successful farmers
  • people use sustainable animal husbandry practices
  • women learn to read and learn skills
  • people understand how to protect their local environment while still making a living for themselves
  • create understanding, acceptance and support of people with disabilities in all aspects of society, including paid work
  • develop environmentally-appropriate and historically-respectful tourism that helps local economies
  • train local restauranteurs in developing countries to become more sustainable and more attractive to a wider clientele
  • create and support schools
  • celebrate the arts and bring access to theater, dance, song, paintings, sculpture or other arts to any group or community
  • use the arts to educate about any economic or social issue
  • contribute in some way to any of the Millennium Development Goals
  • give children and teens alternatives to negative/destructive activities

and on and on.

Cultural organizations, vocational programs, education programs, girls-empowerment programs, anti-violence programs, agricultural programs, schools – all of these and more contribute to economic and social development, even if they don’t say so in their mission statements. And if these organizations involve volunteers, then their volunteers also contribute to economic and social development.

How are you going to leverage the International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development?

  • Will you blog about what your volunteers are doing to help your local communities economic health or social cohesion/inter-cultural understanding or community health, showing that your volunteers aren’t just nice and good-hearted, but filling essential roles and being the best for those roles?
  • Will you create a message on YouTube or Vimeo addressing your volunteers specifically, but sharing it with everyone, talking about how volunteers contribute to economic and social development?
  • Will you write a letter to your local newspaper to be published on December 5 and talking about how volunteers contribute to economic and social development in your community?

Don’t make this hug-a-volunteer-day. Don’t turn the day into just another day to celebrate volunteering in general — there are plenty of days and weeks to honor all volunteers and encourage more volunteering; keep December 5 specifically for volunteers who contribute to economic and social development, per its original intention, and, therefore, keep it unique and interesting and something worth paying attention to!

And just to be clear: by volunteer, I mean someone who is not paid for his or her service, or, if he or she has a “stipend”, it covers only very essential expenses so the volunteer can give up employment entirely during his or her stint as a volunteer, rather than the stipend being as much, if not more, than some mid and high-level government workers of a country are making. Yes, that’s a dig at a certain organization.

Here’s how I volunteer – and economic and social development is actually a primary motivation!

LinkedIn for Nonprofits? The Good & Bad

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I love LinkedIn. It’s how I stay connected with so many of the colleagues I’ve worked with or presented with over the years, or people whose work I am intensely familiar with (and who know a great deal about my work as well).

What’s kept LinkedIn so valuable for me is that I don’t connect to just anyone on LinkedIn; I reserve my connections there for real colleagues – employees or volunteers, doesn’t matter – and treat their contact information there as oh-so-precious. It’s my online address book for current and former co-workers. If it went away, I’d be lost, as it’s my professional address book and my way to know who is where.

I appreciate all my LinkedIn colleagues who gateway their Twitter feeds to their LinkedIn status – that way, I can more easily catch up with what they are up to without having to subscribe to their Twitter feeds.

I tolerate LinkedIn groups. They are clunky: hard to navigate, bury discussions, make it hard to see who else is a member, and are severely limited (you are limited in how many discussions you can actually join). But worst of all, the content seems to be mostly pleas for employment, rather than substantive discussions/debates. YahooGroups is a MUCH better platform for discussion – easier to use, more features, allows much more control by individual members in terms of how they receive messages, and many of the groups are rich in content.

I would love it if more organizations would put their events in the LinkedIn event feature. Then everyone who is attending – including those who are presenting – could show via LinkedIn that they are attending, which is then seen by everyone they follow, and which then might lead to even greater attendance.

I appreciate that LinkedIn has a section for users to input their volunteer experience. But I don’t use it. Why? Because whether or not I was paid to head a project, manage other people, facilitate an online event or represent an organization shouldn’t matter in terms of my profile; the nature of that work, that accomplishment, that leadership should be what’s most important. Why should some of the best work I’ve done be segregated elsewhere on my profile merely because I wasn’t paid to do it?

Is LinkedIn of use for nonprofits and NGOs? Of course! In addition to what I’ve said above, it’s also a great way to review new people you are connecting with elsewhere – on Facebook, that you meet at this or that reception or read about in a newspaper article and think, hey, that might be a a great candidate for our marketing position (paid or volunteer – doesn’t matter!), or as a possible board member.  

But a word of advice: never email someone you have never met with an invitation to be a board member at your organization, no matter how great their profile is on LinkedIn. You need to make sure this person is going to be a good match at your organization before you offer him or her a leadership role, and that takes interviews and reference checks.

Should you use LinkedIn as I do? Maybe. Maybe not. My point with all of the above isn’t so much to say, use it like me, but to say: think strategically about how you use it, at least review all of the various features, and test many of them for yourself as well, to see if they are worthwhile for YOU, specifically.

Also see:

Pro Bono / In-Kind / Donated Services for Mission-Based Organizations:
When, Why & How?

Short-term assignments for tech volunteers

Courts being fooled by online community service scams

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

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

— Original blog from 2011 below —

As I’ve blogged about before, there is a for-profit company based in Florida, Community Service Help, Inc., that claims it can match people have been assigned court-ordered community service “with a charity that is currently accepting online volunteers” – for a fee, payable by the person in need of community service. But the community service is watching videos. Yes, you read that right: you pay to get access to videos, which you may or may not watch, and this company then gives you a letter for your probation officer or court representative saying you did community service – which, of course, you didn’t. – you watched videos.

Another of these companies is Community Service 101, which charges a monthly fee for users to track and report their hours – something they could do for free on a shared GoogleDoc spreadsheet. There’s also this nonprofit, Facing the Future With Hope, which also offers to find online community service, for a fee. And there’s fastcommunityservice.com, which claims that you can work off your court-ordered community service hours by taking an online “Caffeine Awareness Course.” It’s a $30 fee to take this “course” and get their letter saying you have done community service – which you have NOT, because taking an online course is NOT COMMUNITY SERVICE. And, not to be outdone is completecommunityservice.com, which follows the same model: pay a fee, get a letter that says you did community service.

At least one of these companies is affiliated with Terra Research Foundation; it didn’t have a web site when I first started blogging about this back in January, but it does now, and it’s now listed on Guidestar as “Terra Foundation”, however, the web site has no listing of staff or their qualifications, no listing of these offices they say they have all over the USA, no listing of board members, no listing of current projects, no testimonials from those benefiting from their projects, no listing of specific nonprofit organizations they have collaborated with/assisted, no annual report, no budget information, and on and on.

If it’s a for-profit company saying they can help you with community service for the court, you should be able to find on their web site:

  • A list of courts, by name, city and state, that have accepted community service arranged through this company (not just “courts in Florida”, but “the circuit court of Harpo County, Florida)
  • An official statement from a court – ANY court – saying, “We endorse such-and-such company for getting your court-ordered community service done”
  • A list of “charity partners” or nonprofit partners or government agency partners that use this service
  • The names of staff at the company and their credentials to show their experience regarding online volunteering or community service.
  • A list of all fees – specific dollar amounts – on the home page (not buried on the web site)
  • A scan of a letter they have provided to a court, a probation officer, a school, a university, etc. (with the contact name for the person blocked out, ofcourse), so you know exactly what the organization says to confirm community service.
  • A list of every court, school and university that has accepted the community service hours this company has ever arranged for anyone.

Good luck finding this information on the web sites I’ve mentioned in this blog. The information is NOT there.

If it’s a non-profit company, you should be able to find on their web site:

  • Their most recent annual report that notes their income and expenditures for their last fiscal year
  • The names of the board of directors
  • The names of staff and their credentials to show their experience regarding online volunteering or community service.
  • A list of courts, by name, city and state, that have accepted community service arranged through this company (not just “courts in Florida”, but “the circuit court of Harpo County, Florida”)
  • An official statement from a court – ANY court – saying, “We endorse such-and-such company for getting your court-ordered community service done”
  • A list about specific activities that people do as volunteers through the nonprofit organization
  • A list of “charity partners” or nonprofit partners or government agency partners that use this service
  • A list of all fees – specific dollar amounts
  • A scan of a letter they have provided to a court, a probation officer, a school, a university, etc. (with the contact name for the person blocked out, ofcourse), so you know exactly what the organization says to confirm community service.
  • A list of every court, school and university that has accepted the community service hours this company has ever arranged for anyone.

Again, this information is NOT THERE on the web sites I’ve already mentioned.

While I have no issue with a nonprofit organization, or even a government agency, charging a volunteer to cover expenses (materials, training, staff time to supervise and support the volunteer, criminal background check, etc.), I have a real problem with companies charging people for freely-available information.

I also have a big problem with judges and probation officers accepting online community service that consists of a person watching videos. Watching a video is NOT community service. Listening to a lecture is NOT community service. Watching an autopsy is NOT community service. Courts can – and do – sentence offenders to watch videos or listen to a lecture or watch an autopsy, and that’s fine, but these activities are NOT COMMUNITY SERVICE.

Sadly, courts are sometimes not catching the scam until it’s too late: I’ve been contacted by representatives of two different court systems, both in California, who had approved court-ordered community service by people who used one of these companies, not realizing that the people had just paid a fee for a letter and had not done any community service at all (and both representatives said watching a video or taking a course is NOT community service in the eyes of the court!).

You can read about what happened when I started investigating Community Service Help, Inc. in January and reported them to the proper authorities, and what the company’s reaction was (not good!). And you can read the nasty comments that are showing up on that original blog – the people who are running these unscrupulous companies are definitely feeling the heat!

I wish I could spend time reporting each of these companies to the State Attorneys General for each state where they reside, but I just do not have the time; it’s a lot of forms to fill out.

In that original blog, I asked if organizations that claim to represent the community service sector such as the Corporation for National Service or AL!VE would investigate and take a stand regarding these companies – to date, they have done nothing.

I’ve contacted the following organizations today about these unscrupulous companies, urging them to investigate. Let’s hope those who can really do something about these companies will do so!

American Probation and Parole Association

U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services System

Federal Probation and Pretrial Officers Association (FPPOA)

National Association of Probation Executives

American Correctional Association

And one final note: I’ve been lucky enough to have involved some court-ordered folks as online volunteers – I say “lucky enough” because they have all of them have ended up volunteering for more hours than they were required to do, and been really great volunteers. And, no, I did not charge them!

Also, here’s free information on Finding Online Volunteering / Virtual Volunteering & Home-Based Volunteering with legitimate organizations.

November 6, 2012 update: I just got got email from a TV reporter in Atlanta, Georgia who used my blogs about this scam to create this excellent video about this scam and the people behind it. Thanks Atlanta Fox 5!

February 2013 update: Here’s the latest on what’s going on with this company.

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

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

The blog you just read is the most popular blog I have ever published. Please note that I have no funding to do this research that I do on unethical community service, and some of these people that run these programs get incredibly angry at me for bringing them to the attention of law enforcement – one even threatened legal action against me, complete with letters to my employers, texts to my family and some very nasty social media posts. I do this research and these awareness activities entirely on my own, with no financial support for such. 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.

Judging volunteers by their # of hours? No thanks.

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I would never judge the quality of an employee by how many hours he or she worked. When I see someone regularly working overtime, week after week, here are my thoughts:

  • That person’s job might be too much for one person; that job might need to be broken up into two positions.
  • That person might be doing things he or she shouldn’t be doing, and ignoring what should be priorities. I wonder what isn’t getting done?
  • That person may not be qualified for this position.
  • That person may have personal problems that aren’t allowing him or her to get this job done.

So, if I wouldn’t think the number of hours worked by an employee is a good indicator of their job performance, why would I judge a volunteer by the number of hours he or she contributes?

When judging volunteer performance, I look at:

  • What did he or she accomplish as a volunteer for this organization?
  • How does this person’s volunteering – specifically this person’s time and effort – have a positive effect?
  • How did volunteering have a positive effect on him or her?

Which is actually how I judge paid employees as well…

I gather that data by:

  • surveying volunteers, employees, clients and the public, through both traditional online and printed surveys and formal and informal interviews
  • reading through feedback that comes through emails, memos and online discussion groups
  • listening and writing down comments I hear
  • observing their work for myself

What about you? Is your organization still giving out volunteer recognition based on number of hours provided to an organization? Is the person who donated 100 hours to your organization last year really more valuable than the person who donated 20?

Volunteerism & NGO resources in India, for Indians?

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India is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country on the globe, the most populous democracy in the world, the world’s ninth-largest economy by nominal GDP and the fourth largest economy by purchasing power parity. Yes, it has only 8.5% Internet penetration, but it also has at least 100 million Internet users. (here’s where I got this info, in addition to Wikipedia)

In short, India is really big and really important.

But go to any online search engine and search for

volunteer India

and the links generated are for Westerners – people from Europe or North America or Australia – to travel to India and volunteer.

But people in India want to volunteer in their own communities, with local NGOs. On YahooAnswers, people from India, in India, regularly post and ask where they can volunteer locally, in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai, Pune, and on and on. Here’s an example of one such person. Where is the online resource for people in India to find volunteering opportunities in their own communities and to learn how to be a great volunteer?

IVolunteer.in comes close to trying. It’s an initiative of MITRA, a not-for-profit organization in Delhi. But its database interface doesn’t allow a search by community, and seems to not be working properly – I did several searches using different criteria, and came up with no volunteer opportunities at all.

Is there really no kind-of VolunteerMatch or AllforGood for India? Really?

And what about a primary resource to help local NGOs in India build their capacities regarding financial management, fundraising, HR management, volunteer engagement, marketing and other key functions? South Africa has one. But not India? NGOsIndia.com comes close to trying…. but is far from there.

If you know of web sites that address either of these issues, please note such in the comments section. I really want to be wrong about these lack of resources for India.

However, please note, I am NOT looking for organizations or programs that send volunteers from other countries to India!

International Volunteer Day for Economic & Social Development – Dec. 5

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It’s not too early to start planning for how your organization will leverage December 5, International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development. This isn’t a day to honor only international volunteers; the international in the title describes the day — meaning it’s a global event — not the volunteer.

It’s a shame to turn the day into just another day to celebrate any volunteer, rather than specifically those volunteers who contribute to economic and social development. Such volunteers deserve their own day. There are plenty of days and weeks to honor all volunteers and encourage more volunteering; why not keep December 5 specifically for volunteers who contribute to economic and social development? Why not keep it unique?

Even if you are in a “developed” country – the USA, Canada, Norway, France, whatever – you have volunteers that are engaged in economic and social development. Here in the USA, there are volunteers staffing financial literacy classes for low-income populations, training unemployed people to enter or re-enter the workforce, helping refugees and new immigrants access much-needed resources and services, training seniors to use computers and the Internet, using theater, dance and other performance as an education and awareness tool, and so much more. Those are all examples of volunteering for economic and social development!

And in addition to keeping this day special, let’s also be careful of how we talk about volunteers. For instance, back in 2009, I got this note in a mass email sent out from United Nations Volunteers:

This is the time to recognize the hard work and achievements of volunteers everywhere who work selflessly for the greater good.

Selflessly?

Volunteers are not all selfless! Volunteers are not all donating unpaid service to be nice, to help the world, or to make a difference for a greater good. Volunteers also donate unpaid service:

  • to gain certain kinds of experience
  • for a sense of adventure
  • to gain skills and contacts for paid employment
  • for fun
  • to meet people in the hopes of making friends or even get dates
  • because they are angry and want to see first hand what’s going on at an organization or within a cause, or to contribute to a cause they feel passionate about
  • to feel important

None of those reasons to volunteer are selfless — and all of them are excellent reasons to volunteer, nonetheless (and excellent reasons for an organization to involve a volunteer). These not-so-selfless volunteers are not less committed, less trustworthy or less worth celebrating than the supposed “selfless” volunteers.

 

Please – no more warm, fuzzy language regarding volunteers! Let’s quit talking about volunteers with words like nice and selfless. Volunteers are neither saints nor teddy bears. Let’s start using more modern and appropriate language to talk about volunteers that recognizes their importance, like powerful and intrepid and audacious and determined. Let’s even call them mettlesome and confrontational and demanding. That’s what makes volunteers necessary, not just nice. Let’s increase the value of volunteers with the language we use!

 

In short, let’s give volunteers their due with the words we use to describe them.

And just to be clear: by volunteer, I mean someone who is not paid for his or her service, and his or her “stipend” that’s supposed to merely cover essential expenses so the volunteer can give up employment entirely during his or her stint as a volunteer isn’t in fact more than some mid and high-level government workers of a country are making. Yes, that’s a dig.

International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development was declared by the United Nations General Assembly per its resolution 40/212 in 1985.

Also see Learning From The “Not-So-Nice” Volunteers, which I wrote back in 2004.

Here’s how I volunteer (no stipends yet!)

Yes, research microvolunteering, however…

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I was oh-so-excited when I read that the Institute for Volunteering Research in the UK is going to be undertaking a project to research microvolunteering, a form of online volunteering/virtual volunteering that’s been around for many, many years – long before there were smart phones.

But I was oh-so-disappointed to see that IVR’s project will be focused only on microvolunteering from the volunteers’ point of view.

The hype regarding microvolunteering, a form of online volunteering, is similar to the excitement a few years ago regarding family volunteering. That excitement regarding family volunteering translated into lots of campaigns to encourage families to volunteer together, rather than helping organizations get the knowledge and resources necessary to create volunteering opportunities that entire families could undertake. The result was, and is, a lot of very frustrated families who want to volunteer, but cannot find opportunities. I see the same thing happening with microvolunteering – far more organizations and media articles encouraging people to try it, rather than resources to help organizations to be able to create microvolunteering opportunities and support volunteers in these roles.

What’s needed – desperately needed – is research about microvolunteering from the *organizations’* point of view, specifically:

  • what kinds of organizations are creating microvolunteering assignments (in terms of the mission of the organizations, whether or not they have a staff member devoted to managing volunteers, the level of tech-saviness of staff, etc.)?
  • what kinds of microvolunteering assignments are most popular with volunteers? (which attract the largest numbers of volunteers, or seem to always attract at least some volunteers)
  • what kinds of volunteer management practices are necessary to ensure microvolunteering assignments are completed such that they are of value to the organization?
  • how is success measured by organizations regarding microvolunteering assignments? (is it just in number of volunteers that were involved or the amount of work done? Or do some organizations track different measures, such as volunteers’ perceptions changed, volunteers’ awareness built, volunteers signing on to longer-term projects, volunteers becoming donors, etc.?)
  • what are the challenges to organizations creating microvolunteering assignments and to effectively supporting volunteers undertaking such assignments?
  • when microvolunteering doesn’t work, from the organization’s perspective (it has no real impact on the organization, the volunteers don’t go on to become more longer-term volunteers, donors, other kinds of supporters, it’s a lot of work for very little, real return, etc.), *why* doesn’t it work?

Unless researchers try to get answers to these types of questions, unless microvolunteering research is focused on organizations themselves, rather than just volunteers, more organizations won’t create more microvolunteering assignments – and more potential volunteers will be frustrated when they get excited to participate in something that actually isn’t available to them.

How to get rid of volunteers

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Last week, I signed up to help at a community event, held yesterday.

Just. To. Help. To assist.

Yesterday, when I arrived at the event site – a public school – I found out I was in charge of the entire event. More than 30 kids would be there in an hour, expecting me to lead them through 90 minutes of activities that were completely foreign to me.

I don’t like kids.1 And I noted this at the time I signed up to help. I care about the cause, however, and as I was new to the committee – I just joined last week – I wanted to prove myself as a reliable, helpful committee member. By assisting at an event. By helping someone else in charge.

But there I was, in charge of an event I knew nothing about. About to face more than 30 kids, all under the age of 12.

I wasn’t scared. And that was good, because kids smell fear. No, instead, I was angry. Kids smell anger too, but it tends to make them listen to me. And that played to my advantage during the event – they never crossed that line into chaos that a large group of kids can so easily dissolve into.

Then there were the other adult volunteers, who were also there just to help, just to be nice. And they just kinda stood there, watching me try to pull it together. And as I was bossing those confused volunteers around in a frantic attempt to pull the event together, I wondered: Have each of these people been registered with the school and had a criminal background check? Is it my responsibility to check into that before they participate? Come to think of it, no one at the school checked to see that I was who I said I was, or asked me for my school volunteer I.D. number. How do I know any of these adults are safe to be around these kids?

I pulled the event off, on a very basic level. I drew on my experience as a manager of people, projects and events, on my two years of experience volunteering with the Girl Scouts (I’ve noticed that troop leaders at events get the kids started on an activity immediately and have them keep repeating it until volunteers are ready to move them on to the next activity), my experience having coordinated and directed more live events than is probably healthy for any one person in one lifetime, and by channeling my ever-so-bossy-but-organized Great Aunt Cornelia, who is still a legend in my family for her management abilities.

Also, it turns out none of the adult volunteers were predators nor inclined to ignore kids engaging in dangerous behavior. Lucky kids. Lucky me.

In addition, the volunteer that was supposed to be in charge did have all of the materials and equipment ready to go at the site – that helped tremendously. However, she was astounded, upon arrival just after the kids started the first activity, that the emails she sent in the preceding days weren’t understood by me and others as completely signing off on responsibility for the event (she had, indeed, said in those emails she would be late, and said myself and another volunteer would be the “leads” for the other volunteers until she got there, and some emails came with attachments… But, of course, I thought the school principal would be in charge, since she was cc’d on everything, since I have no experience at all with this kind of event, since I had made it clear I was just signing up to help, and since, to her knowledge, I have no experience doing anything like this. And I don’t like kids).

Was the event a success? In my opinion, no. It wasn’t bad, and the kids had fun and were kept busy, but the reality is: the kids didn’t really learn anything about the subject at hand. They had fun, and they walked away happy, and that’s nice – but they didn’t walk away retaining any knowledge, which was the entire purpose of the event. No minds were changed, no behaviors altered – and that was the mission of the event. A lot could have been done at the event to create that knowledge, to ensure things were remembered, to better ensure some behaviors would change, but I would have needed more than 90 minutes of prep to make that happen.

In addition, this could have been an event where not only did kids get some really essential knowledge, but also, some adults could be inspired to help at future events. And that’s why it was a stark reminder about why I – and others – train in volunteer management issues (as well as why there are so many books on event management). And why so many schools and other organizations struggle to find volunteers.

Let’s face it: a great way to drive away volunteers is to sign them up to help at an event and, when they show up, tell them they are in charge. Or have them confused about what they are supposed to do, and feeling generally unsupported. Or have them bossed around for a couple of hours by a very confused and angry me.

Volunteer management isn’t just mindless bureaucracy, with forms to fill out and procedures to be followed. It’s about ensuring that an organization or program or department mission is met. It’s about ensuring volunteers don’t show up and just do some seemingly random activities. It’s about creating experiences that lead to awareness and inspiration – not just getting some work done. It’s about ensuring safety – not just keeping fingers crossed and hoping everything works out.

And effective volunteer management is what keeps volunteers coming back again and again.

Volunteer management also isn’t just one person’s responsibility; some person at that school trusted a volunteer explicitly with organizing a safe, meaningful event for students from the school. Who was that person? What is he or she going to do about what happened yesterday? Does he or she even know what happened – and what didn’t happen? Did they just walk by and think, yeah, the kids are having fun, no problems here? Are they reading this blog right now?

I know the volunteer that was supposed to be in charge isn’t reading this blog: she also sent me an email last week proudly stating that she doesn’t read blogs and isn’t on Twitter or Facebook. Just like so many people I’ve met here in Oregon, I’m sorry to say…

Here’s a positive: I’ve never been more dedicated to the fundamentals of volunteer management and effective, program-based planning than I am right now.

I still don’t like kids though…

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1. Okay, I don’t hate kids. I sometimes find them quite amusing. I really love watching them learn. And I’m passionate about girls knowing just how many choices and opportunities are out there. But I do not think kids are automatically cute nor innocent nor sweet, and I also don’t like parents and other adults who think of kids as precious snowflakes who have every right to scream in a restaurant – though I cut a lot of slack on airplanes.

Cell phones & activism: not a new idea, still a good one

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10 years ago, I published this on the United Nations Information Technology Service (UNITeS) web site:

Cell phones, beepers and text messaging are used by a growing number of demonstrators and grass roots activists to stay connected and facilitate activities on-the-spot. Wireless technology can allow widely separated participants to coordinate activities in real time, and communicate emerging information quickly.

That’s the introduction to chapter four of Handheld computer technologies in community service/volunteering/advocacy, a paper I wrote for the UNITeS initiative. It presents examples of volunteers/citizens/grass roots advocates using what we then called handheld computer/personal digital assistants (PDAs) or phone devices as part of community service/volunteering/advocacy, or examples that could be applied to volunteer settings (the term smart phone wasn’t one I knew back in 2001).

Yes, that’s right: activists were using text messaging and cell phones as a part of their organizing more than a decade ago; the earliest example I can find is the 1999 Seattle demonstrations against the World Trade Organization (archived versions of the web site for the Ruckus Society at archive.org is a good place to learn more). The debate in our office about whether or not this was online volunteering were quite lively back then (I came down firmly in the yes camp).

I also got major cool points for quoting Jello Biafra on a UN web site, but I digress…

The grass roots organizing that’s lead to the Occupy Wall Street protests is fascinating to watch, per its use of so-called social media, but let’s remember it’s not new – this has been done before, and I hope the organizers are using lessons from those previous expereinces, as well looking into how rumors and urban myths could interfere and even derail their activities (and how to prevent or address such).

Oh, and, indeed, this is also a volunteer movement. A DIY volunteer movement. Wish that got talked about more as well.