Tag Archives: volunteers

When to NOT pay interns, redux

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A US Federal judge has ruled that against the company that made the movie “The Black Swan” for not paying interns.

In the ruling, U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III said the film’s producers should have paid the two interns because they did the same work as regular employees, provided value to the company and performed low-level tasks that didn’t require any specialized training. In ruling for the interns, the judge followed a six-part test outlined by the Labor Department for determining whether an internship can be unpaid. Under the test, the internship must be similar to an educational environment, run primarily for the benefit of the intern as opposed to the employer, and the intern’s work should not replace that of regular employees.

“Undoubtedly Mr. Glatt and Mr. Footman received some benefits from their internships, such as resume listings, job references and an understanding of how a production office works,” Pauley wrote. “But those benefits were incidental to working in the office like any other employees and were not the result of internships intentionally structured to benefit them.”

I tried to warn you! I did! I tried to warn you in my blog When to NOT pay interns and my other blog Are Interns Exploited?.

Note that this was NOT a matter of the organization being volunteered for being a for-profit. That this was a company, a business, rather than a nonprofit, NGO or charity, was NOT the problem for the judge. The problem was the nature of the work these unpaid interns (these VOLUNTEERS) were doing and the reason these tasks were done by volunteers (to save the organization money!).

Nonprofits, NGOs, charities: WAKE UP. This kind of lawsuit could happen to you. Especially if you keep harping on the dollar/Euro value of volunteer hours, the way UN Volunteers, IFRC, ILO & others are encouraging you to do.

Here’s a better idea: create a mission (and a mission statement) for your volunteer involvement and live it! State explicitly why your organization reserves certain assignments for volunteers, to guide employees and volunteers in how they think about volunteers, to guide current volunteers in thinking about their role and value at the organization, and to show potential volunteers the kind of culture they can expect at your organization regarding volunteers. It will also help to prevent exploitation – or perceptions of such – regarding your involvement of volunteers. Let it be an answer to this question: “Why do volunteers do these tasks rather than paid people” but without the answer, “Because we can’t afford to pay people to do this work.”

My previous blogs on this subject:

Note that the links within these blogs may not work, as I moved all of my blogs from Posterous to WordPress a few months ago, and it broke all of the internal links. Also, some web pages on other organization’s sites have moved since I linked to such, and I either don’t know or haven’t been able to find a new location for the material.

Volunteer online ever? I’d love your photo!

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jayne at computer 2002Do you help, or have you ever helped, a nonprofit organization, non-governmental organization (NGO), grassroots organization, school, or other civil society organization (CSO) via a computer or smart phone, as a volunteer (that means unpaid, NOT as a paid employee or paid consultant)?

Maybe you volunteered onsite as well, but at least sometimes, you also volunteered offsite, designing a database or graphic or web site, editing a document, translating text, offering professional advice, moderating an online discussion group, tagging photos or mentoring someone.

Maybe it was called virtual volunteering. Or online mentoring. Or cyber service. Or microvolunteering. Or crowd-sourcing. Or cloud computing volunteering. Or Internet-mediated service.

Or maybe it was just called volunteering, plain and simple.

Whatever it was – or wasn’t – called, I want your photo! Why? I want to feature such photos at this Flickr Group, “Online Volunteers.”

Photos of yourself with a computer or tablet or smart phone would be great, but so would a photo of you with your dog. Or your kids. What’s most important is that you don’t just submit a photo; you also should describe what you do as an online volunteer, including either the name or a description of the organization(s) you support.

ALSO, please tag your photo “online volunteer” (use quotes in the tagging process).

Submit the photos directly to the Flickr group for online volunteers– which means you will need a Yahoo ID. If you don’t already have such, and don’t want one, you can send ONE photo to me, via email, however, please clearly note in your email who you are, why you are sending the photo, etc.; blank emails, or those with sketchy descriptions, will be discarded without viewing (to protect myself from computer viruses). Photos that don’t clearly represent online volunteers will be rejected – that’s why your description is SO important.

Please share this message to volunteers you work with, or anyone you think might be interested.

Goal: to show the diversity of online volunteers out there. The practice of online volunteering is more than 30 years old. I want to show just what a HUGE group of people volunteer online, and have been doing so for a long while now!

Looking forward to your photos!

Pizzeria tries to recruit unpaid interns, feels Internet’s wrath

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Ah, the smell of volunteer exploitation in the morning…

Roberta’s, a famous, hip restaurant in New York City that sells $18 pizzas is (was?) seeking “unpaid interns” to work in its community garden.

Yes, I find it outrageous. And so did a LOT of folks.

Here is a blog I wrote back in May 2012 about various organizations recruiting unpaid interns, and the interns being upset at being called “volunteers.” The title, When to NOT Pay Interns, is meant to be provocative, but, make no mistake: I’m on the side of those interns that SHOULD be paid – like those at Roberta’s.

Note: some of the links in the blog may not work; I just switched blog providers, and while all of the blogs transferred over no problem, I’m still working on fixing the links. And as I’m not a not-for-profit organization, and as I cannot afford to pay an assistant, no, I am NOT recruiting “unpaid interns” to help me. Argh.

Do you welcome people with your language?

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Someone who is associated with a blood and tissue donation program that is not based at a community of faith (church, mosque, temple, etc.) posted this on Facebook recently:

Wanted: A leader in a faith community who would like to share a blessing at our upcoming volunteer recognition event.

I offered this caution in response:

Be sure you get someone who will be respectful of the fact that not everyone at your event is of the same faith – and some may not be people of faith at all. As an Atheist, I have felt really unwelcomed at many volunteer-related events because of the faith leader’s address.

The response was as it always is to me when I offer that caution – what I call playing the “culture” or “majority” card:

Historically, however, this hasn’t been an issue in our organization. I find that the region in which we live is rather accepting of these blessings, and they are almost an expectation. In other areas of the country where I have worked, this hasn’t always been the case. Because of the work we do, we also find that more of our volunteers are spiritual in nature.

This person is making assumptions – because of the region, because of her own beliefs, and because of conversations she’s had with volunteers where everyone has seemed to be on the same page regarding religious belief – that everyone is fine with a religious ceremony at her volunteer event, that no one has ever been made uncomfortable or not felt welcomed as a result. After all, no one has complained before – therefore, everyone is fine with it. And, in addition, people who volunteer regarding blood donations are spiritual in nature. Why else would they volunteer?

Here’s the reality:

Most people who have been made uncomfortable by the mixing of religion and volunteering at an otherwise secular event are probably never going to say anything about that discomfort – the defensive reaction of this volunteer manager, as well as a religious leader that weighed in later, illustrate why. No one wants to be seen as ruining an event for others, or taking an activity away that others like, even if the activity makes them feel less a member of the group – so, rather than be accused of trying to remove all religious references at an event (even though all that was asked for was language that was respectful – no request was made not to make religion any part of the event), people that aren’t of the majority religion stay silent in their discomfort.

And you have to wonder: if no one has complained, could it also be because you’ve created an atmosphere where non-believers/other-believers don’t feel welcomed to volunteer?

People volunteer for a variety of reasons. And people have many different ideas of where “goodness” comes from. People who believe that goodness, and the desire to volunteer, comes from a “God” tend to be quite vocal about it. But volunteer managers – and all of us – need to remember that there are a lot of people that don’t believe in a “God” or a “higher power”, but do believe in goodness and in volunteering to help others – they just aren’t as vocal about that belief, or lack of belief, either because of the negative reactions such an expression often elicits or because they simply don’t believe in being so vocal about one’s motivations for volunteering. Volunteers Beyond Belief is a good example of such a group.

As volunteer managers, one thing we should be united about in terms of belief is the belief in creating welcoming, inclusive events for our volunteers, where we are careful about our language and our assumptions.

So, yes, you may have a blessing from a religion leader at a volunteer event that both celebrates that person’s beliefs and the belief of others but doesn’t make people that aren’t such believers unwelcome or unwanted.

Exclusive language at an event:

“We volunteer because, as Christians, we…”

“In the name of Jesus Christ…” or “In the name of Allah…, we are here today…”

“Let us all bow our heads and give thanks to God…”

Those are all fine at an event targeting a specific community of faith. But unless you have interviewed each and every volunteer about their beliefs, you have no idea what those beliefs might be for every person. So, instead, if you feel you must have a religious activity at your volunteer event, consider more inclusive religious language:

Let us all bow our heads and reflect on the goodness we have seen from volunteers, and if you would like to pray with me, please join me.

In joy we gather this evening, bonded together in our work and our goals, bonded together in our love and our dreams, bonded in festivity and thanksgiving, bonded in celebration. May the joy of our togetherness rise above all sadness. May the kindnesses we share rise above all harshness. May the unity for which we long rise above all divisiveness. And may all that is restless within us lead us one day to the ultimate Good, the ultimate togetherness. (from this web site)

Being culturally appropriate is important – but it shouldn’t be used as an excuse for impoliteness or prejudice to minority groups. Catering to the majority is easy; thinking about who I might be leaving out, and what I can do to welcome everyone into volunteering, is an ongoing learning process – and quite a struggle at times. It’s not easy, but in the end, it certainly creates a richer, diverse volunteer family.

Crowdsourcing & Microvolunteering: still not new, still takes a lot of work

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Egads, another breathless story about crowdsourcing, one that says it’s new (it’s not) and that it’s all about doing work that nonprofits don’t have paid employees to do. Argh!

I’m not against crowdsourcing or microvolunteering or whatever we’re calling it these days. As I’ve said for many years, these can be very effective forms of virtual volunteering – perhaps not so much in getting critical work done for an organization, but, rather, for getting more people engaged with an organization such that they might be moved to volunteer more, in more substantial ways, to give a financial gift, and to tell their friends about their positive experience with the nonprofit.

My beef with the crowdsourcing bandwagon is three-fold:

  1. It’s not a new practice. Not at all. It’s the oldest forms of virtual volunteering, a practice that’s been around for more than 30 years. USENET newsgroup were my favorite place to find and post crowdsource opportunities for nonprofits and causes I supported back in the mid-1990s.
  2. Creating crowdsourcing opportunities, or microvolunteering tasks, or microtasks, or whatever we want to call them for volunteers (I called them “byte-sized” opportunities back in the 1990s – the name didn’t catch on), takes a LOT of work:
      • You (the nonprofit) have to create meaningful assignments that can be done in just a few seconds or minutes by dozens, even hundreds, of people – not just busy work that isn’t really going to have any value to the organization nor to the volunteer. As anyone that works at a nonprofit knows, that’s easier said than done!
      • You have to come up with some way to track what volunteers are contributing to the project, so you can review what’s been submitted in a timely manner and leverage such, as well as so volunteers can be thanked and further encouraged to engage with the organization.
      • You have to come up with some way to measure the impact of the project, beyond number of volunteers that participated, if you want to justify spending the time and resources to engage in this form of virtual volunteering.

    For instance, say you want volunteers to tag photos on Flickr: someone from the organization has to upload the photos, has to create written guidelines for how the photos are to be tagged in an easy-to-understand way, has to look over how volunteers are tagging the photos to make sure such is being done appropriately (and to delete those tags which aren’t appropriate), and has to track all of the volunteers that contributed so they can be thanked and invited to participate in something else, or to otherwise support the organization. The vast majority of nonprofits I know of do NOT have the resources to do that!

  3. Crowdsourcing often DOESN’T work. Nonprofits tend not to blog about failures. Yet, I hear from them after workshops frequently, telling me how their attempts to engage people in microvolunteering has failed: few people submitted logo ideas, or voted in the contest that might help them get funding, or provided advice on that tech question the nonprofit had. Those breathless media stories convinced them that hundreds, even thousands, would turn out online to help – and few, if any, actually did.

I created several crowdsourcing opportunities when I directed the Virtual Volunteering Project. One of my favorites was asking people to come up with tag lines for virtual volunteering itself – anyone could email in a slogan idea, and dozens of people did (that’s right – WE came up with “volunteer in your pajamas” – or pyjamas – YEARS before anyone else did!). But I didn’t do it because I really needed help getting a tag line; rather, I did it to get lots of people excited about the Virtual Volunteering Project, to get as many people involved in an online activity as I could on the project’s behalf, in order to encourage more people to work on more substantial activities with us and other organizations as online volunteers, and to get more people talking about virtual volunteering. And make no mistake: it took a lot of work on my part to make this successful: I had to think about where and how I was going to communicate the campaign, what the wording of the message would be, and how I would track and respond to submissions. It didn’t take tons of time – but it did take time, at least a few hours.

A misconception about microvolunteering — and, indeed, about all volunteering, not just virtual volunteering — is that the goal is to get work done, or to get work done for free. These are old paradigms regarding volunteering that so many of us have worked for a very long time to move away from. Volunteering is about so much more: it’s about building relationships with the community, increasing the number of people advocating for your organization and even supporting it financially, demonstrating transparency, and even targeting specific demographics for involvement in your work.

So, by all means, yes, let’s get excited about crowdsourcing, microvolunteering, and all other forms of virtual volunteering. Let’s keep talking about it. But let’s also stay realistic: it takes a LOT of time and expertise on the part of the nonprofit or other mission-based organization to create successful crowdsourcing opportunities. Let’s do a better job of detailing what it takes to create these type of opportunities, so organizations really can leverage crowdsourcing – rather than breaking hearts.

Also see:

Everything old is new again, & again

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People watching TV and writing about it online with their friends at the same time?!. Breathless buzz buzz buzz buzz buzz!!!

Am I talking about the Super Bowl last weekend, and so many people live tweeting it? Or the last episode of 30 Rock last week? Or the Olympics last year?

No – I’m talking about something that’s been happening for at least 30 years.

I’m talking about Usenet, a worldwide Internet discussion system that started in the early 1980s. Usenet was not only the initial Internet community – in the 1980s and 1990s, it was THE place for many of the most important public developments in the commercial/public Internet: it’s where Tim Berners-Lee announced the launch of the World Wide Web, where Linus Torvalds announced the Linux project, and where the creation of the Mosaic web browser was announced (and which revolutionized the Web by turning it into a graphical medium, rather than just text-based).

It was also the place where there were discussion groups – called newsgroups – for everything imaginable: volunteer firefighting, accounting, classic cars, computer repair, tent camping, hiking with your dog, nonprofit management, college football teams – and, indeed, television shows.

Yes, as early as the 1980s, many thousands of people all over the USA were gathering online with friends to talk in realtime about what they were watching on TV. While I didn’t write online during the X-Files in the 1990s, I fully admit to running to my computer as soon as an episode was over, to read what everyone thought and to share my own reactions. Usenet TV and entertainment-related communities fascinated me so much at the time that I ended up writing about them at my day job: about how members of the online communities for the X-Files, Xena, and other entertainment-focused newsgroups engaged in online volunteering & various charitable activities. That was in 1999.

There’s nothing really new about people live tweeting what they are seeing on TV, except that more people are doing it than were on newsgroups and that it’s being done on Twitter now.

And I bring this up because I keep finding articles and research that claims online volunteering or microvolunteering is new. It’s not. Helping people via the Internet, in ways large and small, is a practice that’s more than 30 years old, and just-show-up volunteering without a long-term commitment, which until recently was called episodic volunteering (and I called online versions of it byte-sized volunteering back in the 1990s) has also been around for decades.

We’re not in uncharted territory regarding volunteering or any human interaction online – so let’s embrace our past, learn from it, and give the true innovators, the real pioneers, their due! Rebranding practices and approaches is fine, but let’s not deny our past in the process – there are some great learnings from back in the day that could really help us not so make many missteps online now!

Also see:

What do NGOs understand that USA nonprofits don’t?

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Last week, I got to be a part of the program for a group visiting Portland through the US State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP). It was the fourth time I’ve gotten to be a part of the program over the years – the first time was in Austin, Texas, back in the 1990s. This time, visitors were from Egypt, Afghanistan, Liberia, Tunisia, Latvia, Greece, Mexico, El Salvador, Morocco, South Africa, Cameroon, the Philippines, Ethiopia, and more.

Talking with leaders of NGOs from all over the world is incredibly energizing – for me, it feels like coming home. Many are stunned that I’ve been to their countries – or that I even know where their countries are, what language they speak there, etc., in contrast to so many people in the USA. I’m sorry to sound the snob, but my fellow citizens are notorious worldwide for our ignorance about the rest of the planet, and not even having a passport, and I’m proud to be in contrast to that stereotype.

(just last week, I had to explain to a very close friend what the European Union was – she’s a very intelligent person, but if none of the news outlets ever mention the EU, how would she know what it is?).

This time with the IVLP, I was part of a small group of members from the Northwest Oregon Volunteer Administrators Association (NOVAA); instead of a traditional workshop, we divided up and each spent time with three people, for 20 minutes, talking about volunteer engagement, and would switch to a new group every 20 minutes. It allowed me to get one-on-one time with more than half the NGO representatives, and that’s always delightful. Many of the problems they face regarding volunteer engagement are the same as anywhere: trouble mainitaining volunteer motivation, volunteers not finishing assignments, too many volunteers one day and not enough another, etc. I hope they found my references helpful – hard to address everything in just 20 minutes!

One moment for me that I particularly loved: how integral social media is for many of these NGOs in working with volunteers. I loved hearing about all the ways they recruit, interact with and support volunteers using various social media tools, reaching volunteers via their phones as much, if not more, than via their computers – all said that, for the most part, email is dead for their young volunteers (people under 40) altogether. These NGOs haven’t needed workshops or conferences to convince them these tools are valuable; they’ve seen their value immediately. When I told them just how many nonprofits here in the USA refuse to use Facebook, Twitter, or other social media tools to work with volunteers, about how, if nonprofits here do decide to use such, they often give social media responsibilities to interns and senior management stays away from such, and how often I’ve had hostile reactions to the tech practices that these NGOs, by contrast, have fully embraced, they were floored. And they laughed. A lot. And when I told them that, in Oregon, in the supposedly oh-so-tech-savvy Portland area, I have had women younger than me say, “Oh, I don’t have email, so send that to my husband’s/daughter’s address, and he/she will print it out for me to read,” their jaws dropped.

True, many of these NGOs aren’t recruiting ethnic minorities, religious minorities and other marginalized groups as volunteers in their countries – and don’t see why they should have to make volunteering more accessible to such. They don’t see who they might be leaving out as volunteers by totally abandoning offline recruitment and support methods. In short, their volunteer engagement is not perfect and needs to further modernized, especially in terms of being inclusive – but what they are doing in terms of leveraging networked technologies in recruiting, involving and supporting volunteers is far, far ahead of what most nonprofits are doing in the USA. And all I can say is: WELL DONE. And keep teaching me!

Another big emphasis for these NGOs in particular is involving young people as volunteers – young people who are unemployed or under-employed, people under 40 with some education but who cannot find jobs. These NGOs see volunteer engagement with young people as a way not only to build the skills of those young people so that they can get jobs – or even start their own businesses – but also to give these young people a sense of civic responsibility and community connection beyond protesting in the streets. I was happy to help address some of these ideas in my very limited conversations, and welcomed their online inquiries so I can send them to further resources.

And, finally, I apologize to the guys from West Africa who were offended I hadn’t been to any of their countries yet (I’m trying!), and if the guy from the Philippines does not send me the photo he took of myself and the guy from Afghanistan wearing the cowboy that he bought in Texas, with both of us making the “hook ’em horns” sign, I will be DEVASTATED.

POSTSCRIPT: Not devastated.

For more information about my training.

Also see:

volunteering in the digital age – cool, but not new

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The timeless act of volunteering in the service of others has taken on new dimensions in today’s digital age. Anyone with an Internet connection or a mobile phone can make a difference.
– United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
5 December 2012, International Volunteer Day for Economic and Social Development Day

“New” is, of course, relative…

In 2001, I wrote about how people were using handheld technologies in community service, environmental and activist work, citing examples that went back to the 1990s (when we called them “PDAs” instead of “smart”). And, of course, the practice of virtual volunteering is more than 30 years old – as old as the Internet, and starting long before there was a World Wide Web (in fact, Tim Berners-Lee said in an October 2001 event with UN Volunteers that online volunteers played an essential role in his development of the Web).

But I’m glad, nonetheless, to see the head of the UN acknowledging virtual volunteering. His predecessor, Kofi Annan, certainly knew it was a force to be acknowledged and supported. Hope that recognition and promotion of volunteering, online or off, onsite or remotely, continues!

Volunteering in the digital age – it’s not new, but it’s most definitely cool, and worth continuing to talk about.

Also see:

Myths About Online Volunteering (Virtual Volunteering)

Micro-Volunteering and Crowd-Sourcing: Not-So-New Trends in Virtual Volunteering/Online Volunteering

Make All Volunteering as Accessible as Possible

Recognizing Online Volunteers & Using the Internet to Honor ALL Volunteers

 

mobile apps in nonprofit program & management work

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Whenever I read about mobile apps (software applications to be used on smartphones or tablets) for nonprofits, the articles are almost always be about fundraising – about how to allow people to easily donate to an organization.

What I’m hungry for is information on how nonprofits are already using mobile apps in their program or management work.

I’ve blogged about this quest before, just last month, and posted about it on the TechSoup community forum, and the silence has been deafening. The impression I get is that there are far more ideas about how apps might help nonprofits, beyond allowing people to make donations from their smart phone, than there are actual app uses.

If you have information on employees, consultants or volunteers using mobile apps as a part of their work for nonprofits, NGOs, libraries, government agencies, or any mission-based organizations, pick your place to share your story over on the TechSoup community:

Also see this

The quest continues!

A volunteerism blog, not a political one

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During this election season in the USA, there has been a lot of talk about the role volunteers played in the work of various campaigns, including the presidential campaign. But most of it has focused on the “free labor” aspect. Yet, as we all know (right?!), volunteers are NOT free.

 

The reason volunteers were effective in various campaigns this time around – and, well, always – isn’t because they were unpaid labor. Rather, it was because volunteers were the best people for certain tasks, and could do certain tasks far better than paid staff.

 

I got a lot of phone calls related to the election for the last three months. I realized after several of them that, when the person said, “I’m calling from the such-and-such campaign…”, I almost always interrupted them at some point, even if they were calling from a cause or campaign I supported, to say, “Hi, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I have absolutely no money to donate to the campaign whatsoever.” But when the person said, “I’m a volunteer, and I’m helping with the such-and-such campaign…” I let them finish their spiel and answered all of their questions (but still couldn’t give money).

 

I thought about why I was doing that, why I was being so much kinder to the volunteers, and the answer was, for me: the people that are volunteers are supporters of such-and-such campaign, no question. A lot of people will do anything for a paycheck and, therefore, I wonder if the motivation for the political call from someone who is being paid isn’t actually all about the commission they are trying to make for every person that donates. With a volunteer, I know, absolutely, that that person is volunteering from a passion for that candidate. And I want to be a part of that.

I ended up volunteering for a campaign because one of those callers said, up front, that he was a volunteer and he was NOT calling for money – rather, he was calling to see if I would be voting, if I would be supporting a certain presidential candidate, and if I wanted to volunteer. And I said yes. And there was something so warm and energizing about sitting in another volunteer’s house, with lots of other volunteers, calling potential voters on my cell phone, rather than being paid to sit in a corporate-esque phone bank making calls – do you think people could hear that in my voice? I do.

 

That is not to say people that are paid to work on campaigns don’t have passion. I have been paid to do public relations and marketing, and I’m quite passionate about the causes I’ve been paid to promote – I’m not sure I could do the same for something I don’t really feel personally supportive of. I used to cringe when I worked at the UN Volunteers program and people would try to say that UN Volunteers had more passion than UNDP workers in the field – having worked in the field, I could never tell the different in what contract someone had just based on the passion they exhibited, or didn’t in the field.

 

But the fact remains that, often, the public responds more positively to someone that says, “I’m a volunteer” than they do to a person that says, “I’m an employee.” And exactly the opposite is true as well in certain situations – some people will refuse to work with “just a volunteer”, even if that person has more qualifications and expertise than a paid employee of the same organization.

It goes back to what I’ve said again and again: for some tasks, volunteers are the best people for the job, and for some tasks, employees or paid consultants are the best people for the job, and it does NOT have to do with saving money!

Also see:

Writing a mission statement for your organization or program.

Going all-volunteer in dire economic times: use with caution

The Value of Volunteers (and how to talk about such)