Tag Archives: volunteers

Digital Dunkirk: online volunteers scramble to help endangered Afghans get visas & out of Afghanistan

1 Reply
three vertical stripes, first black, then red, then green. In the middle is an outline of an image of a building, all in white
Flag of Afghanistan:

All around the world, particularly in the USA, online volunteers, most working on their own, independent of any formal group, have been trying to put together SIV, P-1 and P-2 visa applications for Afghans who helped the USA military, USA programs and USA citizens working in Afghanistan. SIV folks worked with USA Armed Forces as translators or interpreters in Iraq or Afghanistan. The P-2 visa is for Afghans who helped in USAID-funded projects, participated in US State Department programs, or helped women start businesses, access education and health care and promote women’s rights – all things that will make them the target of the Taliban.

For 20 years, these Afghans completely embraced ideas that the Taliban finds abhorrent: women in most workplaces and professions, a free, questioning press, sports for everyone, music, art, movies, social media, travel abroad, and a vibrant, active civil society. Western reporters interviewed these Afghans, profiled them in heart-warming stories on TV and in online news sites, with quotes and photos. I worked alongside some of these Afghans in 2007, mostly in Kabul, but also briefly in the Pansjir Valley and Kandahar. I took photos with them, I blogged about them, and after I left the country, we stayed in touch, I edited press releases and reports they wrote in their jobs, we met up when they visited the USA.

And now, that work, those travels, those photos, those public pats on the back over two decades, may get them killed. That cherished certificate of recognition from the US State Department or some other foreign government has suddenly become a potential death sentence.

This effort, which is largely taking place on WhatsApp and Signal, has been called a “digital Dunkirk.” – The Atlantic, “Escape From Afghanistan,” August 23, 2021.

For the last two weeks of August and most of September, I’ve been part of this global virtual volunteering endeavor, this “digital Dunkirk.” And we’ve largely been a failure.

We’ve stay up late with and gotten up early for our desperate, terrified Afghan colleagues, messaging back and forth in those hours when the time difference has us all up at the same time, giving them updates on what we’ve found out and what we’ve done, reading their updates about what they are seeing, debunking rumors they’ve heard (and there are SO MANY rumors), offering sympathy and encouragement while trying to not sound glib or shallow. We’ve spent hours and hours on visa applications, reading the guidelines over and over, making sure that absolutely every bit of essential info the State Department might want is there, exercising the bits they don’t but that Afghans feel so proud of, like a declaration of honorary citizenship for some US city they visited. Part of the trouble with helping many Afghans stems from having trouble getting contact info for former employers that they worked for five to 10 or 15 years ago – work that could still get them killed now, under the Taliban. For Afghans we didn’t work with directly, we research former employers, track down the names of staff, write them, beg them. We continue to track down US staff who used to work at the Afghanistan embassy, people who have carefully hidden their email addresses because they are, no doubt, overwhelmed with strangers emailing them – including buying a subscription to LinkedIn just so we can message these people – and we ask, could you sign off on this P2 application I prepared for so-and-so? Only you can do it, because I didn’t work with him. It has to be you. Won’t you please? We’ve written our US Representatives and US Senators, telling them what we’re doing, asking if they can look into the matter for this person, specifically. We wonder just how far we can stretch the definition of de facto family in an application, to include nieces, nephews, adult brothers, in-laws… We look at the revised visa requirements for other countries and do the best we can in putting together applications for them, too.

We write, and research, and re-write, and research, and answer texts all morning and all night. We sometimes believe that if we slept, if we stepped away from our phones, we might miss an opportunity to help someone escape the country. We also scrub our social media accounts and web sites and blogs of photos and identifying info for all the Afghans we’ve worked with, both back in Afghanistan and right here in the USA.

The last two weeks of the US at the Kabul airport were horrific. One Afghan colleague never got her US paperwork – she still hasn’t, despite my US Senator’s staff assuring me that they had looked into the matter and it’s “in process” – but she did get visas for herself and her whole family for Australia. They rapidly packed and drove to the airport. They never got close to the gate – they never even got out of the car. It was a terrifying experience, and when they finally realized the Taliban would not let them through, even by foot, they returned home, defeated, despondent. A few hours later, the bomb went off. They were safe, for the moment – but we knew they weren’t getting out any time soon. It was like hearing a massive door slam shut.

The vast majority of the people that the Digital Dunkirk volunteers have tried to help have not gotten out of Afghanistan. Those people, those US and Australian and UK and French and German allies, are hiding at home, wondering when they will run out of money for Internet access, when they will run out of food, when a landlord will turn on them for not paying rent, and when a neighbor will turn them in, knowing they could win favor with the Taliban for doing so.

And we tremble when a social media account of an Afghan colleague goes silent.

When people say volunteering feeds the soul, that it lifts you up, that it’s oh-so-healthy, they are leaving out the volunteering, onsite or online, that is soul-draining, that it can leave you feeling helpless and distraught despite pouring so much into it. I’ve always bristled when people say, “Virtual volunteering is great for people who don’t have a lot of time to volunteer” or “virtual volunteering is impersonal!” Neither statement is true – not of any virtual volunteering I’ve ever researched, and especially not for the virtual volunteering I’ve most recently been a part of.

Per my virtual volunteering experience in this Digital Dunkirk: I’m exhausted. I’m frustrated. I’m angry. And I’m out of tears some days. And if you tell me the value of this volunteering in terms of the number of hours I contributed and the dollar value of those hours, I will probably want to hit you in the face as hard as I possibly can. I won’t, because I am committed to non-violence, but I’ll want to.

I’m not alone in this virtual volunteering – I’m in contact with folks at an NGO that are trying to get more than a dozen families out, and it’s been wonderful to share information, advice and frustrations. There’s also:

  • Task Force Pineapple, a high-profile effort by US military personnel and others that successfully evacuated more than 1000 Afghan allies and their families.
  • More than 40 volunteers at the University of Pittsburgh‘s Center for Governance and Markets are (were?) helping too. And then there are people like me, alone, trying to help Afghans they worked with: I see the posts all over Twitter and my LinkedIn account by people asking for advice, reporting their own progress, linking to some resource they’ve found.
  • There’s Special Operations Association of America (SOAA) is comprised of USA volunteers that says it is working side-by-side with the US government “to bring home our wartime brothers and sisters. Our mission is to safely provide humanitarian support in direct support of US policy.”
  • In this incredible 50 minute podcast, “Roamings and Reflections,” humanitarian assistance and international development expert Sasha Ghosh-Siminoff joins host Nicholas Heras to recount the massive effort to evacuate Afghans as the Taliban seized Kabul. It really captures what those days in Afghanistan were like for the online volunteers in the USA and elsewhere trying desperately to get people on those last flights. Many US government workers were risking their jobs by helping volunteers trying to get Afghans out of the country on those last flights. At one point, Ghosh-Siminoff says that, rather than digital Dunkirk, the effort, “was more of a digital Schindler’s List.”
  • This Stars and Stripes story, Afghan evacuation took hidden toll on mental health of volunteers who tried to help, notes that many of the volunteers in Digital Dunkirk efforts are military veterans who served in Afghanistan Veterans who had unresolved trauma from their time at war and thought helping to evacuate people would “make things right,” according to Amy Williams, the chief clinical officer at Headstrong. The story notes that members of an online support group for such volunteers said they didn’t think they could complain about their stress when Afghans have far worse situations, or they they didn’t think others would understand what they had gone through. Some volunteers, though, said they did not feel any adverse effects from their unsuccessful efforts to help Afghans. On the contrary, they said they feel better for having tried.
  • Here is Stars and Stripes profile of several Digital Dunkirk efforts.

Of course, the stress and frustration of online volunteers in this effort is nothing compared to the Afghans we’re trying to help. In addition to being terrified of the knock at the door that means the Taliban is there, to search the home, to take away boys and young men to fight, to take away girls for rape (there’s no such thing as “child marriage” – please stop saying that), to find files and data that could prove someone in the family worked with the USA, the UK, Australia, or some European country, Afghans are also running out of money and food.

All this volunteering may be for naught. The visa applications may never come through, and even if they do, these many thousands of Afghans may never get out of the country. Many may be murdered. The women, in particular, will suffer horribly.

For the online volunteers trying to help, no certificate, no statistic on the monetary value of the time they contributed, no t-shirt, is going to serve as appropriate recognition for what they’ve done. There’s just one way we’re going to feel good about our virtual volunteering: getting people out of Afghanistan.

It’s been so worthwhile to connect with other volunteers, sharing resources and feeding off of each other to maintain hope. And a shoutout to the friend that isn’t involved in any of this, but listens to me rant and gives me words of encouragement – she’s helping to, as an online volunteer, even if she doesn’t know it. Thank you to everyone out there that’s volunteering online to help Afghanistan, whether it’s to help people get out, pressure their own governments to, in turn, pressure the Taliban to keep their promises (which they mostly have NOT so far, in case you aren’t paying attention), or to help Afghan refugees in their own country. I see you. I value you. Others do too. Keeping doing what you can.

Also, don’t you dare tell me that virtual volunteering is impersonal.

I have an Afghanistan Twitter list that I use to stay abreast of what’s happening in the country – it’s public – you can use it too. I’ve put together this list of ways Afghans can keep their computers and phones safe, and I’ve put together this list of online resources for Afghans trying to teach girls at home (frustrating, as most Afghans don’t have Internet access, most Afghans don’t read English, and all these are in English – there really needs to be a site in Dari and Pashto, but I can’t find such). You can feel free to share these resources with anyone you think could benefit from such, and your suggestions for additions to these resources would be helpful.

A sad turn of events has many of us feeling especially pessimistic: the State Department sent an email on September 9th to at least some Afghans who had applied for the P-1 visa, that said, in part:

Please note that case processing cannot begin until/unless you relocate to an eligible processing country. Processing is not feasible in Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea, Syria, Turkey, and Yemen. Once you have relocated to a country where refugee processing can occur, you will need to inform the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration… of your current location and contact information for your referral to be assigned to a U.S.-funded overseas Resettlement Support Center for case processing… The United States is unable to provide protection or support to you while you await a decision on your refugee case. Case processing can be lengthy (potentially 12-14 months), so please be aware that this process could require living in and supporting yourself and your family in a third country for a substantial amount of time until case processing is complete. Even if you qualify for the P-1 or P-2 program and travel outside of Afghanistan, there is no guarantee that you will be approved for resettlement to the United States.

The information has been a gut punch to the Afghans I’m working with. Do I tell them now to get out of Afghanistan, anyway they can, even illegally, and once in that country, follow what the US State Department has said? What do I say now? I have no idea. And neither do all the other online volunteers I work with.

But Digital Dunkirk continues.

If you are helping people who are still in Afghanistan and are trying to get out, I have a Google Shared drive where I am sharing all of the information and links I have found helpful. If you see something in the drive that is inaccurate or outdated, or you have resources that I could add to such, please email me at jcravens42 “at” yahoo.com, putting “helping Afghans” in the subject line.

And in case you are wondering: I am working to support five Afghans and their families to leave the country.

  • Two are women I worked with when I was there in 2007. Their P-1 and P-2 applications, which I submitted since I worked directly with them in work that was funded in part by USAID, have been flagged by one of my US Senators, Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon. One women needs to get out by herself, but another needs to get her sister, her mother and four nieces out. Next steps? Finding a way for them to get to another country to live for 12 – 18 months (see earlier US State Department communications).
  • One is a man, who did some work for the US Embassy. I have the names of the US Embassy staff who signed off on his payment paperwork. Only they can submit his paperwork. And they won’t reply to my emails. I now need to find someone who worked at the US Embassy who will be willing to submit his P-2 paperwork.
  • One got out of the country with his immediate family and is now, supposedly, in process for his P-2 – and since this is being handled by a US-based nonprofit I did not work with, there’s not much I can do other than share hopeful info.
  • One is someone who was a part of a USA-based nonprofit that I have volunteered with – that nonprofit has submitted his application for a P-2 application, but he’s stuck in Afghanistan, like my two colleagues. One staff member at the nonprofit was trying to communicate with 14 people that was associated with this nonprofit, and it just became way too much, so she’s creating teams of volunteers to be the primary contact for each of the 14 people. I’m on a team for a man who is a journalist. Next steps? Finding a way for him and his family to get to another country to live for 12 – 18 months (see earlier US State Department communications) and any associations of journalists abroad who might care about his situation and want to help in some way.

If you can help with any of the aforementioned four situations, contact me.

Update: One of the people I have been helping made it to Pakistan with her four nieces and mother, and then was able to go on to Australia, because she attended university there many years ago and that network has been working to get alumni out. Her sister was unable to go too – she could not get a visa for her. I continue to try to help her sister and others.

Update: Another perspective on being a part of the online #DigitalDunkirk, to get our endangered allies, the people we put into this precarious position, out of Afghanistan. This is not the warm and fuzzy just-show-up-when-you-feel-like virtual volunteering story you will find elsewhere. The emotional toll is real.

Update: One of the people I was trying to help got out, no thanks to me nor the USA. She’s now in Australia with her nieces and mother, and she wrote this account of why she fled and what her final weeks in Kabul were like. Her sister, her brother and her brother’s family remains. One of my co-workers also remains there. The USA is their only hope – and the USA offers no help to get them out.

Yes, virtual volunteering will continue after the pandemic

Leave a reply

I keep seeing this comment in blogs and articles and tweets:

“Will virtual volunteering continue after the pandemic is over?”

Of course, it will. Just as virtual volunteering was happening BEFORE the pandemic, at THOUSANDS of organizations. Why in the world wouldn’t it continue?

Maybe my latest video will stop this question from being asked… though probably not. FYI, the video is just four minutes long.

And for a free, basic orientation in virtual volunteering, you can watch these free videos on my YouTube channel – altogether, less than an hour:

Altogether, these videos cover developing initial online roles and activities for volunteers, how to rapidly engage online volunteers, how to expand virtual volunteering, how to adjust policies, how to address safety and confidentiality, the importance of keeping a human touch in interactions, addressing the most common questions and resistance to virtual volunteering and much, much more. You have my permission to show them at any conference or workshop or class you might be doing regarding virtual volunteering.

For some more advanced topics regarding virtual volunteering:

Also see:

If your program wants to better use online tools to support all of your volunteers, including those providing service onsite, or if your program wants to create a robust virtual volunteering scheme, such as an online mentoring program or online volunteer engagement as skills-building or other extension of your mission , check out the Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook: Fully Integrating Online Service Into Volunteer Involvement. The book can help you fully explore the reality of remote volunteer engagement, in terms of policy and procedures, to ensure success. This book was helpful long before the global pandemic spurred so many organizations to, at last, embrace virtual volunteering. This is the most comprehensive resource anywhere on working with online volunteers, and on using the Internet to support ALL volunteers, including those you might not think of as “online” volunteers.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site or my YouTube videos and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

Helping online volunteers stay engaged & energized

Leave a reply

In pre-pandemic times, an online meeting felt like a luxury, a welcomed relief from driving to a site or taking mass transit. Now, because of COVID-19. when the only way to safely work together is online or via the phone, we’re all burned out by online meetings, and there’s nothing virtual about our fatigue.

In addition, volunteering onsite is a way to be a different person than we are at our paid work or in a classroom or even with our families. It’s a way to feel like we’re making a difference in the world. It can be a refreshing change from other parts of our life. For people that live alone, volunteering onsite can provide a much needed social life. While I think online volunteering can be wonderfully personal, I also know that virtual meetings, virtually all the time, is not the world most of us want to live in.

Volunteers are exhausted. Many that still have jobs and struggling to do those and assume new family care obligations – children are in virtual school and some older relatives have moved back in with younger family members. Many are having to look over their finances every day. Most everyone is scared of for their own health as well as everyone else in their household. And many people, especially living alone, are oh-so-lonely. Volunteering these days doesn’t offer the time out it did in pre-pandemic times – it can just feel like another online meeting.

But nonprofits still need volunteers, and volunteers still need volunteering. I know so many nonprofits, NGOs, charities and other groups have a huge amount on their plate these days and far more stresses than usual, but we all need to take a deep breath and spare some thoughts for both our current volunteers and those we want to recruit.

How to Recruit & Engage Volunteers in a Time of Virtual Fatigue, an article is by WBT Systems, which produces TopClass LMS, a learning management system for membership-based associations, has great advice for any program involving volunteers. It starts with some basics from quality volunteer engagement we should all know and apply even in non-pandemic times, like creating realistic roles for volunteers and emphasizing why the task matters to the program and the difference it will make. But then it gets into more specific advice that relates to current remote working challenges, which I’ve reframed and expanded below.

For instance, we all need to better commit to SHORT meetings that have a definite purpose and a definite start and end time. Don’t have a general, open group volunteer meeting; have a here’s-what-everyone’s-doing meeting, devoted exclusively to elevator speeches from each volunteer. Or have a celebrate-one-accomplishment meeting, devoted solely to quick updates. Whatever the meeting, be able to answer these questions: what do I want to happen as a result of this meeting? Why does this meeting matter? Why can’t you ask for this info via email?

I like to prepare my meetings as though it’s a stage performance: I like start and end on time and know exactly what I want to say, but also be ready for a spontaneous improv moment! I also am ready to facilitate: to frankly, politely tell a person who is going too long that we are going to have to table that discussion until later, for instance, because we need to hear from everyone.

Also regarding meetings, the article suggests telling volunteers you will open up an online meeting 15 minutes before the start and leave it open 15 minutes after so they have a chance for chatting, if they wish. I have REALLY enjoyed this in meetings and webinars.

I sometimes encourage people I’m meeting with to have the meeting in a different room than they are in usually – and I do the same. The same rules apply: you should be in a well-lit room that does not have lots of distractions, if at all possible (people walking through the space, intrusive sound, etc.). Otherwise, you might be surprised at how refreshing it feels to have a meeting in a different room, or even just in a different place in the usual room.

In addition, I like when I don’t have to have a full meeting to get a question resolved or check-in with everyone – I like having a Slack channel just for volunteers I’m working with, so they can check-in or ask a question of me, any time. It’s a virtual way of dropping by my office. And it keeps messages out of my email in-box.

The WBT Systems article suggests that you “Invite someone to Zoombomb the end of the meeting, perhaps the CEO, board chair or another leader who thanks the volunteers for giving their time and talent.” I LOVE this idea.

I’m somewhat tepid on the idea of things like encouraging everyone to wear a hat, or having everyone bring a toy to a meeting, etc. – the article doesn’t suggest this, but I’ve seen it elsewhere. I’m not big on ice breakers before every onsite meeting – I do not like having my time wasted, especially when I’ve schlepped across town or had to juggle to carve out time for a meeting, and everyone going around the room talking about who their favorite superhero is (Wonder Woman in the DC universe, Jane as Thor in Marvel). Online, I can find meeting games even more annoying. I want to feel like my time is valued and what’s most needed is getting done. In the end, you have to know your audience, you have to experiment and be observant, you have to be open to what is NOT working, and you have to work towards balance.

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

Don’t assume staff working with volunteers, or even volunteers themselves, understand how to lead and manage virtually. Yes, I’m going to yet again recommend The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, which emphasizes support for volunteers more than any other topic. Also, if you have time, look for videos and articles that could help others, and if you don’t have time, recruit a volunteer to curate such for you to review and share.

When Susan Ellis and I wrote The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, we never envisioned a global pandemic creating this massive, sudden shift to virtual volunteering for so many agencies. I’m glad to be able to recommend this detailed resource for ensuring success in virtual volunteering, with far more information than a blog or webinar ever could.

Also see:

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. 

High Impact Virtual Volunteering

Leave a reply

The world will get safer as more people get vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2, the infectious disease which causes Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), but health officials are saying over and over that our world is going to stay the way it is for most of 2021, and probably well into 2022: face masks will continue to be needed in order not to spread this or other viruses, even if you aren’t sick from such. We will need to continue to avoid groups of people, including large crowds. We will need to socially distance. People vulnerable to the illness will need to continue to be protected.

And while lots of precautions will, I hope, continue to be taken to ensure onsite volunteering can be done safely amid the ongoing threat from COVID-19, it also means that virtual volunteering – using the Internet to support and engage volunteers – is going to still be necessary, even for organizations that avoided the practice for decades. And the reality is that virtual volunteering – a practice that’s more than 35 years old and that thousands of organizations were leveraging long before the global pandemic – is a tool that creates an avenue to involve volunteers that could not be involved otherwise and is an avenue of volunteering that many people actively seek out even when there isn’t a dangerous virus lurking about.

High Impact virtual volunteering has always been something many volunteers have sought. While many consultants, especially from the private sector, say the trend for volunteers is towards micro-tasks, I disagree: I hear people saying they want to make a real impact in volunteering, an investment of time that makes a real difference, that isn’t just about minutes or hours done, and isn’t about a check box of tasks completed. I’ve been talking about the desire of volunteers for this kind of deeper-investment virtual volunteering since 2015, including in this blog, the future of virtual volunteering? Deeper relationships, higher impact. In that blog, I said:

When volunteers interact with clients directly, it’s a highly personal activity, no matter the mission of the organization. These volunteer roles involve building and maintaining trust and cultivating relationships – not just getting a task done. It takes many hours and a real commitment – it can’t be done just when the volunteer might have some extra time. And altogether, that means that, unlike microvolunteering, these direct service virtual volunteering roles aren’t available to absolutely anyone with a networked device, Internet access and a good heart. These roles discriminate: if you don’t have the skills and the time, you don’t get to do them. And, believe it or not, the very high bar for participation is very appealing to a growing number of people that want to volunteer.

I always have to remind people at this point that I’m not opposed to microvolunteering – online tasks that take just a few minutes or hours for a volunteer to complete, require little or not training of the online volunteer, and require no ongoing commitment. I’ve been writing about microvolunteering before it was called that – I gave it the name byte-sized volunteering back in the 1990s, but the name didn’t stick. If you want to give lots of people a taste of your program, with an eye to cultivating those people into longer-term volunteers, and/or donors, and you have the time to create and support microvolunteering assignments, great, go for it!

But I continue to hear and see a growing number of comments, especially young people, saying they want more than just a “quickie” volunteering experience. They want more than number-of-hours volunteering and a list of tasks that need done. They want something high-impact. They want to feel like they have really made a difference. They want to make a real connection with the organization and those, or the mission, it serves. And not just for virtual volunteering! They also want it for onsite volunteering.

I’ve talked about the factors for success in what I’ve called direct-contact or direct-support online volunteers since the 1990s, first via the Virtual Volunteering Project. I have continued to try to highlight those kinds of virtual volunteering roles and tasks specifically via the news section of the Virtual Volunteering Wiki and this list of online mentoring programs (all of which I maintain with no support and no funding to do so). And it was very satisfying to hear directly from programs involving online volunteers recently and to hear them confirm the best practices I’ve promoted for years.

When a university contacted me this year about what their student volunteering abroad program could look like online instead, a program where students provided medical help with medical and public health professionals in other countries, I put together a quick list of what this could look like, based on these resources I’d continued to maintain, and I’ve been adding to it ever since. This list of what high-impact virtual volunteering looks like, with links to examples, is for people seeking ideas for an online project that will mobilize online volunteers in activities that lead to a sustainable, lasting benefit to a community or cause, particularly for a community or audience that is at-risk or under-served. It was created especially for programs looking for ways to engage online volunteers in high-responsibility, high-impact tasks focused on communities in the developing world. Note that these ideas absolutely can be adapted for remote volunteering within the same country where the online volunteers live as well – “remote” could mean across town rather than around the world.

Also see:

Hearing Directly from Programs Involving Online Volunteers

How will SARS-CoV-2 & COVID-19 affect volunteering abroad?

Safety in Virtual Volunteering

Also see:

Also, the Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook: Fully Integrating Online Service Into Volunteer Involvement can help you better work with people online – specifically volunteers. These can be volunteers in short-term, “microvolunteering” tasks or longer-term, more high-responsibility roles, like what is highlighted here in the blog you are reading now. These can be volunteers who do some or most of their service onsite, at your organization, or volunteers who do most or all of their service remotely, rarely or ever onsite and in-person with you. This book was helpful long before the global pandemic spurred so many organizations to, at last, embrace virtual volunteering. This is the most comprehensive resource anywhere on working with online volunteers, and on using the Internet to support ALL volunteers, including those you might not think of as “online” volunteers.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site or my YouTube videos and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

Copyright, ownership & works by volunteers

Leave a reply

Happy New Year!

When I directed the Virtual Volunteering Project back in the 1990s and did workshops introducing virtual volunteering to a room full of representatives from nonprofits and government agencies, an early question I got was, “Who owns what an online volunteer creates as a part of their service?” So I asked the various experts in traditional volunteer management for the answer – and they didn’t know! That question had never come up for them. It took cornering a panel of lawyers at a conference (they were presenting on liability and volunteers) to get the answer: volunteers own what they create.

Two more recent articles confirm this:

In this article from INFORMATION OUTLOOK V16 N04 JULY/AUGUST 2012, Volunteers are Copyright Owners, Too!, author and copyright lawyer Lesley Ellen Harris notes, “Whether it be an article, image, video, business plan, table based on research, or other type of content, it is possible that the material being created by your volunteers is automatically protected by copyright (yes, even without registering the material or using a copyright symbol).” The article strongly recommends entering into a copyright agreement with volunteers to help prevent problems, such as a volunteer quitting and demanding that you stop using their work.

This February 2019 article from copyrightlaws.com, Who Owns Copyright in Works By Volunteers, affirms the previous recommendation: “You may want to consider developing an agreement with your volunteers that transfers to your organization the copyright in any works they create for you. Such an agreement ensures your organization can use their work as needed. It can also address the liability of volunteers using third-party works without obtaining permission.” It’s something companies frequently include in a contract that an employee or contractor/consultant signs, but that they often forget to have volunteers sign.

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

As noted in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, developing written agreements to be signed by both online volunteers and their host organization (page 66) can prevent problems down the road, not only regarding ownership and use of what an online volunteer create, including web sites and code, but also regarding confidentiality and privacy in using of the volunteer’s information, including images of them, regarding confidentiality regarding the organization and the information the volunteer has access to, particularly client information, regarding how the online volunteer should represent his or her association with the program online (in emails, on social media, on LinkedIn, etc.), and liability regarding malware.

That said, I regularly look for controversies regarding volunteers and the materials they create for programs they support, particularly regarding copyright, and haven’t found anything. But just because there hasn’t been a newspaper article, newsletter article or blog about it doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened.

And note: I’m not a lawyer. Don’t use this blog as your ultimate, last guidance. If volunteers are creating things for you, or engaging in activities that result in a product or program you use (photos, a strategy, a database, etc.), talk to a lawyer about legal agreements you may want to have volunteers sign regarding use and ownership of what they create for your program.

Also see legal issues and virtual volunteering.

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. 

Contributing to online communities can help you professionally

Leave a reply

I see lots of young people online who are wondering how to build up their skills and résumés in this time of COVID-19, or to explore careers with so many onsite experiences closed to them. I want to remind them all (they all read my blog, right?) that volunteering to help with an online community is a great way to get experience, to build your skills, to build your knowledge, to build your portfolio and to network for jobs.

Don’t believe me? I’ve been helping with online communities since 1993 or so, mostly as a volunteer. And those experiences have played a substantial part in both getting professional positions and getting experience that’s helped me in my offline work.

The first online community I participated in was the soc.org.nonprofit USENET newsgroup. It was created in June 1994 and gatewayed to the email-based mailing list USNONPROFIT-L. The community was for the discussion of nonprofit management and program issues. I found it soon after it was created and, after a couple of years of participating, because I was such a prolific contributor, I got asked to co-moderate it, as a volunteer, and I did so for several years. My participation there, and some onsite volunteering and collaboration, lead me to being offered a paid position: to direct the Virtual Volunteering Project.

In the late 1990s, I participated in three other online communities, all on YahooGroups: CyberVPM, UKVPMs, and OZVPM, all focused on managers of volunteers. It was because of my participation in those three communities, talking about the VV Project and virtual volunteering in general, that I got noticed by a United Nations agency in charge of the online volunteering portion of NetAid, and ended up directing what became the UN’s Online Volunteering Service. I also have lifelong colleagues and friends because of my volunteer participation in those three communities specifically.

In 2001 or so, while living in Germany and working for the UN Volunteers program, I started participating in the then newly-launched TechSoup online community. You can see an early version of that community on the Internet Wayback machine. I was a very active volunteer contributor and ended up getting asked to be a volunteer moderator, helping to introduce topics, answer questions and delete spam, and to lead a couple of online events. And years later, in 2009, after volunteering on and off, I got a part-time contracting gig helping with the community and some online events. I’ve done that off and on ever since (including now!).

Around that same time, someone set up an online community for people working in international aid and development work. I joined that community and, once again, I was a prolific contributor, as a volunteer, and eventually got asked to be a volunteer board member of the newly-formed nonprofit that got set up to support the community. The Aid Workers Network lasted for just a few years, but I got asked about that experience regularly in job interviews, and there are two people that remain my professional colleagues to this day.

On Reddit, I’ve been the volunteer moderator for the volunteer community, the community service subreddit, and the inclusion subreddit, for a few years now – and I got a short, well-paid consulting gig earlier this year because of my activities on the volunteer subreddit specifically.

So, that’s my story on how volunteering to contribute, moderate, facilitate and lead online communities has helped me professionally. It could help you, too:

  • Look for Reddit communities that represent what you want to do professionally or as a volunteer. Read a lot before you contribute, and always read as much as you yourself post. When you feel ready, post helpful, on-topic questions, advice and comments. Follow the rules. If you do this regularly, don’t be surprised if you end up getting asked to be a moderator. Even if you aren’t asked to be a moderator, if you think your contributions show your expertise, workstyle and character, consider including a link to your Reddit profile on your résumé.
  • If you use computers or your smart phone as a part of your volunteering or professional work with nonprofits, NGOs, charities, community groups, advocacy groups, libraries, religious groups, etc., and you want to share your experience and help others that might be trying to do so, consider joining the TechSoup online community and contributing to the subjects there, like Databases and Software (including apps), Web Building, Digital Engagement, Hardware, Servers & Networks, Security, Privacy & Safety, Tech in Disasters, Tech Planning and Policies or Tech4Good, Tech Making a Difference, Tech in Society.
  • Use Google, Bing or Duck Duck Go, and on Facebook, to find online communities hosted on other platforms that relate to what you want to do, whether its humanitarian work, nonprofit theater management, rescuing wildlife, logistics after disasters, whatever. As always, read a lot before you contribute, and always read as much as you post. Post helpful, on-topic questions, advice and comments and follow the rules. You might get asked to be a moderator, but regardless, you’ll create an online profile potential employers might find quite interesting.

And if your nonprofit, NGO, charity, library, etc. has an online community, the contributors to that community are volunteers, even if you don’t call them such, even if you also call them clients or community members instead. If they are asking questions, offering comments and advice, introducing discussions on your community, even debating (but are staying on topic) and you aren’t paying them, they are online volunteers, they are contributing their time and talents, and you are engaged in virtual volunteering.

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

For detailed advice on creating assignments for online volunteers, for working with online volunteers, for using the Internet to support and involve ALL volunteers (including those providing service onsite), and for ensuring success in virtual volunteering, check out The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. You will not find a more detailed guide anywhere for working with online volunteers and using the Internet to support and involve all volunteers. It’s available both as a traditional paperback and as an online book. It’s co-written by myself and Susan Ellis. If your organization wants to better engage the people who contribute to your online communities – and, yes, those are online volunteers – this book can help.

Also see:

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

Please share about your experience working with online volunteers

Leave a reply

If your nonprofit, NGO, library, school or other mission-based program is involving online volunteers, or if your business / corporation has a virtual volunteering component in its employee volunteering program, below is a list of public online spaces where you can share information about your program: what software volunteers use to check-in or communicate with you, what they use to collaborate with each other, what tools and techniques (IT-based or otherwise) you use to support online/remote volunteers, your successes, your challenges, etc. These are also great places to ask questions and for advice regarding virtual volunteering:

You can share exactly the same information across all three of those online communities because each of those communities reaches a very different audience – the Linkedin group reaches a mix of people at a variety of programs working with volunteers as well as corporate representatives and university students and faculty. The subreddit reaches a younger and mostly male audience that you probably won’t reach otherwise. The TechSoup community reaches a mix of nonprofit folks and tech-savvy people who care about nonprofits. In short, there is very little audience crossover on those three communities.

(note that only the Reddit group is for recruiting online volunteers; on TechSoup, you should use this forum to recruit online volunteers)

Why share publicly about your experience working with online volunteers, including challenges? It’s a great way to both brag about what you are doing – and what you are doing is worth bragging about – and to learn from others. No one has a monopoly on knowledge about virtual volunteering – everyone is constantly learning, including me – and this is how we can all learn together.

The reality is that there needs to be a much greater diversity of contributions to those groups regarding virtual volunteering and I’m NOT going to work forever. This call is also my effort to try to cultivate a greater number of voices talking about virtual volunteering – there was far, far more online discussion about it back in the late 1990s than there is now!

Full disclosure: I am a moderator for all three of those groups, and I’m also hoping to see emerging leadership such that I can hand over the reins on these eventually!

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

For much more detailed advice on creating assignments for online volunteers, for working with online volunteers, for using the Internet to support and involve ALL volunteers, including volunteers that provide service onsite, and for ensuring success in virtual volunteering, check out The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. Tools come and go – but certain community engagement principles never change. You will not find a more detailed guide anywhere for working with online volunteers and using the Internet to support and involve all volunteers – even after home quarantines are over and volunteers start coming back onsite to your workspace. It’s available both as a traditional paperback and as an online book. It’s co-written by myself and Susan Ellis.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

NYT spotlights how seniors are volunteering virtually

Leave a reply

The New York Times, in a story last week, says “Older adults, particularly vulnerable in a pandemic, still work for their causes, but primarily from home now”, via virtual volunteering.

The story notes what all of us that work in or with nonprofits know so well: in March, the health risks of in-person contact brought in-person volunteering to an immediate halt at many programs, particularly for seniors / the elderly. Volunteers are the lifeblood of many nonprofits and other community programs,, but the pandemic has created major barriers to volunteer participation, especially for older people, who face a higher risk of serious illness or death if they contract the coronavirus. As a result, many seniors have pivoted to virtual volunteering, and some of these elderly volunteers are finding themselves devoting even more hours each month to their causes now.

The story profiles two senior volunteers who are doing more virtual volunteering because of the pandemic, and what they are doing as online volunteers:

Before the pandemic, Paula Brynen devoted 15 hours a month to various causes, including arts groups and a volunteer recruitment clearinghouse. For instance, she volunteered onsite for the local chapter of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, volunteering that is especially important to her, having survived leukemia in 2011. She used to help with the setup for the annual fund-raising walk; now, she focuses on fundraising phone calls. Opportunities with arts groups have disappeared for her for now, but she has several new projects, including working as a mentor with Table Wisdom, a St. Louis-based nonprofit that matches older adults with students and young professionals in the United States and abroad who need career advice and help with English-language skills. She connects each week via Zoom with a young environmental engineer in Colombia who is hoping to advance her career by improving her English. Ms. Brynen is also volunteering for Democratic candidates in the November election, and she recently helped a graduate student in psychology complete her training by serving as a sort of virtual guinea pig, doing sessions as an art therapy patient.

Barbara Lewers is a 79-year-old New Yorker who spent two afternoons every week volunteering at Senior Planet’s center in Manhattan before the pandemic. When Senior Planet, a program of the nonprofit Older Adults Technology Services and which helps older adults learn to use technology. shifted its work completely online, Ms. Lewers shifted, too. A retired advertising creative director, she has volunteered in a program that makes check-in calls to older New Yorkers. She has also helped with a program that has deployed 10,000 tablet computers to older low-income residents in city housing, helping to train people how to use them.

The Times article notes that technology can be a barrier for some older adults, who can be less likely to use the latest technology, according to the Pew Research Center; for example, last year 59 percent of Americans age 65 and older had broadband internet connections, roughly 20 percentage points fewer than those in younger age groups. Efforts to help seniors use online tools are noted now almost every week on the TechSoup online community forum (do a search for the world senior, click on forums, sort by date).

I am not surprised at all that the online volunteers profiled in this NYT story are people who already had an established relationship with the nonprofits they are now helping as online volunteers – that’s something that’s usual for online volunteers even when there isn’t a pandemic going on (as noted in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook). I’m not surprised that these experienced, traditional volunteers are finding themselves spending MORE time as online volunteers. I am very glad the article spotlighted senior citizens as the online volunteers in this story, not just as the recipients of service. I just wish this story had talked to more nonprofits about how they are creating activities and roles for volunteers, what challenges they are facing, etc.

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

For much more detailed advice on creating assignments for online volunteers, for working with online volunteers, for using the Internet to support and involve ALL volunteers, including volunteers that provide service onsite, and for ensuring success in virtual volunteering, check out The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. Tools come and go – but certain community engagement principles never change, as this Times article confirmed! You will not find a more detailed guide anywhere for working with online volunteers and using the Internet to support and involve all volunteers – even after home quarantines are over and volunteers start coming back onsite to your workspace. It’s available both as a traditional paperback and as an online book. It’s co-written by myself and Susan Ellis.

Also see all of the blogs I’ve developed JUST THIS YEAR to help nonprofits quickly launch online roles & activities for online volunteers and to deliver their programming and services online:

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

Virtual volunteering is more than “making cards for the sick/elderly”

Leave a reply

The proliferation of projects right now during the global pandemic where people write cards or postcards for elderly people, people in residential care facilities, patients in hospitals, people who are homebound, etc., is astounding. The number of schools and corporations proudly touting this as “virtual volunteering” is equally astounding.

Cards can be nice. When my grandmother turned 100, my sister and I coordinated with our friends so that she would get more than 100 birthday cards via postal mail for her birthday, and she did, and she was delighted. It was nice. I’m glad we did it.

But that thrill lasted a day or two.

What she enjoyed far more, on a weekly basis:

  • Learning to play Wii.
  • Learning to use a tablet to download free books.

I wish it had dawned on me to get her signed up on Facebook so we could have played Scrabble together. I wish I had figured out if we both got the same episode of Jeopardy at the same time, so we could have live-chatted during it on WhatsApp.

What I’m getting at is this: are these “let’s write and send cards for the homebound” something that the recipients REALLY want, or is much more substantial virtual volunteering and online collaboration what we should be shooting for?

What about remote programs where volunteers:

  • Ask for their stories about particular periods in history: Where were you when the first men landed on the moon? How did you know that happened? What was your life like during the civil rights movement? Tell me about September 11, 2001? What was it like to go to grade school when you were a kid – did you walk to school? What did you wear? What if those sessions were recorded and made available via the local library or the local historical society, or spliced together into a video to share on YouTube, or edited into weekly or monthly podcasts?
  • Cook together with the person they are visiting remotely: each comes up with a relatively simple recipe, tells the other all the ingredients that might be needed, and one dish is cooked one week and another dish is cooked a week or two later?
  • Teach a person how to use Wikipedia, or even how to edit Wikipedia. What if they worked together on improving a Wikipedia article about local history?
  • Play free online word games together, like Scrabble? Or play even more advanced, free games together? Don’t be surprised to find out a lot of seniors are already engaged in online gaming.
  • Make something together while you are online together: origami, paper hats, lightsabers from toilet paper rolls (you don’t think seniors are Star Wars fans?!?), some other simple, crafty thing made from things you both can easily get your hands on… Again, record the session, splice all the sessions into something fun and share on YouTube.
  • Have an online book club, where seniors and teens all read the same book and then talk about it together online.

In short, volunteers and corporate social responsibility program managers: quit thinking you know what seniors want and what will make them happy, based on what’s most convenient for YOU. Don’t think of seniors and people in residential homes sitting there passively waiting for your uplifting message. Think about ENGAGEMENT. Think about INTERACTION. Think about what the seniors or patients might want, not primarily what you THINK they want. Have you asked them? That might be a great place to start.

Here’s a very long list of virtual volunteering roles and activities. Writing cards isn’t on it, by the way.

And here’s a seven-minute video where I say most of the things I’ve just said in this blog – and more!

August 3, 2021 update: An example of a high quality digital volunteering/friendly visitor program born out of COVID: It was oh-sorefreshing to learn about the Digital Buddies initiative in Scotland, which started during the Covid 19 pandemic to enable older people in the Scottish Borders to connect digitally with friends, family, groups & the wider world. Digital Buddies teamed the older people up with a digital buddy, often a family member, friend or neighbor, and they did not do it simply by creating a web site and giving people each other’s Skype IDs and hoping for the best. The volunteer buddy supports the person with whatever they wish to learn to do at their own pace, with the aid of SEVERAL step-by-step picture instructions and the assistance of staff. We also provide a tablet and access to the internet to those who do not have access to technology. There are just 15 older people in the Borders participating in Digital Buddies. Many were apprehensive at the beginning, as they worried they might not remember or manage. With the help from their buddies they are now regularly using their digital device to video call with friends and family, join local groups, meetings or classes that have moved online in Covid19, attend virtual religious services, do their shopping, and much more. Resources provided to participants include how to access the accessibility settings on the tablet devices used, how to charge the devices and use them to listen to podcasts, access email, etc., as well as digital inclusion tips.

My favorite part of the program is this:

When we were looking for buddies we weren’t looking for IT specialists, we were looking for people who:

  • Had a little spare time.
  • Were patient.
  • Were comfortable explaining in non jargon terms.
  • Knew how to do the basics on touch screen devices – we try to match people who have knowledge of similar devices.
  • Could commit to supporting someone for at least 6 months.

Yes, six months. Not just a few weeks. And not a few-minutes-a-week commitment: volunteers were expected to engage in something meaningful and impactful.

See Setting up a Digital Buddies project – What we Learned for more.

It’s the sign of a quality virtual volunteering program that when an initiative produces such a report, talking about what’s worked and what hasn’t and what comes next.

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

For much more detailed advice on creating assignments for online volunteers, for working with online volunteers, for using the Internet to support and involve ALL volunteers, including volunteers that provide service onsite, and for ensuring success in virtual volunteering, check out The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. Tools come and go – but certain community engagement principles never change. You will not find a more detailed guide anywhere for working with online volunteers and using the Internet to support and involve all volunteers – even after home quarantines are over and volunteers start coming back onsite to your workspace. It’s available both as a traditional paperback and as an online book. It’s co-written by myself and Susan Ellis.

On a similar themes:

Vanity Volunteering: All About the Volunteer.

*Another* Afghanistan Handicraft program? Really?

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

Volunteering during the holidays during a pandemic

Leave a reply
graphic by Jayne Cravens representing volunteers

The question will be coming soon, at least in North America: how can I, or my entire family, volunteer to help others during the holidays – Thanksgiving and Christmas – during this pandemic?

First, know that nonprofits, even when there is not a pandemic, are deluged with people looking for a feel-good, heart-warming, short-term volunteering experience that makes them feel like they are helping others, that they can bring along their kids, maybe take some selfies… and some nonprofits are willing to create these opportunities because programs can use them to educate the volunteers about hunger, homelessness, etc. and get some financial donations. But these holiday opportunities fill up QUICKLY. In non-pandemic times, I advise potential volunteers to look for holiday volunteering opportunities in the summer because these roles fill up so quickly.

What’s the landscape like during the pandemic for holiday volunteering, especially with a family? Even smaller, in terms of opportunities.

If you want to volunteer during the holidays, onsite rather than online, your best bet is to focus on local Meals on Wheels programs and food banks, and to be flexible with many different days and times you are available in November and December. Look into requirements to volunteer NOW – the web sites of various programs should have complete details. If you can volunteer for more than one day, all the better – it’s a lot of investment to train and screen volunteers, and it’s much easier to involve volunteers who will come a few times, not just once.

You can also start taking inventory of your own immediate neighborhood. Do you know who your neighbors are? Do you know their Thanksgiving plans? In talking to your neighbors (socially-distanced and with a mask, of course), do you find any that will be alone for Thanksgiving? Would they be open to your bringing them a Thanksgiving Day meal, or a meal on some other day? What about making five chicken pot pies or some other thing that can be homemade and frozen and giving them to neighbors to use/eat whenever they want to? Or some bags of groceries (including toilet paper)? People who are far from family, who live alone – some are elderly, some are foreign students, and on and on – are probably all around you.

Is there a church, temple or mosque nearby, and would they be able to match you with a family or a single person in need that would welcome a meal or bags of groceries? This will probably be done anonymously – you probably won’t get to meet the family unless you are already a member of that community of faith.

What about neighbors that have dogs – are there any that have trouble walking their dog and would welcome you and your family walking their dogs some days over the holidays?

Do you have neighbors who are homebound – elderly, people living in a home for people with disabilities, etc. – who would enjoy chalk art drawings on the sidewalks outside their homes?

I’m really good at creating volunteering opportunities that are skills-based and project-based, that are about more sustainable results, not so much charity. But charity is what most volunteers want to do over the holidays. So, the above are my ideas. What are yours? What are you planning to do over the holidays to volunteer safely during the pandemic? Please offer ideas in the comments below.

More: Volunteering in the time of the novel coronavirus/COVID-19

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help.