{"id":180,"date":"2011-10-10T16:25:00","date_gmt":"2011-10-10T16:25:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coyoteblog.posterous.com\/yes-research-microvolunteering-however"},"modified":"2021-05-12T13:28:02","modified_gmt":"2021-05-12T20:28:02","slug":"yes-research-microvolunteering-however","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/2011\/10\/yes-research-microvolunteering-however\/","title":{"rendered":"Yes, research microvolunteering, however&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was oh-so-excited when I read that the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ivr.org.uk\/\">Institute for Volunteering Research<\/a> in the UK is going to be undertaking <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ivr.org.uk\/projects\/Current+Projects\/Micro-volunteering+research\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">a project to research microvolunteering<\/a>, a form of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.coyotecommunications.com\/volunteer\/ovmyths.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">online volunteering\/virtual volunteering that&#8217;s been around for many, many years<\/a> &#8211; long before there were smart phones.<\/p>\n<p>But I was oh-so-disappointed to see that <strong>IVR&#8217;s project will be focused only on microvolunteering from the volunteers&#8217; point of view<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>The hype regarding microvolunteering, a form of online        volunteering, is similar to the excitement a few years ago        regarding <a href=\"http:\/\/www.coyotecommunications.com\/volunteer\/groups.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">family volunteering<\/a>. That excitement        regarding family volunteering translated into lots of campaigns to        encourage families to volunteer together, rather than <a href=\"http:\/\/www.coyotecommunications.com\/volunteer\/groups.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">helping        organizations get the knowledge and resources necessary to create        volunteering opportunities that entire families could undertake<\/a>.        The result was, and is, a lot of very frustrated families who want to        volunteer, but cannot find opportunities. I see the same thing        happening with microvolunteering &#8211; <strong>far more organizations and        media articles encouraging people to try it, rather than resources        to help organizations to be able to create microvolunteering        opportunities and support volunteers in these roles<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>What&#8217;s needed &#8211; desperately needed &#8211; is research about microvolunteering from the *organizations&#8217;*       point of view<\/strong>, specifically:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> what kinds of organizations are creating microvolunteering       assignments (in terms of the mission of the organizations, whether or not they have a staff member devoted to managing volunteers, the level of tech-saviness of staff, etc.)?<\/li>\n<li> what kinds of microvolunteering assignments are most popular       with volunteers? (which attract the largest numbers of volunteers, or seem to always attract at least some volunteers)<\/li>\n<li> what kinds of volunteer management practices are necessary to       ensure microvolunteering assignments are completed such that they       are of value to the organization?<\/li>\n<li> how is success measured by organizations regarding       microvolunteering assignments? (is it just in number of volunteers       that were involved or the amount of work done? Or do some       organizations track different measures, such as volunteers&#8217;       perceptions changed, volunteers&#8217; awareness built, volunteers       signing on to longer-term projects, volunteers becoming donors,       etc.?)<\/li>\n<li> what are the challenges to organizations creating       microvolunteering assignments and to effectively supporting       volunteers undertaking such assignments?<\/li>\n<li> when microvolunteering doesn&#8217;t work, from the organization&#8217;s       perspective (it has no real impact on the organization, the       volunteers don&#8217;t go on to become more longer-term volunteers,       donors, other kinds of supporters, it&#8217;s a lot of work for very       little, real return, etc.), *why* doesn&#8217;t it work?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Unless researchers try to get answers to these types of questions, unless microvolunteering research is focused on organizations themselves, rather than just volunteers, more organizations won&#8217;t create more microvolunteering assignments &#8211; and more potential volunteers will be frustrated when they get excited to participate in something that actually isn&#8217;t available to them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was oh-so-excited when I read that the Institute for Volunteering Research in the UK is going to be undertaking a project to research microvolunteering, a form of online volunteering\/virtual volunteering that&#8217;s been around for many, many years -&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[20],"tags":[187,301,304,410,464,529,530,532],"class_list":["post-180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community-volunteer-engagement","tag-evaluation","tag-micro","tag-microvolunteering","tag-research","tag-success","tag-volunteer","tag-volunteering","tag-volunteers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3fFJB-2U","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=180"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6348,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/180\/revisions\/6348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}