{"id":7866,"date":"2026-06-16T03:41:00","date_gmt":"2026-06-16T10:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/?p=7866"},"modified":"2026-06-12T10:46:53","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T17:46:53","slug":"consequences","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/2026\/06\/consequences\/","title":{"rendered":"What are the consequences of allowing court-ordered volunteers to make a donation instead of actually doing service?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full\"><a href=\"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/council_transparent.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"461\" height=\"212\" src=\"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/council_transparent.jpg\" alt=\"image of a panel discussion\" class=\"wp-image-5010\" srcset=\"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/council_transparent.jpg 461w, https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/council_transparent-300x138.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 461px) 100vw, 461px\" \/><\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;ve drafted an article about how some nonprofits and probation officers are allowing people who are court-ordered to do community service to pay a fee or make a donation as a substitute for actually volunteering. But I&#8217;d like to ask for feedback on one part of the paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I wanted a list of some of the consequences of this practice of allowing court-ordered volunteers to make a donation instead of actually doing service. But I have just three points:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>People becoming skeptical that community service is actually being done and believing those that receive court-ordered community service are getting \u201can easy way out\u201d of real consequences for their actions.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Inequity, as some people still have to do actual community service because they cannot afford to make a financial donation, and the donation being asked for is often less than the fine the court issued and offered to waive in return for community service.<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>In the case of nonprofits offering legitimate online community service, a growing belief that virtual volunteering is merely someone watching videos or producing text that is supposedly their self-reflections \u2013 something that could easily be generated in seconds by artificial intelligence \u2013 which undermines the credibility of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.coyotecommunications.com\/vvwiki\/examples.shtml\">actual virtual volunteering<\/a>, such as transcribing scanned, hand-written historical documents, redesigning web sites to that they are accessible for people with disabilities, correcting captions on videos, etc.  <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Are there more consequences of allowing this practice? I would love your thoughts. Please know that, in sharing them here, I might include them in the final paper, though I won&#8217;t be identifying contributors, unless I have the contributor&#8217;s permission to do so and feel that it&#8217;s necessary (such as for quotes).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here are <a href=\"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/blog-common-themes\/communityservice\/\">all my blogs to date regarding some aspect of court-ordered community service<\/a>. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve drafted an article about how some nonprofits and probation officers are allowing people who are court-ordered to do community service to pay a fee or make a donation as a substitute for actually volunteering. But I&#8217;d like to ask for feedback on one part of the paper. I wanted a list of some of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_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},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[20,12],"tags":[27,2357,556,129,569,568,2157,376,2027],"class_list":["post-7866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community-volunteer-engagement","category-nonprofitngoagency-management","tag-accountability","tag-accountable","tag-courts","tag-credibility","tag-ethical","tag-ethics","tag-judicial","tag-probation","tag-required"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3fFJB-22S","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7866","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=7866"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7867,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7866\/revisions\/7867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coyotecommunications.com\/coyoteblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}