What's New With Jayne
& Coyote Communications / Coyote
Broad
Me in New York City, first week of November -
available for one-twos of onsite, in-person consulting.
I'll be in New York City the first week of November,
for the first time in decades. If you would like to book an
in-person meeting or onsite training while I'm there, please contact me ASAP, and we can discuss
your ideas and my fees. More about my consulting,
training or presenting.
I am away from my computer and phone for the last two weeks
of September.
September 2026
Advice & Resources To Help You
Write Better.
Good writing can make the difference in whether or not someone
believes you or trusts you. It can mean the difference in
accessibility and something being completely out-of-reach. And even
in this age of AI, you need to be able to write well if you want to
be understood by others, whether you are writing a social media post
or writing a novel. These resources can help.
I'm the new moderator of two more subreddits: UNV (regarding United
Nations Volunteers) and Oregon Camping.
They could not be more different, and if you want to see just how
different moderating and facilitating online communities can be,
have a look. And if you view my Reddit
profile, you can see all of the subreddits I manage (though
note some are no longer active). Volunteering to moderate, and being
a frequent contributor, to online communities has led to some paid
jobs for me, and launched my career at the United Nations - you
should
look into it.
My availability: I'm available for full-time or
part-time employment, or short-term consulting,
training or presenting. I
did some amazing things at the nonprofit organization I worked for
most recently and am so ready to get busy with new projects! I'm
ready to help improve your communications activities to attract
and retain more donors and volunteers and to build more
recognition and trust in your community, I'm ready to help improve
your volunteer engagement, I'm ready to evaluate your
communications and volunteer engagement activities, I'm ready to
train your staff, and so much more. Contact
me! Please note that I do not work pro bono - I do
charge fees for my time. Also, I am away from my computer and
phone for the last two weeks of September.
August 2026
Resources for
those involved in court-ordered community service: for
officers of the court, for host organizations, & for those
who have been court-ordered to do community service.
Whether you are a judge assigning offenders to community service,
a probation officer or other officer of the court supervising
people who are court-ordered community service, or an organization
being asked to host volunteers who are doing community service per
a court-order, these resources are for you. You will not find a
more extensive set of resources on this subject anywhere! In
addition to my own advice, I link to resources and research from
others.
How to Help Afghans In
Afghanistan & In Your Country.
Just as the title says. I am not going to stop trying to help
Afghanistan, and I hope others will join me, especially to help
women and girls.
Suggestions for mutual
aid societies in Afghanistan: acts of survival as well as
resistance.
Mutual aid is a voluntary, peer-to-peer exchange of resources and
services for mutual benefit for people in a particular
neighborhood or region. It's sometimes called
neighbors-helping-neighbors. It's usually informal: there's often
no government agency or nonprofit organization organizing it,
though that does happen. And it's usually not some huge,
well-organized network: it's usually something done spontaneously,
without careful, long-term planning. Mutual aid activities can be
focused just on helping others to obtain food and medicine, but
they can also be acts of resistance: they can be focused on
helping people specifically who are being marginalized or
oppressed by the government or by some or even a majority of
people in an area. This resource reviews many different examples
of successful mutual aid networks, including those that were done
in response to inequities and repression and those that were done
in defiance of the government or societal norms. It offers several
ideas for creating grassroots mutual aid networks as a way to
build solidarity with other Afghans, to survive the evils of the
Taliban, and to reduce the suffering of people.
An online community for current and former United Nations
Volunteer!
When I worked at UN Volunteers HQ in Bonn, Germany, directing the United Nations Online Volunteering service
and co-managing the UNITeS initiative,
I would regularly recommend to any employee within ear shot that UNV
needed to start an online community for former and/or
currently-serving UN Volunteers. I said it would be great for UN
Volunteers to share their experiences, and we could use their
positive feedback in a whole range of communications products. I
said it might help us identify problems we were overlooking. And I
warned that, if UNV didn't start such a group, officially, that
someone would start one that was unofficial, and over which UNV
would have no control. UNV never took action, and so unofficial
online communities for UN Volunteers popped up on LinkedIn, Reddit, and
probably some other places as well, though none ever enjoyed much
popularity. I'm pleased to note that the UNV subreddit,
which was abandoned some years ago, has been revived - by me. It is
not an official UNV outlet and has no formal affiliation with UNV.
But like the Peace Corps subreddit, because it's not official,
members can speak more freely. Note that I am enforcing
confidentiality and privacy rules. If you are a current or former
UNV, I hope you will join.
July 2026
Dos & Don'ts of Using Artificial
Intelligence at Nonprofits: the case for integrity,
authenticity & originality.
This is not a list of AI tools. There are plenty of people and
companies out there offering such lists. Instead, this is a list
of things nonprofits can and should do with AI tools, and a list
of things I feel strongly that nonprofits should NOT do. Before
your nonprofit starts considering any AI tool, you need to
consider the issues presented on this page. Otherwise, you won't
be making fully-informed decisions, and you may be replacing
authentic, human presentations at a time when authentic
human-to-human connections have never been needed more. My
resource is written in plain language to help give any nonprofit,
non-governmental organization (NGO), charity, community group or
people-caring government agency an understanding they can use to
ask more specific questions of those trying to push them into
using AI and to guide them in their use of AI no matter what tools
they choose.
I'm moderating these subreddits (Reddit online
communities) and would love your on-topic participation in any of
them. These are good ways to get a question you might have
crowdsourced - you will not only get my advice, but the advice of
others as well. These are also great avenues for you to promote a
resource or event (just please stay on-topic for the respective
subreddit). Click on the link to see a full description of the
online community:
June 2026
What are the consequences of allowing court-ordered volunteers
to make a donation instead of actually doing service? Is it
really a bad thing to do? I'm asking on my blog because I'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 volunteer, but I'd like to ask for feedback on one part
of the paper before it gets published. Please
read the blog and offer your thoughts in the comments there.
I'm the guest on a recent Third Sector UK podcast, talking
about how nonprofits, charities and NGOs can, are, and should be leverageing Reddit. The
podcast featuring me was published Friday, June 19, 2026. The
podcast is available on all the usual streaming services and via
the Third Sector UK web site.
I've revived another subreddit (Reddit community)! This
time, it's the r/ICT4D
subreddit. ICT4D stands for Information & Communication
Technologies (ICT) for Development. ICT4D refers to the
application of ICT to economic development, humanitarian aid &
development, & to causes that help empower a particular
demographic or all people to address challenges, have greater
access to education, protect their environment, etc. It is a term
popularized by various United Nations initiatives. And it's a practice I've been deeply involved
with since the 1990s.
Note that I have no intention of holding on to the subreddits
I manage indefinitely. I would be thrilled to turn all of
them over to groups of dedicated moderators who want to see them
flourish and stay on-topic. I keep claiming the ones that have
been abandoned that are focused on subjects in which I am
interested because I know that artificial intelligence bots are
scraping Reddit for content, and I hate the idea of TechBros
defining things like virtual volunteering, or best practices in
philanthropy. Participating in Reddit communities has also been a
great way for me to get noticed and hired for paid work. You can
see all of the subreddits I moderate at my Reddit user profile.
May & June blogs:
May 2026
Earlier this year, I decided to do a series of (mostly) new blogs
of advice about working in international development. This started
in April and continued through May:
I've written a lot of career advice-related blogs other than these
over the years, for people in careers with nonprofits or
international development agencies. All
of my blogs with career-related advice are here.
March 2026
Measure the ROI of your
nonprofit's volunteer engagement by grading each volunteer
activity.
Some organizations want to evaluate ROI (return on investment)
regarding volunteer engagement by comparing the cost to the
organization for a particular volunteer activity versus how much
that volunteer activity brings in in terms of financial donations.
I don't think that's a good evaluation method. Instead, here's a
method I think is a much better way to judge the ROI of volunteer
activities. You can do this evaluation by yourself, as the manager
of volunteers, or you can do this as a team exercise with a
variety of employees and lead volunteers.
Updated resource:
Ideas for Creating Roles
for Volunteers.
A lot of nonprofits, NGOs and other groups struggle with ideas for
engaging volunteers. I've got some substantial lists of ideas for
volunteer engagement - to support your outreach activities, to
support fundraising (beyond just asking them to ask their friends
to donate), to help with IT-related issues, and more. There are
also ideas here for groups of volunteers and, of course, online
volunteers. These roles are based on reality: I've either worked
with volunteers in these scenarios or been a volunteer in these
scenarios myself.
March & April blogs:
February 2026
Most of my web site is now mobile-ready, meaning that it will
render appropriately on smart phone screens. This has been a
long-time coming and is VERY overdue. But being a one-person shop,
and my paid work, has regularly interfered with finally getting it
done. Well, mostly done. If you haven't looked at most of the pages
on your nonprofit's web site, I highly recommend it. And if you
think most people are looking at your web site from a laptop or
desktop - oh, my, you are overdue for a reality check.
Among the sections I made easier to read on a phone are my blogs from Afghanistan.
For six months in 2007, from March through August 2007, I worked in
Kabul, Afghanistan, helping a national government ministry there
with various communications functions and to help build the capacity
of the Afghans I worked with to do their jobs, with a particular
emphasis on women government workers. I maintained a blog via a
private Yahoo Group for friends and family, and I cleaned up those
blogs later for public consumption, publishing them on my web site,
because I want to remember my time there, because I want to have a
record online of what life was like there for a foreign aid worker
in 2007 (in contrast to now), and because, for many years, I hoped
it would be helpful to other female aid and development workers that
might be going to Afghanistan or any post-conflict zone (I got
emails saying it did - thanks for writing). It's surreal to read
them now - we were all so full of hope... and not only does that
hope for Afghans feel gone, but the careers of many thousands of
people in the US in international humanitarian work have been
crushed.
With the demise of the volunteer subreddit (it's now just another
subreddit for people to ask where to volunteer and a few
organizations to recruit volunteers - there are more than 25 of
these already on Reddit), I had no where to share all of the
volunteer management and volunteerism info I used to share there. I
found that r/Volunteerism
had been abandoned seven years ago and decided to follow the
procedure to become its moderator. And so I am - and am posting
almost every day about volunteerism trends, legislation that can
affect volunteer engagement, resources regarding volunteer
management and more. Join me there.
Reddit users are far younger than the people who usually read
volunteerism-related info!
My Blogs in January & February 2026
January 2026
Happy New Year!
A new, free resource from me:
Design Checklist: What to
Review Before Publishing a Communications Product
Nonprofits produce communications products, online and in print,
from web pages to social media to brochures. Whether that product is
designed by a professional designer or is designed by someone who
has never had a design class, there are certain qualities those
products MUST have. And while there are a plethora of online
resources that provide excellent guidance on accessibility and
usability for online products, like web pages and apps, there is a
lack of guidance for how to make print products and graphics
associated with social media relevant / necessary, complete,
informative, legible for a majority of viewers / readers and
understandable for a majority of the target audience. This web page
provides simple, easy-to-understand guidance for both designers and
those who have the final say on something being published.
December 2025
Making a short video for your
nonprofit with just the tech you have.
Most nonprofits, no matter their size, no matter their focus, need
at least one short video that succinctly explains their programs and
their impact, or a video that shows how the organization engages
volunteers. They may also need a video that helps onboard program
participants or explains safety measures. Your small nonprofit with
just a handful of staff - maybe just a few employees, maybe just one
employee, maybe all volunteers (unpaid staff) - may think it cannot
make such a video, because it can't afford a professional
videographer. In fact, you can, and with just the tech assets you
have. This resource takes you step-by-step in how to identify the
hardware and software you have right now, via your smart phones and
laptops and operating systems, and how you can leverage that very
basic technology, as well as the photos you may already have on
hand, to create videos you need, from videos of clients explaining
the impact of your programs to short videos for Facebook and
Instagram reels, Tik Tok, and whatever else shows up as the fun new
social media. Note: this is the first tech-focused resources I've
created on my web site in YEARS. It's nice to get back to the
subject that inspired this web site back in 1996.
If you want to see the video I made for the Habitat affiliate I work
for now, the video I made on the cheap, it's linked off the
aforementioned page, but here's the
link to the video as well..
Creating Roles & Tasks
for Volunteers.
A key to retaining volunteers is having roles and tasks well-defined
and IN WRITING, so that expectations are clear. This is yet another
step to undertake BEFORE you start recruiting volunteers - and if
you don't, don't be surprised when you can't keep volunteers and
your volunteer engagement flounders. Added challenge: this is NOT
the primary responsibility of the manager of volunteers; a variety
of employees and leadership volunteers should be creating tasks.
This resource now not only has ideas for roles and tasks for
volunteers, but also the steps necessary to encourage (require?)
staff to do so.
My Blogs in October, November & December 2025
September 2025
Training Staff in Volunteer
Engagement (& the risks of not doing so)
Nonprofits, NGOs, government agencies, community groups and more
rarely make training employees and lead volunteers a priority when
it comes to volunteer engagement. There is an assumption that the
hard part of volunteer engagement is recruitment (it's not), and the
easy parts are creating volunteer roles, communicating expectations,
supervising and supporting volunteers (they aren't easy). There's an
assumption that anyone and everyone know inherently, without
training, how to do all that's needed to involve volunteers
successfully - or that you just simply point volunteers at a pile of
work and wish them well. But the reality is that there are specific
points about volunteer engagement and support your staff need
training on, and there are very real risks in not providing
this training at least yearly.
My Blogs in August & September 2025
July 2025
If you follow me on
the social media channel of your choice, you have been kept
up-to-date regularly about all that's been going on. But if not,
here's what you've missed:
- I attended my first Touratech Rally. Touratech is a company
that sells after-market items for motorcycles, for motorcylists
who like to travel and camp, especially long distances and in
other countries. I offered to present at the rally on how to
“do good” (volunteer) while on a motorcycle adventure
(based on my transire
benefaciendo "to travel along while doing good." advice
and was accepted!
- The United Nations General Assembly has proclaimed 2026
the International Year of Volunteers for Sustainable
Development. I've created a IYV2026 resource on my site
that notes the origins of the year, highlights the
accomplishments and resources of the first International Year of
Volunteers in 2001, and links to the growing number of official
resources, so your nonprofit, NGO, charity, or other community
organization leverage the year - something you should start to
do now, not in January. I hope my resource/portal can be used to
compare resources now and then, to see how far we've come and
how much more we need to do.
May, June & July Blogs:
April 2025
Me participating in a volunTOURism activity? Yes,
it’s
happening! I’m well known in many corners of the
Interwebs for speaking out against unethical
voluntourism
and vanity volunteering. But I'm less known for supporting ethical
voluntourism: where local people define the activity and lead it.
Where the focus is on educating the visitors so they can become
advocates back in their own countries. Where the activity actually
creates jobs for local people. Where short-term visitors are kept
away from vulnerable people, like orphans, and view wildlife from
afar, not interacting with them as though they are pets. Where
intercultural learning really does happen. In May 2025, if all goes
as planned, I’m going
to
Paraguay via Habitat for Humanity’s Global Village program. I
still have a bit more money
to
raise to support the local program in Paraguay (would love
your support). I'll write about my trip, of course - follow me on
the social media channel of your choice to stay up-to-date!
Other blogs in March & April 2025
February 2025
I want to highlight two recent blogs in particular, because I feel
it's so, so important right now. One is Your
Nonprofit
CAN Resist. Here's How. In On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons
from the Twentieth Century by Timothy Snyder, he warns “Do not obey
in advance”. Yet, I recently watched in horror as a consultant
encouraged nonprofits to alter their language, WITHOUT being asked
to, regarding diversity, equity & inclusion, to play it safe, to
not attract attention, to appease in advance, etc. This is a
slippery slope of nonprofits trying to appease and therefore going
against what should be their core values and contributing to the
success of people that want to wholly and ultimately undermine their
work. There’s a point where nonprofits need to stand up for their
core values despite the consequences. This may be it.
Another is Your
nonprofit
WILL be targeted with misinformation; prepare now.
Nonprofits, no matter how small, no matter how beloved, need to be
thinking about their strategy NOW for if and when they are targeted
by misinformation. It doesn’t matter what your nonprofit’s mission
or size: it can be a target for misinformation, on a local or even
national level. And given the current Presidential administration,
the power of misinformation should never be under-estimated.
Other blogs in January & February 2025
January 2025
Happy New Year!
For the first time in many months, I've created a new resource on my
web site for nonprofits: How Your Nonprofit Can Have a
Wikipedia Page (& if it can't, why not). Not every
nonprofit, NGO, charity, cause-based initaitive, etc., needs a
Wikipedia page. And not every nonprofit will qualify to have a
Wikipedia page. But if you feel your nonprofit deserves a Wikipedia
page, or you want certain Wikipedia pages to mention your nonprofit
or some prominent person associated with your nonprofit, this
resource is for you. As someone that's created more than a dozen
Wikipedia pages that have not been deleted, I know what I'm talking
about.
You may have already noticed some changes to my web site - that I'm
not updating certain sections anymore, like the section on addressing
misinformation in community and humanitarian initiatives, Or
the pages on database
management for nonprofits. A lot of information on those pages
is timeless - that's the primary reason I'm keeping them up even
though I'm no longer updating them, because I think they are still
helpful. Another is that I think they might be helpful to academics.
But I'm scaling back which sections of my web site I'm updating
because it's just to much effort, entirely unfunded, to keep them
up-to-date. I'm focusing more these days on my paid work and on my travels and
personal interests.
I have every intention of continuing to update most of my content
regarding communications
for nonprofits and volunteer engagement, as
well as my
advice for volunteers or people who want to volunteer.
And you can continue to find me almost daily on various
social media channels.
You can find me online on these social media channels (and I
update them far more than I do my web site):
December 2024
I have substantially updated some of the social media management
advice pages on my web site, as the social media landscape has
changed so drastically in the last year in particular:
Nonprofit
Organizations,
NGOs, Charities & Online Social Networking: Advice for
Getting Started or to Keep Going.
There are a lot of nonprofits using social media (Facebook,
Instagram, LinkedIn, the site formerly known as Twitter, BlueSky,
Mastodon) and online communities just like they use their web sites:
to post to press releases or event announcements, just as a one-way
form of communication. And if that's how your nonprofit, NGO or
government agency is using social media, then your organization is
missing out on most of the benefits you could gain from such, like
new donors and volunteers, returning donors and volunteers, greater
awareness in your community regarding your work, etc. Social media
platforms are all about engagement. This guide is meant to help you
know what you should be doing, at minimum, to manage your
organization's social media activities - even if you are an
all-volunteer organization with a tiny budget.
Daily,
Mandatory, Minimal Tasks for Nonprofits on Social Media.
There are certain tasks that a nonprofit, NGO, government agency
or other mission-based organization should be doing every day, or
most every day, on social media to make using such worthwhile: to
build trust in your work, to attract more volunteers and financial
donors, to keep your current volunteers and financial donors, to
attract media attention, and to ensure your organization is seen
as relevant and credible by elected officials and the general
public. That's what this page is for. I broke these must-do tasks
down into the most simple, basic list as possible - these tasks
take minutes, not hours, a day.
October, November & December 2024 blogs
August 2024
I did a webinar for the
Beyond Africa Podcast in August (on YouTube) about careers in
international development, including the United Nations. Here is a
link to the resources I referred to in
this webinar, as well as the slides - I compiled all of my
resources regarding how to work abroad or how to volunteer abroad
and put them all on this page for the webinar.
July, August & September 2024 blogs
July 2024
PRICE DROP on The
LAST Virtual
Volunteering
Guidebook paperback!!
I
have less than 10 paperback copies left and once these are gone,
they are GONE, and the paperback book will be available only at
Amazon for a higher price!
May 2024
Affirmation that this is web site is
created & managed by a human (and why you should
post a similar affirmation on your web site and create a public
statement on how you use artificial intelligence).
In June, I will be the keynote speaker at the Volunteer Engagement
Leadership Conference, hosted by Minnesota Alliance for
Volunteer Advancement (MAVA). This is my first in-person
speaking engagement since before the COVID pandemic! More about my
workshops and speeches and how you can book me.
April, May & June 2024 blogs
March 2024
My two part time jobs and several personal projects have resulted in
my not updating my online channels as much as I have in the past.
Some things I've been up to:
January, February & March 2024 blogs
Older blogs:
2023, 2022. 2021, 2020, 2019, 2018,
2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011 & 2010 Blogs
(index of titles, by reverse date, latest to oldest)
What was new prior to January 2024
(announcements made prior to the last entry on the "What's New"
page you are reading now.
Quick Links
my home page
my
consulting services & my workshops & presentations
my
credentials & expertise
my research projects
my book: The Last Virtual
Volunteering Guidebook
How
to Support This Web Site & My Work
contact
me or see my
schedule
Free Resources:
Community Outreach, With & Without Tech
My Resources: On Community Engagement,
Volunteering & Volunteerism
Free
Resources: Nonprofit,
NGO & other mission-based management resources
Free Resources: Technology
Tips for Non-Techies
Free Resources: Web
Development, Maintenance, Marketing for non-Web designers
Free Resources: For
people & groups that want to volunteer
linking
to or from my web site
Coyote Helps Foundation
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me, like me, put me in a circle, subscribe to my newsletter)
how
to support my work & this web site
To know when I have developed a new
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Disclaimer: No guarantee of accuracy or suitability is made
by the poster/distributor. This material is provided as is,
with no expressed or implied warranty.
See this web site's privacy
policy.
Permission is granted to copy, present and/or distribute a
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The art work and material on this
site was created and is copyrighted 1996-2026
by Jayne Cravens, all rights reserved
(unless noted otherwise, or the art comes from a link to
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