Virtual Volunteering Wiki
History of Virtual Volunteering

Virtual volunteering is not a new concept - the practice has been widespread for many years.

Virtual volunteering has been going on probably as long as there has been an Internet (which itself is more than 35 years old [1] ). The first instance of organized virtual volunteering is probably Project Gutenberg[2] , a volunteer effort that began in 1971 to digitize, archive and distribute written cultural works. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books, such as works by Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Mark Twain. These works continue to be typed in and proofread by online volunteers[3] .

Tim Berners-Lee, who is credited as the inventor of the World Wide Web, made an online appearance at the  United Nations Open Day in Geneva in 2001, during which he noted the role online volunteers had played in his development of the Web a decade earlier[4] .

In 1995, a then-new nonprofit organization called Impact Online, based in Palo Alto, California, began promoting the idea of virtual volunteering[5] , a phrase that was probably first used by one of Impact Online's co-founders, Steve Glikbarg. In 1996, Impact Online received a grant from the James Irvine Foundation [6] to launch an initiative to research the practice of virtual volunteering and to promote the practice to nonprofit organizations in the United States. This new initiative was dubbed the Virtual Volunteering Project, and the Web site was launched in early 1997[7] . After one year, the Virtual Volunteering Project moved to the Charles A. Dana Center at The University of Texas at Austin, and Impact Online became  VolunteerMatch.

Meanwhile The New York Times, on 13 May 1996, published Taking in the Sites; Now, It's Philanthropy Surfing on the Internet, an article about the proliferation of web sites that facilitated online giving or online volunteering in some way. The article included this part: "One nonprofit group, Impact Online, was created to help charities use the Web. The group, in Palo Alto, Calif., uses its site to match what it calls 'virtual volunteers' with organizations that need them, and has begun a data base of group logos and missions." This might be the first use of the term virtual volunteers in a newspaper, but any article about Project Gutenberg in the 1990s would be about virtual volunteering, even if it doesn't use the term. 

The first two years of the Virtual Volunteering Project were spent reviewing and adapting telecommuting manuals and existing volunteer management recommendations with regard to virtual volunteering, as well as identifying organizations that were involving online volunteers. By April 1999, almost 100 organizations had been identified by the Project as involving online volunteers and were listed on the Project's Web site. By the end of 1999, as the numbers grew exponentially, the Project stopped listing every organization involving online volunteers and instead identified only those organizations with large or unique online volunteering programs. The Project used its research about these organizations to continually create and refine guidelines for engaging and supporting online volunteers. The various versions of the Virtual Volunteering Project web site that listed these online volunteering projects can be viewed by searching www.serviceleader.org at archive.org before 2000.

Until January 2001, the Virtual Volunteering Project listed all telementoring, e-mentoring and teletutoring programs in the USA (in which online volunteers mentored or tutored others, through a nonprofit organization or school). At that time, 40 were identified. This was the first and only effort to list all such programs, and to track what made them successful. The archived version of the 2001 list can be found at http://www.coyotecommunications.com/vv/direct/telem.shtml

The original Virtual Volunteering Guidebook from 2000 is still available for free online from Energize, Inc. Not entirely out-of-date, still has a lot of valuable information, and if you honestly cannot afford the latest, completely revised and greatly expanded version, it's better than nothing. But you will be missing out on a LOT by using this instead of the greatly revised version. 

An archived version of the Virtual Volunteering Project, as it was when Jayne left and it went on hiatus in January 2001.

TIMELINE

1971:
Project Gutenberg , a volunteer effort to digitize, archive and distribute online written cultural works in the public domaimn, begins. It is probably the first instance of organized virtual volunteering.

1995
A new nonprofit organization called Impact Online, based in Palo Alto, California, begins promoting the idea of virtual volunteering , a phrase that was probably first used by one of Impact Online's co-founders, Steve Glikbarg. Impact Online later became VolunteerMatch.

1996-2001
Impact Online receives a grant from the James Irvine 6Foundation to launch an initiative to research the practice of virtual volunteering and to promote the practice to nonprofit organizations in the United States. This new initiative was dubbed the Virtual Volunteering Project, and the Web site was launched in early 1997. After one year, the Virtual Volunteering Project moved to the Charles A. Dana Center at The University of Texas at Austin, and Impact Online became VolunteerMatch. The Project also did a few small, informal studies regarding online volunteering among different services and their users in 1997, 1998 & 1999. You can view an archived version of the site, on its end date in 2001, here. You can view archived versions of the site from earlier years by searching for www.serviceleader.org at the Internet Wayback Machine. You can view the very earliest version of the site, from 1997, by searching for www.impactonline.org/vv/ at at the Internet Wayback Machine.

1999
The NetAid web site is launched in September, with President Bill Clinton, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and Nelson Mandela, South Africa's former President, logging on. NetAid, a United Nations initiative, was globally launched with concerts on October 9, 1999 at Wembley Stadium in London, Giants Stadium in New Jersey and the Palais des Nations in Geneva and included a component for virtual volunteering, which later became the UN's Online Volunteering service.

2000
Susan J. Ellis and Jayne Cravens publish The Virtual Volunteering Guidebook free online, using text from the Virtual Volunteering Project web site and Susan's additions.

2000
NetAid, a joint online initiative by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Cisco Systems, launches its fuller online volunteering matching service, in partnership with and largely managed by the United Nations Volunteers (UNV) programme based on Germany. The service encouraged and allowed NGOs and UN-affiliated projects serving the developing world to recruit and involve online volunteers (NetAid 2000[9] ). UNV, a part of UNDP, took over the service entirely in 2004, relaunching it at www.onlinevolunteering.org . 

2001
The United Nations Information Technology Service (UNITeS) publishes a paper on "Handheld computer technologies in community service/volunteering/advocacy," providing the earliest examples of volunteers/citizens/grass roots advocates using handheld computer/personal digital assistants (PDAs) or phone devices - what would later be called Smart Phones - as part of community service/volunteering/advocacy, or examples that could be applied to volunteer settings.

As the millennium begins, virtual volunteering is an established, widespread practice worldwide.

EUROPE

In 2013, Jayne Cravens researched virtual volunteering in the EU for the the European Commission/Joint Research Centre/Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (http://ict4empl.wikispaces.com). Her final paper included the following information about the early days of virtual volunteering in Europe:

An archived version of the Virtual Volunteering Project web page from December 2000 listing organisations outside the U.S.A. engaging online volunteers[8] lists five organisations in Europe that contributed information to the project regarding their involvement of online volunteers... The project did not record how many online volunteers from Europe these initiatives were involving. Below are excerpts from that web page. Note that the web pages referenced below may no longer function, and that these organisations may no longer involve online volunteers:

Barcelona 2004 Universal Forum of Cultures, http://www.barcelona2004.org/html/indexfuc_e.html (Spain)
“...has online volunteers performing research to find online discussion groups for topics relating to the forum's mission (peace, sustainability and cultural diversity), disseminating information about the Forum (online 'ambassadors'), and developing and maintaining the Virtual Forum's online activities.” This web site was launched four years before the forum actually took place.

Samaritans and Befrienders International, http://www.befrienders.org/ (U.K.)
“Trained 'listening' volunteers who provide support via phone to people who are suicidal or despairing, and who work to increase public awareness of issues around suicide and depression. Some of the centres also provide support via e-mail.”

German Charities Institute, http://www.dsk.de
“This organization was one of the first to provide information to the Virtual Volunteering
Project about its involvement of online volunteers.” The specifics of what information this organisation provided are not listed on the project's web site.

YouthOrg UK, http://www.youth.org.uk, (U.K.)
“YouthOrg UK's virtual community and web site are entirely managed, developed and published by volunteers. Online volunteers also maintain a Web-based bulletin board, answer technical inquiries and design graphics.

In Spain,

Discussions regarding working with remote volunteers “virtually” occurred on UKVPMs, an online discussion group on YahooGroups for managers of volunteers at charities in the U.K., as early as March 2002[10] , though it is probable that such discussions began earlier, as the group began in 1999, but the YahooGroups archive does not go back farther than 2002.

By the end of 2003, OneWorld, a charity based in the U.K., had extensive experience involving and supporting remote volunteers who served as onsite editors and reporters for the organisation in their respective countries, a fact highlighted by UNV at the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) in Geneva, Switzerland, organised by International Telecommunication Union.

Virtual Volunteering Wiki Footer

Detailed information about how to use the Internet to support and involve volunteers - virtual volunteering - can be found in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. This wiki is a supplement to the book - but no substitution for it. 

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Want to know more about using the Internet to engage and support volunteers? See:


The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook
by Jayne Cravens and Susan J. Ellis


The most comprehensive guide available on virtual volunteering, including online mentoring, micro-volunteeirng, virtual teams, high-responsibility roles, crowd sourcing to benefit nonprofits and other mission-based organizations, and much more.


Published January 2014, based on more than 30 years of research.  Available as both a print book and an ebook.