What WAS New with Jayne & Her Web
Site
December 2021
November & December blogs:
October 2021
Digital Dunkirk: online volunteers scramble
to help endangered Afghans get visas & out of
Afghanistan.
Starting in August, I became a part of a virtual volunteering
endeavor: “digital Dunkirk.” In the USA, online volunteers,
most working on their own, independent of any formal group,
have been trying to put together visa applications for Afghans
who helped the USA military, USA programs and USA citizens
working in Afghanistan, or who 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.
Volunteers in other countries also participated for Afghans
that helped their countries' militaries and INGOs. This blog
talks about what it's been like to be a part of this effort,
links to various groups involved, and tries to illustrate why
it's so wrong to value volunteer time in terms of monetary
value and why there's nothing impersonal about virtual
volunteering. Note: yes, I was supposed to be offline for most
of of September, but a family emergency kept me in my house -
and therefore able to participate in this endeavor from the
start.
Social
media use by humanitarian agencies: a literature review.
This is a list of research and policy guidelines regarding use
of social media by a variety of humanitarian agencies and
disaster-response agencies. This is by no means a
comprehensive list. Using the references in these papers will
lead to even more resources. Also included are resources
regarding the ethics of taking in humanitarian and development
situations, and the appropriateness of using such photos, with
an eye to protecting people's rights and dignity. It's hoped
that this can help nonprofits, NGOs, humanitarian agencies and
others to develop appropriate, ethical social media use
policies and procedures.
September & October blogs
September 2021
I am offline for most of September. I am not checking
email, social media, or any online spaces. If you are from the
press and on deadline and need to interview me, then
send me a DM via
Twitter. Friends and professional colleagues, if you
need to reach me urgently, text me (and you already have my
number).
July & August blogs
July 2021
The Difference in
Email, Social Media & Online Communities: A Graphic
Explanation.
It can be difficult for people to understand the difference in
email, in social media and in online communities, especially
since email can be used to create an online community, or
social media can be used to create an online community
(Facebook Groups, for instance). And they all are people
sending messages to people - so what, really, is the
difference? This is my attempt to graphically show the
difference, but I'll still have to use words to more fully
explain what I mean. All three of these avenues for online
communication can intersect. But one online avenue of online
communication may be a better avenue for a communication goal
than another - this resource examines that as well.
Through August, I'm teaching:
MGT
553
Using Technology to Build Community and Grow Your
Organization. The course is a part of the
college's
MS
in
Nonprofit Management. It examines online networking
tools that can be used to foster connectivity,
communication, and collaboration in order to strengthen
nonprofit and religious-based organizations. As someone that
has been online since the early 1990s and still believes
that online communities are the heart of the Internet, I
could not be more excited to teach this course! I'm using a
mix of books, online readings, podcasts and my own
audiovisual materials to explore how mission-based
initiatives can use online tools to create a sense of
community among donors, volunteers, clients, neighbors and
partners, and how to attract new people to be a part of
those communities. It’s a class about facilitation,
trust-building, outreach, and working with humans -
online.
I'm also still in very part-time role with TechSoup,
helping to manage the TechSoup
online community - introducing topics, answering
community questions, trying to attract new participants
and helping to move the community to a new platform in
June. Yes, joining and participating in the TechSoup
community is going to be one of the assignments for my
Gratz College students!
So, if you want to book
me for a training or consultation, know that my
schedule is very tight now and through September (when I
am on vacation)! And it's also that time of year when I
start getting contacted about leading workshops in the
Fall, so it's not too early to talk to me about my
schedule after this class is done.
June 2021
June Blogs
April 2021
The global COVID19 pandemic caused a drastic rise in the
number of programs launching new virtual volunteering programs
to engage their clients with volunteers who must stay home.
Since April 2020 or so, via Google Alerts, I have been
receiving
daily a long list of stories that
mention
virtual volunteering,
virtual volunteers,
online volunteers, and other phrases related to virtual
volunteering. I review them all, to see if programs are unique
in some way, are a good model for others, or are otherwise
worth knowing more about, and
compile
the
stories that are especially worthwhile at the
Virtual
Volunteering Wiki. There's no better way to understand
virtual volunteering in-depth than to see how other
organizations are doing it. If you are a journalist seeking
stories about virtual volunteering, you will find this list
very helpful.
February 2021
Many, many nonprofits have been online and talking
together since the mid 1990s. The soc.org.nonprofit
USENET newsgroup was created on 27 June 1994 and
bidirectionally gatewayed to the email mailing list
usnonprofit-l@rain.org (USNONPROFIT-L). It was a community
for the discussion of nonprofit management and program
issues - not just tech issues. USENET newsgroups were some
of the first online communities. Before the web, there was
USENET, and there were communities for (what seemed like)
every subject under the sun. There was nothing called
"spam", many groups were carefully moderated by humans to
insure no "flame wars" broke out and nothing off-topic got
posted. If you want to see how nonprofits were using the
Internet in the early days, and just how much their
questions have NOT changed from then until now, it's worth
revisiting this community. A terrific resource for academic
researchers.
Online community management as volunteer management
I rediscovered a workshop I did on how cultivating,
engaging and supporting an online community is a lot like
cultivating, engaging and supporting volunteers - in fact,
it's how I approach online community management. I've edited
the raw video I found down to about 37 minutes and
posted it to my
YouTube channel, and made it
available as a podcast as
well.
I don't have many podcasts or other audio-only files. The
ones I do have, at last, I have compiled them
here on my own web site.
All of these files can be listened to via my web site
(streaming) or you can download any of them and listen to
them offline, as you like.
January 2021
In December, 2020, the US Federal Communications Commission
(FCC) hosted an excellent webinar that presented a panel of
representatives from virtual volunteering initiatives -
nonprofits that have programs that involve online volunteers
primarily, rather than traditional programs that added an
online volunteering component. The webinar panelists talked
mostly about the specifics of how their initiatives involve
online volunteers (the exact roles that volunteers undertake),
how those volunteers are supported and how those volunteers
are central to their initiative's online program delivery and
mission. It's one of the best webinars on virtual volunteering
I've seen in a long, long time (and I'm a tough audience).
I've
summarized
the webinar here.
2020 was an incredible year for virtual volunteering, so
much so that it was nearly impossible to keep the
Virtual Volunteering Wiki
news section updated. I don't add absolutely every
announcement about a new virtual volunteering initiative -
there are, literally, thousands and thousands of organizations
involving online volunteers. Instead, I focus on especially
innovative programs, or programs that have a particularly
high-impact because of the contributions of online volunteers.
Note:
I have no funding at all to maintain the
Virtual Volunteering Wiki,
I would love to hand it over to a university-based program to
manage (as long as they would make the commitment to maintain
it for at least the next five years).
December 2020
Advice for
those assigning or supervising court-ordered community
service
Mandatory community service or a "Court Referral Program" is an
alternate sentencing option for Superior, Municipal, Traffic and
Juvenile Courts in the USA. Community service is considered
restitution by an offender through helping his or her community.
The
service means
actions,
activity,
engagement
-- doing something that needs to be done and that helps the
community or a cause. Too often, the goals of court-ordered
community service aren't happening, and instead, people who need
the service cannot find a place to do their service hours, and
nonprofits expected to host these volunteers cannot do so. This
new resource is for judges, probation officers, prosecutors,
defense attorneys, and other criminal justice practitioners that
are involved in assigning and supervising court-ordered
community service.
November & December 2020 Blogs
October 2020
Still trying to remind everyone that
virtual
volunteering is an established, credible practice, more than
35 years old, with a rich history and more organizations
than can be counted involving online volunteers this way. In
short,
Virtual Volunteering is NOT NEW. If
you are a volunteerism "expert" and you are calling it new - you
aren't a volunteerism "expert."
September & October 2020 Blogs
September 2020
New:
Resources
regarding online harassment, defamation & libel.
If you are a manager of social media, if you use online tools
at all as a part of your work, this is a must read. And if
your organization employs or engages a social media manager,
as a paid worker or as a volunteer, this is also a must read
(and a prompt for you to check on on that person's work - they
may be being harassed and be reluctant to tell you).
For a couple of decades now, volunteers have been getting
together for intense, one-day events, or events of just a few
days, to build web pages, to write code (hackathons,
apps4good, etc.), to edit Wikipedia pages, to transcribe
historical documents and more. These are gatherings of usually
of onsite volunteers, where everyone is in one location,
together, but even before the global pandemic, these
activities were involving or mobilizing remote volunteers -
online volunteers helping from wherever they were. This
resource has been revised to take into consideration more
virtual volunteering / remote volunteering, rather than
everyone being in the same room.
New:
The
Nonprofit & NGO Guide to Using Reddit
As of July 2019, Reddit ranked as the No. 5 most visited
website in the USA and No. 13 in the world. Reddit is a
community of communities, and its communities are called
subreddits. A subreddit can have a focus on a geographic area,
a book, a celebrity, a particular time in history, a specific
hobby - anything. Statistics suggest that 74% of Reddit users
are male. Users tend to be significantly younger than other
online communities like Facebook with less than 1% of users
being 65 or over. If you want to reach a younger demographic
regarding your volunteering opportunities, your awareness
messages, your data that shows your value to the community and
more, you need to build posts to Reddit into your marketing
strategy, no matter what your nonprofit's size or focus. This
resource tells you how to do it.
July & August 2020 Blogs
July 2020
I remain overwhelmed with inquiries and work regarding
virtual volunteering because of the Coronavirus disease 2019
(COVID-19) pandemic. But I've squeezed in time for these
activities:
This is a resource for people that want to volunteer, but
if you want to engage volunteers onsite, in-person, you should
review this and make sure you can meet all of these standards
that are being recommended.
May & June 2020
May & June 2020 Blogs
Virtual Volunteering is EXPLODING
The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by
severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2),
has caused a sudden, drastic rise in the number of
programs launching and expan virtual volunteering programs
to engage their clients with volunteers who must stay home.
Via Google Alerts, Since late March, I am daily receiving a
long list of new news stories, articles and blogs that mention
virtual volunteering, virtual volunteers, online volunteers,
online helpers and on and on. And Twitter is awash with new
initiatives being launched. Here is how I've been responding
since late March:
- I have prepared a resource to help nonprofits,
charities, government programs and other that involve
volunteers to quickly, immediately, launch online
roles and task for their volunteers, so they can
continue to be engaged and so the organization can continue
to meet its mission and, perhaps, even reach more people
with their services.
- I am trying to sound the alarm about safety in virtual volunteering:
I am seeing so MANY new activities launch without any
consideration for safety of volunteers and clients. It's
going to lead to problems, maybe even tragedy. Please,
please read this resource about virtual
volunteering safety. At least watch this short YouTube
video I made about safety in virtual volunteering,
just five minutes long,
- I also have a video about the very personal nature
of virtual volunteering (it's in response to
people saying that virtual volunteering lacks a "personal"
quality).
- Long before COVID19, I maintained the longest list
ANYWHERE of where and how
to find virtual volunteering opportunities - a
resource that targets volunteers, who want to keep helping
but aren't finding enough online volunteering to keep them
engaged.
- Per many volunteering abroad programs being postponed,
I've created a list of Ideas for High Impact
Virtual Volunteering Activities, 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. 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.
- I have a
series of videos about virtual volunteering,
made this year that, altogether, in less than an hour,
provide a
robust video introduction to virtual volunteering,
to rapidly introducing or expanding roles and activities for
online volunteers. These videos are freely available.
- Building a team
culture among remote workers
Coming together face-to-face, in the same room, does not
automatically create team cohesion and a strong sense of
team. Yet, many people think having online meetings
automatically means it’s difficult for staff to have a
strong sense of team. When thinking about creating a sense
of team online, try to get away from that aforementioned
belief. People feel a part of a team if they feel heard and
included, whether online or off. And they will attend
meetings and pay attention to those meetings if they feel
the meeting is relevant to their work - on or offline. This
resource offers ideas for live events, asynchronous events
& activities that can build a sense of team among remote
workers.
- I am trying to get the word out about The Last
Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. There are
so many, many programs launching online volunteer engagement
that NEED to read this, especially those that will be
expanding into virtual volunteering in connection with their
programs (serving seniors, serving children, etc.).
- I've created a list of Considerations for
ensuring safety in online service delivery by
volunteers, where volunteers are interacting with
members of the client and the public. Not all of
these suggestions are appropriate for every volunteer
engagement scheme. These suggestions are written
specifically for NON tech staff - instead, for the people
that manage client programs and manage volunteers, and the
people that manage IT staff, so they can come to this issue
from a human support, human management issue FIRST, rather
than a tech issue.
- I am regularly posting about new virtual volunteering
initiatives to the Reddit
Subreddit regarding volunteers.
- I am tweeting like crazy and responding to
tweets by people posting about virtual volunteering in some
way.
- And a reminder: Virtual Volunteering is NOT new - this
short YouTube video explains why its
inappropriate to call virtual volunteering new.
February & March 2020
Gone for Most of March
I will be
traveling in
Baja, Mexico for most of March and I will not be
answering email or any electronic messages in that time. I may
not even have access to my phone number. It's going to be
wonderful! If you want to reach me, it's best to write me
before March 1st or after March 30th. If you need to reach me
urgently,
DM me or MT me on Twitter and I'll get a
notice on my phone the next time I'm in Internet range.
Considerations When
Redesigning Your Web Site
When is it time to redesign your nonprofit, NGO, charity or
government program's web site? And what guidance should you
provide your designer? This page offers detailed information
that will get you a better web site - not just a different
one. As with most content on my web site, this is for small
programs, including all-volunteer organizations.
Recruiting
Volunteers To Serve in Difficult, Even Dangerous Roles
Some volunteering is perceived as difficult by potential
volunteers and the general public, because of the clients that
volunteers will work with or the kind of activities volunteers
must undertake. Examples: serving as a Big Brother/Big Sister,
mentoring a foster child, assisting adults with developmental
disabilities, volunteering in a shelter for women experiencing
domestic violence, or staffing a suicide hotline. Some
volunteering is perceived as difficult AND dangerous, such as
fire fighting or search and rescue or volunteering in prisons
or jails. Some volunteering is perceived as controversial,
such as providing water stations in the dessert for people
entering a country illegally and can die from dehydration, or
defending a women's health clinic patients from protesters.
Difficult, dangerous and/or controversial roles actually
appeal to many people who want to volunteer: they feel
strongly about the cause, or they want to do something
substantial and challenging. But other roles may seem too
intimidating to new recruits, like mentoring a young person
going through the foster care system, working with young
people in the juvenile justice system, working with people
with intellectual disabilities, or working with seniors. How
do you recruit for roles that might seem difficult, dangerous,
even controversial? How do you recruit for a subject area or
role that might provoke an initial reaction of fear among
potential volunteers?
This
resource can help.
Cultivating Online Civility
When I began writing about online culture, back in the late
1990s, misinformation was at a minimum and easy to identify, and
hateful trolls were oh-so-quickly banned from online
communities. Now, hate and misinformation rage online, and not
just among strangers - neighbors are raging against each other
on local online communities. Can online civility be restored? Is
it possible to challenge misinformation and destructive speech
in the strongest, most deliberate of terms without being accused
of hate speech yourself?
This
page links to efforts focused on online civility - most of
these efforts are not by me, BTW.
Available Again For Consulting or Employment!
Add Video-Editing to My Repertoire
In the last two years, I've produced a fair number of videos
in relation to my work: writing and producing simple
trainings, editing presentations, training and speeches by
others, and captioning all of these - nothing too
sophisticated, though I did produce a short program
highlights video with music. If you have simple video
editing or captioning needs, please contact me - I have very
affordable rates for this freelance work.
Have you benefited from any of the
resources on my web site? Would you like to support
me in continuing this work? I accept donations via PayPal or you
can make a regular monthly gift by
becoming a patron
(via patreon.com).
January & February 2020 Blogs
January 2020 News
How Volunteers Can
QUICKLY Help Your Program To Be More Accessible Online
Most nonprofits, NGOs, charities, schools and other
mission-based organizations will never be able to afford a
professional web designer, let alone one that can build a
fully accessible web site. Yet, these organizations most
certainly want people with disabilities to access their
online information, just like any other donor, client,
volunteer, participant, activist or other potential
supporter. This resource talks about how volunteers can help
any mission-based organization have a more accessible, more
welcoming web site.
UPDATED: One Day Activities for
IT Volunteers or Volunteering Using IT
This page provides advice on how to put
together a one-day event, or just-a-few-days-of activity,
for a group of tech volunteers onsite, working together,
for a nonprofit, non-governmental organization (NGO),
community-focused government program, school or other
mission-based organization - or association of such.
Special Offer Reminder
If your group (association, university
class, etc.) is in the USA and the group you may want to
receive one of my trainings
is an audience that will be at least one third African
American, Latino and/or American Indian/Native American,
I will give you a special, reduced rate for an online or
onsite training. This is per my commitment to helping
African American, Latino and American Indian/Native
American managers in nonprofits, civic organizations,
government programs and schools in particular to build
their capacities regarding communications and/or
volunteer engagement, and to cultivate far more trainers
and consultants from these communities. Please contact me for more
information about my special rates for your audience.
Here are some of my trainings on YouTube.
You can read more about my
consulting services and the list of University-Level Instruction -
Course Options that I am interested in
teaching, in-person or online.
December 2019 News
Updated: One Day Activities for
IT Volunteers or Volunteering Using IT
You can recruit a group of volunteers for
intense, one-day IT or web-related events, or events of
just a couple of days, to build web pages or improve your
web site's accessibility/usability, to write code for a
new app, to edit Wikipedia pages, to transcribe historical
documents and more. Because computers are involved, these
events are sometimes called hackathons, even if coding
isn't involved, though edit-a-thon or transcribe-a-thon
are also being used more and more. This updated resource
can help your nonprofit think about possibilities for such
one-day events that might benefit one of your programs or
the entire organization.
November & December 2019 Blogs
October 2019 News
Make
All Volunteering as Accessible as Possible: advantages for
your program & how to do it
If you want access to the greatest amount of
talent and resources that volunteers can possibly bring to
your program, you have to make all volunteering as
accessible as possible. That means looking for ways to
accommodate a myriad of people who have different abilities,
needs, personality types and work styles. As Susan Ellis
said, "Accessibility and diversity are about accommodating
everyone, not just people with disabilities or people who
are from minority groups. You want to make volunteering as
welcoming to the widest number of people possible." This resource can help.
Booked through February 2020
I'm working full-time again for a previous
client through February 2020 (and, per funding, much longer,
I hope!). That means this client is
currently my professional priority and I am very limited on
any consulting work I can do. I am still
available for trainings on a very
limited basis. Here
are the services I offer for nonprofits, NGOs,
charities, government agencies, universities or
for-profit companies wanting to improve CSR.
And my earlier offer stands: if your group (association, university class,
etc.) is in the USA and the group you may want to receive
one of my trainings is an
audience that will be at least one third African American,
Latino and/or American Indian/Native American, I will give
you a special, reduced rate for an online or onsite
training. This is per my commitment to helping African
American, Latino and American Indian/Native American
managers in nonprofits, civic organizations, government
programs and schools in particular to build their
capacities regarding communications and/or volunteer
engagement, and to cultivate far more trainers and
consultants from these communities. Please contact me for more
information about my special rates for your audience. Here
are some of my trainings on YouTube.
You can read more about my
consulting services and the list of University-Level Instruction -
Course Options that I am interested in
teaching, in-person or online.
September & October 2019 Blogs
August 2019 News
When "Just" a Volunteer is Better than a Paid Employee
I’m seeing more and more local organizations –
non-governmental organizations (NGOs), charities, schools – in
developing countries posting on sites like Reddit, asking
foreign volunteers to travel to their countries and volunteer.
These NGOs and others offer no information on whether or not its
legal for foreigners to come to the country and volunteer, no
information on what they will do to ensure volunteers will be
safe, no information on what screening they do of volunteers to
ensure safety of volunteers – they just post, “Hey, we help
orphans / wildlife / women, and you can come here and help us.”
Hosting International
Volunteers: A Where-To-Start Guide For Local Organizations
provides detailed suggestions for NGOs in developing countries
interested in gaining access to foreign volunteers.
A travelogue of my 4 day, 3 night, 580 mile
motorcycle tour of Deschutes National Forest, Newberry National
Volcanic Monument, Big Obsidion Flow, McKay Butte Fire, and Fort
Rock, Oregon.
May & June 2019 Blogs
April 2019 News
Special Offer
If your group (association, university
class, etc.) is in the USA and the group you may want to
receive one of my trainings
is an audience that will be at least one third African
American, Latino and/or American Indian/Native American, I
will give you a special, reduced rate for an online or
onsite training. This is per my commitment to helping
African American, Latino and American Indian/Native
American managers in nonprofits, civic organizations,
government programs and schools in particular to build
their capacities regarding communications and/or volunteer
engagement, and to cultivate far more trainers and
consultants from these communities. Please contact me for more
information about my special rates for your audience. Here
are some of my trainings on YouTube.
You can read more about my
consulting services and the list of University-Level Instruction -
Course Options that I am interested in
teaching, in-person or online.
March & April 2019 Blogs
February 2019 News
So many of us are reeling at the passing of
Susan J. Ellis in February. There is no person on Earth who has
done as much to promote volunteerism and the best practices for
engaging and support volunteers than Susan. Her contributions
cannot be overstated. This
is my tribute to my dear colleague, with links to several
others.
My advice for corporate social responsibility
(CSR) is different than most anything else you will read on the
Internet or read in a book. It's different from most anything
you will ever hear at a conference or workshop or consultation.
My advice is meant to be provocative and disruptive. I'm sharing
information and approaches and complaints that so many
nonprofit, NGO and public school staff want to say to
corporations and foundations, but they've been too afraid to. This new section of my web site
provides an index of resources meant to help for-profit
businesses, large and small, engage in CSR - financial
donations, in-kind donations, employee volunteering, etc. - in a
way that really does benefit the causes, communities or
nonprofits and goes beyond feel-good public relations.
How to volunteer outside, on public lands -
national parks, national forests, national monuments, state
parks, etc. - is a frequently asked question Quora and
Reddit. Also, people in the USA often will pay thousands of
dollars to travel overseas to undertake activities they could do
right here in the USA, for far less money and spending far less
travel time. This is my attempt to reach out to people who want
to volunteer outside in support of wildlife and/or our natural
spaces and provide them with the guidance they need. This is a
part of my growing set of resources
for volunteers.
I'm available for consulting or employment!
I'm available for conference training days, short-term or
long-term consulting, for short-term deployment abroad, or
even a part-time or full-time gig. You can
see some of my trainings on YouTube
and read
more about my
consulting services. I'd also love to teach. I've
developed a list of
University-Level
Instruction - Course Options that I am interested
in teaching, in-person or online. I have lectured as a guest
in several classes at various universities, and I am very
interested in creating and delivering undergraduate and
graduate-level courses as part of an MBA program, a nonprofit
management or public sector management degree, a social work
degree, a public health education degree, a marketing or
public relations degree, or international affairs, among
others. I've
detailed my research,
university teaching experience, teaching philosophy and
course development interests here.
January & February 2019 Blogs
January 2019 News
Diagnosing
the causes of volunteer recruitment problems
Efforts
to Educate the Public About Humanitarian Development
& the work of Nonprofits, NGOs, Charities, etc.
The audience for my web pages and blogs are, primarily,
staff at mission-based organizations: nonprofits,
non-governmental organizations (NGOs), charities, government
agencies, schools and other public sector organizations, as
well as their partners - corporations, universities, etc. I
also sometimes write material for volunteers themselves - or
people who want to be such. Sometimes, however, I write
material to try to educate the public about humanitarian and
development work and about the work, culture, ethics and
limitations of nonprofits, non-governmental organizations
(NGOs), charities and other mission-based organizations.
Here are some of those blogs focused on the general public.
Join me on Quora and Reddit in 2019
I am the most-viewed contributor to several
Quora groups, including those on volunteerism, volunteering, nonprofit organizations, non-governmental organizations, non-profit fundraising, community service, and more, I'm also one of the moderators of
the subReddit on volunteering. I'm all alone
on these forums in trying to answer questions, for the most part
- and I don't want to be. Please join me on these groups and
help me educate people about the realities of volunteer support,
nonprofit management and ethics, and voluntourism!
December 2018 News
The majority of my work is focused on
helping professionals that work at nonprofits,
non-governmental organizations, government agencies and
other mission-based programs. That includes helping them to
work with volunteers. However, I have a section of my web
site focused on helping volunteers themselves, based on the
questions I read on Quora, Reddit and other sites from
people that want to volunteer. This new resource on that
section of my web site is designed to help you have
realistic expectations for volunteering and to avoid an
experience that will make you feel worse instead of better.
November & December 2018 Blogs
November 2018 News
I dream of hostels
October 2018 News
Folklore,
Rumors, Urban Myths & Organized
Misinformation Campaigns
Interfering with Development & Aid/Relief
Efforts, & Government Initiatives
(& how these are overcome)
Folklore, rumors (or rumours) and urban myths /
urban legends, as well as organized misinformation
campaigns and "fake news", often interfere with
aid, relief and development activities, and
government initiatives, including public health
initiatives -- even bringing such to a grinding
halt. They create ongoing misunderstandings among
communities and cultures, prevent people from
seeking help, encourage people to engage in
unhealthy and even dangerous practices, cultivate
mistrust of people and institutions, have even
lead to mobs of people attacking someone or others
for no reason other than something they heard from
a friend of a friend of a friend, motivated
legislators to introduce laws to address something
that doesn't exist, and influenced elections.
Since 2004, I have been gathering and sharing both
examples of this phenomena, and recommendations on
preventing folklore, rumors and urban myths from
interfering with development and aid/relief
efforts and government initiatives. I do this
entirely on my own, as a volunteer, with no
funding from anyone. I am pleased to have recently
updated these resources with new resources.
September & October 2018 Blogs
September 2018 News
How to Recruit
Volunteers in Forest Grove & Cornelius,
Oregon -
for nonprofit organizations, government
programs, schools & communities of faith
A few nonprofits in my area have said
that they struggle with finding enough
volunteers. I made this straight-forward
resource for this specific geographic area,
both to help these nonprofits and to offer
an example for other communities in how to
put together such a customized guide for
themselves.
For two weeks in late July (and two days in
August), I traveled through Nevada via motorcycle.
July & August 2018 Blogs
June 2018 News
In 1994, perhaps earlier, an initiative called
Smart Valley was
launched in California. Smart Valley was a 501(c)(6)
nonprofit organization focused on creating an
"information infrastructure" in Silicon Valley,
California - Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale,
Cupertino, San José, Santa Clara and the surrounding
area, creating projects to enhance the quality of
life in Silicon Valley. Smart Valley's projected
included SmartSchools NetDay and PC Day, Smart
Voter, to help people learn about upcoming
elections, Connect 96: The Global Summit on Building
Electronic Communities, the Public Access Network
(PAN), a Telecommuting Initiative, and the Smart
Valley Webmasters Group. Smart Valley was also
affiliated with the nonprofit organization Plugged
In, one of the first digital divide efforts, working
to bring "the tremendous technological resources
available in the Silicon Valley to youth in
low-income communities" in East Palo Alto and
SV-PAL, the Silicon Valley Public Access Link.
My dear colleague
Erin Barnhart
(Effective Altruism) is organizing summer webinars
on selected Fridays regarding
expanding skills
in volunteer engagement, some featuring my
other dear colleague,
Liza
Dyer and some featuring me! These webinars are
intense, fun, interactive, an hour long (never
more),
affordable and each focused on ONE
aspect of effective volunteer engagement. We
designed these topics based on what we are all
hearing from people working with volunteers, in any
capacity, as well as our own experiences as managers
of volunteers and as volunteers ourselves.
Here's
more info about the webinars.
May & June 2018 Blogs
May 2018 News
The Virtual Volunteering Wiki was developed in
association with
The Last Virtual
Volunteering Guidebook. The wiki has
been hosted at virtualvolunteering.wikispaces.com- its
home since 2013. Unfortunately, as of September 2018,
Wikispaces will be discontinued by its parent company.
It's a devastating blow, as
The
Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook
has the Wikispaces address in it - and that can never
be changed - and Susan Ellis and I have worked so hard
to get the Wikispaces address shared, far and wide.
The Virtual Volunteering Wiki has been relocated here,
at
www.coyotecommunications.com/vvwiki/.
Although it will not longer be, officially, a wiki, it
will maintain its neutral tone and will welcome
contributions from
anyone who has information
about virtual volunteering. Some of the most popular
pages on the wiki:
March update
January & February 2018 blogs
January 2018 updates
I've created two new
resources to help organizations use social
media:
- For
Schools: You Should Be Using Social Media.
Here's How.
There are a lot of web sites saying what the
benefits are for schools to use social media. But
there's few that give specifics on what a public
school should be sharing via Facebook, Twitter,
etc. This advice talks not only about exactly what
your school should be posting to social media, but
the consequences of not doing so, as well how to
handle tough questions and criticism. It also
links to legal advice.
- For
Local City & County Governments: You
Should Be Using Social Media. Here's How.
To not be using social media to
deliver information and to engage means you are
denying critical information to much of your
community and promoting an image of secrecy and
lack of transparency. In fact, the lack of use
of social media can be seen as your city council
or county government trying to hide something,
and even lead to rumors that are much harder to
dispel than they would have been to prevent.
This advice talks not only about exactly what
your school should be posting to social media,
but also how to handle tough questions and
criticism.
December 2017 updates
I was honored to guest blog the Energize, Inc. Hot
Topic for December. The topic I chose to write about: "Letting Fear
Prevent Volunteer Involvement is Too Risky." If
you can't tell from the title, it's about how the risks
around involving volunteers often aren't as great as NOT
involving them - to NOT involve volunteers puts your
organization at risks that I consider far greater than by
involving them. There is a podcast
version, in case you would prefer to hear me
blabble.
I also have a new resource on my web site: Getting More Viewers for
Your Organization's Online Videos. Videos are
a great way to represent your organization's work, to show
you make a difference, to promote a message or action that
relates to your mission, etc. But just uploading a video
isn't enough to attract an audience. This new page on my
site offers specific steps that will get more views for
your organization's videos on YouTube. Note that many of
these tasks would be great for an online volunteer to
undertake, with guidance from an appropriate staff member
November 2017 updates
Since June, I've been working with Knowbility,
a nonprofit based in Austin, Texas with whom I’ve been
working with on and off since its founding in 1998. I'm
recruiting nonprofits, non-governmental organizations
(NGOs), charities, schools and others to be able to
participate in OpenAIR
2018, so that those participating
organizations can welcome more clients, more donors, more
volunteers and more supporters via their web sites. This
Accessibility Internet Rally (AIR) by Knowbility was a
hackathon before there was the word hackathon
- it's been going on since 1998. See the event web site OpenAIR 2018 event web
site. for more information and how your
nonprofit, NGO or charity can participate. This means,
however, that I’m not available for any consulting gigs,
other than one-off trainings, until after May 2018. So if
you are thinking of me as a consultant in 2018, contact me
ASAP, as my schedule fills up quickly! More about my consulting services.
Check
out this photo of me and some of my fabulous Knowbility
co-workers!
Also, check out my new five minute video
pitching participation in OpenAIR 2018
to nonprofits, NGOs, charities and artists. Give me five
minutes of your time, watch the video, and PLEASE consider
participating!
November & December 2017 blogs
October 2017 updates
I had the honor of being
profiled
by Open University in the United Kingdom, where I
received my Master's Degree. I also wrote a followup
regarding
whether
or not pursuing a graduate degree at OU helped my
career (spoiler alert:
it did).
October 2017 blogs
September 2017 updates
I am thrilled to announce that I am working with
Knowbility,
a nonprofit based in Austin, Texas with whom I’ve been
working with on and off since its founding in 1998. And
even better: what I’m doing will help nonprofits,
non-governmental organizations (NGOs), charities,
schools and others to be able to welcome more clients,
more donors, more volunteers and more supporters via
their web sites. I am the Knowbility liaison for
nonprofits, NGOs, schools and other mission-based
organizations that will participate in
OpenAIR 2018.
This is my very favorite group volunteering gig and
hackathon anywhere in the world. This
Accessibility Internet Rally (AIR) by Knowbility was a
hackathon before there was the word
hackathon.
It was an onsite, local event for many years, and is now
an
international virtual volunteering event! See the
event web site
OpenAIR 2018 event
web site. for more information and how
your nonprofit, NGO or charity can participate. This
means, however, that I’m not available for any
consulting gigs until after February 2018. So if you are
thinking of me as a consultant for next year, contact me
ASAP, as my schedule fills up quickly!
More about my consulting
services.
Also, I've created a web page that answers the question,
"
How did you get a job with the
UN?!" Because I am exhausted from answering that
question on various online discussion groups.
September 2017 blogs
August 2017 updates
Latest Resource: Civil
Society Capacity Building: Why?
My favorite kind of professional work is building the
capacities of civil society organizations, especially
in transitional and developing countries, to
communicate, to change minds and to engage a variety
of people and communities, through communications,
dialogue and volunteering. But the term civil
society isn't used in USA as commonly as it is
elsewhere, and many don’t understand exactly what I
mean when I talk about my favorite type of work. This
new resource explores exactly what is meant by the
phrase civil society capacity building.
August 2017 blogs
July 2017 blogs
June 2017 blogs
in June, all blogs were focused on communications and
community engagement in some way
May 2017 blogs
in May, all blogs were focused on volunteerism in
some way
April 2017 blogs
March 2017 blogs
January & February 2017 blogs
December 2016
United
Nations Tech4Good / ICT4D Initiatives, a
list of the various United Nations initiatives that have
been launched since 2000 to promote the use of
computers, feature phones, smart phones and various
networked devices in development and humanitarian
activities, to promote digital literacy and equitable
access to the "information society," and to bridge the
digital divide. My goal in creating this page is to help
researchers, as well as to remind current UN initiatives
that much work regarding ICT4D has been done by various
UN employees, consultants and volunteers for more than
15 years (and perhaps longer?).
Updated:
Preventing
Folklore, Rumors (or Rumours), Urban Myths &
Organized Misinformation Campaigns From Interfering
with Development & Aid/Relief Efforts &
Government Initiatives
Folklore, rumors and urban myths / legends have
interfered with humanitarian aid activities and
government initiatives, including public health
programs, even bringing such to a grinding halt. They
create ongoing misunderstandings and mistrust, prevent
people from seeking help, encourage people to engage in
unhealthy and even dangerous practices, and have even
lead to mobs of people attacking someone or others
because of something they heard from a friend of a
friend of a friend. With social media like Twitter and
Facebook, as well as simple text messaging among cell
phones, spreading misinformation is easier than ever.
Since 2004, I have been gathering and sharing both
examples of
this phenomena, and recommendations on
preventing
folklore, rumors and urban myths from interfering with
development and aid/relief efforts and government
initiatives. I've updated this information with
new information per the organized misinformation
campaigns targeting Ukraine and the elections in the
USA. Now, with fake news sites set up specifically to
mislead people, as well as crowdsourced efforts by
professional online provocateurs and automated troll
bots pumping out thousands of comments, countering
misinformation efforts has to be a priority for aid and
development organizations, as well as government
agencies.
What Was NetAid?
A history of the NetAid initiative, part of which became
the UN's Online Volunteering service.
November
& December blogs 2016
My
top blogs of 2016
Volunteers
Along Immigrant &
Refugee Journey
Folklore,
Rumors & Misinformation
Campaigns Interfering with
Humanitarian Efforts &
Government Initiatives
Did
Facebook hurt the Syrian
Revolution?
20
Years Ago: The Virtual
Volunteering Project
How
did volunteers impact the
2016 USA Presidential
election?
fake
news, folklore &
friendships
Nonprofits
& NGOs: you MUST give
people a way to donate
online
How
Will Trump Presidency Affect
Humanitarian Aid &
Development?
2017
National Summit on Volunteer
Engagement Leadership
To
Do List the Day After the
USA election
Why
I still don’t like
“International Volunteer
Manager’s Day”
When
“participatory” &
“consultation” are just
words
Gossip’s
toll in your workplace
Research
Explaining How Websites
Encourage Volunteering &
Philanthropy
papers
on cyberactivism by women in
Iran & Azerbaijan
Some
Truths About Volunteer
Retention
Volunteering
& social cohesion in a
post Brexit world
Song
of frustration re:
volunteering
November 2016
Tech
Volunteer Groups / ICT4D
Volunteers
A list of tech volunteering
initiatives, some defunct,
some still going strong, that
recruit tech experts to
volunteer their time support
either local nonprofit
organizations or NGOs in
developing countries regarding
computer hardware, software
and Internet tech-related
tasks.
Updated: PDX-area
Organizations Involved in
Overseas Development / Aid /
Relief & Volunteer
Efforts Or Educating People
Re: Other Countries/Global
Affairs
Some are nonprofits, some are
university programs, and some
are for-profit companies /
businesses. Some are focused
exclusively on aid and
development, some are focused
only partially on such. There
are more than 35 such
organizations here, mostly in
Portland, but a few in other
places in Oregon.
Al
Gore Campaign Pioneered
Virtual Volunteering
Back in 2000, when Al Gore ran
for president, his campaign
championed virtual
volunteering by recruiting
online volunteers to help
online with his election
efforts. I was getting ready
to leave the Virtual
Volunteering Project
then, to work for the UN in
Germany, and was not able to
document these pioneering
efforts at the time. I
remembered this effort
recently, per the current (and
seemingly never-ending)
Presidential campaign in the
USA, and went digging on
archive.org to find the
original materials from that
campaign regarding this work
with online volunteers. He
even had a
site for users of personal
digital assistants (PDAs),
the precursor to the smart
phone. ( Somewhere on the site
is also a mention of either
online volunteering or virtual
volunteering, but I can't find
it anymore...
October 2016
University-Level Instruction -
Course Options
I have lectured as a guest in several classes at various
universities, and I am very interested in creating and
delivering undergraduate and graduate-level courses as
part of an MBA program, a nonprofit management or public
sector management degree, a social work degree, a public
health education degree, a marketing or public relations
degree, or international affairs, among others. I've
detailed my research, university
teaching experience, teaching philosophy and course
development interests here.
Research needs re: virtual volunteering
What would NGOs and nonprofits love to know about virtual
volunteering? What would be great, even ground-breaking
research regarding virtual volunteering? Here are some
digital volunteering research topics in dire need of
exploration (and that really need to be undertaken by
people that are NOT me).
September & October 2016 blog entries
August 2016
Lessons from
onlinevolunteering.org
Some key learnings from directing the UN's Online
Volunteering service from February 2001 to February 2005,
including support materials for those using the service to
host online volunteers.
Updated:
Where to Find Online Volunteering
My work is focused mostly on nonprofits, government
agencies and other mission-based programs, but a lot of
individuals that want to volunteer contact me as well,
often about where to find online volunteering
opportunities. I created
this
page for anyone looking to quickly get into virtual
volunteering, whether it's a long-term,
high-responsibility commitment or a micro task.
August
2016 blog entries
The awesome power of tweet tags
Research needs re: virtual
volunteering
Virtual volunteering: it’s
oh-so-personal
assigning law breakers to community
service: worthwhile?
“If
no one is complaining, we don’t have to change how
we do things”
Proud
to fool courts re: community service
Kentucky
politicians think volunteers are free
Volunteer
management is community engagement
July 2016
blog entries
women-only
hours at community Internet centers? why?
humanitarian
stories & photos – use with caution
Wikipedia
needs improvement re: volunteerism-related topics
Tourism,
a catalyst for peace and development
Safety
in Virtual Volunteering
Why
Do So Few Women Edit Wikipedia? Insights into
virtual volunteering
Police:
use social media to invite community participation,
show compassion
Is
it really *impossible* to break into humanitarian
work?
Universal
accessibility in tourism! World Tourism Day theme
2016
Selling
community service leads to arrest, conviction
June
2016 blog entries
May 2016
I blog often about communications - crafting welcoming
messages, crisis responses, managing online conflict,
encouraging reconciliation, etc. I decided to create an
index of those blogs here. For more
than two months, every Tuesday
night, and sometimes on
Saturdays, I attended the
Washington County Sheriff's
Department's citizens academy.
The academy ended in May. As a
consultant and researcher
regarding volunteer engagement
and communications, I’m
talking to organizations about
community engagement, and I
wanted to see a
non-volunteering community
engagement scheme first hand,
to see how it works and to
think about ways the idea
might be exported to other,
non-law enforcement agencies
and even overseas. Also, I’m a
human rights advocate, and
when I look at what happened
in Ferguson, Missouri in
particular, I am outraged. So
I wanted to see what the
attitude of my local sheriff's
department is. I
blogged halfway through the
experience. And now have
a lovely photo of me and
Sheriff Pat Garrett (no,
really, that's his name).
May 2016 blog
entries
April 2016
Due to a lot of retweets and mentions, I've been getting a
lot of visitors to my blog: Vanity
Volunteering: all about the volunteer.
Have a read and leave a comment!
April 2016 blogs:
(in published date reverse order)
March 2016
A visit to Havana, Cuba
I went to Havana, Cuba at the end of February. It’s been a
life-long dream. Per my research before and during the trip,
I've written published two blogs in March, one on Internet
access / digital literacy in Havana, and one on Tweeters
re: Cuba development & ICT4D.
March 2016
blogs: (in published date
reverse order)
January
& February 2016
Me in
South Carolina
Jan. 27 - 29
I'll be the
keynote
speaker and
presenting
workshops at
the South
Carolina
Association
for Volunteer
Administration
(SCAVA) annual
conference,
January 27-29,
2016 in North
Myrtle Beach!
You do not
have to be a
member of
SCAVA to
attend. Join me! And you can book me for
your
conference or
workshop!
Me in
Vancouver,
Washington
Feb. 11
I'll be the
keynote
speaker at the
Nonprofit
Network
Southwest
Washington
/ Directors of
Volunteer
Programs
Association
(DVPA)
conference on
Thurs.,
February 11 in
Vancouver,
Washington
(state). And
you can book me for
your
conference or
workshop!
January
& February
2016 blogs:
(in published date
reverse order)
What was new
prior to 2016 (since 2005)
Quick Links
my home
page
my
consulting services & my workshops
& presentations
my
credentials & expertise
Affirmation that this web site is
created & managed by a human.
My book: The
Last Virtual
Volunteering Guidebook
contact me
or see my
schedule
Free Resources: Community Outreach, With & Without Tech
Free Resources: On
Community Engagement, Volunteering & Volunteerism
Free Resources: Technology
Tips for Non-Techies
Free Resources:
Nonprofit, NGO & other mission-based management resources
Free Resources: Web
Development, Maintenance, Marketing for non-Web designers
Free Resources: Corporate
philanthropy / social responsibility programs
Free Resources: For people
& groups that want to volunteer
linking to
or from my web site
The
Coyote Helps Foundation
me on
social media (follow me, like me, put me in a circle,
subscribe to my newsletter)
how to
support my work
To know when I have developed a new
resource related to the above subjects, found a great
resource by someone else, published
a
new blog,
uploaded a new
video,
or to when & where I'm training or presenting, use any
of the following social media apps to follow me on any of
these social media platforms:
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the poster/distributor of the materials on this web site.
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See my web site's privacy
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