The Extraordinaries

Volunteerism: Is a spade a "Spade?"

Thanks to Peggy Hoffman for starting off the conversation about the nomenclature of volunteerism. See post here. I've been thinking about this issue for quite some time. The issue is this:

It seems that we've narrowly defined what is and what is not "Volunteerism." And that we may benefit from broading the definition to include other forms of non-market work by citizens.

I actually wrote a bit about this issue in my recent post about Information Age Volunteerism for TechPresident, but cut it, thinking it was a little off focus for the article. Here's the section before the edit:

Sometimes I wish that Wikipedia would follow me around so that I could turn to it and ask it questions in the middle of a conversation. No, it’s not always right. No, it’s not the utopian vision of collaboration that some wish it were. But it’s damn good. I’d be hard pressed to find a nonprofit organization that hasn’t benefited from Wikipedia being freely available at any time of day or night. Wikipedia is volunteerism for the Information Era.

Of course, we can support Wikipedia by giving a donation, but we can also support it simply by editing a page. Moreover, we can support endeavors that are like Wikipedia. What’s like Wikipedia? Open source software. What is the most efficient and value creating volunteer workforce in existence today? It's the open source community. Being an "open source coder" is synonymous for "software development volunteer." We can support it by using open source software and by contributing code to open source projects.

In addition, we can start thinking about how we can use these Wikipedia/Open Source-like models in the field of volunteerism. The private sector is quickly coming up with brilliant new ideas that take advantage of the amateur’s passion for participation. Threadless, Innocentive, iStockPhoto. These are companies that have dominated their niche by relying on peer production. These models work. Let’s explore them.

And let’s call Open Source and Wikipedia “volunteerism.” There’s an issue of nomenclature that flies under the radar. Why isn’t the Open Source movement the single greatest volunteer accomplishment? I won’t mince words; it is the single greatest volunteer accomplishment. Why don’t we herald it as such? Why don’t we model volunteer efforts in other domains after it?

In my opening analogy, I said that discovering new forms of volunteerism was like a Magellanic voyage. But of course, Magellan didn’t discover anything. He came across lands where people had been living for centuries. Open Source has been here for a long time. However, the field is not linked decisively enough with volunteerism. Magellan named almost every place he visited and these names still exist today: the Pacific Ocean, Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia. The process of naming a thing for one’s community can have transformative effects.  

What do you think?

ps. I also cut the part about Magellan because I thought it was hyperbole and dorky... but here it is, back again... so feel free to say that it's hyperbolic dorkism.

(and why does Typepad completely jack up formatting?#@#$!)

Information Age Volunteerism - Open Sourced! Crowdsourced!

A piece I wrote just went up at TechPresident. Check it out! Here's the opening servo:

My mom friended me on Facebook last week - we've formally entered the Information Age. The transformation touches so many aspects of our lives, from family relationships to the seeds of our economy. But despite my mom's online habits (and the empirical evidence it may provide about living in the Information Age) and in the midst of great national excitement about community service, the field of volunteerism remains stolidly in the Industrial Era. It retains structured hierarchies, formal vetting phases, and long-term relationships. But the moment is ripe. We can look to Wikipedia, iStockPhoto, and other Information Age examples to inform, enliven and inspire volunteerism.

http://www.techpresident.com/blog/entry/33677/information_age_volunteerism_open_sourced_crowdsourced

Ps. Get the the "servo" now? It's not a typo. It's a "salvo" for the Information Age. Ha ha... (well, I suppose it's also mechanical, but controlled by bits&bytes in most cases.... Okay, this is a lame joke overall.)

Volunteer with Idealist.org From the Comfort of Your Own Computer

Idealist.org is asking for your help to serve as a virtual volunteer call-banker to reach out to their member base - reminding people that they've got profiles on idealist and should use them:

"At Idealist.org, we strive to assure that no opportunities for action or collaboration are missed or wasted. Unfortunately, sometimes the organizations on our site lose contact with their accounts, which means they can't publicize their missions here or reach out to potential volunteers, interns, and new employees. This also keeps all of our users in the dark about the opportunities that exist in their communities. We need to contact these organizations and remind them about their Idealist.org profiles."

It's a great example of how a virtual volunteer workforce can provide resources to an organization that may be unattainable (ie: too expensive) by other means. Love to know how this works out.

VolunteerMatch Google Earth

This is interesting. VolunteerMatch has implemented a Google Earth layer. As I wrote in my book in the maps chapter, I think that tying organizational data to maps is a very very good idea in a lot of instances. Apps like Maps and Earth, give you millions of $$ of infrastructure for nothing (eg: map images, databases, etc). Several months ago, I would have said that doing almost anything on Google Earth wasn't worth the effort because users have to download a separate app to run it, but since they've integrated with the browser now, it's a sharp direction. I'd love to know how many people use it, how many opps they check out, and how many convert.

Currently, it looks like it filters along two data points (opportunities & organizations). I'd love to see some additional filtering parameters so that I could, at a glance, see some general categories and select something that fits my expertise profile (one step at a time, I know). A project that I worked on for the California Dance Network did a pretty good job at this kind of thing (IMHO).

Check out this intro video:

Hospital Volunteering: 3 Things You Didn't Know & How the Web Can Help

 Did you know that volunteering in hospitals is one the oldest volunteering traditions in the United States? I didn't, until I talked last month with Joan Cardellino, the Director of Volunteer Services for the California Association of Hospitals and Health Systems. She has been in the field of volunteerism for the past 30 years.

When I asked Joan what three things most people don't know about hospital volunteerism she said:

1. It's huge. The state of California alone has over 100,000 hospital volunteers.
   
2. It's one of the longest traditions of volunteering in the United States dating back to the beginning of the colonies. Originally, health committees, made up of volunteers, gathered together to deal with health issues like flu, or cholera epidemics. The committees evolved into dispensaries, which led to clinics, which lead to the creation of hospitals.
   
3. Volunteer opportunities exist at every level of organization within a hospital, for every age, and at every service level from being on the hospital's Board of Trustees, to writing letters to patients as a kindergartner.

Cardellino explained why hospital volunteers are important to patient care in hospitals:

"Volunteering is a natural component of meeting the endless need of the human condition. People are always going to be sick, they are always going to be born, they are always going to die, and they are always going to need health care. There is some element of this human condition that requires a personal touch."

She said that there will never be enough resources from current funding sources (i.e. insurance, government, individual's fees for services) to meet this endless need. Communities need to band together to support their local hospitals to fill in where the traditional resources are not enough by providing service, providing funding, advocating, and governing (on Boards of Trustees).

According to Cardellino, the greatest challenge hospital volunteerism faces today, is the aging of its volunteer workforce. Hospitals need to supplement the traditional "pink lady," with volunteer opportunities for teens, baby boomers, and people in their 20s, 30s, 40s.

Another challenge hospital volunteerism faces is regulation, and the number of human resource and legal issues that need to be addressed before a person can volunteer. For example, after our conversation, I checked out the volunteer opportunities at one of my local hospitals, the Children's Hospital and Research Center in Oakland. According to the Volunteering: First Steps section of their site, in order to volunteer I need to:

• Complete a 2-page application.
• Complete a Health Clearance form which proves that I am cleared for TB, Measles, Mumps and Varicella.
• Mail in the application and Health Clearance form (It takes 2 weeks for the application to be processed and the background check to be completed).
• Go for a placement interview.
• Go to a 2-hour orientation.

Once all of that has been completed, I would need to commit to one 4-hour shift per week, during regular weekday business hours, for six months.

One of the ways Cardellino feels some of hospital volunteerism's challenges can be met is by using the Web to help with:

• Recruitment (i.e. online marketing).
• Interviews (i.e interview college students via the web so that they can be interns when they come home for the summer).
• Recognition (i.e.posting stories about volunteers online).
• Orientations and trainings (i.e. clinical volunteers can stay in compliance with their regulatory training and certifications through web-based training).
• Communication (According to Cardellino, "If we needed the voice of every hospital volunteer in the state of California to advocate on behalf of a hospital volunteer issue that is currently in front of the assembly, we don't have a way to do it").

She had lot of ideas for ways hospitals could use a 20-minute volunteering service like The Extraordinaries such as:

• Call banks for hospital advocacy issues.
• Call banks for Telehelp and Elderhelp.
• Immediate phone calls after someone receives a cancer diagnosis from a cancer survivor.
• Reminder calls for events, meetings, trainings and conferences.
• Cleaning up databases by calling numbers and looking up addresses.
  
• Sending personal messages on behalf of hospital patients.

Ultimately, she feels that "episodic volunteer" opportunities, like the kind The Extraordinaries will provide, are essential to keeping hospital volunteerism programs afloat:

"It's exactly the kind of thinking we need to do in hospitals.

Every time I hear a volunteer leader say, 'We can't use episodic volunteers,'   I say, 'Well, you might as well close your doors now.  If you don't find a way to use episodic volunteers in today's volunteer environment, you're never going to be able to continue on.'

That's where the field has taken us. They want the traditional 'pink lady' who comes in every Tuesday and sits at the information desk, and that's it. We need them. We have to have them, but we've got to go this road of this 20-minute volunteer opportunity. This is our future."

Britt Bravo also blogs at Have Fun * Do Good and BlogHer.

Reddit.com, a social news site, is pairing volunteers with nonprofits between now and February 14, 2009 as part of its Feed a Need project.

Nonprofits can submit their organization's name to be considered for volunteer time through the Feed a Need site. The organizations that receive the most votes from the community before December 23, 2008 at 7 PM ET will be the winners of volunteer time.

Individuals who would like to volunteer can fill out a short form on the Feed a Need site to be entered into their, "Database of Awesome." If the volunteer works at least 2 hours on a Feed A Need project before February 14th, 2009, their name will be entered into a drawing to win prizes like an Xbox 360, or a new Dell computer.

I've never seen an online contest where the prize for the nonprofit is volunteer time. I'll be interested to see how reddit coordinates the actual doing of the volunteer work, and what the results are. Kudos to them for finding a way to use our "cognitive surplus" when people have less of a financial surplus to share with nonprofits.

You can find out more about the Feed a Need Project at feedaneed.org, and read more about it on the Reddit blog post, Feedaneed.org - Volunteer to help nonprofits get important things done.

Britt Bravo also blogs at Have Fun * Do Good and BlogHer.

Encouraging Volunteerism: An Interview with Ruthanne Feinberg

Ruthanne Feinberg is a busy woman. In addition to being Managing Director, Head of Internal Recruiting and Co-Head of Human Resources Practice for Glocap Search, she also volunteers. She is on the National Advisory Council of DonorsChoose, teaches interview and resume skills to low income individuals with StreetWise and The Opportunity Network, knocked on doors during Hillary Clinton's campaign, and is an Advisor to The Extraordinaries.

Yet, in a recent phone interview, Feinberg said that she doesn't feel like she, or other people, are volunteering enough.  "I'm embarrassed for how little I've done since I've moved to New York, "I think, especially now, there is so much talent out there that is sitting idle.  . . . There is plenty of work that needs to be done in society. Somebody who is a laid off banker has a few hours a week to do something while they're doing a job search."

We discussed a few ways to encourage more volunteerism.

1. Volunteer opportunities need to be easier to find

 "I'm a really big believer that more people would volunteer if we made it easy for them to do it. A hundred percent of the time if I call one of my friends and say, 'I'm going to do this, will you do it with me?" if they are available people love to do it.

I don't think many people know how to find volunteer opportunities.  If I said to myself, 'Sometime in the next three months I want to do a resume workshop for somebody,'  I wouldn't even know where to start."

2. Volunteering opportunities need to engage volunteers' skills

"I knew I wanted to work for Hillary Clinton, and it took me some time to figure out what I could do. At the end of the day I think what I did was satisfying, but I would have done a lot more had there had been a channel where I could have done that. I would have done much higher level work.  I would have done more work. I just didn't know who to call, and tell them, 'I'm a resource.'"

3. Volunteer opportunities need to be shorter term, and more flexible to fit busy schedules

"I could never sign up for something like to be a Big Sister, or to tutor a child. My schedule is too unpredictable. I travel. I get called into meetings at the last minute. It's very hard for people to do something like that. However, if someone said, 'Ruthanne, come on Saturday and paint a school, or do a workshop. I'm much more inclined to do that.'

Some of Feinberg's ideas for 20-minute volunteer opportunities that people could do through The Extraordinaries were:

• Give feedback on a resume and cover letter
• Give advice to low income youth about their college applications
• Help with a grant application
• Assist with a PowerPoint presentation
• Talk to seniors who need companionship on the phone
  
• Proofread

In addition to making volunteer opportunities easier to find, more engaging of the volunteer's skill set, and suitable for a busy schedule, Feinberg thinks people are particularly attracted to opportunities that make then feel connected to the people they are helping. "That's one of the reasons I really like DonorsChoose. You see exactly where your money is going." 

Feinberg's most fulfilling volunteer experience was delivering food to people with AIDS through Elipse in San Mateo, CA.  She has difficulty talking about the death of one of the people she delivered food to, "I was with him right before he died. It was a very meaningful, intimate volunteer experience."

When asked how she made time to volunteer for Elipse, Feinberg explains that she was younger then, but quickly adds, "If something is important you make the time."

Britt Bravo also blogs at Have Fun * Do Good and BlogHer.

Microvolunteering on Twitter

Wanna help someone out in 140 characters or less?  Check out @microvolunteer on Twitter.

According to the project's home page, www.microvolunteerism.org, "The Microvolunteerism Project is an initiative to facilitate effective distributed volunteer work.
We aim to build a community of both not-for-profit projects and volunteers, that can mutually support each other."

Microvolunteer "tweets" questions from nonprofits, and asks the Twitter community to answer them.  The project appears to be based in the Netherlands.  Two questions were asked last week:

"What online volunteerism portals are you aware of?" asked by the Microvolunteerism Project itself.

"Do you know someone who can give a presentation / workshop about Web 2.0 to a group of ~35 non-technical business people on the evening of Dec 19. The original presenter had to cancel due to family issues. Any suggestions?" asked by the Amsterdam chapter of the European Professional Women's Network.

Sadly, the updates seem to have stopped after that.You can see some of the "top tweeters on the Microvolunteer Project thank you page.

It's an interesting idea though.  Seems like a good tool for individual organizations to set up within their own communities, a Twitter account, or another online tool, to specifically facilitate its supporters quickly sharing their expertise with the organization, and with each other.

Thanks @engagejoe for the tip!

Volunteering 2.0: Community Building

When I do presentations about nonprofits and the social web, I often explain Web 1.0 vs. Web 2.0 like this:

Web 1.0 is a one way conversation.

Web 2.0 is a two way conversation.

Web 1.0 is about listening to me. Web 2.0 is about listening to each other.

In her recent article, From Organizing Charity to Community Building, Susan Ellis of Energize Inc. uses a similar framework to talk about the future of volunteering. Ellis reflects,

"The problem, for me, is that the charity model is one-way. It centers on givers, 'those who have so much,' providing aid to recipients, 'those who have so little.' . . .

What would happen if we stopped asking 'what new people can we find out there to give us help?' and instead talked to our members, audience, visitors, clients – whomever our focus is – and found out what they wanted and were willing to help create?"

Ellis recommends that volunteer managers focus on building community among the populations they serve, and describes the best volunteering as an "exchange." She writes about a program that connects elementary school children and seniors as an example of a beneficial volunteer exchange:

"A nursing home near an elementary school was asked to open its dining room from 3:00 to 5:00 as a safe place for 'latchkey' children who otherwise had no adult supervision in the late afternoon to do homework. Older residents who were able were encouraged to greet the youngsters, give milk and cookies, and help with the homework. As you can imagine, the kids responded and pretty soon it was very hard to tell who was giving or receiving more. The seniors suddenly had young visitors and the students suddenly had tutors."

Most people want to contribute to making the world a better place, in one way or another. Whether they are creating a YouTube video for a cause, or helping to create an urban garden, it's not just the giving that makes them feel good, it's also the feeling that they are part of a community that is working together for a better world.

The next time your organization creates a program, or campaign to recruit more volunteers, don't just ask yourself, "How can I facilitate them doing something for us?" Also ask yourself, "How can I facilitate our doing something together?"

Flickr photo credit: One Way uploaded by Jef Poskanzer. Elephants uploaded by wwarby.
Britt Bravo also blogs at Have Fun * Do Good and BlogHer.

Resources to Launch a Virtual Volunteer Program for Your Nonprofit

Last week I posted about becoming a virtual volunteer (a volunteer whose work happens online), but what if you're a nonprofit that wants to start a virtual volunteer program?

Here are a few resources to get you going:

The Virtual Volunteering Guidebook: How to Apply the Principles of Real-World Volunteer Management to Online Service by Susan J. Ellis and Jayne Cravens.

Susan Ellis of Energize, Inc.'s list of articles, e-books and websites about Using the Internet and Virtual Volunteering.

Jayne Cravens' of Coyote Communications' articles about online and virtual volunteering.

"Ask the Expert: Jayne Cravens — Online Volunteering" on the Corporation for National and Community Service's site.

ServiceLeader.org's Virtual Volunteer Resources.

Tom McPhee of Volunteer Power's book (written with his son, Jonathan) The New Breed: Understanding and Equipping the 21st Century Volunteer.
What are some of your favorite virtual volunteer program management tips and resources?

Flickr photo credit: NASA Rocket Launch 9/25/06 uploaded by nashpreds99.

Britt Bravo also blogs at Have Fun * Do Good and BlogHer.