Virtual volunteering: a guide for involving
employees of corporations / businesses
Virtual volunteering - volunteers providing service via a computer,
smart phone, tablet or other networked advice - presents a great
opportunity for companies / businesses to expand their employee
philanthropic offerings and corporate social responsibility endeavors.
Here is a long list of what virtual
volunteering looks like (this is the most comprehensive list of
virtual volunteering roles and activities anywhere).
If your company wants to allow or to encourage its employees to
volunteer online from your workplace, "on the clock," or to volunteer
online from home on their own time, this detailed guide will help. It's
based on more than 25 years of experience
and provides a realistic approach, one based on actual practice.
For decades, there have been companies allowing employees to volunteer
online from the work place, either on breaks (off-the-clock) or as part
of an official time-off-to-volunteer policies - in other words, virtual
volunteering isn't at all new to the corporate world. One of the first
to do so was Hewlett-Packard, which established an online mentoring
program back in the 1990s, one of the first ever: it brought together
employees of HP together with high school students (this program has now
been split apart: the student
mentoring component is now its own, independet nonprofit; the HP
employee mentor component is now focused on aspiring entrepreneurs
around the world).
Other companies that have also talked openly about their employee
virtual volunteering activities are Newell-Rubbermaid,
Deloitte
Australia, and Cisco.
I started a
thread on this online community to track businesses / corporations
that were pivoting to virtual volunteering because of the pandemic
and, honestly, it's impossible to keep up with them all, because
there are so, so many.
Through virtual volunteering, some
employees will choose to help organizations online that they are already
helping onsite. Other employees who are unable to volunteer onsite at a
nonprofit or school, for whatever reason, will choose to volunteer
online because of the convenience. Some employees will choose to help as
online volunteers just because they prefer it.
Getting Up to Speed Fast About Virtual
Volunteering
I have a series of free, short videos on my
YouTube channel that, altogether, in less than one hour, create a
basic training regarding virtual volunteering – in using the Internet to
involve and support volunteers. The videos are focused on staff –
employees or volunteers – who are responsible for recruiting and
supporting volunteers at nonprofits, NGOs, charities, government
programs and other mission-based initiatives, but corporate
representatives will find it helpful as well. Here is the order I
recommend you watch these videos in if you want a full, basic
orientation in virtual volunteering:
Policies
Before promoting virtual volunteering to your company's employees,
whether your intent is to eventually partner with a nonprofit on a
specific project, like online mentoring, or if you are going to
encourage employees to engage in virtual volunteering on their own, you
will need to create policies and address questions regarding:
- Employees
using company-issued devices (laptops, smart phones) as a part of
their volunteering (may they use such? if so, what precautions do
they need to take to protect company information, prevent viruses
from getting onto the network, etc.).
- When
employees may engage in virtual volunteering (outside of work hours
only? offsite from home only? onsite, during work hours, but only if
such will not interfere with work).
I would love to help your company develop its
own policies for employees engaging in virtual volunteering during
company hours or using company resources.
Getting Up to Speed Fast About Virtual
Volunteering
You will also need to think about how your company will track track time
and accomplishments by employees engaged in virtual volunteering. Many of
the following suggestions are based on this simple idea: the more
employees see employee volunteering being recognized and celebrated, the
more likely they are to report their hours to whatever person or
department is in charge of the employee volunteering program.
- Create
a space or section on the employee Intranet for discussion/reporting
about volunteering - all volunteering, not just virtual volunteering.
It could be a place where people share photos of themselves
volunteering, testimonials about their volunteering, etc., a place
where senior staff thanks volunteers, and a place where volunteers or
the HR department posts opportunities for volunteers. Employees won't
post to such without prompting; you will need to contact specific
employees directly and ask them to post testimonials, photos, etc. to
the online area, and thank them PROFUSELY for doing so.
- Create
a plan to regularly encourage picture sharing of volunteers-in-action:
people taking selfies at their desk or wherever they engage in virtual
volunteering, as well as onsite volunteers engaged in service. They
can share this on the intranet or with HR or whomever is in charge of
the employee volunteering program, and these images can be used in
employee communications to further create excitement regarding
employee volunteering.
- Create
a schedule for regular reminders in employee newsletters and
company-wide communications about volunteering (where to find such,
upcoming opportunities, photos of employees-in-action, testimonials
from employees that have recently volunteered, thank yous to
volunteers).
- Get
permission from senior management and the marketing department to
provide regular, brief reminders at company-wide meetings about
employee volunteering, using photos, thank yous, updates on upcoming
opportunities, testimonials, etc.
- Create
a plan to recognize departments that have the most number of employees
that volunteered in a month or a quarter.
- Create
a volunteer reporting form, the simpler the better, to encourage
employees to share volunteering information. It should ask for the
name of the organization assisted, a summary of what the volunteer did
at the organization, an estimate regarding the number of hours in a
specific period the volunteer thinks he or she provided, and a box to
check yes or no regarding if any of the assistance was provided via a
computer, tablet, smart phone or other networked device offsite from
the company, or if any of the service was provided via the employee's
own home (such as knitting something, making baked goods, stuffing
envelopes, etc.). Have the form online (and use all of the above means
to encourage employees to fill it out), and allow for online
submissions (so that employees do NOT have to print it out to fill it
out), but also have paper versions, and drop by department meetings
and hand them out, and have them available at company-wide meetings,
to encourage employees to fill out such. The more you use this form to
recognize employee volunteers in front of their peers, the more you
will encourage more employees to fill it out.
Expanding Understanding Re: Virtual Volunteering
Once you have these strategies in place or underway at your
company:
- Write
an article about virtual volunteering in your company newsletter.
Focus on the kinds of things online volunteers do, where
to find virtual volunteering opportunities, where to find the
policies of your organization regarding volunteering, etc. Ask
employees that are already engaged in virtual volunteering to get in
touch with you - you will need their expertise if you decide to
formally partner with a nonprofit or school in a High
Impact Virtual Volunteering Activities, or if you want
to have employees already engaged in virtual volunteering to
contribute to an article for the company newsletter about their
experience. You may want to have a
panel discussion at lunch time of people you've discovered
volunteer virtually at your company, and invite employees to
come ask them questions about their experience; at the end,
include info about how to find virtual volunteering
- Get
started on implementing your strategy about tracking time and
accomplishments by employees engaged in virtual volunteering and
regularly reminding employees of these activities
Don't be surprised to find lots of
employees are already engaged in virtual volunteering. Very often,
people engage in online service - helping to edit their child's school
newsletter, translating an article for a nonprofit, tagging photos with
appropriate keywords for an organization - but never think of it as virtual
volunteering. They also may think of such online service using
a different term, such as micro volunteering, crowd sourcing or digital
volunteering. If such employees haven't been volunteering exactly per
your new virtual volunteering policies, don't panic and don't
punish; instead, celebrate, collaborate and educate - you want
that community service to continue!.
Starting Your Own Virtual Volunteering Program
Some companies want to partner with a
school or nonprofit regarding virtual volunteering and steer their
employees into that program specifically. The most popular type of this
kind of partnership is an online mentoring program.
It is vital that, if you want to
engage in a partnership with a school or nonprofit regarding virtual
volunteering, you FIRST talk to the school or nonprofit about what they
NEED, not what you want to do. Set up a meeting and ask questions like:
- How does your program current involve volunteers? How
does your program currently involve volunteers with your clients?
- What are the greatest challenges for your clients /
students / parents / etc.?
- What is the greatest challenge to doing what your
program wants to do? (if they say "money", then say, "and if you got a
million dollars, what would that money pay for?")
Believe it or not, the vast majority
of nonprofit organizations are not saying, "Gosh, we have all this
work laying around that just anyone could do if they would simply walk
through the door..." Nonprofits, charities, schools and other
organizations, more often-than not, need volunteers with specific
skills, experience and availability... Volunteers
are not free: the staff at a volunteer hosting organization need
to create volunteering opportunities, to supervise and support
volunteers, to trouble-shoot and to evaluate and report on the
experience. If you ask an agency to create volunteering opportunities
specifically for your employees, you are asking them to spend money
and resources they may not be able to afford - so be ready to make an
appropriate financial - CASH - donation to a nonprofit or school if
you want a customized volunteering gig for your employees at that
nonprofit or school.
Because of the global pandemic, Junior
Achievement chapters all over the USA (and the WORLD) have
converted much of their student coaching to online experiences.
Cautions
Do NOT over-segregate online volunteers from onsite volunteers in overall
data; remember, they are ALL volunteers, no matter where or how they
donate their service. It's fine to put a special highlight on virtual
volunteering, but don't produce two entirely different reports on employee
philanthropy that in any way implies that virtual volunteering is somehow
not really "hands on" or not as real as onsite volunteering.
Also, note that not all employees engaged in volunteering want the company
involved in any way. They may not want their volunteering, done entirely
outside of company work hours, as employee volunteering, as something your
company can take credit for. If you find out an employee is volunteering,
online or onsite, but the service is never during work hours and doesn't
use any company resources, you need permission from the employee to count
that as part of the company's corporate philanthropy, and you need to be
respectful if the employee declines to make such volunteering a part of
the company's official program. Of course, if employees are taking time
off, paid or unpaid, to volunteer, then your company including such in the
official corporate philanthropy program shouldn't at all be a problem.
Also see:
What
too many are getting wrong about virtual volunteering these days.
This is an analysis of red flags in newly-launched online volunteer
engagement, presenting challenges that can be easliy avoided.
Need more detailed assistance?
The
Last Virtual Volunteering
Guidebook, written by myself (Jayne
Cravens) and volunteerism expert Susan
Ellis and the result of MANY years of research and experience,
can help your company / business in better understanding virtual
volunteering and in fully-developing your company's employee virtual
volunteering program.
The book provides complete details on what virtual volunteering is,
all of the many, many different forms in which it is practiced,
various ways to support and grow virtual volunteering, and how to
address various challenges that might arise.
The book can also help your company work with nonprofits and schools
to help them develop virtual volunteering opportunities for your
employees - something many organizations need assistance with. Many
traditional volunteer centers are still struggling with the concept of
virtual volunteering; corporate support in the form of training and
funding could help greatly in getting volunteer centers to embrace
virtual volunteering, a practice that's more than 30 years old and is
undertaken by many thousands of people and organizations. Your support
of any organization regarding virtual volunteering starts with your
company fully understanding the realities of the practice, and this
book can help greatly in that regard.
Also see:
- Ideas for High
Impact Virtual Volunteering Activities
This resource is 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. It was
created especially for programs looking for ways to engage online
volunteers in high-responsibility, high-impact tasks focused on
communities in the developing world, because onsite volunteering
abroad is not an option - which is the reality in 2020, and probably
2021, because of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), an infectious
disease caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2
(SARS-CoV-2). 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.
- Short-term Assignments
for Tech Volunteers
There are a variety of ways for mission-based organizations to involve
volunteers to help with short-term projects relating to
computers and the Internet, and short-term assignments are what are
sought after most by potential "tech" volunteers. But there is a
disconnect: most organizations have trouble identifying such
short-term projects. This is a list of short-term projects for "tech"
volunteers -- assignments that might takes days, weeks or just a
couple of months to complete.
- One(-ish) Day "Tech"
Activities for Volunteers
Volunteers are getting together for intense, one-day events, or events
of just a few days, to build web pages, to write code, to edit
Wikipedia pages, and more. These are gatherings of onsite volunteers,
where everyone is in one location, together, to do an online-related
project in one day, or a few days. It's a form of episodic
volunteering, because volunteers don't have to make an ongoing
commitment - they can come to the event, contribute their services,
and then leave and never volunteer again. Because computers are
involved, these events are sometimes called hackathons, even if coding
isn't involved. 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.
- 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.
Return to my index of Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR) resources & advice for ethics, strategies
& operations.
I'm
Jayne Cravens.
I'm a consultant regarding communications and community engagement,
primarily for nonprofits, NGOs and other mission-based organizations. I
have many years of experience working with corporations, governments,
foundations and other donors, and for two years, I ran a corporate
philanthropy program at a Fortune 500 company. I created these corporate
social responsibility (CSR) pages on my web site out of frustration of the
continuing disconnect between what mission-based organizations, including
schools, are trying to accomplish and what corporations and other
businesses want to fund and volunteer for. Most advice for CSR comes from
people in the for-profit world who have never worked for a nonprofit,
charity, public school, etc., and often has a paternal approach to working
with mission-based organizations. My approach is different: I am urging
the business world to be
partners, not dictators, when it comes to
the third sector.
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