Jayne Cravens What's New

What's New

With Jayne

& Coyote Communications / Coyote Broad

The LAST Virtual Volunteering Guidebook
available as a paperback & an ebook

Susan Ellis and I wrote this in-depth guidebook for anyone who believes in mainstreaming use of the Internet in the recruitment, engagement and support of ALL volunteers. It covers high-responsibility, expert tasks, long-term commitments, micro tasks (microvolunteering), risk management, supervising volunteers and more. It represents well more than a decade of research and experience, and is written in such a way to be relevant no matter how networked technologies change.

Whether you are brand new to virtual volunteering or you already have some experience, you will find this book packed with helpful, detailed information regarding task design, supervision and support, recognition, safety, evaluation and more. Also helpful to those creating or expanding online mentoring programs. Read the reviews

Note: I have a series of videos about virtual volunteering 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, on-demand.

March 2024

My two part time jobs and several personal projects have resulted in my not updating my online channels as much as I have in the past. Some things I've been up to:

In February, I joined colleagues from Habitat for Humanity to advocate to members of Congress for more support for affordable housing,
In January, I went to Guatemala for two weeks to tour parts of the country by motorcycle.
In November, I went to Kentucky for personal reasons, but it resulted in me getting a dulcimer for Christmas, and learning to play a dulcimer, and continuing to learn to play piano and guitar, have proven more interesting than updaing this web site regularly.

I very likely will stop posting to the site formerly known as Twitter, per the actions and associations of the current owner. You can find me online on these channels instead (and I update them far more than I do my web site):

January, February & March blogs

September, October, & November 2023 blogs

September 2023

Almost two years ago, a colleague of mine was able to flee Afghanistan, along with a few female members of her family. She's now living in a country that has granted her long-term temporary asylum. It should be a happy ending - but the reality is that, for so many refugees, it's not. My colleague has shared her story about the profound challenges she is facing, and so many are common to other refugees,

On a personal note, in September, I toured Vancouver Island and parts of mainland British Columbia by motorcycle (Oh, Canada!)

May, June, July & August 2023 blogs

I'm now blogging just twice a month.

Our Lady of the Manifest: the icon for a very particular community of online volunteers
Finding people, organizations & topics to follow on the Fediverse
What is meant by “safety policies” for volunteering programs?
What I’ve learned working at Habitat for Humanity
For Executive Directors: It’s Time for Mandates Regarding Volunteering Engagement.
Volunteering, or that meeting you are going to host, must sound enticing & compelling or people won’t care (our post-pandemic reality).
The problem with volunteer matching platforms isn’t a software issue
Abilities you need to work in humanitarian development successfully

April 2023

March & April blogs
UN Volunteer requirements – but with no guidance?
Should you leave Twitter & Facebook for the fediverse?
The delicate, peculiar task of promoting a charity’s gala
How nonprofits can leverage LinkedIn
Social media is losing its influence for nonprofits – what to do?
Is trauma while volunteering abroad inevitable?
In-person / on-site work & meetings automatically better than online? NOPE!
AI: great for simplistic poems about virtual volunteering, not so great for biographies.

Payment required.

Please note that I cannot do pro bono consulting: custom workshops, evaluating your proposal or software, brainstorm ideas for you new program, write a chapter for your book, evaluate your CV, etc. Consulting is my job, my livelihood, and neither my mortgage company nor the grocery store I frequent accept volunteering hours as payment - I need to be compensated for my consulting time. I have free workshops on my YouTube channel, including an introduction to virtual volunteering. All of the materials on my web site are free, including my My Volunteer Management Resources are organized like the chapters of a book on volunteer management, so for whatever issue you are facing - lack of volunteers, high volunteer turnover, lack of diversity, etc. - the answer is likely there. I hate to have to be this blunt, but please don't ask me to donate my consulting services. If you can't find something on my web site, by all means, email me and ask. If you have a question, by all meas, ask. But just as you wouldn't ask for a plumber or electrician or lawyer to work for free, please don't ask me to. In fact, I really hope you will consider financially supporting this web site and my work.

Note:
I'm available for a limited number of training, presenting and short-term consulting gigs in 2023 starting in early June (I am unavailable for anything other than a short online presentation until then). I have an ongoing part-time position that I hope to continue to do through 2023 (and maybe beyond) that is my professional priority, so my time is limited. Please inquire to book me as many weeks or months in advance as possible.

I've been diversifying where I am online, per the disturbing behavior of the new owner of Twitter. I'm still there - but also posting much more elsewhere:

February 2023

Earliest articles and print references to virtual volunteering - new ones found!
I no longer update the Virtual Volunteering Wiki, mostly due to lack of funding. But I was granted a free subscription to newspapers.com and I decided to do a new search on the earliest mentions of the term virtual volunteering, and references to the practice that don't use the term. You can see the earliest articles, from the early 1990s, here. Just more proof that virtual volunteering is NOT new - and hasn't been for decades.

January & February blogs
Corporate employees are often not successful at virtual volunteering. Why?
When volunteering is bad for your mental health.
Love for NGOs in Belize.
You can volunteer to address the critical needs of refugees IN YOUR OWN COMMUNITY.
For Your Volunteers, Is Help Just a Phone Call or Text Away?.
Online spaces reflect your onsite vibes? What about vice versa?.
Your biases in screening volunteers.
Volunteer engagement could help address negativity that rose in recent years..
Most popular blogs of 2022.

January 2023

Happy New Year!

New:
Volunteering to help refugees in your own country. There is NO need to go to another country if you want to volunteer to help refugees - it's very likely they are right there in your country, now, even right there in your own community. And your help, as a volunteer, is urgently needed. This resource will tell you how to help. With the launch of the Welcome Corps in the USA, it's important to know what supporting newly-arrived refugees really entails.

I also am volunteering with the American Red Cross and with a local group that helps refugees, which is sharpening my skills and helping me feel more connected offline. Also learning to play piano. And traveling. In other words, busy as usual.

December 2022

Since it's December, here's a reminder of why I think December 5 should return to its roots ass International Volunteer Day for Economic & Social Development, as declared by the United Nations General Assembly in a 1985 resolution.

November & December blogs

October 2022

Through the rest of 2022, I'm happily VERY busy with lots of contract work (always fun to put my own recommendations into practice).

Also:: At the end of 2022, I will no longer be updating the news section and the research section of the Virtual Volunteering Wiki. It's been an unfunded project since it was launched a decade ago, in association with the publication of The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, one I've struggled to keep up-to-date because my paid work has to be my priority. The start of the COVID pandemic in the USA in 2020 meant a huge surge in news and, months later, a surge in research. But that's died down significantly, and after a lot of consideration, I've decided that the end of 2022 is a good time to stop updating those two sections. The reality is that:

Virtual volunteering is no longer new, innovative nor experimental. Virtual volunteering is mainstream. When this wiki was launched, there were already thousands of nonprofits, NGOs, charities, community groups and government agencies involving online volunteers, but there was a need to prove it. There was also an ongoing need to show the varied ways organizations involve online volunteers. But now, because of the global coronavirus pandemic, virtual volunteering is now a commonplace term and new initiatives are launched at least weekly.
I don't have the time nor the funding to continue. Without funding, I can't afford to subscribe to news outlets so I can read all of the stories. Also, my funded time has to take precedence over this wiki.

September & October blogs

May 2022

How Volunteers Can Support the Person In Charge of Volunteer Engagement
The person in charge of volunteer engagement at a nonprofit, NGO, charity, school or other civil society organization or mission-based program primarily recruits and manages volunteers that are supporting other staff: the program staff, for instance, may need mentors for clients or people to clean up a public space or to foster animals. The fundraising staff may need volunteers to staff a donor event. But the person in charge of volunteer engagement should also be thinking about how volunteers can help with volunteer engagement - with recruitment, onboarding, training, support and recognition of volunteers. This resource provides information on how and why to do that.

UNESCO 2005 guide to involving volunteers in telecenters/telecentres
The UNESCO Multimedia Training Kit (MMTK) was created by and for UNESCO in 2005 to provide trainers in telecentres/community technology centiers (CTCs), community media organizations, multimedia community centers, civil society organizations and anyone in a community ICT4D initiative. The kit was set up in modules and targeted these initiatives in developing countries in particular. The MMTK materials were intended for mediated use by trainers in face-to-face workshops. I was charged with developing the section of the kit regarding involving volunteers and now have them shared on my web site.

Still asking: What should my next virtual volunteering video be?
At the start of the global pandemic two years ago, I created and shared videos to help organizations understand virtual volunteering and to quickly create roles and activities for online volunteers. I share them on my YouTube channel. What would you like my next free training about virtual volunteering to be? What is a subject I could cover in just 5 to 15 minutes that would help your nonprofit, charity, school, NGO, library or other cause-based program regarding virtual volunteering or some other aspect of volunteer engagement that's not already covered elsewhere? Please note the subject you need most in the comments on this blog (from May 2021).

Hiring someone to train a group about virtual volunteering? Of course I would love it if you hired me, but if not, then here's what to look for in a virtual volunteering trainer: that person has experience as an online volunteer with more than one program, and that person has involved online volunteers, in both short-term and long-term, high-responsibility roles, and involved both individual online volunteers and volunteers working in a team. And remember: I have more than an hour of FREE training regarding virtual volunteering on YouTube.

May blogs:

April 2022

Video-editing services:

I now provide basic video editing services: splicing different clips together, adding in title slides, fades between scenes, intro music, captions, etc. Great for speeches, presentations, client testimonials, volunteer testimonials and instructional videos. This is a fee-based service. More about these services and samples of my video editing work.

Reorganized Links to My Volunteer Management Resources

I"ve got enough resources on my web site related to volunteer engagement for a second book - but rather than put them in a book, I decided to reorganize my resources more like chapters in a book. I put them in the order I think you should read them, but also put them in an order to help you more quickly find just the advice you need, on demand. I'm particularly proud of my resources and blogs about Ethics in Volunteerism & Court-Ordered Community Service, a subject that volunteer consultants have ignored for way, way too long (but maybe given how much controversy it can draw, I shouldn't be surprised) .

The list of more than 100 research or academic articles about virtual volunteering has been updated with more research and case studies. Note that most of these are NOT written by me. There is no doubt many more research article in languages other than English than are listed here (at least I hope so). I have this list of research and case studies at the Virtual Volunteering Wiki, which I'm going to continue to maintain through 2022, but I think I'm gong to have to abandon, due to lack of funding.

March & April blogs:

February 2022

Afghanistan has dropped out of the news. But the people in Afghanistan and Afghans refugees continue to struggle, to be oppressed, even to die.. Fleeing Afghanistan: "Experiencing the Dark Time: Caught Up In a Cage" is a first hand account of an Afghan who lived in Kabul until November 2021. Just before the recent Taliban takeover, she worked at a government agency and with some nonprofits in Afghanistan. She was also active in her community, going to Rotary Club meetings and various professional and civil society networking events. She lived under the Taliban as a young girl many years ago, but when they were removed from power back in 2001, she was able to return to school, pursue university degrees and begin her career. She was able to study in Australia and the USA and went on networking and education trips hosted by various international groups in Eastern Europe and India. She very much believed that she was free to pursue these education and career goals, and did so openly. This is her account of what life was like under the Taliban both the first time when they took over Afghanistan and then when they retook the country in August 2021, when the USA abandoned the country.

January & February blogs:

January 2022

Happy New Year!

Videos Your Nonprofit, NGO, Charity or Other Mission-based Organization Should Have Online.
Videos are a great way to represent your program's work, to show you make a difference, to promote a message or action that relates to your mission, etc. What should the content of your videos be? How long should they be? What platform should you use? Do you have to go to film school? This page provides details on what subjects you should consider for online videos, what should be long, what should be short, what platforms you should use, what tools you need (you probably already have them!) and how volunteers can help.

13 Reasons Not to Volunteer Abroad
These are the most common reasons people say they want to volunteer abroad. And they are not good reasons. In fact, they often hurt people and animals in other countries, rather than helping. This page is written for people that want to volunteer, rather than my usual audience - the people that engage volunteers. Note: when I originally posted this, it was 12 reasons. I have a feeling the number will continue to go up.

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

What too many are getting wrong about virtual volunteering these days.
United Nations Volunteers says, when it comes to onsite & online, “They are ALL volunteers”.
Digital Dunkirk: online volunteers scramble to help endangered Afghans get visas & out of Afghanistan.
(I took most of September off from blogging - or any online activities)

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).

If you want to book me for a training or consultation, it's best to contact me as of October 1 or later.

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.

My course at Gratz College is under way!

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

The global pandemic has dominated our lives for more than a year. If you follow me on social media, you've seen me attempt to play my part in educating people regarding the importance of vaccinations and the importance of identifying myths about the disease and the vaccines. On a personal level, after more than a year, I went on my first camping trip and staying in touch with motorcycle travelers who are also re-emerging. The global nature of this disease has really brought home for me that travelers from "the West" need to travel with respect for others, in addition to our needing more clear guidance on what to keep in mind when traveling abroad during a global pandemic or to an area that is experiencing a serious crisis.

June Blogs

May 2021

My big news: I will be teaching a course at Gratz College through August, I'm teaching: MGT 553 Using Technology to Build Community and Grow Your Organization. Here's more about this and my other teaching.

What should my next virtual volunteering video be?
Since the start of the global pandemic last year, I have been creating and sharing videos to help organizations understand virtual volunteering and to quickly create roles and activities for online volunteers. I share them on my YouTube channel. I list all of these videos on this blog. What would you like my next free training about virtual volunteering to be? What is a subject I could cover in just 5 to 15 minutes that would help your nonprofit, charity, school, NGO, library or other cause-based program regarding virtual volunteering? Please note the subject you need most in the comments on this blog.

May Blogs

April 2021

New video: Is virtual volunteering going away after the pandemic?
I explain in this new four-minute video why virtual volunteering is here to stay, how it was well-established before the pandemic and how there's a much better question you should be asking.

Latest news about virtual volunteering

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.

March & April 2021 Blogs

February 2021

Revisiting soc.org.nonprofit

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.

My podcasts

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.

February 2021 Blogs

January 2021

Terrific virtual volunteering webinar from the FCC

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.

Two milestones reached: I made my 5000th posting this month to the TechSoup Online Community Forum, and January 4th was the 25th anniversary of the launch of my own web site.

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).

January 2021 Blogs

2021, 2020, 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011 & 2010 Blogs (index of titles, by reverse date, latest to oldest)

What was new prior to January 2021 (announcements made prior to the last entry on the "What's New" page you're reading now.

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Disclaimer: No guarantee of accuracy or suitability is made by the poster/distributor. This material is provided as is, with no expressed or implied warranty.

See this web site's privacy policy.

Permission is granted to copy, present and/or distribute a limited amount of material from my web site without charge if the information is kept intact and without alteration, and is credited to:

Jayne
Cravens & Coyote Communications,
www.coyotecommunications.com

Otherwise, please contact me for permission to reprint, present or distribute these materials (for instance, in a class or book or online event for which you intend to charge).