Internet Technology and Online Community

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May Hot Topic: Three Things Volunteer Managers Can Learn from the Social Media Revolution

Submitted by Susan J Ellis
on Tue, 05/01/2012 - 14:42

Guest commentator Rob Jackson draws three critical points from recent social media data that have direct relevance to leaders of volunteers – and gives tips for responding. Are you keeping up with how fast things are changing?

Getting Thoughtful on Thursdays (on Twitter) about Volunteer Management

Submitted by Susan J Ellis
on Wed, 03/14/2012 - 20:09

Colleague Sue Jones from Volunteer Centre Warrington, England, is our guest blogger today – and invites you to learn about and be a part of a weekly volunteer management “Tweet chat” that happens every Thursday.

Every week, we host a ‘Tweet chat’ discussion focusing on volunteer management issues, which we call ‘Thoughtful Thursday’. We use the Social Action Network i-volunteer to blog about our selected topic or focus and then encourage participants to comment, share ideas and discuss the issues raised via Twitter.

How to Use and Add More Events to VolunteerMatch’s 2012 Volunteer Engagement Calendar

Submitted by Cara Thenot
on Tue, 12/20/2011 - 22:14

Thanks to Engaging Volunteers, VolunteerMatch’s informative and focused blog, for starting Google calendar with dates and ideas for motivating volunteers throughout 2012. You can download the calendar by clicking on the tiny “Google Calendar” button at the bottom of the calendar on their blog post.

November 20, 2011: International News From the Field

Submitted by Susan J Ellis
on Sun, 11/20/2011 - 00:00

Emergen (http://emergen.com.au) is an online community for "emerging young leaders" in Australia, made up of over 1000 professionals aged 20-35. Along with online and in-person learning opportunities, it provides participants "the opportunity to develop their professional brand and reputation. Members can do this through blogging, being interviewed for Emergen TV or participating in our Awards program." They even provide Bloggers Training online.

One of Emergen’s projects is "Blogging for a Cause Ebooks," the latest of which is a Tribute to the International Year of the Volunteer. This 60-page, graphically elegant document (using the issuu publishing platform) offers first-person accounts of different volunteer experiences, as expressed by volunteer bloggers. The contributors are diverse in all sorts of ways: culturally, ethnically, degree of involvement in volunteer work, and the types of causes they support.

The essays even tackle negative perceptions and controversies about

November 6, 2011: International News From the Field

Submitted by Susan J Ellis
on Sun, 11/06/2011 - 00:00

Volunteer2 (volunteer2.com), provider of popular volunteer management software, has created another free online resource for the volunteer field:  the Mission Points ROI Calculator, designed to help measure the “Return on Investment” associated with engaging volunteers at an organization.

Most organizations value the contribution of volunteer time without assessing its true worth.  The concept that a report documenting more and more volunteer hours appears better does not take into consideration what gets accomplished during those hours – and what if that time was actually wasted?  Further, the most popular method of measuring the ROI of volunteer engagement is calculating the wage replacement value of the number of hours contributed by volunteers.  This simply furthers the questionable idea that hours equal cash equal impact.  

The Mission Points ROI model treats the number of volunteer hours consumed by an organization as an expense.  It also allows measurement of desired outputs

October 16, 2011: International News From the Field

Submitted by Susan J Ellis
on Sun, 10/16/2011 - 00:00

Get Volunteering, www.getvolunteering.ca, is the national registry of volunteer opportunities for Canada.  It is run by Volunteer Canada with support by Manulife Financial.  They also have a presence on Facebook, where they are currently offering a 12-part "Get Volunteering Conversation Series" with the intention of "providing a place for users to discuss, promote and participate in volunteerism."

A cluster of people of various backgrounds are invited to open the Conversation with early postings (Susan Ellis was invited this week) and then anyone may add their comments.  The current topic, "Benefits of Volunteering," is the fourth in the series; it launched on October 12th and will run through the 17th, when a new topic will be posted.

All the previous Conversations are archived and can still be viewed.  Previous topics have been

  • "Volunteers in Politics"
  • "Can Canada Become a Destination for Voluntourism?"
  • "Is Volunteering in Our DNA?"

4317 people already "like" this feature (and the

September 4, 2011: International News From the Field

Submitted by Susan J Ellis
on Sun, 09/04/2011 - 00:00

501Videos (www.501videos.com) is a video production company owned by Christopher Davenport, a successful documentary producer. His interest is in presenting his video production services to nonprofits and he’s found a unique way to market his services that also provides useful resources. 501Videos offers a weekly series of free, short (3 to 5 minutes) videos called "Movie Mondays."

Although promoted as "for Fundraising Professionals" and focused on increasing financial donations, the videos cover many different topics, including board management, community outreach, and donor relations. For example, the topic last week was "The New Look of Board Meetings (for creating high performing boards)," dealing with how to prepare for and structure meeting agendas for more effective board interaction.

A new topic appears every Monday and that’s the point. When you sign up, you get notices by e-mail of the new topic and log in for one week of access to the newest video.

August 28, 2011: International News From the Field

Submitted by Susan J Ellis
on Sun, 08/28/2011 - 00:00

Sewa Day (http://www.sewaday.org), scheduled for September 25th, is an international day of volunteering "where thousands of good-hearted people across the world come together to experience the joy of giving (sewa) in its truest sense."  As the Sewa Day Web site explains, sewa, also spelled seva, is a word in the ancient Indian language of Sanskrit that means “an act of kindness without expectation…The term invokes a spirit of community and selfless service for a just and fair society.”
 
It is a bit hard to trace the origins of this day of service.  The international site is sponsored by Sewa UK but you can select from a long list of other countries also commemorating the day.   Throughout the site are references to “Be the Change” (seemingly unconnected to the U.S.-based organization of the same name).  “Be the Change” was an annual event sponsored by SAALT (South Asian Americans Leading Together) to foster leadership and community engagement.

August 7, 2011: International News From the Field

Submitted by Susan J Ellis
on Sun, 08/07/2011 - 00:00

RealizedWorth, the consulting team of Chris Jarvis and Angela Parker, works with companies to design and implement outstanding corporate volunteering programs. Their blog, "Realizing Your Worth" (http://realizedworth.blogspot.com), discusses corporate social responsibility news and current issues, and gives valuable tips to program leaders.

In the past few weeks, they have been running a series of posts under the title "The Business Case for Employee Volunteering," presented with this rationale: Employee volunteering has the capacity to generate important value for your company and community. This blog series offers compelling reasons why your business needs to invest (a bit more) in employee.

The most recent post is Case #7 is "Value Generation." Here’s a taste:

Despite the apparent self-interest of companies regarding employee volunteering, it is important to note that this self-interest is not at the expense of the interests of the public, but in collaboration with them.

July 31, 2011: International News From the Field

Submitted by Susan J Ellis
on Sun, 07/31/2011 - 00:00

TechSoup.org, the well-respected and invaluable site that provides “technology products and information geared specifically to the unique challenges faced by nonprofits and libraries,” has been connecting technology experts and community organizations through volunteer consulting for a long time.  Their TechSoup Community Forum, for example, permits agencies to post questions and get useful answers at no charge. 

Building on that successful forum and connecting it to Twitter, TechSoup has just launched Donate Your Brain! (DYB) as a micro-volunteering initiative, allowing “anyone, anywhere, to help nonprofits and other community organizations with quick answers and suggestions for their Internet, software, and other tech needs.”  And they mean "anywhere" -- the service is international.

There’s a full explanation of DYB at http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/p/dyb.aspx, both for how the project works for organizations and for volunteers.

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