SITE

by Patricia Kimball

It is hard to believe sometimes that there was life before email. How did we communicate? How did we share our ideas? How did we schedule meetings, announce events, or talk to our friends across the country without spending a fortune on phone calls?

I have been thinking a lot about email and the value of technology and social media and the speed at which we can communicate and exchange ideas across miles and time zones and among large numbers of people. I have been thinking about how this tool – email specifically – has changed our communication patterns, style and most certainly, our work lives.

I am old enough to remember the years I spent working without email. Without computers, actually. And to really date myself, without answering machines or voice mail. I remember receiving phone messages in my actual office mailbox on little pink pieces of paper. I remember handwriting case notes and scheduling meetings by calling people one-by-one. These things took hours. We did not know “another way” was just on the horizon, so we did not resent the time it took to perform these tasks, it was just part of the job. This is not to say we did not complain about it….oh, we did complain.

The “email way” arrived and years later, as evidence of it as a universally accepted communication mode, your email address is a standard requirement on any application you fill out.

I stop here and start a new train of thought – which I promise will circle around to connect back to email.

How many people do you know that are not “really busy”? Ask anyone how they are doing and I guarantee, more times than not, he/she will refer to how busy he/she is. And it is true. We are all busy. We all have many things to do in our lives and too little time to accomplish them. We all feel the pressure of time and the pressure to accomplish things, lots of things.

So, back to email. If we save so much time through email and other forms of technology, where has the saved time gone? What have we done with the hours we have saved by not having to call 15 people one-by-one to schedule a meeting? Clearly, based on the mantra “I am so busy”, we have filled the hours we save through technology. Filled them to the brim, it seems.

So, maybe we do more now. And by doing more, we accomplish more. And by accomplishing more…then what? Have we solved more social problems? Have we cured that which ails us? Are hungry people less hungry? Do homeless people have access to more shelter? We are clearly doing more, but are we doing better?

I love technology. I love social media. I love being able to communicate quickly and with ease. I do not want to go back to the time when notebook referred to a spiral-bound book of lined paper. But, I also want some of my time back. I want to spend those hours I have gained with people. Thinking. Slowing down and paying attention to the world. Formulating really good ideas to solve our most pressing social challenges. I want to use the precious time we save through technology not to do more, but to do better. How about you?

Patricia Kimball is the owner/founder of Ideactive Solutions and is a featured blogger.

By Maria E. Hinteregger

Ten years ago, potential volunteers would contact a program by phone, mail or even in person. Many of our organizations had no website and some even lacked computers. People could find out about us by connecting with us during work hours and we made time to orient them with what we do and how we might benefit from their time.

Today, the internet is often the first place that people look for information. People of all ages are surfing the web at all hours of the day (and night) to learn about their communities, including where to volunteer. They often start with one idea, and then look at other information in the process.

One way to take advantage of this change is to use VolunteerMaine. This statewide, web resource is free for both agencies and potential volunteers and can be accessed through United Ways, local host sites, links from agencies and www.VolunteeMaine.org. VolunteerMaine.org has multiple resources for learning about the best practices for volunteer management. Volunteer Solutions, the software that facilitates the volunteer matching, is where your volunteer recruitment can excel.

Although the initial time to register an agency, write about its programs and develop and post volunteer opportunities on the website might be considered burdensome by some, there are many benefits to doing it that more than offset the investment in time.

When someone comes to VolunteerMaine looking to find a volunteer opportunity, they will often start out with a simple zip code search to find out what is in their community. The search results allow them to review agencies and find which agency’s mission best fits their own. In their search, they may discover agencies they were unaware of or learn about agency programs of which they were unaware. Now the volunteer will review the volunteer opportunities that are listed. Which ones fit their schedule, their likes and dislikes, their skill-set? At this point, they can either give you a call or send you an automated email if they’re interested or continue their search another time.

Let’s look at the process the potential volunteer has just gone through and how it affects the work you do. First off, even if you never hear from this potential volunteer, they have taken the time to learn about your program. How often do you have someone read through what is basically your brochure (assuming you have a brochure)?

Without VolunteerMaine, you may never have had even this connection since the potential volunteer may have wanted to contact you during non-business hours. The websites busiest hours are 10pm to midnight and there is more activity on Saturdays and Sundays, then on Friday.

And don’t think that not getting a volunteer means that no one is looking at your listings. The United Way of Mid Coast Maine site for October 2009, showed that there were 608.75 Unique Visitors and almost 20% of site visits are for 5 minutes or more and 6 % spend more than 30 minutes.

Now consider that the potential volunteer does contact you. They have already taken the time to orient themselves to the organization and know what you will be asking them to do. They know that they meet the requirements for the position and are aware and comfortable with any pre-requisites including background checks or references. The time you spent registering your agency and creating a complete and accurate job description for each of your opportunities has now saved you the time to orient a new volunteer. Your complete job description has allowed the potential volunteer to envision themselves doing this work, which greatly increased the likelihood that they would follow up with you. It has also saved you the time of working with potential volunteers who might not have been a good fit, as well as the awkward situation of having to turn someone away.

Using VolunteerMaine allows you to do your job more effectively and efficiently. You can use your time to work on meeting your mission rather than on recruiting.

Since VolunteerMaine is administered by sites throughout Maine, contact your local United Way to get connected with an administrator who can answer your questions, guide you through problems, and inform you of various site features and how to use them.

Maria E. Hinteregger is the Associate Director of Community Impact at the United Way of Mid Coast Maine and a guest blogger.

By Sarah Ryan, Ph.D.

If your nonprofit doesn’t have a second life presence, are you doing a disservice to your clients? Probably not. If you don’t provide economic data on your website, are you failing your donors? Maybe so. These questions point to the difficulty of strategic communications planning in the digital age. The good news: You already have (most of) the tools to make the right decisions!

Nonprofit leaders, volunteers, and supporters can help their organizations succeed through effective external communications – digital or otherwise. And, the criteria for making decisions in the digital world are almost identical to those for newspaper, radio, and billboard campaigns. Yes, you might have to debate things like “Twitter vs. Blog (or both!)”, but your options should be judged based upon how well they serve your audience and your mission. With those two criteria in focus, decisions become much simpler. Let me demonstrate…

A nonprofit client came to me very concerned about second life. Other nonprofits in the neighborhood had a presence in the virtual world, offered clients the chance to chat via avatars, and hosted online socializing events. “We need to be doing this,” I was told. “And soon.” When I asked “Why?”, the organization’s community outreach director mumbled something like “…because the Jones’ are doing it.” I actually found this to be a compelling argument – no organization wants to lag behind its community or competitors. But the core mission of my client was assisting small businesses, mostly immigrant-owned, in succeeding. Having been a small business owner, I could not imagine wanting to create a pretend me and interact with pretend others in cyberspace while trying to juggle face-to-face meetings with clients and vendors, budgets, etc. So I asked, “Did any of your clients ask for this?” Silence. And I advised, “At your next big gathering, ask your clients what they need and want from you online. Maybe it’s second life. More likely, it’s a page with all of the business forms they’re always hunting for. I’m guessing it’s not virtual socializing. I bet you’ll find that that’s a waste of time and resources for this audience.” I offered that advice both because of the audience and the organization’s mission…

Some organizations, like my client, assist a select group of people in achieving specific goals. The people and those goals are central to the mission and are the basis for making almost all decisions (e.g., does X get our clients closer to Y). Other organizations – most nonprofit organizations, I’d argue – have a broader mission. While a nonprofit might protect animals in a certain jurisdiction, for example, it might also aim to educate a wider audience about animal cruelty. While a 501(c)(3) might support a single arts institution, it probably also champions the power of the arts to promote peace and tolerance in the broader world. When broad-missioned organizations ignore new technologies, they fail to fully realize their potential, or keep their promises. If an arts leader, for instance, laments that fewer people (than ever!) are visiting her museum in this down economy, she needs to bring the museum to them via the organization’s website, Twitter (e.g., pithy quotes from artists), blogs, etc. If she has to pay for underutilized physical spaces (e.g., empty galleries because there is no money for school bussing…), her digital showcases can actually save money while increasing the number of constituents served. Maybe. Of course, nothing substitutes for viewing a piece of art or watching a performance up close. But when the audience doesn’t show, the institution must find other ways of fulfilling its mission. New technologies not only fill gaps, they can take information, art, and client service-delivery in interesting and meaningful new directions.

So, the criteria for judging an external communication strategy are still service to the audience and mission. Nonprofit leaders, staffers, and volunteers should begin digital communications conversations by asking, “what does our audience want, need, and desire?” and finish with “does this forward the mission of our organization?” In the digital age, it is important to reach out to audiences in more ways than ever before. But not every tool or site or activity is right for every organization. There are costs associated with unnecessary communication strategies – time, money, burnout – as well as with underutilized digital technologies – loss of clients, educational opportunities, and potential revenue streams, declining prestige. Digital strategies are exceedingly important for large organizations in major markets such as New York City, where “cutting-edge” is a mission, not a vision. But smaller organizations and individuals working for good shouldn’t feel obligated to jump on every e-bandwagon. Just like always, they should focus on doing what they do best for the people they serve – in person, on the radio, or via frenetic tweets.

Sarah Ryan, Ph.D., is from the Department of Communication at The University of Texas at El Paso and is a guest blogger.

By Jeremy Keith Hammond

The prefix ‘open’ has become applied to many new terms, particularly in online conversations. It describes an approach to design, development, organization and distribution. Open-approaches are most often considered free, though not just in price, but in liberty. Think of free speech instead of free beer. ‘Open’ has become particularly popular, not just for its effectiveness of producing results, but also because of its human-oriented, ideological fundamentals. Openness combines extreme levels of practicality and idealism as they have never been before.

Early ‘open’ appearances include open-source technologies or software such as the Linux operating systems for computers which are produced and advanced by legions of volunteer developers all over the world interested in the technology and its quality instead of by profit driven corporations. People work on it freely, distribute it freely, and change it freely, etc. all for the benefit of the general public. The same principle has been applied to the Mozilla Firefox web browser, the world’s leading browser after Internet Explorer. Programmers from every continent collaborate on this one program to produce a stable, high quality piece of software that purely benefits its users. One could view this as the democratization of technology and many consider it to be a positive step forward. The ‘open’ concept has expanded to include works of art and music, as well as college course materials such as MIT’s popular open-courseware.

This idea has started to roll over into other areas of society and many are eager to explore the potential of ‘open.’ In the world of software, we have concrete definitions of what’s free and open but as the concept is used more widely, things get a little hazier. We can narrow things down to a few principles.

Let’s look at the principles of ‘open’ that have been laid out so far and explore how they could be used in the field of volunteerism.

Principle 1: Transparency
Transparency: meaning that you can see inside it, study it or understand it. For example, open source software or an open government. In the former example, there is no secret coding hidden for proprietary sake. Also, knowledge about its contributors is readily available to those concerned and the level of contribution is used to determine value and reward. There are no secret recipes. This has a viral effect in the transmission and evolution of the software. What’s particularly important is the trust that is built. By being able to look inside the software you can easily be reassured about the nonexistence of anything malicious.

Transparency already yields similar results in volunteerism. Most nonprofit orgs are required to file IRS form 990, a public document, which sheds light on the revenue and spending practices of each nonprofit. This practice, among others, has built a huge amount of trust between nonprofits and the public. All you need to do is say the word, nonprofit and instantly the listener has made a positive judgement about the nature of the endeavor or organization. It’s also important to volunteers. The average volunteer is faced with multiple organizations and projects competing for his or her time. Trust is going to be a major factor in determining which cause they aid. A more transparent organization is going to garner more trust.

Additionally, a transparent organization is easier to improve. With more people able to view it and analyze it, it opens itself up to more constructive criticism. Ideally, those people will be volunteers in a position to make that analysis and implement positive changes.

Principle 2: Participatory
This particularly refers to more substantive contribution. We’re social beings with self-esteems that benefit from knowing we make positive differences in our world. Wikipedia is wonderful evidence of that. The wealth of knowledge contributed to this online resource is absolutely immense and it’s all conducted by thousands of people around the world entirely for free. People are excited to take ownership of something publicly beneficial. I personally have contributed articles to Wikipedia and feel very proud about it.

Offering an outlet for that desire in your organization is critical. Allowing volunteers more authority - as their contributions increase in quality - is an excellent reward system that will improve your organization, advancing its cause and greatly increase retention.

Another way an organization can follow this principle is by creating an environment open to as many volunteers and their abilities as possible. Everyone can contribute to your cause in some way - learn how to be open to new forms of contribution. Also consider the demographic. Allow beneficiaries of your organization to participate in the governance of its activities. After-all they may know better than anyone else how to be served.

Principle 3: Flexible, Malleable, Editable…
This suggests that your organization ought to be accepting of change, particularly change derived from all of its contributors and not just a small authority. Consider the case of the battle of the browsers. Despite having a stranglehold on the market (due more to its corporate connections with computer retailers than the value of its browser), Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is a lot slower in meeting the demands of consumers than its open source counterpart, Mozilla Firefox. While Internet Explorer provides updated browsers every so often, Mozilla is constantly and immediately updated by extensions produced by programmers which can easily, and sometimes automatically, be installed. These updates are user driven instead of market driven. The advantage is a better product or service.

The volunteer environment is constantly changing. The needs and motivations of volunteers shift due to numerous circumstances often times on an internal, community, national or international level. It will behoove your organization to meet those changes as soon as possible to ensure the sustainable recruitment and retention of volunteers.

For instance, we’ve seen increases in contributions from younger generations. A smart organization would harness that youthful energy to bring fresh ideas to the table. Being open to the ideas of those youth, in essence enabling them to participate and dictate those very changes may even maximize the effect.

Other open strategies and qualities to think about that are applicable to volunteerism include:

1.Providing spaces for people (volunteers) as they are and as they want to become
2.Embracing the richness and wisdom in differences or plurality
3.Acting with a light spirit, sense of fun, creativity and a perspective of opportunity
4.Applying practical and productive techniques and approaches from non-traditional domains
5. Distributing increasing control, earnings, and assets into the communities they serve

Following these principles results in a fresh, flexible, sustainable, and ethical volunteer program which benefits not only the organization, but its volunteers and constituents as well.

Jeremy Keith Hammond is on the Buoya! Steering Committee and is a guest blogger.

By Carla Ganiel

Heather Banester Bassett’s recent post on the benefits of volunteering for job seekers got me thinking about how to reach the unemployed or underemployed. One of the first pieces of advice for job seekers in this age of social media is to create or update your profile on LinkedIn. Having had my own LinkedIn profile for at least a couple of years, and having woefully neglected it for most of that time, I wondered whether there might be a way to use the site to identify possible volunteers.

I logged into my profile and started looking around. One feature that is new since the last time I visited is the “What are you working on now?” question that appears under your photo and job title. I typed in, “Carla is writing a post for the Volunteer Maine blog.” You, however, could use this space to advertise your need for a volunteer to help with your marketing plan.

Alas, beyond this I couldn’t figure out any way to easily search out people who might be looking for volunteer opportunities or to advertise them to my contacts. Wouldn’t it be nice, for example, if the developers of LinkedIn would add a little check-box under “contact settings” where people could indicate an interest in volunteer or pro bono projects?

Of course, it’s possible that my lack of familiarity with the site is the reason I couldn’t figure out how to use it more effectively for this purpose. Who else out there is on LinkedIn? If you have any suggestions, let me know. In the meantime, I’m going to commit to finding ways to make better use of my own profile. Or at least I’m going to try, provided that I don’t get distracted taking quizzes on facebook instead.

Carla Ganiel is a Commissioner on the Maine Commission for Community Service board and a featured blogger.

By Pete Phair

Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter… BlackBerry, Palm Pilot, iPhone… email, mp3, 3G & 4G networks… Google, Bing, Yahoo… Can you even imagine what our lives would be like without these household terms, companies and gadgets? Do you recall a thing called a dictionary? Remember when ‘cut & paste’ meant, well, to cut with scissors and paste with glue? The workplace has seen oodles of amazing changes in the last 20 years around communication, information management, technical support, etc. and as these concepts become more ingrained into our daily lives, both at home and at work, it’s sometimes easy to forget the way we use to do things. It seems apparent that using these valuable, technological resources is no longer user’s choice but rather, an absolutely critical necessity.

I Googled ‘Volunteering” and got 13,700,000 hits about the subject. That’s 13 and a half million perspectives. At the click of a virtual button, I can inform thousands of people about volunteer opportunities, current events and how to properly wax a pair of skis. When WinterKids launches its new website in a month or two, anyone visiting our pages will be able to give a donation, volunteer for a number of upcoming events, retrieve contact information for staff and board members, fill out a volunteer application form, etc… the list goes on… Twenty years ago, you got a phone number out of the phone book and set up a meeting to talk about all the things a company could do for you. These days, phone books are practically obsolete. Marketing and promotions are naked without web links, interactive imaging and user-friendly web tools. Volunteer recruitment is almost impossible without tapping into the World Wide Web somehow. Terms like “Googling”, “texting” and “virtual” are just a sampling of the new vernacular.

Oh sure, we can still use the good old fashioned radio, TV and newspaper mediums and in fact, they supplement new age campaigns rather well, but by themselves, they have become wholly ineffective. Strategic planning now comprises web approaches, electronic media tactics and pinpointed marketing through the web. The days of cold calling, martini lunches and roll-a-dex resource development have been replaced by targeted marketing, video-conferencing and on-line search engines.

Let’s face it, whether we embrace it or not, the reality is, we are globally and electronically connected these days and no amount of kicking and screaming will hold off your eventual acceptance of this fact of the world. Those who scoff at this new way of doing business will suffer for it in some fashion. Those who refuse to develop at least a working knowledge of the techno-tools at their disposal are doing their organization a disservice. Wear your Luddite crown proudly if you will, but rest assured, eventually, a video of you and your crown will be posted to somebody’s YouTube account.

Pete Phair is a guest blogger and the Outreach Coordinator at WinterKids.

By Sharon Tewksbury-Bloom

Last month I attended the National Conference on Volunteerism and Service in San Francisco. This was the biggest and most spectacular gathering of volunteer leaders and change agents ever in the United States. The organizers really outdid themselves in terms of star power, meaningful engagement, flawless logistics, etc. So how can we improve next year? Better, more effective use of social media. Social media was a professed new focus of the conference this year, but it was clear to me that this was merely a test year. The greatest sign that the involvement of social media in the conference was not well planned: NO WIFI!

For the uninitiated, let me step back a minute and describe what a conference looks like that effectively engages social media. Conference organizers create the structure that allows conference goers to go the extra mile to engage with one another and share their thoughts and ideas with their peers as well as with the masses of people who wanted to attend the conference but were unable to. For example, the conference decides on a hashtag (a key word that every attendee will use when writing about the conference online so that the information can be found and aggregated). For this conference it was #NCVS. If you go to http://search.twitter.com/ and type “NCVS” into the search box you will find posts from before, during, and after the conference.

Where NCVS organizers dropped the ball was in not enabling social media use at the conference itself. They even set up a blog about the conference but didn’t blog during the event! If they had WIFI access and even someone designated to be tweeting or live blogging from each session or main event, it would have created a rich conversation for people both within and outside of the conference to follow. One of Twitter’s greatest strengths is in helping a large group of people who are all interested in the same thing but don’t know each other, have a massive conversation. If everyone is using the same hashtag / keyword then you can get up-to-the minute information about that topic from everyone at the conference. On a practical level you can find out how long the line to get into the opening plenary is, which session has an engaging presenter you want to see, where to get coffee within a few blocks, and feel the enthusiasm as everyone writes about their reactions to Michelle Obama’s speech.

For more ideas of how Social Media can be effectively used in a conference setting, check out Alan Levine’s guest post on Beth Kanter’s blog.

For more information on Social Media in Local Government, check out the “Wikis, Podcasts, and Blogs –Oh My!” article from the Fall 2008 edition of NAVPLG.

- Sharon Tewksbury-Bloom, Volunteer Program Specialist, Volunteer Arlington and Board Member, National Association for Volunteer Programs in Local Government (NAVPLG), www.navplg.org

Information Age Volunteerism - Open Sourced! Crowdsourced!
By Ben Rigby, www.techpresident.com

Click here to read a very interesting blog about volunteerism in the age of facebook, flicker and the like.

By Ann Swain

The phone rings and the caller says…”…have a second?” Before you can say a polite ‘no’, the caller is on their way with their multi-faceted barrage of questions, concerns, venting and who knows what else. At the end of the call, you find you have either agreed to do something you know you don’t have time to do or you find that you have to deal with a situation that you knew nothing about previously.

At the last National Conference on Volunteering and Service I attended a session called ‘The 32-hour Day’. Admittedly when I signed up for the session, I was actually thinking about the book on caring for someone with dementia called, The 36 Hour Day. At first I was disappointed that I had misread the title but then found myself in a session I sorely needed. Yup, the time management issue comes up every day of my life. How on earth can I get 32 hours of work done in 24? Actually, I don’t really want to use up the entire 24 working unless, of course it’s spread over a few days. One can only hope.

I realize there are a number of technological methods which could assist me in some attempt at time management. The first step to recovering from poor time management is to admit there is a problem. Then I can take a look at the list of tasks which need to be completed and prioritize the list, hopefully before it grows. Sometimes, this means not answering the phone for at least one-half hour if possible. So back to technology…some managers have access to the fancy phones which assist in scheduling, some have a PDA which will even alarm to remind them of a task needing attention while others use Microsoft Outlook. All of this technology still needs human attention to input data and to maintain the data.

When I truly evaluate the process and commit to it, it really does work. Schedule time for tasks and stick to it. Always allow for make-up time if you don’t happen to complete a task that was scheduled earlier in the day. By not procrastinating, the scheduled tasks always get done and on time.

I know this all sounds very rigid, but it really does save the brain from some measure of overload. And when someone asks you if you have time, it’s easier to take a look at your documented schedule and say, ‘I really don’t have time right now but I can get back to you at a later time’ (according to your schedule).

Ann Swain is the Director of the University of Maine Cooperative Extension Senior Companion Program and a featured blogger.

Living in this fast-paced technology-dependent society makes communication with people very easy and very fast, whether through text messaging or email. In fact, I receive more emails in a day than phone calls I receive in a week which might be nice if the emails weren’t for solving problems that I don’t have or other similar junk mail topics. The nice thing about junk mail though is that with one click I can delete it, just as if someone were to receive an email message asking them to volunteer on a project, they could quickly respond no, or not respond at all, and not give it a second thought. However, if I call a person to ask about volunteering, a person is much less likely to say no or not answer me at all and then immediately hang up the phone.

Although we live in this computer age, many people still prefer to speak with a “real person.” I myself am stuck between using email and the phone for communicating with others and although I do check my email constantly during the day, I am always prepared and happy to receive or make a phone call. Many of the volunteers I work with however are not as connected to computers. Many of my volunteers are summer people who have come up to Maine to enjoy the outdoors and spend time with their family, not spend hours on the computer, anxiously awaiting an email asking them to volunteer. In fact, some volunteers don’t even have computers nor email addresses! ~gasp!~ Just kidding.

But seriously, if there is one thing that I have learned thus far through my experience as a volunteer coordinator, it is that you need to find out from your volunteers the way they prefer to be contacted. After all, if someone is willing to donate their time to you, you should be willing to donate your time, just as equally, to them. So in conclusion, stop reading this and pick up the phone and call someone, who knows, you might find a new volunteer!

Alice Phillips is an AmeriCorps member serving with the Maine Conservation Corps at the Damariscotta Lake Watershed Association in Jefferson.