 Welcome everyone to Tech 101, the best assignments for online volunteers. My name is Becky Wiegand and I'm here at TechSoup's headquarters in San Francisco and I will be your host for today's event. We'll also be joined by Jane Cravens from Coyote Communications. So a little bit more about me. I'm an Interactive Events Producer here at TechSoup. I've been with the organization for just about 6 years this spring. And prior to that I worked for 3 different small nonprofits based in Washington D.C. and Oakland, California. And I was often the accidental techie helping to manage our online presence and email blasts and fixing tech problems on the fly with very little training in those fields. And so I was also a TechSoup user through each of those organizations requesting donations and also using the resources available through TechSoup to help solve some of those tech issues for my organization. So I've come from that background and I'm happy to be hosting today's webinar and sharing the expertise that Jane Cravens will be bringing with us. And she is a really amazing expert on volunteerism. She has a consulting firm called Coyote Communications and she's written some books on volunteering as well. And she hosts seminars like this all the time, and she's been generous enough to share that with us. She also is a host in TechSoup's forums. So you can find Jane there to help answer questions on a daily basis, which is fantastic. You'll also see Aliba Zekian from TechSoup in the chat window. She'll be helping grab your questions and flagging them for follow-up for the Q&A and also helping you with any tech issues throughout the webinar. A quick look at today's agenda. I'll do a hopefully pretty quick introduction of TechSoup in case this is your first time joining us. We'll have some polls asking you how much you're already engaging with online volunteers. Jane will then take over and give us some definitions of what a virtual volunteering assignment or task might look like, and why to work with them and how to attract them. Then she'll talk about some of the best types of assignments. She'll talk about some of the no-knows and the worst tactics. And then we'll talk a little bit about what things you can go home and do in your organization right away to help improve how you engage those online volunteers. We'll have time at the end for Q&A, and we'll also try and raise up some questions throughout the webinar. So when it comes to you, feel free to ask it in that chat window. So quickly, who is TechSoup? We're a nonprofit with a clear focus. We are aiming to help fellow nonprofits, charities, public libraries, and foundations with their tech products and services, plus providing learning resources like this webinar today and our articles, blog, community forums that are there to help you find the solutions to your technology needs to better meet your mission. We've been around since 1987, and we've served more than 200,000 charitable organizations with more than 11 million software and hardware donations in 60 countries around the world. So if you're not joining us from the United States today, we may have a local partner in your country, and you can find out more about them by visiting TechSoupGlobal.org, which is the umbrella organization, also a nonprofit that helps operate all of our programs. We have a variety of new things that we're always doing at TechSoup, including offering new consulting services, new software programs like Windows 8.1 Operating System, and new programs like QuickBooks 2014 that have recently become available. You can find all of these resources and more by visiting TechSoup.org. So with that introduction, I'd like to go ahead and do a quick poll to see who already is involving online volunteers in some way in the organization. So how many of you are involving online volunteers now? And this will just help inform Jane as she opens up the presentation with her content in just a moment. So feel free to click those numbers on your screen. We're going to give a few more seconds here so that everybody gets a chance to participate. You can also chat into us if you'd like to share how you're engaging those volunteers. It's always interesting to see how people are using and working with volunteers in their communities. Just a couple more seconds for you to click on the screen. And right now it looks like about 70% of the participants in today's webinar are saying that they're not currently using volunteers online or involving online volunteers right now. So that's really helpful. I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to Jane Cravens, our host for today on sharing her expertise. And I'd like her to just take a moment to give us a little bit more background about herself and tell us who she is before she gets started. So Jane, thanks so much for coming on the program today. We'd love to have your expertise. Thanks for joining us. Thanks. I'm really happy to be here. I've done these webinars for TechSoup in previous years, but this may be the first time I've gotten to do one about virtual volunteering, so I'm pretty excited. I have been associated with TechSoup since it was called CompuMentor back in the 90s and didn't have a website. I was involved as a client, then a volunteer, and now I manage the online discussion group. So I have seen TechSoup from every way you could see TechSoup, I think. And I feel really happy that they're talking about virtual volunteering today because I think it's a great topic for the audience. And in case you're wondering who I am, I'll put different pictures up. I'm a little bit different than maybe some of the other volunteer management consultants that do presentations because I actually work with volunteers, and I'm a volunteer myself. So I use my experience as a manager of volunteers, both at TechSoup and maybe other organizations, as well as my experience as a volunteer on-site, online, and everything in between to inform what I talk about. So I try not to just talk about theory, I try to talk about what I'm actually experiencing, what I'm seeing other people experiencing. So I really hope you'll follow me on Twitter. I don't just talk about virtual volunteering, however, I also talk about my other work, working overseas in communications issues, and whatnot. So I'm not virtual, even though I'm virtual right now. And I just published a book, and all of today's resource materials come from that book, and the book is called The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. And it is for sale as a paperback and as an e-book. And also, in case you're wondering about that wacky title, I did a blog today about that specifically. And some of the things I'll talk about today will reflect that title. It may not be for the reasons you think that we named it The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. There is also a wiki, and this is free. Anyone can access it. And what we've tried to do with the wiki, my co-author and I, is to create a space where the things that change about online volunteering, virtual volunteering, specifically software, hardware, tools, whatnot, will be reflected in that wiki. And you can submit suggestions for the wiki. You can't edit the wiki directly, but you can suggest changes. And I actually right now am the person who will edit that wiki. So let's get right to it. What is it that I mean about virtual volunteering? Well, first of all, it's not new. And it's a practice that is as old as the Internet. So it's more than 35 years old. What it means is a volunteer who is completing tasks in whole or in part off-site from your organization. They are using the Internet and a computer or another network device such as a smartphone. And it includes a lot of other terms that you hear. You hear the term telementoring or microvolunteering, crowdsourcing, all that. That's all included in virtual volunteering. And in fact, Susan and I even include any work done with volunteers online. So even if your volunteer is doing their service on-site, but you're primarily interacting with them online via email, via Skype, well that's virtual volunteering because part of that volunteer service really is happening remotely. And it can be a long-term assignment with a lot of responsibility. It can be a short little micro task that takes under 30 minutes. It can be an ongoing commitment. It can be a one-time just show-up thing. It comes in all shapes and sizes. But what I want to really emphasize today, and this is what our title is implying, is the boundaries between online and traditional volunteering are just about gone. And I did this little graphic to say we really need to stop talking about on-site traditional volunteers only and then having a completely separate discussion about online volunteers. Really, there are now only volunteers. And I don't mean merely volunteers. I mean exclusively volunteers. The boundaries are really changing. And a lot of times people after they go through a presentation like this realize they are involving online volunteers, and they didn't know they were. So it's always interesting to do this presentation face-to-face because usually midway through a few people raise their hand and say, I just realized I'm doing this. I didn't realize I was doing this. So it can be pretty interesting. So what do these online volunteers do? What do they really do? And I have a long list here. This list changes a little bit from time to time. You'll notice on this list, I've got translate documents, I've got design databases, monitor the news. Most of these aren't technical assignments. I think a lot of people when they first hear of the concept think that I'm talking about people who are going to do IT-related jobs. And most online volunteering isn't IT-related jobs. It's just the IT is the avenue the service is delivered, but creating a podcast, interviewing somebody, or monitoring the news, or answering questions, those are very human-to-human interactions. What you'll also notice when you look at this list is some of these could be done in a few minutes. Some of these would take several hours, days, weeks. Some of these don't require a person to have any skills, but some of these require a great deal of skills. You can't translate a document unless you're fluent in another language for instance. So what I like when I look at these assignments is I find them very human. I'm not talking about connecting computers. I'm talking about connecting humans. That's what virtual volunteering is. So I really hope you'll think of it that way. And this list just changed time to time. And if it changes, you'll find that change reflected on the wiki as I discover new ways that people are engaging with volunteers online. So as I said, most virtual volunteering tasks aren't about tech. They're not specifically related to Internet technology. And they're much more related to expertise being donated online. So for instance, if you've got volunteers managing your online discussion group, you don't need somebody who's great at tech as much as you need somebody who's great at being with people, talking to people, knowing if somebody is feeling left out, knowing how to read a message and go, hmm, I think that person might be feeling hostile or angry. And that's a skill that isn't so much IT as much as it's understanding human behavior. So I just want to reemphasize that. That said, it's important to watch your step when you're talking about virtual volunteering. Mind the gap. Watch your step. There's really no reason to ever use the word virtual volunteering or micro volunteering in your organization if you think that some staff are going to be turned off by that. I've noticed that when I work at organizations and I say, you know, Joe edited our brochure and designed it. And everybody's like, that's great. Who's Joe? And I describe Joe and they look at his work and they're thrilled, and they're like, well, we need to thank him in some way and we do that. I never have to say, well, this was virtual volunteering. If I say, well, you know, he did it on his home computer because his computer is better than the ones here. Everybody goes, oh, great. But if I say, well, this was a virtual volunteering assignment that can sometimes get people hackles up. They suddenly, oh, it's a new term. It's a jargony term. I also don't use the term virtual volunteers. And the reason I don't is because when I did back in the 90s, people would say, oh, so they're not real. Or they would say, well, we have real volunteers, but then we have virtual volunteers. So I try to say online volunteers or I just say volunteers. I also think it's a good idea to let the volunteers decide what's online and what's on-site. And so what I mean by that is say you're going to use volunteer match and you're going to recruit volunteers. In your description, you need volunteers to edit your newsletter, describe all of the things you need out of an editor, good English skills, and perhaps a certain software, et cetera. You don't ever have to say this is a virtual volunteering assignment if you think that might somehow scare somebody away. In fact, but actually for volunteers they actually love the term. It's more organizations that hate it. But sometimes you can upload an assignment to volunteer match and you're thinking it's an on-site assignment and somebody may write you and say, well, I'd love to do this, but you know, I could do it from home. And that may not have bound on you. Be open to that. Let volunteers propose what they might like to do as an online volunteer. And there's no need to say if an assignment is best done by a computer or a smart phone. Again, volunteers will decide that for themselves. They'll decide how they would most like to do the assignment. We have one question that came in that I think related to that slide, so I just wanted to clear up. So Giuseppe was asking, is virtual volunteering like microvolunteering? And I know on this slide you said you don't need to use the different terms, but I think there's confusion around what it means. Yeah, microvolunteering is just another form of online volunteering. So microvolunteering is short term online volunteering. Microvolunteering is something, some people say it's what you would do in 10 minutes or less. I've seen other people say microvolunteering is something that you could do in just a couple of hours. There's no dogma. You pretty much get to decide. But just as with, you have group volunteering, you have what's called episodic volunteering. That's the old word for microvolunteering. You have team volunteering. Microvolunteering is just another form of online volunteering. So you can get really caught up in all those terms. If you want to brand it as microvolunteering, and you want to keep all of your assignments really short, that's great. If you just want to call it volunteering and say we have short term assignments, we have long term assignments, you can do that. But microvolunteering is a part of virtual volunteering. Back in the 90's, just a little history note, we called that bite-sized volunteering. Susan Ellis and I, we were so proud of that term. We thought it was such a great term and it never caught on. And then somebody thought of the term microvolunteering and we were like darn, if only we'd come up with a cool name back in the 90's when we were talking about the short term tasks. So I hope that answers your question. So what is a great online volunteering assignment? Well, it doesn't say in essence we have all this work to do, please come do it. Just like a restaurant doesn't say we have all this food, please come eat it. It has a description of not just what needs to be done, but why it's important to the organization. Why do you need this paragraph translated into Spanish? Why do you need this video edited and have music added to the video? Why do you need somebody to monitor the news for a certain term or certain event? When you can say that, why it's important to the organization, it becomes really appealing to volunteers. They see not just work to be done, but a difference to be made. A great assignment also has details on expectations. And I think that it's important to say what your expectations are around deadlines. When does this assignment need to be completed? How often does the volunteer need to report in and say, I'm working on this, here's what I've done so far. That needs to be in writing and it needs to be right up front. I think it's important that an assignment has details on what success looks like. As a result of this assignment, what will happen? And a lot of times that can really cut down on miscommunication and frustration on your part and the volunteer who thought he was doing what you wanted and it ended up not being what you wanted. So if you can really provide details on what success looks like on the part of volunteer, that's really helpful. You should also provide details on how the volunteer should ask for help, how the volunteer should complain, and how the volunteer should quit. When your volunteers come on board, even on-fight, it's not for life. We tend to think of it that way. Great, this person is going to be the moderator of my online community forever while they're not. So come up with details on what is the procedure for somebody to quit? Would you like them to give you a two-week notice? Would you like them to give you a month's notice? Would you like an email? Would you like a phone call? So be very specific on that. And also provide details on your policies about confidentiality and ownership of materials. That's really important in online volunteering, ownership of materials. I tell volunteers right up front that for instance, they're designing a logo or submitting logo ideas. Now this is going to become our property and we can do whatever we want to with it. Are you comfortable with that? And I make sure they sign off and say they are. I don't know that that would hold up in a court of law if they suddenly decided, no, I want this back. But what it does do is let people know right up front what your expectations are. And it cuts down on frustration and misunderstandings later. One thing I want you to notice in all this is these are all the things you should be doing for on-site, in-person volunteers. There's nothing really different here. And that's the thing about virtual volunteering. Really all the rules are very similar. There are certain standards you should just always have for your assignments whether they are tiny, tiny, short micro tasks or big long commitments. These are the basics. These are what a great assignment in my opinion looks like. And I'm not supposed to be looking at the chat window, but I just saw that you like bite-sized volunteering. Thank you. I loved that term too. I'm very sorry to get go. So let's talk about examples of the why because I know a lot of organizations struggle with it when you say why an assignment is important. So these are from actual organizations. Translating this guide into Spanish will allow organizations to deliver critical information to more than 15% of our population that are native Spanish speakers. Well now you've changed. I have this work to do. Can you do it? Can you come make a difference for us? Here's the difference you'll make by doing this. And I have two other examples there. One for a microvoluntary assignment, tagging flip or photos. One for moderating online discussion group. And again, it's no different than on-site volunteering, but I think it's saying the why is perhaps even more important for online assignments. I really, really do. So here's another important why. And this is something organizations struggle with. This is a challenge. Why are you creating this assignment for volunteers? Or why are you making this online task something for volunteers to do? For instance, if you divide up an assignment, something you really need done at your organization into 50 little micro tasks, it might actually take 10 times as long to get it done because you've got to recruit the volunteers. You've got to read what they do. You have to redo what some of them did. And it might end up taking 10 times as long as if you just involved one volunteer to do it. So why would you divide something into 50 little micro tasks if it's not as efficient? Well because maybe you want to involve 50 volunteers and you're hoping to turn those people into long-term supporters or longer-term online volunteers. Another thing you need to ask why is you should never say it's because we can't afford to pay someone. So we had to make this a volunteer assignment. It's really important not to do that. That can really make labor groups angry. Something I blog about is when labor groups get angry about say light offs at a school and an administrator says, well we're just going to have volunteers do that now because we can't afford to pay people. So avoid that language. It may be true but it should be something that's never offered as a primary reason that you're making a task, a volunteering task. There's lots of reasons to involve volunteers because some tasks are actually best done by volunteers just as some tasks are best done by paid staff. You may want to involve more people in your organization's work. When I worked at the United Nations one of the reasons they created the online volunteering service wasn't because those tasks weren't getting done that organizations were offering to volunteers but because it was a way anybody could be involved in the work of the UN. And that was something that wasn't possible before. You had to give up your career and go work for the UN for several years to be involved in their work. So they wanted to do online volunteering to involve more people in their work. You may want to reach a particular demographic. You may go, gosh, we don't have many young people volunteering. Maybe if we create online volunteering assignments we'll get some young people in and maybe they'll even become on-site volunteers. And a lot of organizations involve volunteers because it is part of their mission to work with a particular group. So again, look at that. None of those are really different than on-site volunteering. Now this is the first time I've seen this slide. I like it very much. Choose the right way, not the shortest. I like it very much. I like the road too. As a motorcyclist, that's the kind of road I'm trying to master. So that's great. Another characteristic about the best assignments is they're fully supported. That means that the volunteer knows their expectations. The organization knows what the volunteer is supposed to be doing. Everything is in writing. Everybody is going to be recognized. You need to make sure assignments are supported but it's not just, hey, here's the work to do. Okay, see you in three months. So make sure you've got that full support. There's lots of great books and great resources out there. I know of one book in particular that can help you set up the support systems you need for online volunteers. So the right way to engage and support online volunteers is ask more than once your current volunteers, people you see face to face, how they might like to help, how they might like to help online. Often they have terrific ideas. And by the way, that's how I came to virtual volunteering is I was working with a college intern, two college interns from San Jose State University who said, wow, your computers here are awful. Mine at home are faster. Could I build these webpages at home? And I said sure. And that's how I came to virtual volunteering. Create an online group for all of your volunteers so that they can share experiences, so that they can crowdsource problems. They can talk about the events that they just attended if they liked it or not. You can talk about any policy or instituting. It's a really great way to get volunteers feeling supported whether they are doing service on-site or online. Be sure you create a variety of online assignments. You want to create some micro volunteering assignments that take just a few minutes or a few hours, but create leadership roles too. Create high responsibility roles. People want to make a really deep connection. Not everybody wants that quicky, feel-good experience. A lot of people want a really rich, long-term experience. So create a variety of assignments and encourage all of your staff to think about ways to involve online volunteers. It shouldn't be just one person and connect them with the resources they need to be able to do that. Be sure to fully integrate your online volunteer engagement into all of your volunteering so people should have the same or similar orientation, the same recognition. If your on-site volunteers get a coffee mug, your online volunteers should get a coffee mug. They are covered by the same policies, etc. And just be sure you are applying sound volunteer management 101 principles to your online volunteers just as you do with your face-to-face volunteers. Confidentiality, screening, recognition, you know, so lots of great training, lots of great books on those sound principles, and you need to apply them to all your volunteers. But there is also a wrong way to involve online volunteers as Keanu Reeves has found out. Don't segregate your online volunteers from your on-site traditional volunteers. Don't create two different discussion groups. For instance, one for your real volunteers and one for your virtual volunteers. That's a dreadful idea. You can create different groups depending on their work. For instance, perhaps you have volunteers who work with kids, and you have volunteers who help in the office. You might want the volunteers that work with kids to have a separate group so they can talk about matters that might be confidential from the other volunteers. But really try to think of everybody as volunteers. Don't limit your online volunteering to only one kind of assignment. Don't just do microvolunteering. Don't just do long-term commitments. Try to think of a variety of assignments. If you don't put every assignment in writing, even those micro tasks, you are just setting yourself up for tears. You are just setting yourself up for misunderstandings and frustrations. Don't have just one person engaging with online volunteers, and it also shouldn't be, say, your webmaster. I always love when people say, yes, we involve online volunteers to edit our newsletter. Our webmaster manages them. The webmaster has nothing to do with communications activities. He is more of a back-in person. To me that is like asking your printer to edit. Make sure it is a variety of staff and not just technical staff that are thinking about involving volunteers virtually. People that think volunteer management principles don't apply online also become very frustrated with their virtual volunteering experience. They wonder why so many volunteers drop out. They wonder why so many assignments get done. And don't get done, and it's often because they didn't do those good old-fashioned volunteer management 101 principles, like regular check-ins and confidentiality training. Another really important thing is it's a big mistake to think that the Internet is more dangerous than real life. It's no more safe, and it's no less safe than on-site interactions. And we'll talk about that in a moment, but I think it's time for another poll. That it is. So we want to get an idea of how prepared you feel in your current organization for dealing with confidentiality and privacy issues when working with online volunteers because we know this is an area where people often feel a little bit nervous about having volunteers who are online rather than on-site, and don't know what kind of policies or parameters they can have set up to help protect them. So go ahead and click on this poll. People are already participating, but keep on doing it if you haven't yet. And this will give us a little bit of feedback to get an idea of where you're at now with your preparation at your organization, whether it be a nonprofit or a library or a foundation or wherever you're joining us from today. I'll just give another few seconds here for people to participate, and then we'll go ahead and skip to the results in just a moment. So if you haven't yet clicked on the screen, go ahead and do so now. So around 45, 46% say that they're somewhat prepared, but when we combine those other numbers at the bottom we have 27, and 7, and 7 that either don't know or are not very well prepared. So doing some math here, so it's a little more than half of our audience feels like they're very prepared or somewhat prepared on dealing with confidentiality and privacy issues. So that's great. And then the other half, or slightly less, could use some guidance in that area. So Jane, can you give us some tips on how to work with online volunteers while ensuring confidentiality standards and privacy are secured for your organization? I think I can. So this is something that scares a lot of people about virtual volunteering. And so I really wanted to make sure I got it into this workshop because it can be the stop point when somebody is trying to introduce or expand virtual volunteering where somebody says, nope, confidentiality and safety are just too scary on the Internet so we're not doing this. So that's why I put this in here. The best virtual volunteering roles consider confidentiality and safety concerns. And one of the things I love is hearing this question. How do we ensure volunteers will keep things confidential? And my question usually is, how do you ensure that paid staff will keep things confidential? And if the person says, well, we have staff go through a training, I say great, you're going to do the same thing with volunteers. If the person says, well, they're paid, I have to remind them that a paycheck is not magical. And a paycheck does not suddenly make somebody more confidential and more safe than a volunteer. Or when somebody says, how do I make sure an online volunteer isn't actually a bad person? When I do this workshop face to face, I say, well, no one checked my ID. None of you know if I'm really Jane Craven. So how would you have done that? How would you have made sure I really was who I am and that I'm a safe person to be around? And so I have people start talking about, well, we would do a criminal background check. We would have references. Well, you can certainly do that with online volunteers if you feel a role requires that kind of thing. I just remind people that seeing someone face to face on-site is not a screening tool. That's not how you make sure somebody is a good or bad person. You're not psychic. I hate to tell you that, but you're not. Confidentiality and safety, they're training issues. So you need to look at how you train employees and on-site volunteers regarding confidentiality and safety, and think about how you need to do that online. Do you need to put a video online? Do you need to record your training and have it available online for volunteers to see? Do you need to change your policies to talk about social media? What people should and shouldn't talk about with regard to their work at your organization when they're on Facebook or Twitter? Or they go to church and talk to their friends. These are the kind of things that you need to discuss in your training. There's great material out there. Just remember that different roles require different screening, different training. If you have a beach cleanup and you have 100 volunteers show up, you don't do criminal background checks on those volunteers. You have them sign in. I don't even know if those types of events look check ID, but they don't do criminal background checks or have people bring references. By contrast, if you're going to mentor a young person, you're going to have interviews, reference checks, criminal background checks, etc. So online volunteers is the same thing. If an online volunteer will work with children, they're going to have a very different screening and training than an online volunteer who is going to translate one paragraph from English into Spanish for you. Another thing that is absolutely fundamental and maybe even more so for online volunteers is you need to make sure that they know they are being heard by you. You can do that by having timely responses to online volunteers when they email you or call you or text you by surveying them. And I don't just mean like survey monkey, but actually calling people and doing a survey that way. Respond to volunteers one-on-one, give them a call. You know, phones still work. A smart phone can also be a phone. Another way to show volunteers that you hear them is change your policies and procedures based on things they've told you. Do formal recognition. Make sure they get that certificate. Make sure they get the coffee mug or the t-shirt or the reference on LinkedIn. And be very transparent about how decisions are made. Don't just announce that a policy is being changed. Be very clear with your volunteers online or on-site to say how the decision was made. Never just say, you know, I hear you. Because I know that when I hear that I immediately think they didn't hear me. Show it. Show that you've heard somebody. And what's great about technology is that it makes that really easy. It makes it really easy to show volunteers that you hear them. I think it's essential that you have an online group for your volunteers. I mentioned it earlier. I'd like to go into detail now. It's absolutely fundamental that you do this. It brings all your volunteers together. In fact, some of your volunteers may tell you things on that group that they never told you in a meeting because they feel more comfortable doing it in a group. It allows volunteers to talk to you anytime. It allows them to talk to each other. They may not have ever met before, but this is the way that they can communicate together, meet each other, share resources, talk about challenges that they're facing, and get advice from your other volunteers. And what's great for you is you then get to mine that data. You get to mine it for reports on how great your volunteering program is, the challenges you're facing, why you need more money. I just think it's absolutely fundamental on this day and age to have an online group. People will say, well, what if we work with volunteers that don't have email or don't join the group? Well, that happens. It's just like if you have online on-site meetings where volunteers come. Not all of your volunteers can come to the meetings. Some volunteers can't because of childcare. They can't because of timing or transportation. Everything you do with volunteers will always leave somebody out. Creating a group is no different than having an online meeting. It's just another way to let volunteers interact with you and with each other. Okay, here's your homework. Everybody ready? No pop quiz, but there will be homework. Your homework is, I hope you all will set up an online group for your volunteers. If you're wondering what platform to use, TechSoup in our discussion group, we talk a lot about different platforms. And on the wiki, we have a long list of different platforms that we've heard people say they use with their volunteers. Ask your volunteers via your online group, via on-site meetings, what they might like to do for you online. Put that list up of assignments that could be done online and say, would anyone like to do this for us? Look at OnlineVolunteering.org. That is the UN's Online Volunteering Service. And look at VolunteerMatch.org. Look at their virtual assignments. And be inspired by their ideas and create your own assignments based on some of the ideas you see there. Be sure you review your policies to ensure that they allow for online volunteers. You might need to alter some policies as necessary. We go into great detail about that in the book. And look for ways online volunteers could assist you. Yes, you, you listening to this call right now. How could online volunteers assist you in your work? Leading by example is a great way to get more people at your organization working with volunteers. And one of my favorite things, it's a trick. I ask staff, you know, if I could get you a consultant in any area of expertise for a month, and cost wasn't an issue, what kind of a consultant would you want? And they'll say, oh, you know, I would love somebody to come look at our HR policies and make sure they're up to date. Oh, I would love for somebody to come and do a marketing plan for social media. And then I say, how about I get a pro bono consultant for you? If I had gone to them and said, how might a volunteer assist you, they would probably say, oh, I can't work with a volunteer. But suddenly I'm using different language. Remember what we talked about earlier. For some reason it's more welcoming to say expert and consultant who just happens to be an online volunteer. So that's a great way to find assignments for volunteers on site or online. So now that we've gone through this, it's time for another poll. And perhaps this question looks familiar to you because you were asked at the beginning how many of you are involving online volunteers in some way because we'd like to see if any of you have realized that you are working with your volunteers. You're supporting them and involving them via the Internet and you didn't know until you went through this workshop. So we want to see if the numbers are different. So please answer this question again. And I'll wait this time for Becky to do the total so we can see if it's different and it is already looking significantly different. Becky Yeah, I agree. It looks like we had a good percentage that said that they were already. But this time we have more that are saying yes than the first time, trying to pull up the numbers from the very first one. And it looks like, yeah, there are quite a few people who've realized that they are already engaging online volunteers and they maybe just didn't define it that way, and didn't understand that until you had defined it for them in this event. So I think we've helped. Becky Congratulations. Becky Yeah, well then it's great to know that people are already using online volunteers in some ways and those who still aren't, hopefully you have more information and more resources that you can go back and figure out how to engage them and work with them at your organization. We have just a couple more slides that Jane has and then we'll go ahead and get into the questions. So feel free to keep those questions coming in and we'll be starting with Q&A in just a couple of minutes. Becky So, again, all of today's resources came from the last virtual volunteering guidebook. A lot of the details, if you want to know really how to change your policies or how to address certain issues in your online mentoring program or how to even introduce online volunteering to your organization, it's all here in this book. Susan and I worked very hard on this and packed it with case studies. So hope you find it helpful. I hope you'll stay in touch with me. I've got a blog, a Facebook page, a Twitter feed, and an email newsletter. You can find all of that at my website, coyotecommunications.com. You can find all of it at the Wiki, the virtual volunteering Wiki. You can type my name into Google. And I really hope I'm going to see you over on the TechSoup Community Forum. In fact, if after this workshop you have more questions, come on over to the forum. We've got a digital engagement branch and you can ask for questions there. And I am online several times a day and I will be happy to answer your questions. And other members of our community will also weigh in and talk about their own experience. So if you don't get your question asked today, please head over to the TechSoup Forum and let's get your question answered there. Great. Thank you so much for that, Sam. Yes, Q&A. Let's go. Yep. So we have a handful of questions. And to add about the community forums that not only can you get your questions answered, but you can also share your expertise. So if you are joining us today having managed a lot of volunteers and have a lot of experience with it, then you can go over there and share that knowledge with other organizations. So we have a handful of questions. Freya asks, we are small and don't have many volunteers. Is it still helpful to have an online group when we have just two or three people? That is up to you. If you see yourself, what I like about an online group is that all of the messages are in one place and it's easy for me to go back and look and read the questions. In fact, I mentor a person in Afghanistan and we have an online group even though it's just the two of us. Because that way she can always go back and read my questions or my answers to her, my advice to her. It's really up to you. I just can find that messages can get lost in email and that's why I like an online group for the volunteers I work with. So I hope that answers your question. Thanks, Jane. I think it does. And I know that you mentioned that we have some threads in the forums where people talk about tools, but are there specific tools that you use or would recommend for creating an online group? Do you have any favorite? Yeah, my favorite used to be Yahoo groups. And it is not anymore because this is a new interface. I've tried for months now to get used to it. I don't. I have fallen in love with a platform called Mini Groups. And it does have a C associated with it, but it's a combination of a group and a project management platform. And I've been playing with it and have really liked it. But you've got Google Groups. You've got Yahoo Groups. There's lots of free tools, and even Wiki Spaces has a group function so you could use that as well. That's great. And you know, it's interesting. I'm part of a volunteer group that we use a Facebook group. That's a secret private group just for us because we all happen to be on Facebook already. And so we can share and get notifications and post things in that group too. So there are tools out there that you may already be using that you could incorporate a group into. And I'm glad you brought up Facebook. That's one of the things we talk about in the book and I'll just mention now. It can be a great tool, but you also have to remember some volunteers do not like using Facebook for work or volunteering. They consider that serious and Facebook is for fun. So be sure you ask your volunteers if they're comfortable using Facebook as part of their volunteering because sometimes you'll get people that say no. Sure. As with any tool, you may have people that aren't wanting to adopt. We had a couple of other questions. We have Rochelle is asking, if a volunteer is at home volunteering online for your organization and they become injured, who would be liable for the injury? Our on-site volunteers are covered by us if an injury occurs while volunteering. Would that also apply to the off-site folks? It will only, and you can double check with your nonprofit centers. I'll have somebody who can answer questions about risk management. But unless you are an organization like Big Brothers Big Sisters where you actually in your pilot, when somebody is volunteering for you off-site, they're not doing it on a computer. They're up and walking around. Then things can change. An online volunteer is on a computer, and unless the computer jumps up and hits them in the head, I'm really not sure how in the world they're going to be liable just as if you're using Yahoo and you get injured, you can't sue Yahoo. Or you're using Facebook and you get injured while you're on the computer or smartphone. You can't sue Facebook. So the same applies for online volunteering. But always, if it really is a concern, and by the way, I check risk management constantly. There are no cases of this whatsoever. But if it really is a concern, check with your nonprofit center to get you in touch with a legal representative. Do not just call a lawyer because lawyers are woefully uninformed about volunteerism-related legal issues. The risk management center, the nonprofit risk management center is also a good place to go to for legal questions about volunteers. Great. That's helpful. I guess I wonder if that would extend to, for example, I have a desk job where I'm working at a computer all day. If I had to file like a workers comp claim because I got carpal tunnel, I wonder if something like that would apply to an online volunteer. So that's a great question. And I don't know that we could really advise on the sure thing answer because I think you would have to consult kind of the local laws and whatnot as well. But that leads me to another question about whether or not you think it's important to have some type of contract or employee handbook that volunteers also receive, whether they're on-site or off-site, whether that would help make those things, distinctions clear up front. Yes. And that's why I mentioned it a couple of times in this workshop. You absolutely have to have everything in writing. It's just fundamental. I've gotten in arguments with people who don't believe you have to have everything in writing. I do. Now for some of you who are outside the US, you cannot call it a contract. You may not even be able to call it a memorandum of understanding because for instance in the UK if you do that with a volunteer, you've just hired them and they can sue you for back wages. So what I call it is a, I think they call it a voluntary agreement. And you never, in the UK you can't talk about commitments. You talk about we hope you will volunteer 10 hours a week. We hope you will check in once a week. In the US you can say as a volunteer you are committing to volunteering 10 hours a week. You are committing to reporting once a week. Absolutely you need to have policies. What's great about Google and Bing and all these search engines is you can find other organizations' policies and you can use them as a guide to create your own policies. Again in the book we have really extensive information on how to write volunteer management policies so that they cover online volunteering assignments and what your volunteers are doing when they are online. So for instance you may have an onsite volunteer who is talking about your organization on Facebook. They have a legal right to do that. You need to make sure they understand what your confidentiality rules are and what they should not be discussing and what the consequences are for violating that policy. That's great to know. And we also have on TechSoup site, we have a manual that we created. It's a couple of years old but it has some samples of some of these things that I'll include in the follow-up email. It just occurred to me that it has some kind of some basic forms that you can customize and download and use for things like agreements upfront. So beyond having the assignment detailed in writing, having some type of employee handbook but for volunteers specifically, I think you are right that that sounds like necessary to make sure that organizationally things are clear and you are also protecting yourself. Changing topics we have Crystal asking, what kind of online volunteers do you, Jane, use? Do you have volunteers that work for you or work with you? At TechSoup, I work with several online volunteers who help me moderate the discussion group. They delete advertisements or violations of the rules. They look for answers when somebody posts something that they don't know the answer to. They go and look for the answer or they answer it. Somebody may have a question about how do I do this with Facebook or how do I make a website accessible for people with disabilities? And the online volunteers answer those questions. The platform I use to talk to them is a private area of the TechSoup forum. That's where we talk. So that is one of the ways I involve volunteers at TechSoup. We call them our online moderators, our Royal Court. Great. Daniel asks, any tools or apps that you would recommend for managing volunteers and assignments? Are there any tools that you use that you prefer? I really pretty much just use email and maybe, I know in one case I had a lot of volunteers and I was using my own FileMaker Pro database that I created. The more volunteers you have, the more sophisticated your tools are probably going to be. It's a frequent discussion on TechSoup where you can find tools that allow volunteers to self-update their records. And I recommend you have a look at the forum and what we've discussed there about great tools. But me, I tend to, I hate to say that I'm still stuck in spreadsheets and email. Also Rob Jackson and I did a survey of volunteer management software. I believe it was in 2012. We surveyed several hundred organizations about what software they use, why they like it, why they don't. And that's free and available, very easy to find via my website. You absolutely can't find it, just email me. And there are also links on the TechSoup forum about that survey. And you can see what people think of the tools that they are using, and we name those tools. Great. Thank you for that. And we could try and get a link to that to include in the follow-up if you'd like as well. So we're going to just move along because we've answered most of the questions. And then I just wanted to show a couple of additional resources again pointing to the virtual volunteering wiki that Jane has mentioned earlier. And then there are a couple of resources available on TechSoup's website that we thought we'd mention because they might be useful to some of you. So there is a series of courses that are available on volunteer management from one of our donor partners. And it's a certificate series that you can use for continuing education credit or without the continuing ed credit. And then we also have a subscription, a one-year subscription to Volunteer Matters Pro. And then some articles and webinars, so missed about online volunteering which Jane wrote for us a couple of years ago that still got a lot of great content in it. And then a consumer's guide to software for volunteer management does evaluate a handful of the volunteer management tools out there comparing sort of what types of organizations they might be best suited for. So if you're looking for a tool, this article that was written by Idealware for TechSoup is still I think a really valuable piece to look at. And then one webinar that we did previously on social media for volunteer managing and more. So those are some links that we'll include also in the follow-up email. With that we are at the top of the hour, so I'd like to thank our presenter Jane Cravens from Coyote Communications for joining us today and sharing her expertise on volunteering online. And I'd also like to thank Allie on the back end who has been helping grab your questions throughout the duration of the webinar. And last but not least, I'd like to thank ReadyTalk, our webinar sponsor for providing the use of their platform so that we can provide webinars like this on a weekly basis. We hope that you'll join us again. We have another webinar scheduled for next week on Beyond XP, upgrading your Microsoft operating systems. So if you're interested in getting off of XP or Vista, you can join us. We hear more about Windows 7 and Windows 8. And then look to our events page on the TechSoup.org website where you can see other upcoming events. Thank you so much everyone. Please take a moment to complete the post-event survey that pops up so that we can continue to improve our webinar program. Thank you everyone and have a terrific afternoon. Bye-bye.