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Friday Feb 02, 2007
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Virtual volunteering
We've just finished a new section of articles on do-it.org.uk (YouthNet's volunteering website) about virtual volunteering - opportunities that you can undertake from home.
We found some interesting case studies, including roles such as journalism, managing charity eBay eccounts and even writing to American prisoners on Death Row. Yet, there's a sense that this is an approach to volunteering that has still not taken off.
In America, where it's also known as online volunteering, projects have been running since 1997, and the United Nations volunteering service has had an online programme since 2000. But, despite TimeBank's efforts, there's still nothing comparable in this country.
There is a virtual volunteering category on the V-Base software that organisations use to upload their opportunities to the do-it database but until more virtual opportunities are created there's no point making it a searchable category on the website for potential volunteers.
Here at YouthNet , even though we've had some success with virtual opportunities of our own, we've learnt that they're not as easy to manage as you might at first think. In my experience, recruiting volunteer journalists, there's no problem getting people to sign up, but as few as 5% actually go on to write an article. And less than half that small number complete more than one assignment.
Perhaps I'm not a very effective volunteer manager, but I think colleagues have had similar experiences. It's very easy for someone to register for a virtual opportunity but very hard to actually get them started. It can be done, but it seems that, while virtual volunteering clearly has huge potential, it, like any other volunteering opportunity, still requires management time to succeed.
Posted by Tom Green ( 9:52 AM ) Link to this post Comments[0]CSR and companies - come on, don't be shy!
The folks at Intelligent Giving released an interesting piece of research this week. Called the Ethical Bonuses Index, it looks at how companies support their staff with time off to volunteer and matched funding for payroll giving amongst other things.
It’s a useful piece of research, but what I like most is that they’ve been quite open about who responded and who didn’t. This naming and shaming has sparked off an interesting discussion on their blog about how well companies communicate these policies to their staff.
These are the kind of conversations that need to happen more often within companies (as well as in the “real world”). I get the impression that all too often CSR managers lack the resource, budget and genuine backing from senior executives in their business to seriously promote innovative, effective community investment programmes to their staff.
Whilst I don’t want to simplify the whole debate, for me it does boil down to the usual business case issue with CSR – is it worth a business spending time and money on CSR initiatives, and do they deliver any value to the bottom line? Of course I’m going to say yes, but it would be nice to have a really open and honest discussion with businesses about it.
On that point I was really encouraged to hear about Marks and Spencer’s “Plan A” – their “100 point plan to tackle some of the biggest challenges facing our business and our world”.
They called it Plan A because there is no Plan B - which is a pretty clear indication of their commitment.
Posted by Sam Thomas ( 9:38 AM ) Link to this post Comments[0]