Virtual Volunteering

With more and more volunteer recruitment done online, it is important to take a step back and look at who has or doesn’t have the opportunity to volunteer as a result of not having household Internet access. Has digital access changed the demographics of who is being asked to volunteer or to serve in leadership positions such as on a board? In this issue’s Research to Practice, Laurie Mook reviews a study on the influence of household Internet access on formal and informal volunteering. The results confirm that “volunteer recruitment may not always be an inclusive process” and that nonprofits have a role in bridging this digital divide.

Virtual and remote activities are becoming more prevalent in the landscape of volunteer opportunities. However, most of the information or resources for volunteer managers continue to focus mainly on volunteering done on-site, alongside paid staff.  

In this feature article, author Michele Wiesner describes the highly successful volunteer program at Hire Heroes USA, where 85% of volunteer hours are dedicated to remote opportunities. As volunteer program director of Hire Heroes USA, Wiesner is an authority in how to engage with volunteers who never come into face-to-face contact with staff. Here, she shares lessons learned in working with remote and virtual volunteers, describes the relationship between the two, and explains how volunteer managers can think about engaging volunteers in new ways. The potential of remote and virtual volunteers, Wiesner notes, “is limitless.” 

In this quarter's issue, Harrison discusses her "logic model of decision making," designed to guide managers of volunteer resources through the steps and choices associated with managing virtual volunteering. This interview is a follow-up to Harrison’s interview in the last quarter of e-Volunteerism, where she discussed the misconceptions about virtual volunteering. 

After more than a decade of promoting virtual volunteering or online service as an important new development (which it is) for the volunteer field, it's time to step back and look at what is really happening as organizations put the theory into practice.  Yvonne D. Harrison, Assistant Professor of Nonprofit Leadership at Seattle University, has done some innovative research on virtual volunteering, particularly in Canada.  She also wrote her PhD dissertation on the subject and is devoted to helping practitioners understand the theoretical foundation of their work. In this interview with e-Volunteerism, Yvonne tackles misconceptions about virtual volunteering by sharing her research on such issues as how much is going on, who actually engages in it and how they engage, the appropriateness of virtual assignments and management implications, among other points.

The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) was held in Geneva, Switzerland in early December 2003 and included a pre-Summit "Conference on Volunteering and ICTS" (Information and Communication Technologies). To put a more personal face on this event, listen to a sampling of interviews with attendees from five different countries.