Social Ch@nge

I have recently been learning another language and when I explained what I do, the need for the word ‘volunteer’ came up fast. ‘What’s the word for someone who works without pay?’ I asked.

‘A slave.’ said my teacher.

Ah, yes. You know non-profit slaves! People with smarts and ethics and education who you stuck photocopying pages for an hour. Or markering a poster. Those slaves, the ones that don’t come back after your first slave meeting.

There are lots of resources on the internet for getting and keeping volunteers, but I find a lot of them are either not free, out of date, or tend to talk down to organizations about volunteer coordination. There is slightly more out there on online volunteering coordination - try this as a starter place - but it’s hard to find. Feel free to prove us wrong by posting fabulous volunteer coordination resources in the comments section. But until you do:

If you are a desperate real-time volunteer coordinator looking to improve your resources, the best thing you can do is go offline. Find non-profits in your community that have established volunteer programs, sit down with their coordinators and interview them how they process and treat their volunteers. You might ask: what volunteering opportunities do they have? Do they have volunteer job descriptions?  How long does volunteer training last? Do they interview volunteers before placing them? What’s their time-commitment? How do they give and get feed-back from volunteers? And how are volunteers rewarded?

Even better - talk to their volunteers and ask them what the experience is like. See if they can tell you what the process is.

Having said all that, if you are a volunteer who’s looking for opportunities online, you’re in luck. Among other organizations, the UN volunteering service offers a brilliant program where you can pick your online volunteering through tasks, development topics or regions as well as by language. There are so many online opportunities these days it doesn’t bear listing - try looking on Charity Village (Canada), Idealist (USA) or the CEV (The European Volunteer Centre) for a hint of what’s out there.