View source for Finding Volunteers and Organizing Volunteer-Run Projects

Facilitated by Kathryn Benedicto, Happy Snowman Consulting, and Mark Libkuman, OpenFlows

Volunteers offer a compelling resource for low-budget and community-led projects, but it's not always easy to make volunteer-run projects work. Mark will discuss his learnings around organizing volunteer run projects, and offer thoughts on best and worst practices.

== Session Notes ==

What kinds of roles are volunteer techies needed for?
- The ubiquitous volunteer webmaster
- The volunteer IT guy/gal
- Volunteer developers for:
  * Open-source projects
  * In-house development projects
- Communication/outreach - online communities, social networking
  * Activist blogger
  * Social networking guru
  * Online community manager/moderator
  * Wiki gardener

Recruiting volunteers
- Challenges in recruiting volunteer techies
  * It's a high-skill, high-demand workforce
- Where to recruit
  * Usual suspects: VolunteerMatch, Idealist, Craigslist
  * NPTech hangouts: NTEN mailing list, NetSqured meetups
  * Online communities: IT/developer communities, communities centered around the specific skill/technology you need
  * Conferences, user groups, tech events - pitch your organization/project
  * Professional societies
  * Local colleges and even high schools, depending on how geeky your area is
    - The administrator of the Computer Science department is your friend
    - CS honor societies, service organizations
    - Students who need service hours
    - Student groups centered around your cause
  * LinkedIn contacts/groups
- Keep your eyes open for potential corporate career-changers who are looking for a foot in the door of the NPO world
- Look for people who are passionate about your cause
- Sense of ownership
- Getting the right people for the right roles

How to market/evangelize your organization/project in a way that is appealing to potential volunteers
- Connect the dots in a concrete way between what your tech volunteers are doing and how it is saving the world
- Have a list of concrete tasks, with varying levels of time commitment, to accomodate everyone from the one-time volunteer, to the person with only a few hours a month, to the dedicated long-term volunteer

How to motivate volunteer techies
- Self-motivation is the most powerful motivation!  Try to find volunteers who are passionate about your cause and/or who have a personal connection to it

How to manage volunteer techies
- Do manage them
  * Have a person from the organization explicitly take on the role of "tech volunteer manager".  (Will this person be a techie or non-techie?  Maybe your organization doesn't have a choice)

Considerations when you have staff techies working together with volunteer techies

What are effective incentives to provide volunteer techies (since there's no financial remuneration!)
- Good old-fashioned appreciation - say thank you early, often, and sincerely
- For college students: resume credit, letters of recommendation, LinkedIn recommendations
- For professional techies providing pro-bono services: recommendations and referrals
- Same kinds of perks you give your donors: pledge-drive gift thingies
- Include them in your volunteer appreciation events
- Prestige factor

How to retain volunteer techies
- Avoiding burnout

What are the risks when working with volunteer techies?
- General flakiness
- Quality of work - e.g. coding, website, etc.
- Professional conduct as a (volunteer) representative of your organization
- Volunteers may go AWOL temporarily or permanently! And they may not give you any warning
  * Busy people with jobs etc.
  * College students during midterms/finals

How to manage these risks?
- Hold your volunteers accountable
  * Maintain control over your IT information/resources/infrastructure at all times! Passwords, web hosting information
  * For non-techies: demand plain-English answers to your technical questions
  * Touch base with them on a regular basis - in person if possible
- Knowledge-sharing; overlapping duties
  * Have a backup person (volunteer or staff member)
  * Don't let one volunteer monopolize/hoard technical information, especially about your organization's technology infrastructure
- Be judicious about what kinds of projects you use volunteers in
  * Flexible project timeline
  * Non-mission-critical
- Have a continuity plan in case one or more volunteers drop out

Participants' concerns/experiences:
- Retention/ownership
- Resourcing for volunteer management
- Dropping off the face of the earth
- Unrewarding/underappreciated
- Unevenly shared workload
- Grunt work meets organization's needs but not volunteers?
- Group volunteer management (IBM)
- Service events - website building
- Setting boundaries, saying no, avoid NPO guilt-tripping
- Specific volunteering programs
- Sustainability after your volunteer techie leaves
- Plugging into volunteer groups
- Recruiting volunteers
- Prioritizing your work when you manage volunteers

- Intake - create ownership, buy-in
- New people - will they have the same sense of ownership
- Mentoring, buddy system
- Not wasting people's passion

- Extreme volunteering
- Underpaid employee is practically like being volunteering
- Cultural - not reckless cowboys
- Defer to expertise
- Hero complex