Hollywood’s On-Air Effort to Promote Volunteerism Gets Mixed Reviews From Nonprofit Experts

If Hollywood’s “iParticipate” campaign to promote volunteerism were a contestant on a reality show, the judges would be divided about whether to kick it off the program.

Some nonprofit experts say the campaign’s weeklong blitz of volunteer-themed television shows in October was overhyped, produced few new volunteers, and suffered from technical glitches. Others argue that the entertainment industry’s heart was in the right place and volunteer advocates should give the multiyear effort time to mature.

“The messages were all over the map in type, length, and meaning,” Susan Ellis, a consultant on volunteer issues, wrote on her Web site. “It took conscious effort to find the teeny, tiny mentions of service and, if it was hard to catch our eyes, why think the general public was aware of anything?”

Allison Fine, a social-media expert, was more charitable.

“Social change takes a long time and an enormous amount of diligence, patience, and resilience to pursue,” Ms. Fine, who hosts a Chronicle podcast, wrote on her blog. She urged the nonprofit world to help Hollywood capitalize on its greatest strength — a “megaphone” that can reach large audiences at the same time.

No Flood of Volunteers

The iParticipate campaign was created by the Entertainment Industry Foundation, a Los Angeles charity that represents the television and movie industries. It lined up more than 100 programs on ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC and numerous cable channels to feature plot lines, public-service announcements, or other activities promoting volunteerism the week of October 19 to 25.

From the charity’s standpoint, that kind of coordination was a major feat in itself. “Our goal originally was to get 25 shows and we thought we’d be in really great shape,” says Judy Ketcik, vice president of communications for the group.

Viewers were referred to the iParticipate Web site to find volunteer activities. But representatives of two online volunteer-listings groups, VolunteerMatch and Idealist, say the predicted flood of new recruits never materialized. Based on an analysis of Web traffic, Greg Baldwin, VolunteerMatch’s president, estimates the TV week sent only about 100 volunteers to the 70,000 organizations that list opportunities on his site.

Furthermore, he says, the iParticipate Web site failed to display many VolunteerMatch listings properly, which he likened to “a telethon with the wrong phone number.”

Charlie Wilke, senior director of digital media at the Entertainment Industry Foundation, says the group has responded “diligently” to user problems and resolved most of the technical kinks, working closely with All for Good, the online volunteer aggregator that provides the data for the iParticipate site.

Specific Charities Helped

The Entertainment Industry Foundation declines to say how many people have viewed the campaign’s Web site, but argues that the true impact of the TV week is difficult to gauge, both because some people went to other Web sites to volunteer — for example, those of specific charities mentioned in the shows — and because it will take time to measure whether Americans change their behavior.

The group, which has provided grants to community-service groups like City Year and ServiceNation, plans to keep the iParticipate campaign going for four years and is exploring ways to get the movie and recording industries involved, Ms. Ketcik says.

Perhaps the biggest winners of the TV extravaganza were the charities that received specific mentions on shows throughout the week. They included Big Brothers Big Sisters, Habitat for Humanity, KaBoom (a group that builds playgrounds), and the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank.

“We had a huge spike in Web traffic,” says Alison Risso, communications director for KaBoom, which played a major role in a wacky Parks and Recreation plot. “It was a big boost for us.”