Volunteering Goes Virtual

A growing number of nonprofit groups are recruiting people to perform charitable service online

Five years ago, Ruth Volk, a stay-at-home mother in Eagan, Minn., was eager to find a way to use her free time to

help others. But with four young children, she had few moments to spare, and it wasn’t easy to fit those moments into traditional volunteers’ hours.

Then she discovered Bundles of Love, an organization that operates from the homes of its volunteers, mostly by using the Internet. The charity was looking for people to knit, crochet, and sew blankets, clothing, and other baby items for families in need.

Ms. Volk says it was exactly the kind of opportunity she was looking for.

“I loved to crochet, and I was making all these useless doilies that just sat in a drawer,” says Ms. Volk. “I was thrilled to find an opportunity where I could put my skills to good use.”

Today, Ms. Volk continues to work tirelessly for the organization, putting in about 100 hours a month, even though she now has a full-time job.

She also serves on the charity’s board and has become one of its coordinators of volunteers, managing via e-mail messages the work of 300 other volunteers, most of whom she has never met.

“The fact that a lot of volunteer work requires you to be physically present has deterred me from doing more in the past,” she says. “I just could never find that kind of time. But with this, I can multi-task. So even when I’m watching TV or playing a game with my kids I can be doing something that helps other people at the same time.”

Both the number of people interested in using the Internet to do some or all of their volunteering — often referred to as virtual volunteers — and the number of charities interested in recruiting them are on the rise.

Charities of all kinds are offering ways for people to conduct their volunteer work through the Internet, an approach that helps them appeal to people with busy schedules and attract a more diverse volunteer corps than they might otherwise find. While some groups have saved money relying on virtual volunteers, some organizations say that it is more time-consuming for charities to manage online volunteers than traditional ones.

People With Important Skills

VolunteerMatch, an online matching service that connects volunteers with opportunities, has seen the interest in using e-mail and the Internet to do charity work explode.

Jason Willett, director of communications at VolunteerMatch in San Francisco, says that last year about 38,500 people used the service to find virtual positions, compared with about 15,500 who did so in 2000.

Charities’ interest is growing quickly as well: About 14 percent of the listings currently posted on the site specifically seek people who will do their volunteering online, up from 7 percent in 2000.

“Nonprofits are realizing that they don’t always need someone to be physically in their offices for many tasks to get done,” says Mr. Willett. “Depending on the project, it may be more important to find volunteers with specific skills or with a real passion for their cause than to find folks who can come by every Tuesday. By providing opportunities that people can do from home and expanding their search beyond their immediate geographic area, charities are gaining some new and invaluable resources.”

Many types of organizations are seeking to take advantage of online volunteers. In fact, charities in every one of VolunteerMatch’s 28 nonprofit categories, such as environment and the arts, are now seeking virtual help.

Touchy Topics

Tasks traditionally taken care of by staff members or people who go to a charity’s facility to volunteer — such as grant-proposal writing, marketing, and event planning — are increasingly being done by people who volunteer online.

Jodi Gooding, who has a part-time marketing job in Hamilton, Ontario, is busy conducting research and contacting celebrities to plan an online charity auction for the International Council on Infertility Information Dissemination, in Arlington, Va.

Ms. Gooding volunteers about three hours a day for the group, which supports families dealing with infertility and pregnancy loss. Some of her time is also spent monitoring the charity’s online message boards on child rearing and adoption and answering e-mail messages from the charity’s members.

“I enjoy being able to be there for people when they most need me, which often can be at unconventional times,” she says. “If I were working in a clinical setting, I wouldn’t be in the office at 10 p.m. and be able to comfort someone when they are struggling the most.”

Kris Cicak, who serves as the unpaid manager of volunteers at the council, also works remotely from her home in Cocoa, Fla. She says that for charities that deal with depressing topics, or for those that carry a stigma, the opportunity to reach out to people who live in many different locales is essential.

“Many people don’t want to deal with these issues any more than they have to, so it can be difficult to recruit volunteers at all,” she says.

By casting its net fairly wide, however, the council has been able to recruit a stable of about 25 dedicated volunteers across the country, many of whom are parents who have dealt with infertility in the past. About 60 percent of the group’s current volunteers have been with the charity for at least a year.

“Because they can do their volunteering at a time when it suits them best, they tend to stay with us for a while, and they are able to give us many more hours per week,” says Ms. Cicak.

The lack of geographic barriers in recruiting volunteers has greatly expanded the abilities of many charities to find the expertise they need.

Witness Justice, a nonprofit group in Frederick, Md., that provides information and support to victims of violence, was founded three years ago by Helga West.

Ms. West quickly realized that she and her charity’s three other staff members were not equipped to handle the 200 to 300 requests from victims and family members that it received each month.

To lessen the load, Ms. West recruited what she calls an “expert corps of volunteers,” a group now numbering 400 experts on topics such as sleep trauma, security, sociology, and spirituality.

When a request comes in, the appropriate experts receive an e-mail message to which they can choose to respond.

“We have five to 10 experts in each specialized area, so if we send a request and only three respond back, we’re still able to give some really good advice to the survivor,” she says. “We realize our volunteers have very busy schedules, so we have set it up so that they agree to help whenever they can. It’s a very guilt-free way for professionals, with even just a few minutes to spare, to participate and do something meaningful.”

As a former project and training manager for a financial-services company, Doug Meckelson, founder of Elder Wisdom Circle, a nonprofit organization in Walnut Creek, Calif., was accustomed to working closely with colleagues sprinkled across the globe, so collaborating virtually with volunteers came naturally.

In addition to coordinating with his 250 volunteers — people age 70 to 90 who use their home computers to counsel advice-seekers on numerous topics — Mr. Meckelson also uses the help of virtual volunteers for special projects. Most recently, Mr. Meckelson put together a test for an interactive project called Advice TV, which had both advice seekers and older people asking and answering questions via streaming video online.

With no paid staff members and no physical offices to work from, Mr. Meckelson recruited virtual volunteers with particular expertise to get the job done. A film-production student in Boston did the research, a professional announcer in Los Angeles did the voice-overs, and volunteers in Raleigh and Charlotte, N.C., assembled and uploaded the final product to the Internet.

Meaningful Work

Perhaps more important than the ability to attract help from far-flung volunteers, Mr. Meckelson’s organization demonstrates how online volunteering has helped many people who would otherwise have trouble getting out of their homes to volunteer, such as the elderly and disabled.

One of the primary reasons Mr. Meckelson created the charity, in fact, was to be able to provide meaningful volunteer work for older people.

For instance, Mr. Meckelson recalls how he first heard from one of the charity’s volunteers, a man then in his 80s: “This incredibly empathetic and intelligent man, who once belonged to Mensa, and has so much to contribute, originally wrote me an e-mail saying he was looking for a reason to live,” he says. “After he’d been volunteering for a while, he wrote again, this time to say he’s now decided to live until 90 because the work means so much to him.”

The volunteer is now in the hospital, but Mr. Meckelson calls to check on him frequently. “The fact that he knows he’ll be able to get back online and continue contributing is really impacting his will to live,” he says.

Saving Money

Another benefit of using virtual volunteers is that it can save a charity money because it does not have to provide equipment or office space to volunteers, says Donald MacKay, executive director of Soldiers’ Angel Foundation, in Pasadena, Calif., a group that recruits volunteers to send cards, letters, and care packages to service members overseas.

Some of the organization’s 60,000 volunteers sew blankets for wounded soldiers, while others are part of the charity’s E-Squad, which communicates with soldiers via e-mail messages or blogs.

“Because all of the work is being done remotely from people’s homes or over the Internet, it keeps overhead way down and allows the vast majority of donations received to be applied directly to our mission,” he says.

But working with people at a distance does have some downsides. Because most communication between staff and volunteers is conducted online, interactions can become awkward, admits Mr. MacKay.

“Sometimes an individual’s personality or sense of humor doesn’t translate well through e-mail, and things can be taken personally or out of context,” he says. “I have also learned that it is important to be very specific when giving instructions or handling a situation with virtual volunteers. I cannot assume that something I imply will be understood. I have to spell everything out.”

Ms. West, of Witness Justice, agrees that virtual volunteers can sometimes be a bit high-maintenance. In addition to the corps of experts her charity maintains, the group also relies on about 80 other online volunteers who help with fund-raising events in their hometowns and by distributing materials about the organization to their area’s homeless shelters and social-service providers.

“When you’re in an office environment, you are around people every day who are all using the same language about the mission and the work,” she says. “But with virtual volunteers, we’ve found it essential — especially when sending them out to build awareness for the organization — to spend a lot of time educating them and giving them very detailed talking points so that we can be sure they will describe our services and mission accurately.”

Indeed, many nonprofit organizations mistakenly think that managing virtual volunteers is going to be less work, says Benjamin Stokes, who recently conducted an international study of online volunteers and who is the program manager at NetAid in New York City, which educates young people about global poverty. But, in fact, it can sometimes be even more time-consuming because charities must constantly check in with volunteers working remotely.

“A manager may not even realize that one of their virtual volunteers is feeling mistreated or ignored because the volunteer may simply stop communicating,” says Mr. Stokes. “The manager may think: ‘Oh, they must’ve lost interest,’ when actually they’re really upset because he didn’t get back to them for two weeks.”

Acknowledging Contributions

Similarly, managers of volunteers have to make even greater efforts to recognize and thank the efforts of volunteers who aren’t around to witness the fruits of their labors, says Jayne Cravens, former online volunteering specialist at the United Nations Online Volunteers Program. What motivates online volunteers, even more so than on-site volunteers, is specific feedback, says Ms. Cravens.

“They want to know exactly how their task helped make a difference,” she says. “Just saying ‘good job,’ isn’t good enough. You have to say: ‘Because you translated this document into Spanish for us, we get to do a mailing to 4,000 households who have never before been able to take advantage of our services.’ If you spend the extra time to give that sort of detailed feedback to your online volunteers, they’ll be yours. If you don’t, they’ll be gone.”

Sandy Wimsatt has always felt appreciated for the work she does for Families of Spinal Muscular Atrophy, a Libertyville, Ill., group that supports families with children afflicted by the degenerative neuromuscular disease. That, in part, is why she has volunteered for 10 years as the charity’s fund-raising director, working from her San Diego home.

The main reason for her dedication, however, is her son, Michael, who has the disease. Michael is now 10, and in addition to taking care of him and her 6-year-old twins, Ms. Wimsatt spends 15 to 20 hours a week helping families organize fund-raising events in their hometowns. She does most of her correspondence via e-mail and has flown to the charity’s main offices only twice.

“Because this isn’t a very prevalent disease, the families who struggle with it and who volunteer to help are all spread across the country,” she says. “There’s no way we would have even found each other, let alone been able to work together to help find a cure, if we couldn’t do it virtually.”