Volunteers like talking with each other. They have always talked with each other offline, in formal meetings or meeting up at a water fountain or even a bathroom sink or offsite over coffee. When the Internet exploded in popularity in the 1990s, volunteers started talking together online. Many volunteers formed online communities to collaborate together before the organizations they supported even thought about creating policies for online communications.

Now, it's the norm for nonprofits, government programs and other entities involving volunteers to have an official online community for their volunteers to talk with each other. Online communities for volunteers are now a natural extension of traditional, onsite interactions among volunteers for many thousands of organizations.

Online communities for volunteers allow organizations to easily make announcements to all volunteers at once, and, allow volunteers to interact with employees and each other, to get suggestions and feedback, ask questions, etc. These online groups can also serve as a written record of participation, concerns, trends and issues for volunteers, something that is particularly valuable in evaluating the effectiveness of a volunteer engagement program, identifying challenges and addressing such quickly, etc.

Even today, many online groups are created via email; users receive all group messages via their email address, and respond to all group members using a special email address. A growing number are web-based, in the style of an online bulletin board. Some are a combination of the two, allowing users to choose how they wish to receive/view messages - but this option is becoming less and less. That said, woe to the organization that chooses a web-based platform that does NOT send out email notices to volunteers at least every few days regarding new messages on an online group.

There are three arguments I hear from people about why they do not want to create an online community for their volunteers:

Keys to the Success of Online Communities for Volunteers

The key to creating and maintaining a successful online community for volunteers is to determine a purpose for the online forum, and express this purpose clearly and effectively (more than once) to desired participants. Clearly communicate answers to these questions:

• Why is this online forum necessary for your volunteers?
• What do you want the volunteers to value about the forum?
• What do you want to happen as a result of the forum?

A successful online group also takes more than participants; you will also need people filling these roles - and that can be you, that can be another employee, or it can be a volunteer (even more than one):

• Facilitator, to keep the group focused, post items to generate useful discussions, remind participants of the ground rules or topics for discussion, and sometimes step in to calm nerves when online arguments get out of control.

• Administrator, to help with technical issues/problems, delete/add members, and archive the conversations.

• A forum may also may require a Moderator to delete inappropriate posts, to report or to talk to members who violate policies, even to actually read every post before it becomes seen by everyone else, to keep out improper posts.

The group owner must make incentives obvious and valuable to get volunteers to participate. Some organizations require all volunteers to join the online community, if its email-based. Some introduce topics each week to entice volunteers to discuss something online together. Some organizations write online participation into volunteer roles, so that they know that being on the community is part of their commitment. Some groups give awards or badges to recognize frequent contributors.

But your group should NOT be volunteers-only:

• The person in charge of managing volunteers must be a regular user of the group, reading all messages, responding as appropriate, introducing topics, etc. If that person isn't using the forum regularly, why should volunteers?

• Other employees and, as appropriate, even paid consultants, should participate on the community, reading messages, and making announcements and responding to questions, as appropriate. If volunteers see that the organization values the community - by using it themselves - they will use it.

Managing & Supporting Your Group

• Ensure questions from volunteers get answered in a timely manner. That may mean walking into a colleagues office and saying, "Hi, there's a message on the community for volunteers that needs your response. Could we sit down together right now and answer it?" Just sending that person an email may not cut it.
  

• Participate in online discussion groups yourself to get the feeling for what an online community is like. Pick a subject you like - even love - and use that subject to look for online communities via Google, Bing or any online search engine. For instance:
• harry potter "online community"
• adventure motorcycle travel "online community"
• dog trainers "online community"
 

• Make sure all desired participants in your online community for volunteers have been told more than once about the purpose and rules for the forum.

• Make sure all desired participants understand the role of the facilitator or moderator (it should be clear if this person has the right to delete messages, for instance).

• Encourage participants NOT to dominate the online conversation. This may mean sending out a regular reminder, or it may mean communicating directly with a particular participant that is over-sharing.

• Schedule questions or solicitations for feedback regularly, particularly when you first launch the community. Here are ideas:
  • Always post a message after every large meeting of volunteers, or training of volunteers, or any event that involves a lot of volunteers, and ask everyone what they thought of the meeting, training or event.
  • "I want to remind you all of such-and-such policy, which you can find at such-and-such web address."
  • "Perhaps you saw in the news that such-and-such happened. This is how this relates to our organization...."
  • "Do any of you have photos of yourselves while you are volunteering? We are looking for photos to use on our web site, in our annual report, etc."
  • "What was the most challenging thing you faced while volunteering this week? Let's share!"

• Reference things that have happened on the online community in traditional, onsite meetings with volunteers, in reports to staff, in your online or print newsletter for volunteers, etc. Often, volunteers who were reluctant to join an online community will do so when they hear and read about it elsewhere, and participants will feel more valued if they see the organization is referencing the community offline as well.
  

• Each time someone posts who has never posted before, write that person off list and thank that person.
  

• If someone provides a particular helpful answer, or shares something particularly insightful, write that person off list, or call that person, and thank that person.
  

• Consider the security and confidentiality of participants. Will participants be using real names and email addresses, or aliases? May volunteers email each other offlist? You will know the names and email addresses of all participants, but do you want all members to know this about each other? Only you can decide what will be appropriate, and whatever you decide, you need to make the decision clear.

• Realize that it will take time and some trial and error to make your online forum successful. Also realize that, as volunteers come and go, the culture of your online community can change, and you may need to make adjustments in your communication and facilitation style.

There is a list on the Virtual Volunteering Wiki of platforms that can be used for online collaboration, and many of these can be for online communities for volunteers. Some offer much more than areas for discussion: many allow for volunteers to work together on files and projects.

From April 1998 to December 2000, while directing the Virtual Volunteering Project, I solicited feedback from various organizations to see how they used email-based discussion groups, web-based discussion groups/bulletin boards, or newsgroups to interact with their volunteers. TechSoup (then CompuMentor), San Jose Children's Musical Theater, LibertyNet, Boulder Community Net and the American Lung Association were generous enough to let me join their groups and observe first hand how they are used to interact with volunteers. Their feedback, along with my own participation in online communities since 1994, started me on this journey of learning how online communities work.

All of this research and participation lead to the detailed information about working with volunteers online in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook. This book offers much more guidance on how to work with volunteers online.

On a personal note: I miss how friendly and helpful online communities used to be. I fear that Facebook has ruined them forever.

More resources

For more insights into online communities, in addition to The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, see:

• Factors for Success for a Neighborhood or Town-Based Online Community

• Lessons on effective, valuable online communities – from the 1990s

• How To Successfully Move an Online Discussion Group
  Thinking of moving your online discussion group / online community from one platform to another? Maybe the platform you have used for years has become too expensive. Or maybe that platform is going away altogether because the company has decided to discontinue it (like what happened to YahooGroups). Maybe the upgrade to the platform you have been using is not at all to your liking. Or maybe you have decided there is a better platform that will provide you and your community with the features it needs. There are upsides and downsides to moving an online community. How can you move a community in a way that reduces the number of community members you lose and so that you don't lose valuable content from your community - knowledge acquired over years that you want to continue to be readily available? This guide can help. This is advice for content managers / community managers (facilitators and moderators), from a techy point of view but from a how-to-guide-your-IT-department point-of-view.

• Evaluating Online Activities: Online Action Should Create & Support Offline Action & Results.

• Building a team culture among remote workers
  Coming together face-to-face, in the same room, does not automatically create team cohesion and a strong sense of team. Yet, many people think having online meetings automatically means it’s difficult for staff to have a strong sense of team. When thinking about creating a sense of team online, try to get away from that aforementioned belief. People feel a part of a team if they feel heard and included, whether online or off. And they will attend meetings and pay attention to those meetings if they feel the meeting is relevant to their work - on or offline. This resource offers ideas for live events, asynchronous events & activities that can build a sense of team among remote workers. 

• Safety in Online Volunteering Programs
  Information to help your agency create general safety guidelines for all online volunteering programs, suggestions and examples for those managing programs involving youth as online volunteers, and suggestions for bringing together youth and adult online volunteers.

• Leading in a virtual world
  There is a plethora of information about leading a team online, but not much about online leadership-on engaging in activities that influence others online, that create a profile for a person as someone that provides credible, important, even vital information about a particular subject. What does it take to be a leader online? This web page explores that.

• Online culture and online community
  Thinking about the humans behind the emails, social media messages and group posts you read.

• Stages of Maturity in Nonprofit Orgs Using Online Services
  What does a networking technology-savvy nonprofit organization look like? To help nonprofits think about networking tech standards they should pursue, and possible goals for the future, I've created this assessment of the states of maturity for a nonprofit organization's use of networking/online technologies.

• Handling Online Criticism
  Online criticism of a nonprofit organization, even by its own supporters, is inevitable. It may be about an organization's new logo or new mission statement, the lack of parking, or that the volunteer orientation being too long. It may be substantial questions regarding an organization's business practices and perceived lack of transparency. How a nonprofit organization handles online criticism speaks volumes about that organization, for weeks, months, and maybe even years to come. There's no way to avoid it, but there are ways to address criticism that can help an organization to be perceived as even more trustworthy and worth supporting.

Using Instant Messaging With Volunteers
When I worked at the United Nations Information Technology Service (UNITeS,) one of the first ICT volunteering initiatives, I created this resource to help illustrate the advantages for using IM to work with volunteers, based on feedback from various online discussion groups, from its own staff experiences, and other resources.

A mega site of Facilitation (Face-to-Face and Online) resources
This page of many, many resources relating to facilitation is compiled by Carter McNamara.

Dr. John Grohol's guide to Starting a New Online Support Group is focused primarily on how to do the technical aspects of setting up a group via email, USENET, a commercial chat site or your own web site.

Preparations and guidelines for chatting online is a terrific set of guidelines by Colin Gabriel Hatcher for SafetyEd International. Unfortunately, this publication is no longer available at its original URL. To view the resource, go to Archive.org and paste this URL into the WayBack machine:
http://www.safetyed.org/help/chatlive/chatlive.html

Online Community Toolkit
A great set of tools regarding online communities, from what they are to how to facilitate them to sample online community guidelines, rules and member agreements. This collection of helpful articles are by Full Circle Associates Nancy White, Sue Boettcher and Heather Duggan.

WELL Community Guidelines are an excellent example of rules for online communities and moderators. Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (WELL) began in 1985, starting with a dialog between the writers and readers of the Whole Earth Review. The WELL is now a "cluster of electronic villages on the Internet." There are more than 260 Conferences open to WELL members, covering subject categories such as "Parenting," "The Future," or "Pop Culture." WELL members have founded advocacy organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and their experiences have been used to explore online culture and community (such as in Howard Rheingold's The Virtual Community.

Groupware Links
CSCW or "Computer-Supported Cooperative Work" is the study of how people work together using computer technology. Typical types of applications include email, awareness and notification systems, videoconferencing, chat systems, multi-player games, and real time shared applications (such as collaborative writing or drawing). Unfortunately, this publication is no longer available at its original URL. To view the resource, go to Archive.org and paste this URL into the WayBack machine:
http://ww2.UsabilityFirst.com/usability/cscw.html

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