Before the pandemic, Jordan Gutierrez-Ramirez went to work each day with a singular goal.
“All of our aims and our efforts were at getting people away from their screens and away from their desks and into the community volunteering,” said Gutierrez-Ramirez, corporate volunteer manager at United Way for Greater Austin. “We did not have virtual volunteering. Everything we did before coronavirus was all in-person.”
Usually, that meant meeting with a group of employees from a local company at a site that needed hands-on volunteer work. The work would get done, often followed by refreshments and pizza.
But those days are gone. Now Gutierrez-Ramirez finds herself in a situation familiar to charity volunteer coordinators across the globe: how to transition and sustain volunteer programs through the disruptions wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic’s social-distancing mandates.
Tips for Successful Virtual Volunteer Programs
Do the little things right. Volunteering programs are a challenge even without a public-health crisis. Greg Baldwin, CEO of VolunteerMatch, says the fundamentals of an in-person volunteer program also apply to virtual and remote programs. Keep expectations clear with your volunteers, have good contacts, and make sure your volunteers know they are making a difference.
Decide whether your programs can transition to virtual or move on to something else. For example, many childhood literacy programs are now experimenting with virtual story times. But not all volunteer efforts can translate into the virtual realm.
Decide whether a virtual or a “remote” experience is most effective. Baldwin said nonprofit volunteer operations during the pandemic can be split into two groups. Virtual volunteering can be done “virtually anywhere,” while remote volunteering activities require someone to move from place to place but without social contact. Be clear about how your volunteers can accomplish their tasks.
Continue seeking corporate support and skilled volunteers. Many corporate social-responsibility programs are structured around in-person group volunteer activities. With those on pause, now might be good time for volunteer coordinators to reach out to corporate social-responsibility managers and ask for skilled volunteering, such as accounting or technical support.
Since then, she and other charities with critical volunteer programs have been experimenting with how to recruit and deploy volunteers in ways that have an impact and are safe for both volunteers and clients. There are virtual volunteering activities that can be done entirely from the safety of people’s homes and “Covid-conscious” volunteering activities that have been modified to minimize risks, such as drive-by food drives or face-mask collection.
Gutierrez-Ramirez said that in mid-March, as local officials began to issue social-distancing mandates and her office started to work remotely (and canceled its spring day of service), she and other local United Way staffers held a virtual meeting to brainstorm how to transition their volunteer programs into something else. She joked her team even considered virtual-reality volunteering programs.
Since then, the United Way for Greater Austin has launched several virtual or remote volunteer opportunities, including staffing the area’s social-service resource hotline remotely, creating thank-you notes for essential workers, and using “phone buddies” to check in on seniors, one of the most popular new volunteer programs the group has launched.
Recognizing Service
Volunteer coordinators say that one of the most challenging aspects of managing a program is finding ways to recognize volunteers for their service, a big motivator for many people who donate their time. Linda Bryant, who just started as the executive director of Minneapolis-based youth and social services nonprofit Hope 4 Youth in early February, said her group had to cancel its Volunteer Recognition Breakfast in April, which was also National Volunteer Month. Now her organization highlights a volunteer of the week on social media. Two volunteers have also shared testimonials on Hope 4 Youth’s social-media outlets telling of their experiences in hopes it will draw in more volunteers.
Since social-distancing measures have upended Hope 4 Youth’s operations, Bryant has had to find innovative ways to re-engage her volunteer corps. So far, that’s included establishing a telephone tree to coordinate with volunteers, starting a mask-making volunteer program, and tapping the volunteers to buy necessities online to be shipped to the group’s clients at Hope 4 Youth’s transitional housing complex.
A 5K race scheduled for June, staffed entirely by volunteers, has now been moved online to the racers’ treadmills — an effort that will require a similar level of virtual volunteer coordination to pull off.
“We have figured out ways to keep those volunteers engaged,” says Bryant. “Our volunteers are the backbone of our organization, and they are key communicators and links to our donor base as well.”
According to Greg Baldwin, CEO of VolunteerMatch, a nonprofit web directory of volunteer opportunities across the country, many of the skills needed to lead a virtual volunteer program are the same as those needed to lead an in-person volunteer program.
“That means be clear about the mission and purpose of your organization, what is being expected of the volunteer in their role, and make sure you’ve got the leadership and support in the right place to make them feel like they’re making a meaningful contribution to your organization,” says Baldwin. “That doesn’t always happen in this space.”
VolunteerMatch — along with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Candid, DonorsChoose, and GivingTuesday — last week launched PowerOf, a website designed as a “one-stop-shop” to find either volunteers or volunteer opportunities.
Immediate Needs
Many nonprofits, now struggling to adapt to socially distant workplace and service rules, need skilled volunteers more than ever. In particular, many smaller nonprofits continue to have technological and infrastructure issues as work-from-home practices become widespread.
“There has been a narrowing of focus on the most immediate needs nonprofits have right now,” says Lindsay Gruber, CEO of Taproot, an online volunteer-opportunity directory geared toward matching skilled volunteers with nonprofits. “They need to do financial re-forecasting … and crisis communications at a time when organizations desperately need to communicate with their stakeholders.”
Taproot has seen a 15 percent increase in volunteer signups in March and has also seen a jump in interest from corporate social-responsibility program managers looking to recast their volunteer programs in a work-from-home mold.
Lost in Translation
Metropolitan Family Service, an Oregon-based nonprofit with a $3.5 million budget that provides a variety of social services to low-income families, runs a tax-preparation assistance center that before the pandemic would draw lines 200 people long to its office in a mall. Normally, tax season would be largely over by now, but the IRS extended the income-tax filing deadline to July 15. That means a lot of people still need to get their taxes done.
With in-person sessions no longer an option, CEO Judy Strand said the group is creating a virtual tax-assistance center. That comes with some new wrinkles. For one, the tax preparers will not be filling out the tax form directly so they need additional training to learn “telephonically assisted” tax preparation. The nonprofit also needs to beef up its phone system to handle the call volume.
In addition, it is trying to adapt a reading mentorship program that used to use adult mentors in local schools to help kids learn to read. The group is now experimenting with story-time videos distributed through the school system’s new distance-learning software. It’s not a perfect match, though, and Strand wonders if it will be as effective as the in-person mentorship program that existed before.
“It’s hard when it’s an evidence-based model,” said Strand. “You don’t want to change it too much because it gets results.”
What’s Worth Keeping?
The sudden pivot by many charities into virtual volunteering has some nonprofit leaders wondering what they will keep and what they will leave behind when the pandemic recedes. Some of the stopgap measures now being deployed are proving to be valuable tools worth keeping.
“For the foreseeable future, until a vaccine is developed, this is the new abnormal,” said James Taylor, CEO of the John H. Boner Community Center in Indianapolis, which runs several social-service programs, such as providing recreational facilities and opportunities for youths and affordable housing. “We’re testing out all sorts of ideas that now could become part of our repertoire.”
His organization is also testing buddy programs for older people, and Taylor said he was interested in hosting bingo or prayer groups by videoconference.
In addition to virtual volunteer programs, Taylor said his organization will consider keeping online application forms for volunteers developed since the pandemic and is open to using videoconferencing more in the future.
“Volunteers used to come to us and we’d figure out how to plug them in. This is the first time we’ve actually gone out and have recruited volunteers,” said Taylor. “There’s no reason why those things can’t continue.”
