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Virtual Volunteers

Aired March 4 and 5, 2000

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This is Internet on the Air. I’m Joan Silvi. Volunteering online. Details in a moment.

Funding Credit: Internet On The Air is a production of the University of Michigan School of Information and Michigan radio, made possible by a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

It’s time to keep that New Year’s resolution to help a worthy cause. Feeling guilty for missing that volunteer orientation you promised to make? You might find a way to volunteer on the World-Wide Web that lets you help others -- without having to worry about your schedule.

There are important differences between virtual and in-person volunteering. The rewards for volunteering on the Internet are less direct and immediate. For example, at the Internet Public Library, a completely virtual institution, volunteers answer reference questions over e-mail, and receive an occasional thanks in reply. This is quite different from the experience of in-person volunteers who may be motivated by human connection or social interaction.

Virtual volunteering also requires specific technical skills. While traditional volunteers might stuff envelopes for a political campaign, Internet volunteers are consulting via e-mail and designing web pages. This expertise requirement does exclude some people from virtual volunteering, but it opens doors for others. For instance, people with disabilities who have computer skills are involved in many virtual volunteering efforts.

Countless organizations rely on volunteer labor – now the Internet provides more opportunities for people to contribute to a better world.

Visit our web site to find out more about volunteering online and to hear an interview with David Carter, Director of the Internet Public Library, at iota.org. For Internet on the Air, I’m Joan Silvi.

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Related Links

For further information, try these Web sites:

• The Internet Public Library has been " finding, evaluating, selecting, organizing, describing, and creating quality information resources" for the public since 1995.
  
  Browse their ready reference, youth, associations, or on-line serials collections.
  
  IPL staff presented Questions and Quirks: Managing an Internet-Based Distributed Reference Service at Internet Librarian '97.
  
  
• The Virtual Volunteering Project features volunteer management information & resources, including resources for agencies and resources for volunteers.
  
  Interested in volunteering? You might want to read Are you ready to volunteer virtually?
  
  You can also subscribe to the Virtual Verve listserv.
  
  Here are some profiles of organizations that use virtual volunteers.
  
  
• The United Nations General Assembly has named 2001 the International Year of Volunteers.
  
  

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The Interview

IOTA interviewed David Carter in February 2000.

Describe the trends in volunteering during the five years of the Internet Public Library’s (IPL) existence.

We have more volunteers than people who actually do work. This is not to be denigrating to anybody, because I think that people volunteer with the best of intentions. But, [for] the number of people who volunteer and say they want to answer questions and the number of people who actively answer questions [the distribution is] probably about 10% active, 20% semi-active.

What motivates people to work at the IPL?

They probably enjoy it. Like I said, I think that people volunteer with the best of intentions to do work. Especially in a virtual volunteering system, it’s not like volunteering in a physical library, where you meet people, and talk with people. People volunteer at their library because they want to help it out and because it’s a social outlet. We don’t have that social thing for people who are volunteering to answer questions.

How do you recruit volunteers?

[The primary recruitment base is students] who have taken the class and have become so enamored that they just can’t give it up. We also make presentations at conferences, and we talk about the service and let the audience know that the opportunity exists to volunteer, and gain experience doing digital reference. We say “play in our sandbox” and then go out and create your own sandbox. We collect business cards and give people passwords to the system and get them trained, and then some of them actually come in and volunteer.

Is one of IPL’s goals to be a training facility to other parties interested in running similar reference services?

Yes, in the perfect situation volunteers would spend a month or two answering IPL questions and learn what it’s like, and then go off and set up their own service in their own institution. It is perfectly good for the mission of the IPL for people to come and be active for a little bit and then disappear, because that’s probably a good thing.

What do you know about other organizations using virtual volunteers?

People at the “ask-us” services, such as “ask an astronomer” are mostly volunteer based. In fact, they count on volunteers much more than we do - volunteer scientists or art history majors - depending on what their service is. I think they tend to have a better activity rate than we do, but I’m not sure how many hoops they make their volunteers jump through. We don’t have very many hoops. You say you’re a librarian and you want to volunteer, and we sign you up. So we get a lot of volunteers and hope a few of them are active volunteers. Other places may make you jump through more hoops to make sure you’re interested.

What has been the IPL’s experience with training volunteers remotely?

We’ve had to do remote training with volunteers who haven’t been students, and it’s probably not easy. We’ve got a large body of documentation that we can send them and we’re available to take their questions. It’s not that tricky of a system, although it is easier to show somebody what button to press, than it is to have them read about which button to press. I don’t think training is that big of a sticking point.

Volunteer retention: showing gratitude and keeping in touch.

We bribe our volunteers with T-shirts. Answer 20 questions and you get a free IPL T-shirt, which motivates some people. Yes, giving free stuff, some sort of thank you to the volunteers is important. We also send out an e-mail newsletter every so often. Whenever we send out a volunteer update we see an increase in activity from the volunteers and then it tapers off. Reminding them that “Oh yeah, I’m a volunteer for this thing, maybe I should do something every so often”, is a good way to keep in contact with your volunteers.

Projections for the future; Is virtual volunteering recruiting new types of volunteers?

It’s hard to say. Most organizations, if they haven’t already, are going to become at least partially virtual. Most organizations are going to be a hybrid - there are going to be physical presences and virtual presences. While everybody in an organization won’t be working in the same spot, you’ll have clumps of activities in certain places. Places will start to have volunteers that they never see, especially as they expand their online presence, because you don’t have to [physically] be there.

I think opportunities will be open for people who may not be able to physically volunteer, e.g. people with disabilities. If you can get on your computer, you can help answer questions for people or help build a website. Potentially more people can contribute if you have virtual volunteers.

Please direct questions or comments to iota.webmaster@umich.edu.

Last Updated February 24, 2000