Criticism Continues for UK Government Talk Re Volunteers
Like the USA federal and state governments, the government of the United Kingdom, lead by Prime Minister David Cameron, is hoping that its citizens will step up and volunteer their time — work for free...
View ArticlePizzeria tries to recruit unpaid interns, feels Internet’s wrath
Ah, the smell of volunteer exploitation in the morning… Roberta’s, a famous, hip restaurant in New York City that sells $18 pizzas is (was?) seeking “unpaid interns” to work in its community garden....
View ArticleWhy I liked an anti-crowdsourcing Facebook page
On Facebook, I’ve just liked “Crowdsourcing Sucks,” which I originally found on Twitter under crowdsource666. Its motto: “Crowdsourcing, the scourge of the graphic design industry.” How can a person...
View ArticleShould the NFL involve volunteers for the Super Bowl?
Taking a break from promoting The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook to talk volunteers and the Super Bowl (for those outside the USA, that’s the National Football League’s championship game). In a...
View Articlesocial media used to prank journalists during live event – again
“In the end, accounts of the shooting from @JewyMarie made it into reports from the AP (and The New York Times as a result), the International Business Times and an on-air interview with CNN’s Anderson...
View ArticleOPB & Congress Think Volunteers are Free
It’s bad enough that more than 30 miles of dirt trails and primitive roads in Deschutes National Forest in Oregon were deliberately wrecked in 2014 by unsupervised volunteers who were supposed to be...
View ArticleGoing too far
A national nonprofit organization asked me to participate in a one-hour conference call this week to help them brainstorm something they want to do. I said sure, because I can make time available to do...
View ArticleUpdate on a virtual volunteering scam
I’ve been researching and promoting virtual volunteering since 1995. It’s a subject I feel passionately about. It’s real volunteering. I’ve seen how organizations all over the world, large and small,...
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Selling community service leads to arrest, conviction
The most popular blog I’ve ever published, by far, is an exposé of a for-profit company based in Florida, called Community Service Help, Inc., that claimed it could match people have been assigned...
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That moment when you totally change your mind about volunteer engagement
An email I received a few days ago. I’ve changed it a bit to hide the identity of the author: I want to thank you, sincerely, for challenging me to think about my understanding of volunteering. You...
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Learning from a nonprofit’s failure
A couple of the nonprofits where I have worked over the last 30 years have closed for good. I don’t count my time at either agency as enjoyable, and I don’t mention either on my résumé. It was many of...
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Kentucky politicians think volunteers are free
Kentucky’s governor, Matt Bevin, a Republican, is working to end kynect, the state’s widely-lauded health insurance exchange and one of the most successful under the federal Affordable Health Care Act....
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Involving volunteers: a cop out for paying staff?
Nurses in the Philippines are angry. They are being forced to work for free, or for a stipend on which they cannot live, while the hospitals where they are working call them “volunteers.” Some...
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Requirements to volunteer are getting out of hand
There are requirements in some school districts for students to perform a certain number of volunteering hours with nonprofit organizations. And courts across the USA often sentence law breakers to...
View ArticleA PR disaster that has me outraged
Which is worse: founding a company and giving it a name without doing any check on the name or phrase, and then finding out later that the name is associated with a horrible time in history and is...
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Isn’t my good heart & desire enough to help abroad?
An email below that I got recently, which I’ve edited here for brevity and to protect everyone’s identity: My daughter is 16, and she has saved her money to travel and volunteer. She is partial to...
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Vanity Volunteering: all about the volunteer
If you regularly read my blog and web site materials or have seen me present, then you know just how strongly I believe in the importance of the involvement of volunteers in nonprofit/mission-based...
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humanitarian stories & photos – use with caution
If you are going abroad, particularly to developing countries, even just for vacation rather than a humanitarian mission, be really careful and respectful in what you write for the public about your...
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Treat volunteers like employees? Great idea, awful idea
Back in 2009, the Volunteer Centre South Derbyshire, in England, featured one of my posts from UKVPMs (a discussion group for volunteer managers in the United Kingdom) on its blog in response to an...
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Medical Voluntourism Can Cause Serious Harm
In a recent blog hosted by the Scientific American, Noelle Sullivan, a member of the faculty in global health studies at Northwestern University, says her research shows that some people volunteering...
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