Social Good Podcast: Manging Volunteers Online

The latest edition of my Social Good podcast for the Chronicle of Philanthropy is up for listening!

Last month, Andy Carvin, the social media mavin at NPR, asked what Web 2.0 solutions folks were using fo volunteer management.  One of our listeners, Sean McKean of CCS Fundraising asked if I’d follow up   — and I did this month!

This month, Beka Economopolous, the Vice President of Fission Strategy, a firm specializing in Web 2.0 strategic counsel for online organizing, advocacy, marketing, and communications and Ben Rigby the co-founder of really terrific new group called The Extraordinaries and the author of Mobilizing Generation 2.0.

Beka rightly pointed out that there are both front end volunteer management efforts, such as providing lots of access points for volunteers and making sure their engagements are meaningful and productive, and back end, learning more about who volunteers, when and for how much time. Of course, sadly, as in all of life, there are no silver bullet solutions (a great post by Paul Hagen on the lack of silver bulletness for volunteer management sofware IdealWare.)

Beka suggests folks explore these free tools, Facebook, Ning, PBwiki.com.  I’d add CiviCRM for the back end needs as well.

The Extraordinaries is just taking flight right now. The idea is to enable smart phone users to plug in when they have a few minutes, wherever, they are to support a variety of causes. Here’s Ben’s description of how The Extraordinaries is going to work:

We’ve designed The Extraordinaries to feel very much like playing a game. It’s got points, levels, and built-in competition. These game mechanics drive adoption and usage. The key difference is that by playing this game, the player does something useful for a nonprofit organization or public purpose such as:

•    Translating a nonprofit’s Website into a foreign language
•    Identifying craters on the surface of Mars with NASA’s Clickworker program
•    Recording the GPS location of potholes and city infrastructure issues for municipalities
•    Confirming addresses for a nonprofit’s membership list
•    Identifying birds for the Cornell Lab of Ornithology
•    Tagging images for the Smithsonian
•    Transcribing ancient texts for ReCaptcha
•    Reviewing congressional bills for hidden pork
•    Fact checking for reporters
The bottom line according to Beka and Ben is that there need to be lots of access points to enable lots of people to participate with your cause easily, quickly and in meaningful ways.  A perfect description of the Connected Age, I’d say!

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