What Nonprofits are Doing Today: Online Volunteer Recruitment
Posting Volunteer Opportunities Online
www.volunteermatch.org (~60%)
www.idealist.org (~10%)
www.craigslist.org (~20%)
www.volunteersolutions.org (~10%)
www.ivolunteering.org (~5%)
Background Checks on Volunteers
www.volunteerselectplus.com and many others
What Nonprofits are Doing Today: Social Networking
LinkedIn.com (the office)
Can be used for Member recruitment and to get introductions to foundations and funders
Facebook.com (the suburbs)
Can be used to keep in touch with teens and former clients and staff and for online fundraising
MySpace.com (the ‘hood)
A more high risk environment, but can be used to keep in touch with teens
How Do We Realize that Vision?
What We Need to Do: Creative Commons
Provides copyright license to share content as “open source”
http://creativecommons.org
Common Sharing Agreements
Must Attribute, Can Share and Re-edit
Noncommercial, Must Attribute, Can Share
Recommendation: All CNCS organizations should creative-commons-license content
Broadcast Era Communication One to Many Communication We Train You
Telephone Era Communication Two Way, One-to-One Communication We Train You and You Give Us Feedback
Internet Era Communication Member Member Member AmeriCorps Organization 1 Million+ Other Nonprofits 64 Million+ Volunteers Many to Many Communication Everyone Trains Everyone 1 Billion Internet Users
Best Practices Example: TechMission Online
Collection of websites to complement our TechMission Corps program
UrbanResource.net
iVolunteering.org
Also use separate faith-based brands funded by private donations
ChristianVolunteering.org
UrbanMinistry.org
Strengths of TechMission
Innovation
Founder previously co-founded MIT’s Internet and Telecoms Research Consortium
Close to community:
Grew out of Black church movement with high percentage of Black/Latino led organizations that we support
65% of our Members have been people of color (45% Black, 13% Latino, 7% Asian) & over half come from low-income backgrounds
Two thirds of Black and Latino nonprofit leaders in the USA are in faith-based organizations and 46.5% of Black volunteers are religious volunteers
Strong ties with FBO’s: religious volunteers are the largest pool of volunteers (35.1%)
Diversity Profile at TechMission
TechMission Online Websites
Counterpart to Idealist.org & VolunteerMatch with brands that focus on:
Black and Latino Communities
Faith-based communities
Most visited web portal in the faith-based social services sector
Most visited web portal among Black and Latino nonprofit leaders and community organizers
Exponential Growth
Unique Web Visitors (500% growth)
2007: 260,740
2008: 1.3 million
2009: 2-3 million
Volunteers Matched (330% growth)
2007: 1,295
2008: 5,981
2009: 7,500+
Volunteers Matched per Volunteer Coordinator
2004: 100
2008: 929
2009: 1,250
Site Content
Site Stats
Registered Users: 29,056
Total Pages in English: 62,723
Languages Supported: 42 (computer translated)
Pages in Other Languages: 320,000+
Nonprofit Training Resources & Multimedia
Videos: 605
Audio Workshops: 1,148
Documents/Wiki Articles: 2,749
Photos: 2,007
Blog Articles: 639
Book Summaries: 2,856
Site Content
Nonprofit Resources
Volunteer Opportunities: 5,007
Volunteer Resumes: 16,733
Organizations: 4,785
Grants: 604
Nonprofit Jobs: 57
Nonprofit Consultants: 58
Nonprofit Events: 106
Future Direction
Facebook Connect & Facebook Application
Large directory of volunteers
Nonprofits search volunteer resumes/skills
Reverse of current volunteer matching sites
Promote open standards
How to Get Started
Invest in content management system
Drupal, Joomla, or WordPress (blogs)
Research others at: www. cms matrix.org
Alternative for small organizations is a hosted solution like ning.com using your own brand
Hire Many More Tech Staff
Have Members with a specialized focus on online volunteer recruitment
Sample Organizational Performance Measures
Generate 10,000 pages of new content each year
Have 50% of members blogging
Serve 2 million unique users with 10,000 new registered users
Match 5,000 volunteers through online sources
Track using analytics software
Google Analytics is free
Business Model
Give 90% of content away without registration
Each page of content you create generates on average 4 clicks per month
Online recruitment ads cost about $.50/click, so each page of content worth $2.00 per month
Require free registration for 10% of content
Build E-mail list for recruiting members
3% of users register (value = $5 per contact)
10,000 items of content per year generates an additional $240,000 of free web traffic and E-mail list worth $72,000 for recruitment
Need for Open Standards
CNCS and Serve.gov should promote the development of open standards for
Volunteer Opportunity Feeds
Organizational Listing Feeds
Refine existing standard by NetworkforGood
Create working group that Includes VolunteerMatch, Idealist, TechMission, HandsOnNetwork, UnitedWay, etc.
Provide standard to enable these groups to share listings with each other
Summary of Best Practices
Use Open Source Content Management System
Have all staff and Members using FaceBook and LinkedIn for your organizational mission
Creative Commons License at least 90% of content
Post thousands of volunteer opportunities online
Promote blogging for all members
Collect contacts for E-mail lists
Use analytics for tracking (Google or other)
Recommended Reading
Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything
By Don Tapscott & Anthony Williams
Written for non-techies
For More Information
This Presentation
http://www.urbanministry.org/nationalserviceweb
Visit:
www.urbanresource.org , www.ivolunteering.org
www.techmission.org
Contact
Andrew Sears, 617-282-9798 x101 or [email_address]
Appendix
Why Target Christian Volunteers & Social Service Organizations
Religious volunteers are the largest pool of volunteers (35.1%)
46.5% of Black volunteers are religious volunteers
Existing sites like VolunteerMatch are not reaching this sector: only 1.8% of listings are faith-based
Unique Characteristics of Christian Social Services
Common values create increased trust and efficiency
If you gain trust, you can mobilize the social capital of resourced Christians to serve low-income communities
High volunteer rate of Christians makes volunteering a major asset
80-90% of Christian organizations will focus on national partnerships with Christian organizations
Conclusion: Either have targeted marketing or lose most of this sector
Who Really Cares , Arthur C. Brooks
Volunteering in America, 2008, DoL
TechMission, Faith and Non-Discrimination
Our focus is on social services, and we do not discriminate in who we serve
Anyone can post on our site
We are one of the best channels for secular organization to recruit volunteers from churches
Maintain separate brands to target different groups to ensure non-discrimination
ChristianVolunteering.org, UrbanMinistry.org (Christian volunteers and orgs)
iVolunteering.org, UrbanResource.net (others)
By targeting faith-based groups we are able to show higher support of Black and Latino communities in the USA than our secular counterparts
TechMission Partners
TechMission Outcomes: Connecting People to the Poor TechMission Online: 1.3 Million Unique Web Visitors iVolunteering.org: 5,981Volunteers TechMission Corps: 40 FTE Interns City Vision College: 137 Student Enrollments $7.3 Million to Organizations
Segregation in People Resources Source: Corporation for National and Community Service & Department of Labor Value of Faith-Based Volunteers In USA = $51.8 billion
Funding Bias: Non-Whites Make up 52.4% of Poverty but Non-White Led Nonprofits only Receive 3% of Funding http://www.slideshare.net/rosettathurman/race-matters-in-nonprofits-promoting-diversity-in-our-profession and http://www.aecf.org/upload/publicationfiles/executive_transition_survey_report2004.pdf
0 comments
Post a comment