A marketing director is defined by the scope of his or her responsibilities - not a pay rate. Paid or not, you call such a person a marketing director.

An executive director is defined by the scope of his or her responsibilities - not a pay rate. Paid or not, you call such a person an executive director.

A firefighter is defined by the scope of his or her responsibilities and training - not a pay rate. Volunteers can be - and often are - firefighters, despite what the union of professional firefighters wants you to believe.

Often, the term volunteer really is just a pay rate, not a job title. If someone has responsibilities on behalf of an organization, but isn't paid, he or she is a volunteer. Yet a lot of people have a problem with that label as a classification, like these interns who are upset about not being paid. Call them volunteers, and they have a minor freak out. But that's what they are - they are volunteers, because they aren't paid.

The debate should be this: SHOULD interns be volunteers?

What these unpaid interns that are so upset about being labeled volunteers don't seem to get is that I'm actually on their side: I think they should be paid. They should be employees or short-term consultants, no question. Why? Because

• the organizations they work for do not have a mission statement for their involvement of unpaid staff (volunteers),
• the organizations do not have, in writing, why they reserves certain positions and tasks and responsibilities specifically for volunteers rather than employees or paid consultants,
• the organizations say they don't pay volunteers because they "can't afford to" - and as you know, those are fighting words when it comes to saying why you involve volunteers.

May internships be unpaid? Sure! But there must be a stated reason that is not "because we don't have money to pay them." That's just pure exploitation, period.

I worked at a certain very large international NGO that shall remain nameless that was involving unpaid interns in large numbers - and I felt it was incredibly exploitative: nothing was in writing, and people held unpaid internships for months and months for no dicernable reason other than that they were free labor and so desperate for the experience that they made no demands. I didn't have the power to change the intern policy throughout the organization, but I did for my own department. And here's the parameters I established that all staff in our department had to adhere to regarding involving unpaid interns:

• An internship had to have a primary focus on giving the intern a learning experience, not  getting tasks done. Therefore:
  • There had to be a written job description that reflected this primary purpose of the internship.
  • The intern was invited to all agency-wide staff meetings, all staff meetings for just our department, and encouraged to ask to attend staff meetings for other departments, to learn about work across the agency. Staff were encouraged to take interns with them to meetings or events whenever possible, as appropriate.
  • The intern also had one project that was uniquely his or hers, that he or she was responsible for and could put on his or her résumé (for instance, conducting a survey, or evaluating some process and making recommendations for improvement).
  • The intern received job coaching and job search help by other staff members.
• A person chosen for the internship had to be able to say why they wanted to enter into a profession related to our agency's work, and say what they had done up to that point, in terms of education, volunteer work and paid work, to pursue that career choice.
• A person could hold an internship only for up to six months. They absolutely could not hold it beyond six months, no exceptions. An intern could NOT return to our department as an intern again, ever. That reduced the chance of a person being exploited as free labor; it forced rotation in what was supposed to be a role reserved for people learning about our work, not the opportunity for someone to have an unpaid assistant indefinitely.
• Ideally, the intern that was leaving would overlap with the intern that was coming in by one week, so that the departing intern could get experience training someone, documenting his or her responsibilities, etc.
• When the intern left, he or she was interviewed about his or her experience as an intern from the point of view of getting the learning and professional development he or she was looking for, and this was used to continually improve internship involvement and to show if interns were getting what our internship promised: a learning experience.

The primary task we reserved for interns was answering the many, many emails that came in regarding an online program by our agency. We found that interns really were the best people for this task: in contrast to giving this task to employees, interns brought freshness and enthusiasm to responses that really shown through. They quickly saw patterns in questions or comments that a burned out staff person might not see, leading to adjustments to web site information and other communications. Also, in my opinion, because the interns were volunteers, they assumed a much stronger customer-advocate point-of-view regarding the people emailing with questions or comments than employees did; the agency could have a real seige-mentality outlook when dealing with anyone outside the organization, while the interns had a mentality of being advocates for those outside the organization.

As I mentioned, I also came up with tasks specifically for an intern to own. It might be an internal staff survey, a customer/client survey, a research project, an evaluation/analysis project, production of a report or online resource, etc. Every intern walked away something that was his or hers, a project that he or her directed or managed or lead, and that employees and other interns contributed to. That gave interns the management experience so many were desperate for.

The problem with having these internships as unpaid: it meant that anyone who couldn't afford to move to our geographic area and work at least 20 hours a week, unpaid, couldn't be an intern. That excluded a lot of qualified people. It meant all of our interns were from the USA or Europe. It meant qualified people who couldn't afford to volunteer (work unpaid) couldn't be interns. I tried creating online internships specifically for these people, but sadly, we never got qualified candidates to apply for those - though I've wondered if there was just too much skepticism about an online internship being a real internship - perhaps it would be easier now.

One last note: yes, I've been an intern. I had a summer-long internship at a for-profit newspaper between my sophomore and junior year at university, and I was paid - and it met almost all of the parameters I think an internship should have, paid or not, that I've outlined above. I had a year-long internship during senior at my university, at a nonprofit arts center, and I was paid and, again, the role met almost all of the parameters I think an internship should have, paid or not, that I've outlined above. My last internship was a summer-long gig after I graduated, at a nonprofit theater, and I was not paid - but, indeed, the role met almost all of the parameters I think an internship should have, paid or not, that I've outlined above. None of those internships guaranteed me eventual employment, but they all did end up helping me get the experience and networks I needed for eventual full-time employment. All three organizations, including the for-profit company, looked at their intern involvement as a way of giving back, of cultivating young people into specific professions.

The newspaper paid me because it had to; as a for-profit business, it couldn't involve unpaid staff. The nonprofit arts organization paid me because they could; they got a grant from the state to do so. The theater didn't pay me because felt they were offering young people free education and a potential job connection network that aspiring actors, production staff and administration staff couldn't buy if they had wanted to - not kidding! There was also this you-have-to-survive-this-trial-by-fire-to-work-in-theater attitude that those of us who did survive such wore like a badge of honor. I look back on that experience and, as much as I want to say I was exploited... I do feel like I got experience and connections I could never have gotten otherwise, that the organization really did do me a favor.

Also see:

This article in the New York Times about interns.

Internship Programs Under The Fair Labor Standards Act (USA)
This PDF fact sheet provides general information to help determine whether interns must be paid the minimum wage and overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act in the USA

Social Inequity and the Unpaid Intern

The blog unfairinternships.wordpress.com

Linda Graff is a volunteer management trainer, with a specialization regarding risk management in engaging volunteers.

Linda is retiring, and Andy Fryer has done an interview with her that talks about her incredible contributions to our knowledge about effective volunteer engagement. It's worth your time to read the interview.

Readers are invited to comment, and my comment says, in part:

I can’t count how many times I have run to my risk management books by Linda to be able to make a point or even win an argument – and I pretty much dismiss any volunteer management expert who doesn’t have one of her books on the shelf or doesn’t seem to know who she is (blasphemy!).

Every nonprofit organization/mission-based organization needs at least one Linda Graff book on the bookshelf - and staff need to consult such regularly. My recommendation is Beyond Police Checks. It's North America-specific, but the advice is applicable to any country.

It's a loss for our sector that Linda is retiring, but I know that she now gets to spend much more time fishing, and that makes me happy.

I get a lot of emails from people who are not native English speakers, or have not had a lot of education in terms of written English.

That means I can't immediately delete emails that are full of misspellings, ARE WRITTEN IN ALL CAPS, or that don't make for easy reading - all of the criteria that most people use to screen out scammers and spammers. Instead, I have to read such emails carefully and make sure they aren't really from a small NGO in a remote country. And even after reading such emails, I'm not always certain.

Here's an example of the kind of emails I get:

hello
mama jane,
my name is youssuph 18,living in somaliland aka northern somalia .
iam highly interesred in your work n want to be like u in the future,but for now i want u to be our organisation advicer which we have accomoplish the legality of our organisation-we are waiting approval from the ministry
i ,could like to share your 2 decade experience ,
i LOVE your work mama jane.
it is sooooooooooo wonderful
i also could say WELCOME to somaliland .
mwaa jane craven

I'm guessing this person is at least somewhat for real - he got my name mostly right. I have no idea what he really wants - which is often the case when I get these kinds of emails.

But I write back, and see if I can't direct the person to a local organization or online resource that could help them. And very often, it turns out that it's a real person, writing from a real NGO.

I always appreciate it when the person doesn't call me "Sir". I much prefer mama jane.

And the world keeps getting smaller...

You're work or volunteer at nonprofit or an NGO or a government agency - some sort of mission-based organization. Or you want to.

Therefore, you have things to say, or ask, about the Internet, or computers, or smart phones, or any tech that plugs into those. YES, YOU DO!

There are some terrific threads on TechSoup awaiting your comments and questions, like:

GooglePlus - forcing users to use it?

UNV campaign: #actioncounts

Scheduling Volunteers for Therapeutic Riding Center

Library computer system needed for equipment reservations and checkout

Bohemian broadband & fossmaker culture

small nonprofit seeks affordable, reliable automated reminder call service

How to start a computer distribution program for low-income/needy people

Will Facebook kill your web-based online community?

Writing for the web

Which apps would people like?

what video conferencing tools have you really used.

Or start your own thread! You have things to say, to discuss, to share, to whine about when it comes to how you use the Internet, or computers, or smart phones, or any tech that plugs into those. YES, YOU DO!

You can also:

View the TechSoup community by subject matter/branch

View the TechSoup community by latest post

This blog was originally posted 16 August 2010.

So many people -- media and corporate people in particular -- like to talk about volunteers in the most flowery language possible: volunteers as selfless and hard-working and nice and sweet and huggable. Gosh golly, don't you love them?!?

I'm not fond of using fuzzy language to talk about volunteers, because I find it degrading and disrespectful. It devalues volunteers and their role in organizations. 

While in Australia leading workshops on volunteer management earlier this year, one of the very hot-topics that volunteer managers wanted to talk about was volunteers as bullies. So many were facing a toxic volunteer at their organizations who used abusive language with other volunteers, paid staff and even clients, disrupted meetings and plans that other volunteers were leading or organizing, and were uncooperative regarding following policies and procedures. These toxic volunteers were capable of bringing meetings, planning, events, and even entire programs to a halt.

The volunteer managers felt powerless to deal with the bullies, because these volunteers had often been at the organization longer than the volunteer managers had, because the volunteers were also financial donors, because the volunteers had been honored in the past regarding their service, or because the staff was afraid of the volunteers and didn't want to provoke them further. Volunteer managers told me that just one volunteer complaint -- including complaints about being reprimanded for not following policy --  would result in senior leadership displeasure with the volunteer manager. One person said that her supervisor, in regards to complaints by a long-time volunteer who did not want to follow policy, "I just don't want to hear it. Make her happy."

One avoidance tactic upper management uses regarding bullies is to require everyone to go into a conflict management workshop. Those workshops can be really great for other issues, but don't solve the problem of a bully. In fact, volunteer managers report to me that bullies either come up with a way to beg off attending such or are brilliant at hijacking such workshops, portraying themselves as victims and using the tactics they learn at the workshop to divert responsibility from themselves regarding bullying behavior. And I have to admit that I've seen it happen myself.

Since those workshops in Australia, I've kept my eye out for good resources regarding bullying in the workplace. One that I found was a blog from the Open University, Office conflict: the impact of workplace bullying. Another terrific resource is How to deal with workplace bullying and how to tackle bullying at work, also from the United Kingdom. My favorite resource, however, regarding petty tyranny in the workplace is the book The No Asshole Rule—Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t, which I've blogged about before. His book is about paid employees, but it most definitely applies to volunteers.

My own advice as well:

• Document, document, document. Have dates, places and details about the actions of a toxic volunteer in writing. Have details in writing on the consequences of the bullying, such as other volunteers not participating in activities if the toxic volunteer will be there, volunteers dropping out of participation altogether, little or no new volunteers participating in certain activities, and complaints from other volunteers, paid staff and clients. Be ready to present these to your supervisor, the head of your human resources department, and even the head of your organization. Don't wait to be asked to present this information, and don't be discouraged if your initial presentation of such doesn't prompt action; it may take several presentations to get the message across that the toxic volunteer must be let go.


• Be consistent in applying the rules to all volunteers, so there is no possibility of a toxic volunteer claiming you are singling her or him out, something she or he will be tempted to claim to other volunteers and to paid staff she or he has a long-term relationship with. This starts to create an atmosphere where the toxic volunteer will start to feel unwelcomed and will indirectly encourage her or him to move on.


• Be willing to lose the bully, as well as her or his allies among your volunteers, and to answer questions from staff or other volunteers who express displeasure at their departure. If you create an environment where the bully cannot engage in toxic behavior without having consequences for that behavior, that volunteer will probably leave your organization, but not without a dramatic exit, like a fiery letter or email or an emotional final meeting, and she or he may successfully encourage other volunteers to leave as well. Say goodbye and wish them well and calmly move on, focusing on your remaining volunteers, reaching out to volunteers who left because of the toxic volunteer, recruiting new volunteers, staying dispassionate and staying positive.


• Never, ever trash talk the bully to other staff or volunteers, even if you consider those staff or volunteers sympathetic to you. Those words could come back to haunt you. Be above reproach in any comments you make about the toxic volunteer, even among allies. It's fine for volunteers to share complaints with you regarding a bullying volunteer, but keep it dispassionate and don't allow them to cross a line where they could be accused of being bullies themselves.


• Be on the lookout for misinterpretations and misrepresentations of your actions, and ready to respond to such immediately, quickly and decisively.


• Don't think that the situation will somehow work itself out. It won't.   

You probably won't hear any well-known social media guru talking about it, you probably won't hear about it in any social media workshop (except mine, of course), but do you know who is getting the MOST out of social media when it comes to community engagement?

Wrestlers.

Check out 110 Trending Topics in 5 Hours: How WWE Wrestlemania Body-Slammed Social Media:

Behind strong pushes on Twitter and YouTube, WWE Wrestlemania XXVIII laid the smack down on social media last weekend, teaching a digital engagement lesson to the sports entertainment world.

Heck, Wrestlemania taught a digital engagement lesson to the nonprofit world, to ANY world, if those sectors will listen. Also see: How the WWE Is Making WrestleMania More Social Than Ever.

But will you click on those links? Or are you already lifting up your nose at the mere mention of the word wrestling?

Professional wrestling - or, as my people like to call it, rasslin' - is unbelievably popular world wide. I've been stunned at how many wrestling shirts I've seen all over the world, including in Kabul, Afghanistan. In Kabul, there are (or, at least, in 2007, there were) gyms in the city that had the images of wrestlers from Wrestlemania in front of their businesses to draw people in (don't sue, Wrestlemania, just don't). I couldn't understand why USAID wasn't employing stars from Wrestlemania to create public service announcements for Afghans about whatever it is we're trying to get Afghans to do (support women in microenterprises, support girls going to school, grow wheat instead of poppies, drive on the right side of the road, employ proper water sanitation practices, etc.). I'm totally serious, USAID!

But we cringe at the thought of... sniff... wrestlers being involved in anything noble or high-minded or community-focused like that.

I worked with People Magazine once upon a time to do a pilot online mentoring program with kids in Washington, D.C. - and the People folks wanted celebrities to be the online mentors. At a classroom we visited in the basement of a school (where it was easily over 100 degrees on that stifling hot day), there were probably five kids wearing Wrestlemania t-shirts. I talked to the kids while the rest of our visiting party stood across the room, as far away from the students as possible, and when I asked the students what kind of celebrities they admired, they didn't name rap stars - they named wrestlers. I was thinking, hey great, we're getting wrestlers for these kids as online mentors! Later that afternoon, in our followup planning meeting in an air-conditioned room of a then dominant Internet provider in Virginia, a room so cold I needed a sweater, People Magazine staff balked at the idea of wrestlers. They said they were thinking of celebrities such as Martha Stewart and Charleton Heston as possible mentors for these teens. I kid you not - that's the two people they named in that meeting as examples of proper online mentors for inner-city teens.

It's worth noting that the first virtual volunteering by a celebrity I have been able to find has been by...  A RETIRED WRESTLER. Mick Foley is a an online volunteer with RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), the largest anti-sexual assault organization in the USA. He talked about his experience as an online volunteer on a November 2010 episode of The Daily Show with John Stewart. In a RAINN web video, Foley says, “I cannot think of a better way to spend a few hours a week than helping someone who needs RAINN’s services.” Learn more about volunteering for RAINN's Online Hotline.

(Yes, I just burned a bridge with People Magazine. So much for my bid to be one of their most beautiful people. Ah, well.)

Let's be clear: I actually don't watch wrestling. Well, now, anyway - when I was 8, I loved watching Bill "Superstar" Dundee on TV. I also loved roller derby in those days. But, indeed, I have moved on. I could not name a modern-day wrestler. I'm not as hip as you might think.

But I haven't become too sophisticated to say, way to go, Wrestlemania. I'll happily learn from Wrestlemania and wrestlers when it comes to virtual volunteering, online mentoring, and online community engagement, I'd love to invite your participation in any community engagement activity I'm a part of, and I'll even use examples of your online activities in my workshops - even while other social media experts and nonprofit management trainers rolls their eyes and cringe.

But I still might call it rasslin'.

Consulting services by Jayne Cravens.

One of the things I really like about Twitter is that I don't have to follow absolutely everyone whose tweets I might be interested in reading at some point; I can put people and organizations on various lists, by subject matter, geography, whatever, and then check in with those lists as I like. I pick one or two of my lists a day, and then spend a few minutes going through the tweets of that list.

I make my Twitter lists public - anyone can see them. I'm also sharing them below - I thought you might like to see what they are, either to find someone you should be following, to subscribe to any of these lists or maybe to finally get you on Twitter at long last.

Afghanistan
People and organizations that tweet about Afghanistan. I'll always care about Afghanistan...

Aid work & Dev
Organizations working development, aid and humanitarian response in developing/transitional countries.

CSR
Corporate social responsibility and social entrepreneurship, including pro bono help

Colleagues
My professional and volunteering colleagues (if you aren't on this list, and we've worked together at some point in some way, and you are on Twitter, please let me know!)

español
Info & orgs in Spain & Latin America, or any site I follow that tweets in español, all related to some subject I follow (aid work and development, tech4good/ICT4D, tourism for good, CSR, FOSS, etc.)

FOSS
Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) - vendors, distributors, volunteers and advocates.

International NGOs
Major international non-governmental organizations I'm particularly interested in.

Nonprofit associations
City, state & regional nonprofit associations in the USA.

PNW
Portland, Oregon & Pacifc Northwest Tweeters I follow.

Tech4Good ICT4D
Also #nptech, apps for good. Organizations and individuals engaged in activities that use computer, software and Internet technology to help individuals, communities and the environment.

tourism4good
Organizations promoting tourism for good, or tourism for development.

Women & Girls Empowerment
Orgs & tweeters re women & girls empowerment/rights

Vol Research
Research regarding volunteerism and/or community engagement

Volunteerism non-English
Volunteer info & orgs that do not tweet English (but tweet in Spanish, French, Portuguese, or anything I can sorta kinda figure out)

For Volunteers 
If you want to / are a volunteer. If you tweet about your volunteering activities, the things you do as a volunteer, contact me and let me know. If you are an organization focused primarily on volunteers (you have developed a web site or app to help people find volunteering opportunities, for instance), let me know. 

Volunteer recruit/manage
For those that work with volunteers - for managers of volunteers, and for organizations that regularly tweet regarding their volunteers.

Volunteerism
Promoting or researching the concept of volunteers/community help.

If you want to be on any of these lists, please contact me. And if you are interested in the subjects I am, or want to know what I'm up to, I hope you will follow me on Twitter!

I don't like "closed gardens" like Facebook to create online communities for volunteers, clients or members. Not only for all of the reasons I note here on TechSoup, but also because a lot of people do NOT like mixing their social lives with their volunteering lives.

Take this story today on NPR's Talk of the Nation, that noted a teacher was fired for a photo on her Facebook page that showed her drinking wine while she was on vacation. That's enough to make anyone paranoid about using their Facebook page for their work or volunteering. 

Also, if I am required to join a Facebook group as a part of my volunteering, that means other volunteers and the organization's employees are going to know I'm on Facebook, and want to become my friend - and be hurt if I say no.

More on why I don't like "closed gardens" as online communities for volunteers, clients or members. Weigh in there on your own thoughts! (if you try to comment here on this particular blog, I'm going to NOT publish your comment and ask that you over to TechSoup and reply)

I'm not the only one constantly harping that we need to stop talking about volunteers in terms of money saved or in terms of "Hey, we've got all this work to do, let's get some volunteers to do it" - and, instead, start talking about the true value of Volunteers.

Here's a fantastic article from 2008 by Jennifer Woodill for the Nonprofit Quarterly that echoes what a small but growing number of managers, researchers and volunteerism advocates have been saying - there are much better reasons to involve volunteers than we don't have to pay them!

And I don't think it's volunteer managers that are the biggest obstacle in changing this mentality - it's donors, particularly from the corporate sector, as well as big organizations like the United Nations Volunteers program and John Hopkins University, which just cannot let go of the idea of volunteers being great primarily becaues they mean not having to pay employees or consultants to do work.

Way to go, Jennifer!

Also see:

Do NOT say "Need to Cut Costs? Involve Volunteers!"

The Value of Volunteers (and how to talk about such)

Like most people in the USA, I've been captivated by the horrific case of the shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman. And there have been comments in the news accounts and commentaries that always get my attention: Zimmerman is called a volunteer with his local neighborhood watch group.

But the National Sheriffs' Association (NSA), the parent organization of USAonWatch-Neighborhood Watch , the largest neighborhood watch organization in the USA, says George Zimmerman was not a member of any group recognized by the organization. NSA Executive Director Aaron D. Kennard, Sheriff (ret.) said in the press statement. "NSA has no information indicating the community where the incident occurred has ever even registered with the NSA Neighborhood Watch program."

It sounds like Zimmerman was a DIY volunteer. That he was, in fact, a self-proclaimed "captain" of his one-man neighborhood watch group. And that means he was not registered with any organization as a neighborhood watch volunteer, that no one had approved his membership in such, that no one had interviewed him or done a background check on him before he started volunteering, that he had received no training from any official, credible neighborhood watch program, and that no one was supervising him and his work as a "volunteer."

I've always been a big tent person when it comes to volunteering - if a person is helping an organization and not being paid, he or she is a volunteer. That means I throw in people who are doing community service for a grade, or a scholarship, or as part of a court-ordered action. However, I cringe at the idea of George Zimmerman being called a "volunteer."

There's a better word for George Zimmerman: vigilante.

Media - please stop calling him a volunteer.

And on another note:

Nonprofits, NGOs, libraries and other organizations that involve volunteers: do your volunteers know when they are, and when they are NOT, representing your organization? Have you told them? You all tell me you are oh-so-worried about volunteers doing things online that embarass your organization, but what are you going to do when someone wearing that fabulous t-shirt emblazoned with your logo starts going around town representing his or herself as a representative of your organization?