Are You Ready to Host Online Volunteers?

Are you able to manage Online Volunteer assignments at this time?
Recruiting volunteers before you know that you are ready to make use of their contributions immediately or when you do not have the time to communicate with them at least weekly via email will be discouraging and frustrating for your volunteers as well as annoying for you.

Do you have the technology to involve Online Volunteers?
Your connection to the Internet should be reliable and consistent. Your hardware and software should be able to handle the basic standards of the Internet (email and browsing the web). You also must be able to at least view the work results of your volunteer; for instance, you cannot ask for Web site design if you have only a word processing program installed on your computer.

Do you have enough time to manage Online Volunteers and their assignments?
It is very useful to have one person responsible for managing your Online Volunteers. This allows better coordination of their work. The defining of deadlines and control of appropriate results will be a lot easier. This person should have enough time and the commitment to correspond with your Online Volunteers on a regular basis. This person can be onsite at your organization, or, you can recruit an Online Volunteer specifically for this task. However, if you do recruit an Online Volunteer as your Online Volunteer manager, you still need to appoint someone onsite as that person's primary contact (and you will need to be particularly selective when choosing your Online Volunteer manager).

Do you already successfully involve onsite volunteers?
If you have worked with volunteers before, onsite at your organization, you will be experienced in issues like how to best screen volunteers, what criteria to use when matching people to assignments, how much effort you can expect on average, or how to encourage and recognise your volunteers, etc. Organizations new to volunteering are advised to thoroughly study basic volunteer management before embarking on Online Volunteering. Also, Online Volunteering is not supposed to be a substitution of your onsite volunteering activities. By adding online to onsite volunteering you can give more people the chance to collaborate with you and get many more tasks done.

Have you prepared staff and volunteers onsite for Online Volunteers?
Questions and doubts about Online Volunteering in your organization must be settled before the assignments start. The volunteer is not the one to explain to your staff why you should be hosting her or him. If these issues are addressed, you and the volunteer are much more likely to have a successful collaboration.

Do you have a few simple Online Volunteering assignments already defined?
Online volunteers undertake a variety of assignments for organizations through our Online Volunteering service: translations, research, web design, data analysis, database construction, proposal writing, writing articles, online mentoring, publication design, moderating a discussion group, or anything other services that can be done through computer networks. It's a good idea to start with just one or two small assignments, to get used to working with people online. Then you can expand to more assignments, and offer longer assignments. You can use the Examples of Assignments page as a guide for writing task descriptions. Or, search through current assignments and see examples.