Nonprofit COVID-19 Response Forum


Virtual/Remote Opportunities

Has your organization been able to move any of its volunteer opportunities to remote options? If so, how?

There was mention at yesterday's webinar of a Social Media Ambassador Toolkit that is utilized for the OK Food Pantry volunteers... can you please provide some more information/links to that?
Hi Erin! Thank you for following up about this. We are happy to facilitate this connection, and will put you in touch with the volunteer manager for RFBO! Please let me know if there is anything else we can do to help. — Kaitlin Sandmann Kaitlin Sandmann on April 24, 2020
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How do you do a virtual Volunteer Appreciation event that was scheduled for April 22 this year and had to be cancelled due to COVID 19?
That's a great question. One idea might be to set up a virtual event over Zoom. You can use break-out rooms to encourage small group discussion, screenshare to present a powerpoint or video, and announce award winners (perhaps for most hours volunteered, longest duration of volunteering, most unique impacts recorded, etc) to encourage group participation. This could also be a great opportunity to rally volunteers for Giving Day, which has been moved to May 5 this year. What features of the Volunteer Appreciation event will be most important to move over to the virtual event? Happy to keep brainstorming! — Kaitlin Sandmann Kaitlin Sandmann on April 10, 2020
Thank you for the reply! Most important feature of the even will be giving out awards/certificates for longest hours etc. What is Giving day? — Bobbi Bornstein Bobbi Bornstein on April 13, 2020
That makes sense — if you have volunteer addresses, you could announce their awards over Zoom, and then send a certificate to their house! Giving Tuesday (https://www.givingtuesday.org/) is a day of unity in response to COVID-19. It asks everyone who can to donate time or money to organizations in their communities. Promoting this day on social media and asking volunteers to rally as well can help offer a focal point for your organization's needs at this time! — Kaitlin Sandmann Kaitlin Sandmann on April 14, 2020
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We have transitioned some of our lifelong learning programs to an online format. As a result, we are in need of virtual classroom ambassadors. This involves two hours of volunteer time per online session. This role is simply to monitor the session and ensure there are no issues with the online presentation. Pre-training on Blackboard Collaborate Ultra can be provided.
How are these ambassadors making sure no issues are happening? — Erica Liu Erica Liu on April 2, 2020
Hi Josh is your organization planning on staying virtual throughout the summer as well? What process are you using to recruit ambassadors? — Aurora Larrazolo Aurora Larrazolo on April 2, 2020
We haven't had any actually sign up for the role yet. We just held our first class last week that staff monitored. Moving forward we will attempt to recruit volunteers, both from Give Pulse and from within our membership (most likely students who sign up for the class who we ask to be the ambassador). In term of making sure there are no issues, basically we are just asking them to monitor the chat board during the sessions and ensure participants able to ask questions and so forth. Specific technical issues we would request support elsewhere. I hope that helps. I will happily post here if this works well for us. — Josh Raney Josh Raney on April 3, 2020
Also, we are currently going virtual through April 30 but likely will be doing the same for programs in May and June. We are adjusting as the situation develops. — Josh Raney Josh Raney on April 3, 2020
Thank you so much, Josh! Let us know if this works well for you. :) — Kaitlin Sandmann Kaitlin Sandmann on April 10, 2020
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We are exploring asking our volunteers to create DIY videos for our online writing lab so that students have writing activities that they can do from home.
Thanks so much, Leticia! Are students responding positively to the writing activities/videos? — Kaitlin Sandmann Kaitlin Sandmann on April 2, 2020
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Several respondents to our survey indicated that content creation opportunities — translating informational materials, creating social media campaigns, creating content for blogs/newsletters, etc. — were opportunities that can be completed while quarantined, and that will help with recruitment going forward. How else can volunteers in quarantine help the organizations they care about during this crisis?