volunteermatch

Competition is the American way. It keeps organizations accountable and spurs them to continue to improve their products and services and/or decrease their prices, creating a significant benefit for consumers. When there are few options in – oh, I don’t know – the airline, cell phone or cable industries, we can find ourselves with inferior services and high prices. Competition is good because it prompts innovation and improvement. But when it comes to competition in the nonprofit sector, is there a time when more groups jumping in to provide another option is no longer helpful?

I’m intrigued by Chris Hughes’s announcement about the soon-to-be revealed Jumo platform – yes, intrigued enough to take a little quiz for the promise that they would be in touch “soon” with the perfect opportunities. Jumo, which will actually launch in the fall, is in an information-collecting period right now, asking people to answer questions about their interests and preferences. And while Jumo’s collection of offerings isn’t yet clear, it will essentially help to match people with volunteering opportunities that suit their talents, interests and resources – and word on the street is that’s what a few other sites thought they were doing pretty well already.

If I were the folks at Idealist, VolunteerMatch or All for Good, I might not have been totally thrilled to read about Jumo last week. According to the LA Times, Chris Hughes has already raised more than half a million dollars (of a targeted $2.5 million) for his project. This news comes right in the middle of a half million dollar fundraising campaign to save the 15-year-old Idealist.org. And the more than 30 years of combined experience of Idealist, VolunteerMatch and All for Good could be of help as Jumo is in its research and building phase. While I'm sure they aren't close to a cut-throat corporate brand battle, what do you bet they aren’t all picking out new drapes and china patterns together either?

And I’m certainly not picking on Jumo. Chris Hughes is brilliant, he’s established a solid track record of getting things done and I’m thrilled that he wants to put his time and talent toward helping people find meaningful ways to give back. It’s just a broader question about whether or not increased options and competition are always good for our sector - or if they lead to better services and greater impact. Jumo might be a little taste of déjà vu. The volunteering mega-hub All for Good prompted similar questions and conversation last summer when it launched with the backing of Google and the Obama administration. And while I’m sure that Jumo will be different and innovative, and I’m excited to see what it is, I find myself wondering if the best product for all might have been created more quickly through one of the existing tools....I honestly don't know.

Likewise, there are now an almost overwhelming number of clubs, professional organizations and affinity groups where nonprofit workers can seek development, networking and resources. There are so many slightly different groups with similar goals and services that it’s becoming difficult for individuals to find the time for all these groups and similarly difficult for these groups to find enough active members to maintain their chapters.

My colleague Michael Smith and I were marveling today about the fact that if, for example, you are a young(ish), black foundation professional in DC, you could participate in Young Nonprofit Professionals Network, Independent Sector (and its NGen), Council on Foundations (and its NextGen), Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy, Association of Black Foundation Executives, Black Philanthropic Alliance, Washington Grantmakers, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations…and the list goes on. And while these groups do team up for events and programs, they all have their own conferences, newsletters, resources and membership fees. Are we benefitting from so many choices or does everything get kind of muddled?

What do you think? In the nonprofit sector, does competition always spur the most innovation and best result? And do more options for good actually lead to more good?

About a week ago, I shared some of my high level thoughts about the state of online volunteer matching platforms. I expressed that online platforms for “good” need to be great. Because if they’re not, and we don’t make the experience as easy as possible for prospective volunteers, we lose a very important slice of folks we’re trying to attract. Call them what you will -- the unaffiliated, the unconverted, the I-want-to-give-back-but-don’t–know-where-to-start-“ers” these are people who are compelled by something they hear, or read, or stumble upon, and more often than not they turn to Google to find an opportunity to take action on that very issue. From Google, they are led to a myriad of volunteer matching platforms be it VolunteerMatch, Idealist, Craigslist or others. But, how many of them are signing up to volunteer, let alone reporting for duty?

My post came just a few days before the Entertainment Industry Foundation kicked off their multi-year, iParticipate campaign. From my perspective, EIF’s goal was simple – to turn the generation of couch potatoes they’d so proudly reared, into a generation of doers and volunteers. And, they did so in an impressive and unprecedented way. More than 90 shows across all networks either wrote volunteer messages into the scripts, or incorporated a call to action at the end of their shows directing viewers to the iParticipate website.

While it’s still too early to tell whether the campaign was a success or not, we do know one thing -- the platforms weren’t quite ready, and according to some initial reports from VolunteerMatch, many of the individuals who may have been compelled to pause the Tivo and login to iParticipate, were led to outdated or incomplete posts and hard to navigate prompts. Throughout last week’s campaign, Greg Baldwin, CEO of VolunteerMatch shared a series of very transparent reflections on the campaign and the ability of VolunteerMatch to do what it was set up to do – match seekers, with opportunities. In an open letter to the nonprofits who use the VolunteerMatch platform, Baldwin revealed some of the early results indicating that, "Over the course of the week, this historic TV campaign produced an average of only 775 new visits a day or 2.6% of our weekly total of 208,400 visits. This amounts to perhaps 100 new volunteers."

But, then again, it’s not just the platforms that are at fault. The expected surge of volunteers, never appeared to come. We have to take a step back and determine if this kind of celebrity driven campaign is authentic enough to get people off of their couches. We’re all familiar with the strategically placed bag of Dorito’s or the overtly loud “ahhh” after a sip of Diet Coke, but this was a different kind of product placement. It was a way to embed the idea of “giving back” into our psyche. But as many of the comments on the VolunteerMatch post said, you shouldn’t expect immediate results. Campaigns of this nature take a while to seep in – or to go back to the Dorito’s analogy, just because you see them on the screen – doesn’t mean you run down to the 7-11 to buy a bag, but chances are the next time you’re in the store you may reach for a bag of cooler ranch. We can assume the same holds true with volunteer opportunities and will have to wait and see what translates and converts to on the ground experiences.

As Allison Fine pointed out in a post on the same subject earlier today:

"This is an opportunity for volunteer matching websites and organizations, and the nonprofit organizations that use volunteers, to engage with EIF to develop a longer-term strategy of how to continue to raise the importance and opportunities of volunteerism. Social change takes a long time and an enormous amount of diligence, patience and resilience to pursue. These are not characteristics often associated with the entertainment industry, which is why it’s incumbent on the nonprofit community to find ways for the industry to use its best strength, their ability to be a megaphone to share issues with large audiences of people at one time, and couple it with the best strengths of efforts like VolunteerMatch which is to inexpensively reach people — and stay with them over time."

I agree with Allison and believe the new EIF campaign has the potential to truly expose the “unconverted” to new opportunities to give back, but if we don’t make the experience seamless from the beginning, it could very well have the reverse effect.

We’ve watched "do-it-yourself" service grow as individuals take it upon themselves to organize community initiatives. We know there’s a "new civic generation" of Millennials that came of age during the Sept. 11 and Hurricane Katrina disasters and they're volunteering at higher rates than ever before. Baby boomers are using their professional skills to help build capacity at nonprofits. But all of these were trends before the celebrities made a mass appeal to “participate.” So, what’s next and how can we push people to take action – if this type of campaign doesn’t work, what will?