Exploring Volunteering

Table on two approaches to providing youth information online

The web’s development has had an enormous and growing influence on the way information, advice and guidance (IAG) services are delivered. Recently, I’ve been doing some thinking about how IAG services for young people have developed on the web.

The definition of what constitutes IAG precisely is a controversial topic- and not something I want to dive into very deeply with this post. In terms of scope I’m applying this thinking to both careers and non-careers IAG services, as well as rights-based (legal, housing, benefits, etc.) and non-rights based services (health, relationships, emotional wellbeing, etc).

The following is heavily influenced by my experience working on TheSite.org with charity YouthNet providing online information to 16-25 year olds across a range of different issues. To clarify, this post is written in a personal capacity and doesn’t necessarily reflect the views of YouthNet.

The issue or the person?

Broadly, online IAG services have developed along two different routes.

Initially, the way information services were delivered online tended to begin with the issues the services sought to address and that the services’ users were perceived to face. Subsequently as the social web took hold, information services were developed that thrust the personal context of service users to the forefront of service delivery.

This legacy of web evolution means the online information services can often be separated into those that focus on a specific issue and those that focus on the personal context of the service user.

Here’s a simple illustration of the distinction outlined above. An online resource such as a catalogue of factsheets is typically written to address specific issues faced by service users (based on a generic understanding of their personal circumstances). An online discussion forum meanwhile is a resource that privileges the personal context of service users (it makes the specific personal circumstances of specific service users the starting point to delivering its IAG services).

Beginning of web info services

In the beginning, IAG services were delivered in a Web 1.0 world. IAG providers were excited by the storage potential and search capabilities of the web. Gradually all kinds of previously paper-based information was put online, followed by the creation of new content specifically made to fit the web.

Text-based resources typically categorized by issue, followed earlier delivery models developed by libraries and other offline information providers. It was the potential to create huge, seemingly unlimited information resources rich in textual content that excited us. In the world where keyword search was king, information developed around the issues the providers saw as key.

Old screengrab of TheSite.org from 1998

In the case of TheSite.org, from 1998, articles and factsheets were developed editorially that tackled the issues that affected young people. Categories included: “Advice”, “Drugs & Alcohol”, “Education” and so it went in alphabetical order. In addition, sources of support and further information like helplines and organisations were categorised by issue in an effort to render the information accessible to service users.

All kinds of IAG providers discovered they could store and publish this written information relatively cheaply. They could make access to this kind of text-based information (stored on static pages) available on demand, usually for free.

Web technology could begin to automate areas of information provision simply by uploading HTML and thereby hooking into the growing power of search engines. Offline databases could be made available online.

In YouthNet’s case, it meant that it could provide access to information around the clock to millions of young people who had previously been much, much harder to reach. The database of local services, originally called “The Information”, later became Local Advice Finder.

Old screengrab of first version of database of local advice agencies on TheSite.org in 1998

At the dawn of the web this was an information world sorted and ordered predominantly by issue. As a result though this was information delivered on a machine scale, not a human scale. It was an issue-centric approach, which led to systems that tended to be designed assuming service users already understood or could break up their problems into specific issues.

This was a service optimised for those who weren’t in crisis, and could access the information they needed by browsing issues that interested them. For those in crisis, they had to make do with links to resources where they could get the support (often delivered offline) they needed.

This Web 1.0 phase was a world dominated by information that was delivered primarily as objective and factual content, rather than as discursive or speculative material. Content that was more subjective was often seen more as entertaining than informative.

Happily serving information via hosted data sitting on servers came with a funding model of sorts: how people accessed information provided on static pages came with a bunch of new metrics. Page views, unique browsers, bounce rate, SQL queries and so on.

Unhappily, it presented particular challenges. For example, it often separated information provider from information seeker. While we knew when users found the information we offered online (such as with page views), we didn’t often know what they thought of it or the impact it had on them.

Fortunately, another web revolution was just round the corner.

Issues now bound in personal context

Web 2.0 ushered in a new era in online IAG. The web had officially become a social space. It was no longer simply about service users searching for issue-specific content. Information providers began to understand the value of connecting information seekers to their peers. The social web meant that instead of searching for content, you could now search for people affected by the same issues as you.

At a stroke, information provision became as much about information, as it did about support. Issues came to be understood in the specific personal context of those that presented them. This led to a growth in the demand for support services for those presenting with these issues, even before issues could be identified and information on possible options provided.

IAG online had gone beyond simply encouraging service users to read rather rational expositions of issues. IAG providers began to understand the value of facilitating the expression of feelings. These emotions emanated from issues rooted in the lives of the people who chose to connect with such IAG services in a radically new and interactive manner.

Encouraged by the anonymity and connectivity of the web, peers discussed their lives on discussion boards in strikingly personal and intimate ways. Issues were no longer assumed to exist. They could now be discerned through this new person-to-person dialogue mediated by the web.

Screengrab of TheSite.org discussion boards from 2000

It’s interesting that looking back, how soon in TheSite.org’s development the paths had been laid down between the issue-specific content from 1998, and the coming of personal context with the discussion boards in 2000.

Issues understood in a personal context

If online IAG services are ultimately all about building links between identified issues on the one hand, and how these issues may play out in the context of people’s personal lives on the other, then an interesting case-in-point is TheSite.org’s service askTheSite.

It’s a service set up to allow young people to pose questions on a range of topic areas to trained advisors in confidence. It’s a service that encourages users to set out the issues they face privately and confidentially, with as much personal context as they want to include. At the same time, it has led to the development of generic content based on the specific issues presented by specific users (editorialised Q&As are based on real questions received on askTheSite are published on a public archive on TheSite.org with the user’s consent).

In fact, with a bit of rough and ready analysis, it’s apparent that askTheSite is an information service that seems to sit somewhere between these two distinct strands of online IAG.

These two different approaches can be seen in the different ways young people ask questions on askTheSite. Often most users of the askTheSite service seem to articulate their question in terms that clearly and explicitly identify issues they are looking to resolve. Or instead, many users submit questions that talk about their life, rich in personal context, but in words that often leave the issues unsaid and implicit in what they say.

Issue-specific: My problem is this, can you help?

Personal context: My life feels like this, can you help?

Too be clear, this shift in focus can be seen within services too as well as by comparing one service against another. For example, on TheSite.org articles can be issue-specific (such as factsheets), but they can also put the personal context first (through blogs, opinion pieces or diaries). Another example are group chat sessions, which are often focused on the people participating, unless an expert is invited and a topic or theme is selected for the chat session. In these cases, the information service puts the emphasis on the issue selected.

Funding and impact

One of the legacies of this development of information services on the web is the challenge of developing funding models. The majority of funders tie funding to specific issues, making it difficult to balance such funding with an overall holistic approach to offering information. In a technical sense, the web favours a holistic approach by creating value providing information services across a range of issues, and not in isolation.

On the other hand, many funders are also very interested in the personal context of their beneficiaries. Many make funding dependent on reaching specific niche groups of people. However, this can conflict with the demands of providing information as a universal offer (open to all). Again, the strength of the web is that it opens up access to information and can make universal offerings more straightforward than targeting services at specific niche groups.

On top of this, whether this starting point is the issue or the person can point towards the kinds of impact that different information services can have.

Issue-specific resources, often automated, can reach broad audiences Yet often this contact with the user is short in duration.

In contrast, support services focused on supporting the person tend to be narrower as they can’t be automated by the web to account for all the personal contexts that might conceivably by relevant with any given service user. However, the length of the intervention of these personal information services is often longer lasting because of the personal connections it facilitates.

Today I presented some of the thinking we’ve been doing in the Engagement and Support team at YouthNet. We’ve been thinking about mapping all the online services YouthNet delivers and how we engage with and support young people in this delivery process.

Three observations struck home when we listed all the different activities we coordinate as a team.

Online services and 24/7 expectations

First, it struck us that our online services are increasingly a 24/7 consideration. It was ever thus. Though in recent years the always on nature of the net has meant that our services have increasingly extended beyond the more traditional opening hours for advice and support services. This obviously comes with its pressures and responsibilities. However, it’s clear that part of working with the web is that the usual working hours just have to give a little if activities and service we offer are really to be as accessible as possible for the young people we hope to reach.

Spectrum from private to public

Second observation we made was that online services are based on many different forms of contact that sit on a range between the traditional boundaries between the public and the private. To use the terminology of danah boyd, our services have developed based on these emerging “mediated publics” (PDF) 1 [see notes]. It’s worth considering how privacy is now increasingly mediated as well. In other words, it’s not enough to simply opt-out of social networks to guard your privacy, as others may take the situation into their own hands.

If the web’s power is it’s ability to facilitate social contact, we recognise that the technology also comes with constraints that limit or mediate support and advice that young people can access. A number of our online spaces have given young people the opportunity to share experiences and opinions with others in different mediated publics or communities. However, equally many of our services, such as askTheSite, provide ways for young people to guard their privacy in these mediated online environments. From creating bespoke social networks when discussing sensitive issues, through to providing systems that don’t make registration and sign-in prerequisites to accessing confidential online services.

Participation through to volunteering

Third point that leapt out was that we’re increasingly covering a widening spectrum of engagement: from simple acts of participation such as filling in an online survey, through to structured volunteering opportunities that can lead to many years of commitment. With the growing social web, and rising expectations for flexibility, we’re developing more and more varied opportunities that sit at different points on this scale of participation. From the one off to the more committed opportunity, from the intense to the less demanding; the variety of possible opportunities for engagement is increasing.

Why facilitate these particular activities and services?

We believe that the web is particularly good at fomenting peer support. We’ve witnessed increasing interest in the potential for peer support in providing information and advice services from funders, partners and other stakeholders. The experience of the social web is that it’s good at creating connections between people who’re affected by a particular issue or with a common concern.

Group forming around issues

Social media and increasing searchability has meant that groups can form and coallesce around issue rather than gravitating to high profiles brands or campaigns that have traditionally led on issues and information services set up to tackle them. In particular, many of the most high profile brands or campaigns were not always set up to involve young people as well as they could. Today social media, whether it’s a Facebook group, a forum or even just one individuals blog, can serve as putting people affected by a common issue in contact with each other.

Valuing personal experience

Mediated connections through social media can provide young people with a degree of anonymity that can shield those from the worst excesses of stigmatisation and help overcome the stifling social pressure that leads young people remain silent about the big issues in their lives. Being able to mediate how you share your inner most thoughts and fears, as you can on the web, can give people the distance they need. It means those affected by an issue can reevaluate a harrowing experience as they overcome knowledge that can be used to support their peers.

Do-it Satisfaction Survey 2009

We know that one of the key motivations for why young people engage and participate with us at YouthNet is to do with how much the opportunities we offer, give young people the chance of learning and personal development. Anecdotally, our volunteers tell us that their reasons for volunteering are linked with how it helps them attain career ambitions. YouthNet’s Do-it Satisfaction Surveys and other volunteering research back this up, pointing to gaining or improving their skills as motivations for 16-25 year olds for giving time.

Engaging leads to transformation

The benefit for YouthNet as an organisation of engaging fully with the beneficiaries of its services, is the potential transformational impact it can have back on YouthNet itself. There’s a tendency for any organisation to preserve services which it’s familiar with. For sure, transformation can be scary for any organisation. It requires the organisation to ask itself serious questions that go to the heart of it’s own capacity to deliver. Stick with what you know is the safer option, but it’s not always clear that services that don’t adapt continue to meet the needs of the people they’re intending to. Needs can change, so organisations need to as well. If an organisation is genuinely engaging with it’s beneficiaries and supporters, it’s got a much better chance of responding to these needs.

Extending impact

We know that if we involve volunteers in the work of YouthNet, they can explain the benefits of these online services a million times better, whether it’s to their peers or to a minister in the government. Volunteers supporting YouthNet as Ambassadors for Lifetracks have demonstrated that the impact we hope to make is inexorably extended by the involvement of those we aim to reach.

Identifying emerging needs

The web has some enormous advantages in reaching many young people who might not know or feel comfortable approaching information or advice services in other ways. Increasingly youth information services are developing online outreach as part of the strategy to ensure those most in need know how to get the support they need. We know that often many young people see the web as a place to get factual information, however increasingly, many are turning to the web to ask for personal and bespoke support or indeed offering the personal support to others.

But where new technology is concerned, commercial operators are in the business of predicting and shaping our needs of the future. When Steve Jobs launched the iPad many questioned the demand for such a tablet-like device, yet now as sales grow it’s increasingly perceived as signalling a need in the future. As access and usage of the web increases to over 73% across Europe for 16-24 year olds, reliance on online services is increasing.

How many young people feel they rely on their mobile phone today? To keep in step with this changing landscape of technological-based needs we have as digital citizens, we need to engage and listen to what our audience and supporters are saying about their needs. We need to actively consult and we need to be able to interpret and understand the information we get back, if we’re to take advantage of the distinctive reach that online services can have.

Further information

Links to the activities and online services cited above:

• Expert chat
• Discussion boards – TheSite.org
• Group chat
• Ranters
• Polls
• Lifetracks community
• Public archive Q&A
• askTheSite
• Help in a crisis
• Volunteer management
• Promoting surveys
• Need an answer – Lifetracks
• User panels (online focus groups with restricted access)
• Local advice finder
• Do-it bloggers
• Photographers
• Lifetracks volunteer programme
• Lifetracks ambassadors (project group members)
• Accreditation
• Lifetracks project group – Ning (application required)
• Liasing with partners (e.g. partners on askTheSite)
• Group training sessions at YouthNet (e.g. peer advisor training)
• Leaders (application required)

Notes

1- boyd, danah. Why Youth Social Network Sites: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life.” Youth, Identity, and Digital Media. Edited by David Buckingham. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2008. 119-142. doi: 10.1162/dmal.9780262524834.119

Prologue: I’m really interested in the lessons for voluntary organisations from the experience of the media industry facing the social media revolution square on. How can we build a positive agenda of organisational change that adapts best to this new networked reality?

I think that many in the voluntary sector (the formal part to some extent, but especially the informal part) have internalised much of how gift economies work in practice, because that’s where the sector’s roots lie. Jeff Jarvis’s What Would Google Do? and Chris Anderson’s Free are interesting because they mark a shift in the thinking in the private sector. The gift economy is going mainstream. A book like Andrew Keen’s ‘The Cult of the Amateur‘ demonstrate that the reaction against the growing significance of giving activities in the mainstream economy. Keen’s argument is not economic, it’s cultural. Volunteers and amateurs represent a threat to our culture.

Increasingly, as new market opportunities that social media opens up become better understood, they’re effectively coming to know what many in the voluntary sector have always understood. That is, that relationships based on giving have a value socially, spiritually, politically, culturally and economically.

Case study

The newspaper industry is one example of how social media has brought a professional sector closer to the gift economy and, as a consequence, is now encountering many issues that are all too familiar to those in volunteerism.

While newspapers were only printed, publication and distribution were costly. As a result, the means of production were in the hands of the few who could pay what it cost to run a mass circulation newspaper. With the advent of the internet, newspapers went online and many dipped their toe in the gift economy giving their content away on the web in the hope of somehow monetizing the increased reach. Others stuck resolutely with the exchange economy, following an online subscription model: money in exchange for access to content.

Now though, the gift economy is better understood by newspaper publishers. Social media means readers can comment directly on an article, rather than write a letter to the editor. They can share an article with friends, sending a link to their contacts via social networks. Readers can now even help contribute to the content of the online newspaper itself, sending in photos, editing collaborative articles or acting as an eyewitness from the scene itself as social media facilitates communicating in real time.

Social media operates so effectively because we like to give. We like to give our opinion. We want our ideas to gain currency and our thoughts to be validated. We like to give others the benefit of our network, passing information on. Above all, we like to give, to be useful and helpful to others. There are lots of reasons we give as we each have our own personal reasons for giving.

Co-Production and making money a metaphor for giving

The significance of social media for volunteerism is that it is providing the means to build on ideas that pre-date the technology itself. One such idea is that of co-production. It’s a term originally coined by Professor Elinor Ostrom, by later developed by Edgar Cahn. As with the idea of prosumers, it looks to produce results by bringing together service providers and service users.

Time Banks founded by Edgar Cahn are an interesting example of developing a system that promotes the exchange of giving. It’s a curious hybrid of the exchange and gift economies. Cahn used the metaphor of exchange, to explain the power of giving in familiar terms. In so doing, he was positioning volunteering at the core of society and off the fringes.

In a Time Bank community whatever you give is measured in time. ‘Time dollars’ are banked at a local Time Bank and can then be exchanged for something another member of the local Time Bank is prepared to give. Cahn developed Time Banks around the importance of the ‘core economy‘: home, family, neighbourhood and community. It’s important to recognise that a large part of the gift economy is often overlooked. When faced with supporting family and friends, it’s natural to give, rather than seek to exchange.

The interface between formal and informal volunteering

Interestingly this means that few would consider giving time to family as volunteering. In the UK, the government’s Citizenship Survey deliberately avoids tracking giving activity between relatives. NFPSynergy in March 2009 have argued persuasively (PDF) that the Home Office’s definitions on volunteering which are fairly loose, tend to over-estimate the levels of volunteering. It’s worth considering that a large part of the work done in the gift economy is therefore taken for granted such as: raising families, making communities safe and vibrant, caring for the disadvantaged, fighting injustice, making democracy work, etc.

Ultimately, one of biggest opportunities that social media offers volunteer managers is in thinking through new ways to involve volunteers more in how their volunteering experience is managed. Many volunteering programmes already have co-production baked into them: typically mentoring, befriending or programmes training volunteers from amongst their service users are all examples.

Can the giving activities that make up volunteering move online?

It’s worth quickly getting some historical context. When ‘surfing the net’ was a minority pursuit, many saw the online world as separate from the offline world. In 1999, the Netherlands became the first country where the majority of its citizens were online. Now, a decade on, it’s increasingly common for people to experience a merging of the activities they do online and offline.

This merging of experience has meant that the way we use the web has matured. We no longer use it for the novelty value or for the sake of it, we use it because it adds something to our lives. It augments, rather than shadows, real world giving activities. In the late 1990s when newspapers first went online, they were often an attempt to transfer the printed newspaper experience to the computer screen. It was a failure. They were a pale shadow of the printed newspaper in most cases.

To be used, newspapers on the web had to give us something we didn’t get from newspapers in print. Making newspapers social media friendly has been a big element in how newspapers online have evolved to give readers an experience that augmented their real world experience. The jury’s out on where we’ll be getting our news from in the next 50 years.

Moving to the web is a paradigm shift towards embracing the social web and ways of the gift economy. As Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics notes:

«Why didn’t NBC invent YouTube? Why didn’t AT&T launch Twitter? Yellow Pages should have built Facebook and Microsoft should have come up with Google. And Craigslist would have been a perfect venture for the New York Times.»

In each case, the new kid on the block took advantage of social media and moved to a giving model. But why has volunteerism found it so hard to harness social media when as a giving activity it’s already halfway there?

Hard as is for newspapers to move online, it’s a relatively simple proposition. News is after all based on the exchange of information and the web is a communication and information platform. Volunteering is, though, a very different proposition and in a way it’s no surprise moving online has been difficult. When you look at volunteering websites, many have simply transferred the volunteer brokerage service online, narrowing in on recruitment and volunteering opportunity search (e.g. Do-it, Volunteer Match, etc), the part of the volunteering experience that requires an exchange of information.

Information is importantly a nonrival good which may be consumed by one consumer without preventing simultaneous consumption by others. This makes information giving simpler and easier than other kinds of giving for rival goods.

It’s much harder to move over aspects of volunteering, such as learning from service users, sensing the difference your volunteering has made, supporting the most vulnerable and disadvantaged, etc. Faced with these kind of challenges, the web is not always the optimum platform and it starts to become more evident why those in volunteerism are unsure about how to harness social media.

How moving journalism online has brought it closer to other giving activities

The experience of many in the newspaper industry as they’ve moved online has demonstrated that when they use social media, giving is more effective than exchanging. A willingness to share and be open (as when giving to each other) is a more effective strategy than limiting supply and being closed (as when formally exchanging with each other). Jeff Jarvis believes that these giving relationships online amount to what he terms as a ‘link economy‘.

“Links can be exploited and monetized; get links and you can grab audience and show ads and make money. Content is becoming a cost burden, what you have to have to get the links, but in and of itself, content can’t draw value without an audience, without links.”

How do online newspapers get these links? They are given them by their audience, amongst them participants, enthusiasts and volunteer bloggers, by opening up their content and inviting people in. They can’t oblige consumers of their product to link. Instead they can make it easier and more worthwhile to link. It’s the gift economy in action.

Journalism is a profession that is going through the social media revolution. As the internet has provided a low cost content publishing and distribution system, writers willing to share their passion are stepping in to fill gaps that professional journalists are not filling, e.g. niche subjects, hyperlocal coverage, etc. As the internet is enabling networked communication in real time through sites like Twitter and Facebook, so witnesses to breaking news with a mobile handy are replacing the journalist reporting from the scene of the action.

Citizen journalism is where “members of the public play an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information”. We Media sums it up as:

“Armed with easy-to-use web publishing tools, always-on connections and increasingly powerful mobile devices, the online audience has the means to become an active participant in the creation and dissemination of news and information”

It’s a complicated picture. Citizen journalism grows out of the idea of civic journalism where readers are not treated as spectators, but as participants. It’s a participatory approach to journalism, where professional journalists are increasingly collaborating with amateur journalists to produce their work. It’s worth looking at different journalists working in this area such as Nick Booth, Help me investigate with Paul Bradshaw and those on Talk About Local.

This is taking journalism into the gift economy where it’s no longer a simple exchange between producers and consumers, writers and their readership. This new form of journalism is confronting issues familiar to many in volunteerism who’ve worked for many years in the gift economy.

• How, as a professional journalist benefiting from information gifted by citizen journalists, should you recognise or reward their contribution?
• How can professionals and amateurs work alongside each other?
• How can journalists, that straddle the exchange and gift economies, fund their activity without changing the nature of the relationship they have with those who give to them?

Further reading

Jon Snow Interviews Professor Edgar Cahn. In this short clip Edgar explains the simple concept of Time Banking – Volunteering for the 21st Century which is sweeping across the UK.

Co-production – A Manifesto for Growing the Core Economy – New Economics Foundation (2008)

Social media is making the gift economy of today more visible. A good example of this new visibility is to run a simple keyword search on a website like Twitter.

I’ve just had an article published on the e-Volunteerism website: “Social Media and the Gift Economy: Volunteerism in the Vanguard”.

To follow up, I’m going to be posting on here unpicking the different aspects that I covered or touched on in the article itself.

My starting point when I began writing the article was looking at how social media is changing the field of volunteerism. Quickly though, it grew apparent, there was a recurring theme that promised to shed light on a lot of the issues that are hot topics in volunteerism today.

That theme had to do with a line of thinking about social media, volunteerism and the broader context of the gift economy:

1. Social media has led to the reemergence of the gift economy on a whole new scale
2. Volunteerism is one of the most developed forms of giving in many societies today
3. Social media is rewriting many of the rules of engagement for volunteerism because it’s rewriting the rules of the gift economy itself

I really interested in looking and better understanding the way social media is changing the gift economy, and beginning to chart some of what the impact might be in the world of volunteerism.

To give a really quick example. A few years back, as the concept of online volunteering gained traction in the UK, it became clear in the organisation I work at (online charity YouthNet) that the process of coming to a common understanding of what online volunteering was, was challenging the more traditional concept of what volunteering was.

How for example could you distinguish between someone who responded to an online call to action to sign an online petition and an online campaigns volunteer? Or, how could you distinguish between active members of an online community of discussion boards who posted supportive comments to others, and volunteer moderators in place to support the running of the discussion boards?

Up to a few years ago this was a non-issue, until that is, funders got interested in online volunteering and wanted to know the amount of online volunteers that an organisation involved (amongst other metrics) so that they could distribute funds accordingly.

This is a quick example, but it really just alludes to the tip of the iceberg. As the web has become increasingly social, it has in turn began to change the way people volunteer and get involved in social change.

What those changes are and how they affect volunteerism will be the focus of a series of posts on this blog over the next month.