Category Archives: Diary

3 Volunteerism Apps for National Volunteer Week

Posted on April 18, 2012 | Leave a comment

How could I write a blog post on volunteerism apps without mentioning the industry leader? VolunteerMatch is a quality resource that went mobile in 2010. They have facilitated over 6 million volunteer referrals since 1998 and continuing to grow with new technologies has certainly been a key to their success. While other websites’ reviews of this app I have seen say it has a boring design and some iPhone user reviews say it regularly crashes, I am a fan of this app. I love that it brings all of the details of their tens of thousands of online listings to the mobile crowd. VolunteerMatch is my go-to place both for finding my own personal volunteer tasks and for posting non-profit volunteer needs.

Bottom Line: Search for volunteer opportunities, find volunteer opportunities. Simple.

Catalista takes it to the next level. While VolunteerMatch does have a rating function, Catalista’s focus is to make volunteering more social and interactive online. The time before and after a volunteer engagement effect a volunteer’s experience, too, so it’s wonderful to see that this generation has a place to have the interaction continue in their own way. For each volunteer opportunity, you have the option to rate it, share it, map it, log your hours, add to your faves, and of course, sign up. The sharing is limited to Facebook and email. The rating is youthful in it’s language (Would you recommend this to your friends? 1 = No way, 5 = Totally!) I like the “add to faves” option where you can save an opportunity to “My Catalista” for later. The general overall design and tone is right on for the audience (and very appealing to me personally).

Bottom Line: Adding a modern twist to a time-tested model, and gets the job done beautifully.

Then we come to the most complex of the three. Cause.it takes Catalista and adds in some Groupon and Zynga. I love the creativity here. You search for an activity that will help the world in some way – It can be an in-person volunteer task or you can post a promo for an organization to your Facebook profile. Each activity is worth a certain number of points (for example, 30 points to be a patient care volunteer at a hospice). Now here’s the especially unique part — You can redeem those points for real-life items and deals (10 points for 20% off your order at a pizzeria). You sign in with your Facebook account and it can be pretty addictive. On top of the opportunities to win, there is the pride of showing up on the leaderboard (the “Indy”), which currently has Daniel S. at the top with 200 points. There is tremendous potential here, but there isn’t enough content (especially volunteer opportunities that aren’t just posting to Facebook) yet. I hope it continues to reach more non-profits, businesses, and volunteers. This is an impressive example of cause marketing.

Bottom Line: Inspired and inspiring framework, just lacking some fleshing out from the community.

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Posted in Diary

Tagged Social Media, Volunteering

Vintage Vignette: Reach Out and Read

Posted on March 24, 2012 | Leave a comment

Vintage Vignettes glimpse into the Communicationist’s past, one to ten years ago from this day.

On this day in 2009 I was leading a group of volunteers to a clinic to read to kids in the waiting room. This was for three organizations. By that I mean the activity was supporting the mission of the non-profit Reach Out and Read, it was facilitated by the volunteer organization Boston Cares, and it was hosted by the Mattapan Community Health Center. This kind of collaboration is what I love about the volunteerism world. Organizations coming together to find where their missions overlap and the synergy of their cooperation helping even more individuals and communities than they could on their own.

Boston Cares needs non-profits who need volunteers. Reach Out and Read is a non-profits that needs volunteers. Mattapan Community Health Center has kids who could benefit from volunteers reading to them. It seems like such an obvious fit but getting partnerships like this to happen isn’t always easy. Thankfully there are a lot of people out there who love to jump in and get involved.

My role was as a Boston Cares Project Leader. When volunteers signed up through Boston Cares for the waiting room reading project, I would be in contact with them about logistics and questions. I’d supervise them on-site so the health center staff didn’t need to take time away, and I’d follow-up with them afterwards to see how it went for them and if they’d like to do it again. When multiple organizations are involved, it’s important that the Volunteer Coordinator have a clear role. Mine was clearly defined as being from Boston Cares, not the other two organizations, and that helped in the organization of the process.

If you’re looking to volunteer, chances are your local city has an organization that can help you connect to the cause, timing, neighborhood, and role that you’re looking for. This Vintage Vignette focuses on Boston Cares, but there are others like Greater DC Cares. No matter where you are, websites like VolunteerMatch will have listings near you and allow you to search by the type of opportunity you want.

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Posted in Diary

Tagged Outreach, Volunteer Coordinating, Volunteering

Speaking Out More Effectively

Posted on February 26, 2012 | Leave a comment

My views on activism have evolved significantly in the last few years. In college, I protested on the streets regularly, but I became discouraged when it didn’t seem to change anything. I tried phonebanking, calling legislators, street canvassing, and other outreach methods. But what I ultimately found is that living my daily life had the largest effect of all. By boycotting the meat industry in my diet, I helped meat consumption to drop in the U.S. By supporting ethical companies with my dollars, I helped workers earn a living wage. By living as out, I helped the national support level for same-sex marriage rise above 50%.

That’s why my most recent volunteering experience was with SpeakOUT, an LGBT speakers bureau founded in 1972. We simply tell our life stories to anyone who asks to listen. I did my first speaking engagement with them on January 29 for a group of Samaritans-in-training. I spoke for just about 5 minutes about my life story (yes, 20-somethings have life stories, too) and then answered questions for an hour. I was part of a panel with two other speakers. Between us, we told stories of everyday life, suicide, church, domestic violence, marriage, divorce, dating, and coming out. Some in the group of listeners had never met an out person before and they asked us the questions they would have been embarrassed to ask in any other setting. It was terrifying and empowering to speak and I can’t wait to do it again.

The way you live every day matters more than one action every once in a while. I still participate in fundraising walks and rallies occasionally, and there is nothing wrong with participating in public group actions, but the quiet form of activism can be the strongest.

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Posted in Diary

Tagged LGBT, Outreach, Volunteering

Vintage Vignette: March on Washington

Posted on January 18, 2012 | Leave a comment

Vintage Vignettes glimpse into the Communicationist’s past, one to ten years ago from this day.

On this day in 2003 I marched on Washington.

The war in Iraq was about to begin and I could not stand by and let it happen without raising my voice for peace. I took a bus from Connecticut with two high school friends and it was one of the most inspiring experiences of my life. There were hundreds of thousands of people. It was one of the largest protests this country had seen in decades. I saw Rev. Jesse Jackson (and countless other people I never expected to get to see in real life) speak. I felt like I was part of something bigger than me. I felt a sense of community with everyone else there. I felt like I was making a difference.

Many of my positive feelings were shattered when the war began several weeks later anyway. But after my initial mourning, my two friends and I started a club at school called “Students for Peace.” We participated in nation-wide calls to action such as sending bags of rice to the White House with a message attached asking the government to send the people of Iraq this food instead of using weapons against them. We held public forums for teens to debate the politics and morality of the situation. We sold yellow ribbons to show we were supporting the troops by wanting to bring them home. The club quickly grew to the largest on campus with about one third of all students involved.

Using my passion about the cause for something positive helped me through a time when I started off feeling helpless. Don’t like the way things are? Do something to change it! You may not see direct results right away or ever from being one person trying to change something much bigger, but you’ll feel better knowing that you are living your life trying to make the world a better place.

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Posted in Diary

Tagged Community Organizing, Outreach, Vintage Vignette

11 Communicationist Contributions of 2011

Posted on January 9, 2012 | Leave a comment

It’s important to always give back, no matter what you have to give. Looking back at my own year of giving, I donated time, goods, and money towards lots of pretty cool projects. I hope by highlighting their work here you’ll consider adding them to your own 2012 giving list.

Community Servings runs a great fundraiser each Mother’s Day — Meals4Moms. For a $25 donation that covered the cost of a local ill mom’s food for herself and her family for a week, Community Servings sent my mom a card with a message letting her know what was being done in her name. My mom was really touched and raved about it for weeks – Her favorite Mother’s Day gift ever!

On the coldest day of the year I wanted to do something for those who didn’t have a warm home to go home to like I did, so I made a donation to Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program. I already knew about them as a leading local non-profit organization and I want to make my donation an annual tradition.

Most of us have heard of Kiva by now. I love microcredit and I am able to give loans to the exact women’s group that I worked with during my 2005 microcredit internship in Paraguay. I made 4 loans in 2011 and am hooked! I will definitely keep loaning in 2012.

I gave to a few projects on Kickstarter too, my favorite new fundraising website. I want to give to every project! I supported my friend’s independent short film, but you can find anything from magnets that turn your fridge into a robot to an anti-bullying theater production to contribute towards. I recommend checking out my co-worker’s inspiring year-long voyage: Will Travel for Vegan Food.

Saint Francis House is the local shelter in my neighborhood. My wife and I donate our clothes and other goods here several times a year. Give locally, think globally.

Whenever my office doesn’t need something anymore, I give it away on Freecycle. For a little bit of extra effort, items from folders to furniture have been kept out of landfills and go to local people who can get some use out of them. They’ve made some major upgrades to their website since I started using it and I highly recommend joining your local Freecycle group (even if its just to get free stuff).

I give a monthly automatic donation to the International Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission. We want to be able to give to so many causes regularly, but if you choose the one you are most passionate about you can really feel you are making an impact.

Donations don’t have to be monetary. My workplace donated pro bono consulting time by me and a co-worker to Sexual Minorities Uganda. See these posts for the full story.

I donated my personal time to the Boston Pride Committee. I volunteered more for them last year when I had an official position on the committee, but I helped out in 2011 too, including organizing their volunteers for their 2nd annual holiday fundraiser which benefited Youth Pride.

The Network/La Red is a Boston-area domestic violence organization for the lesbian/bisexual/transgender community. Its a worthy cause close to my heart and this year I donated my old cell phone to them. When I upgraded to my first smartphone, I dropped my old phone off in the drop-box at my bank. (Eastern Bank is a caring institution that gives back to the local community not only with a percentage of its profits each year but with things like community rooms at their branches for non-profit meetings.) The Network/La Red does a great job reaching out for partnerships for creative fundraising with places like The Pita Pit.

The organization that I gave the holy donor trinity (time, money, and fundraising) to was the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center for their 6th annual Walk for Change. Doing something positive and active felt even better than hitting the “donate” button and I was able to raise $626 for their work from my family, friends, and co-workers. Here’s my post on how I did it.

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Posted in Diary

Tagged Fundraising, Nonprofit Giving, Volunteering

The Benefits of a Classroom

Posted on December 3, 2011 | Leave a comment

Could you market this room? In my communications writing class at Emerson College this week, the professor ran us through an exercise that taught us how.

It’s all about features vs. benefits. How would you describe this room? Small? Undecorated? Now how would you describe it to someone you were trying to get to use it? Maybe something more like “comfortably cozy” or “a blank slate for your own decorating?” The trick is really not to describe the room at all – Describe what the room does.

Here is a condensed list of qualities that I used to describe our classroom:

Cold
Small
Tech-friendly (contains projector, computer, audio, etc.)
Bright
Versatile blank space
Sound-absorbing walls
Carpeted floor
Quiet

Now here’s the list of some benefits of the same room (using the audience of students):

You will receive intimate individual attention (since the room capacity is only about a dozen).
You will be kept awake and alert (because of the cold and brightness).
You will have a relaxed learning environment (thanks to the quiet).
You will take better notes and learn more because you were kept awake, alert, and relaxed.
You will advance your career further because you had a better learning environment.

Who would have thought that such a drab room could get you a better job?

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Posted in Diary

Tagged Marketing, Writing

The Stigma of the Internet

Posted on November 27, 2011 | Leave a comment

Social media isn’t that new anymore, but turning it into a career is. The options for formal education in writing and marketing for Web 2.0 are still pretty limited. Many programs have courses, but not degrees, on the subject. There are online certifications, but are those taken seriously? I feel like receiving my B.A. through in-person classes gives me a leg up on someone who went to college online. But why the stigma anymore? Hasn’t the Internet been around long enough for us to see the benefits? Imagine having access to any professor, classmate, or regional specialty topic in the country, not just those in a 10 mile radius.

Especially for careers dealing with online issues, wouldn’t online education make sense? You sit at your computer and practice what the professor is talking about by video on another screen, while typing your question in so he/she can answer it when its time for questions. Of course, many people would answer there is a need for human interaction or we’ll all become robots. Or that there is an anonymity and lack of accountability that comes with the Net — You could walk away from your computer during an online lecture and no one would ever know.

In the end, I believe it comes down to the subject and the quality of education. If Harvard is offering an online course, chances are it will be up to certain standards despite being on the Internet. I still wouldn’t trust an online college I had never heard of just the same as signing up for a course at an in-person college I had never heard of, at least to the same degree as one I had heard of. (That’s the power of name recognition for you, Communicationists.) As for the subject matter, I am currently taking a Spanish conversation class and just finished a speech writing class. The benefits of having these classes within walking distance of my home are clear and I wouldn’t have taken them online. One recent example I find interesting is my vegan wife taking a science class online to avoid the animal dissection included in a science class at a local college. She is finding the class just as demanding and useful as her live classes. There are plenty of specific cases like this that could make online education a better fit for certain cases. Just because something is online doesn’t automatically make it untrustworthy.

Have you ever taken an online course and felt like you got return on your investment? Would you consider putting a webinar series on your resume?

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Posted in Diary

Tagged Marketing, Social Media