Using to communicate with volunteers

Flickr: BeFitt

Patrick Daniels

Online Volunteering Development Manager

YouthNet over 10 years old

TheSite.org:

•Provides information and advice for 16-25 year olds across the UK across a range of subjects

•Has 500,000 unique users a month

•Has 30,000 registered users on boards

Who are we?

askTheSite (700-800 questions)

askTheSite is a partnership of nine organisations that gives young people an opportunity to ask a question on a range of subjects: sexual, mental and general health, legal, money, housing, relationships, drugs and alcohol, work and study

•Free

•Confidential

•Within 3 days

Online Peer Advisors (40-50 volunteers + 5 mentors)

We recruit and train online peer advisors to specialise in offering relationships support to 16-25 year olds through the askTheSite service

Who are we?

Why did we join?

It is a platform used by 98% of our volunteer base (95% of our volunteers are aged 18-29)

Why?

We decided to set up a secret group for privacy. We wanted to use Facebook to help give an online

presence to a community of people that already existed, i.e. our project group of advisors answering

questions on askTheSite

Why?

•Unmatched reach – we were following where our volunteers already were

•User-friendly system with functionality that’s widely understood

•Offered a secure solution to multiple web presence

Vertical communication

• Sending out group updates and newsletters• Organising group events (handy coordinating RSVPs)• Personal touch: e.g. keep track of birthdays, other life

events that impact on people’s possibility to get involved• Secure group landing page on the net (brings together our

dispersed web presence to one point where: all can access and they access frequently)

Measurable – visible – effects – good metrics – personal – informal - fun

Admin staff communicating with volunteers

Horizontal communication

• Community building (people can ‘see’ and talk to everybody else)

• Creating a resource that’s more than the sum of it’s parts (functionality in Facebook tends to lock your data in- no export- no tagging for links or videos- Facebook search is limited for discussion boards)

• Volunteers message each other individually (how much is going on?)

Jury out on this – harder to gauge – imperceptible – diffuse – online storage

Admin staff and volunteers communicating with volunteers and admin staff (everyone with everyone)

Important to allow for those volunteers who are NOT part of Facebook (and don’t want to be!)

Walled garden danger

Import to have alternatives for non-Facebookers

Imagining creating other external interfaces that are integrated with Facebook sign-on. This allows for your data to saved on servers you manage

Flickr: avlxyz