Volunteer Promotion, Organization, Resources & Communication

[C. Martens]

At last night's Ubuntu Canada meeting, I was asked to put up some links for a couple of organizations that promote volunteerism, particularly for rural areas. Rural volunteerism, of course, is just one sub-topic amongst many on the huge topic of volunteerism itself, so these will apply to rural areas and big-city efforts. Some brief explanations are included. I've been a volunteer there for well over a year now, at the first org.

www.ruralcanada.ca is a federal site, and again, Imagine has done a great deal of the research that informs it. Links to a Practical Toolkit, other resources, etc. are abundant. There are lots of resources about virtual volunteering, too.

Imagine Canada is HQ'd in Toronto (the result of a merger between the CCP- Canadian Centre for Philanthropy and the NVO-Coalition of National Voluntary Organizations), and we currently have many different sites that should be amalgamated in March. The John Hodgeson Library (www.nonprofitscan.ca) is part of us, and boasts the second largest electronic nonprofit-only library in both official languages in Canada, just behind Volunteer Canada's. We've actually got items found in no other library in Toronto, including the universities', although the square footage is actually rather small; visitors to browse through paper holdings are by appointment only, because the library staff prepare resources for you before you arrive. But so much of it is online...including the huge two-tome annual Directory of Foundations and Grants.

So Volunteer Canada's link is www.volunteer.ca (they often point to Imagine Canada in their links, references, and items like the KDC-Knowledge Development Centre, housed in Imagine Canada's offices but slated to be closed due to funding cuts in March)

Just four of Imagine Canada's links are:
www.imaginecanada.ca
www.givingandvolunteering.ca
www.kdc-cdc.ca
www.nonprofitscan.ca

Another non-Canadian resource that is still applicable to Canada is www.techsoup.org It provides registered charities (not nonprofits like us) with donated software (and some hardware). Lots of software companies give charities tons of software, microshaft being a huge supplier amongst many (e.g. $800 MS Office for $20 admin fees, plus server apps), so you can see why so many charities go the ms route (knowledgeable staff is also abundant). Thankfully, however, techsoup.org also mentions things like drupal, CivicSpace, and CivicCRM, the latter of which I'd like to implement for us.

Managing volunteers, scheduling, retaining, etc. are huge topics (and the real challenge after you recruit them) that CivicCRM will help with. And it is a challenge in itself to recruit them, and that's why I want to try and elminate all disincentives that our organization poses to volunteers. I'm good at it, I've done it for over 20 years, but IMHO, having our email addresses show up in this mailing list, and having to go through the lengthy process of becoming a member in order to get privacy, is a HUGE disincentive. We could recruit like crazy, and get lots of people interested, only to have them shy away from doing any actual work after they see what's involved in communicating virtually with other users. 

It may be all very well and good to say, 'spam is unavoidable', but while techies accept this risk, others don't. I was able to stay a private individual with absolutely no spam until very recently. I thought one of our many selling points was about increasing users' security, instead of exposing their identities and turning them off? Fine way to thank volunteers.

IMHO, a more secure method of communication is needed. Perhaps a CivicSpace intranet?


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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Team Meeting Draft Minutes (Corey Burger)


----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2006 00:23:32 -0800
From: "Corey Burger" 
Subject: Re: Team Meeting Draft Minutes
To: "The Canadian Ubuntu Users Community" 
Message-ID:
 <348bd6da0612100023o5467c90agd7c3e056cc6c9c0 at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Brian, thanks for doing this. Thanks everybody for showing up. It was
good to chat with everybody and see some new faces. Lets make this
loco team rock (and beat -au :) )

Corey

On 12/9/06, Brian Burger  wrote:
> Draft minutes from our IRC meeting this evening, just concluded a few hours
> ago.
>
> **********
> Meeting notes written up by Brian Burger (Madpilot).
>
> Agenda:
> 1. Introductions
> 2. Getting ubuntu membership, how the locoteam can help
> 3. Existing subgroups and projects
> 4. New projects
> 5. Partnerships with existing Linux/FLOSS orgs
>
> Present: (Name/IRC nick/Location)
> Corey Burger/Burgundavia/Victoria BC
> Cody A.W. Somerville/somerville32/Fredericton NB
> Cathy Martens/dennister/Toronto ON
> Tony Yarusso/tonyyarusso/Peterborough ON (for uni, but from
> Minnesota actually)
> Matthew Lloyd/ Phoenix7477/Edmonton AB
> Justin Wong/stryderjzw/Vancouver BC
> Brian Burger/Madpilot/Victoria BC
> Jamon Camisso/jamonation/Toronto, ON
> Kyle Vanditmars/kylevan/Surrey BC
> Ben Hearsum/bhearsum/Thornill ON
>
> Later Arrivals:
> Dan/dabaR/Winnipeg MB
> Dave Sullivan/lophylap (aka lophyte)/Toronto ON
> Andrew Hunter/rexbron/Toronto ON
> Daniel Robitaille/robitaille/Victoria BC
> Chuck Short/zul/Ottawa ON
>
> I think that's everyone, if I missed your name in the log, please let me
> know!
>
> Corey opened the meeting with a discussion of getting Ubuntu Membership,
> what it invovles and why it's something to aim for, with some related talk
> about what sorts of things you could do to get membership. There are
> currently not many Ubuntu Members amongst the Ubuntu Canada group, but one
> of the purposes of a LoCo Team is to get more people more involved in
> Ubuntu, and involvement leads, generally, to Membership.
>
> There was a request for the ShipIt stats for Canada, which Corey can
> apparently get for us. It was noted that ShipIt has become less generous
> about requests for large lots.
>
> When (hopefully at the next Community Council meeting[0]) the -ca LoCo
> becomes an Official team, we'll be getting a large shipment of ShipIt CDs -
> 500, apparently. Folks interested in getting some should wait for an
> announcment on the mailing list.
>
> The need for posters/handouts/postcards/etc was mentioned, and mostly
> referred to Ubuntu Marketing - these are the sorts of projects that can
> benefit all LoCo Teams, not just -ca, so if we do it inside the Marketing
> team, we'll help even more people.
>
> There are several conferences coming up in Canada that could be of interest
> to Ubuntu Canada; Corey has started a list of them on the wiki[1]
>
> The difficulty of reaching rural computer users was mentioned; Cathy Martens
> mentioned that there are some good resources from Volunteer Canada & Imagine
> Canada on this issue (a common problem for all volunteer orgs).
>
> There was a brief sideline on lobbying MPs & government about FLOSS -
> working thru CLUE's [2] existing programs seems to be the best way to do
> this.
>
> The meeting wrapped up (after almost 90 minutes!) with some talk about -ca
> themed wallpapers or other artwork, a mention of the Ojibwe translation
> project being started for Ubuntu, some talk about the upcoming CUTE conf. in
> Ontario, and some offtopic political chatter.
>
> Next meeting is TBA, but tentatively set for 2nd Saturday in January, same
> time & channel. See the mailing list for more info.
>
> I've left huge swathes of the discussion out of these minutes, but I think I
> got the high points and basics. Please feel free to supply additions,
> corrections or spellchecking as needed.
>
> It was great to have such a good turnout to our first LoCo Meeting - thanks
> to everyone who showed up, and hope to see even more next time!
>
> -- Brian (Madpilot on IRC)
> ubuntu-ca.org
>
> Feetnotes:
> 0. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CommunityCouncilAgenda
> 1. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CanadianTeam/Conferences
> 2. http://cluecan.ca/
> ***********
>
> --
> ubuntu-ca mailing list
> ubuntu-ca at lists.ubuntu.com
> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-ca
>
>
>



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End of ubuntu-ca Digest, Vol 21, Issue 17
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