"Utilizing Technology for Volunteer - Involving Organizations", paper by Mark Gannon - March 2001

ICT as Visibility

"A key benefit of the new technology is that it gives ordinary people and community groups access to inexpensive publishing and broadcasting media, the power to express their knowledge and describe their activities to a wide audience, to give validity to their experience" (IBM 1997, p53). This is indeed one of the most useful and liberating aspects of the Internet. Organisations no longer need huge resources to get their message out. This can be effectively done via a simply designed web site and a bit of complementary marketing. In fact, volunteer-involving organisations can get the message out about their work without having to rely on any of the traditional means of communication.

Part of ICT as visibility is telling others about your work, but for volunteer-involving organisations it is also about trying to attract volunteers by having a well crafted online message. Just as someone applying for a job will go and seek the organisation out on the Internet, so too volunteers are likely to look for organisations online either once they have decided to volunteer or as part of their overall search for volunteering opportunities. It is becoming vital therefore that organisations have some web presence, although presence sites tend to be utterly uninspiring and are as likely to put off potential volunteers as having no website at all. The Internet and email can make volunteer-involving organisations and their opportunities more visible to people who they would not usually come in contact with. This might mean people who are physically or social excluded or people who would simply never have thought about volunteering before.

Case Study: 'Do-It' is the UK's national online volunteering database. It matches volunteers to volunteering opportunities and also has lots of information for volunteer-involving organisations and potential volunteers. This could easily be a case study of 'ICT as Accessibility' but it also serves as a good example of ICT as Visibility.

The database is only one section of a wider website called TheSite.org, which is produced and managed by YouthNet UK, a small registered charity founded in 1995. TheSite.org is designed to connect young adults (18-25) in the UK to the best information, help and advice available. It tries to enable these people to make informed decisions for themselves. The 'Do-It' bit of the website was conceived as a place which could offer to the public as many opportunities as possible, from one central online database, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. This way, finding the right opportunity is easy. You can do it from home and you can do it when you want. You can also search for vacancies relevant to your interests and your location.

The placement of a national online volunteering database on a site dedicated to young people is a perfect case study of making 'volunteering' visible, but visible to people who may never have come across or even thought about volunteering before.

TheSite.org is also designed, packaged and presented in a very youth-friendly way so that it makes volunteering look attractive and like something that a young person might actually want to do. This is one of the reasons why there has been a decline in the participation of young people in volunteering. Young people are less likely to be turned on by traditional approaches to volunteer recruitment, therefore, utilising ICT in the way that TheSite.org shows the power of the Internet.

[Content]    [Previous]    [Next]