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Virtual volunteering |
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A major contributor to this article or its creator appears to have a conflict of interest with its subject. It may require cleanup to comply with Wikipedia's content policies, particularly neutral point of view. Please discuss further on the talk page. |
Virtual volunteering is a term describing a volunteer who completes tasks, in whole or in part, offsite from the organization being assisted, using the Internet and a home, school, telecenter or work computer. Virtual volunteering is also known as online volunteering, cyber service, telementoring, and teletutoring, and various other names. Virtual volunteering is similar to telecommuting, except that, instead of online employees who are paid, these are online volunteers who are not paid.
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It would be as impossible to list every possible virtual volunteering task, just as it would be impossible to list every possible onsite, face-to-face volunteering task.
People engaged in virtual volunteering include those who, from home, school, a telecenter or work computer, undertake a variety of activities, without pay, for a nonprofit organization, school, community, environmental or cause-based initiative, such as:
The practice of virtual volunteering dates back to at least the early 1970s, when Project Gutenberg began involving online volunteers to provide electronic versions of works in the public domain 1.
In 1995, a new nonprofit organization called Impact Online, based in Palo Alto, California, began promoting the idea of "virtual volunteers" 2. In 1996, Impact Online received a grant from the James Irvine Foundation to launch an initiative to research the practice of virtual volunteering and to promote the practice to nonprofit organizations in the USA. This new initiative was dubbed the Virtual Volunteering Project, and the web site was launched in early 19973. After one year of operations, the Virtual Volunteering Project moved to the Charles A. Dana Center at The University of Texas at Austin. In 2002, the Virtual Volunteering Project moved within the university to the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs.
The first two years of the Virtual Volunteer Project were spent reviewing and adapting telecommuting manuals4 and existing volunteer management guidelines with regarding to virtual volunteering, as well as identifying organizations that were involving online volunteers. By April 1999, almost 100 organizations had been identified by the Virtual Volunteering Project as involving online volunteers and were listed on the web site.5
Due to the growing numbers of organizations involving online volunteers, the Virtual Volunteering Project stopped listing every organization involving online volunteers on its web site in 2000, and focused its efforts on promoting the practice to nonprofits, profiling organizations with large or unique online volunteering programs, and creating guidelines for the involvement of online volunteers.
Until January 2001, the Virtual Volunteering Project listed all telementoring and teletutoring programs in the USA (programs where online volunteers mentor or tutor others, through a nonprofit organization or school). At that time, 40 were identified.6
Virtual volunteering has been adopted by at least a few thousand organizations and initiatives. 7 The United Nations runs an online volunteering service that places virtual volunteers. Several other organizations, for instance VolunteerMatch and Idealist, that match traditional volunteers also offer virtual volunteering positions.
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