Can you think of a different word for Microvolunteering?
Asked by Ruth Zokas
Ok, let me be honest, that wasn’t precisely Ruth’s question. I couldn’t fit the actual question as a title, so let me share what Ruth sent me:
“During lockdown, we recruited thousands of volunteers and they wanted to be involved in our Kindness Programme, where they would call service users, do their shopping, pick up prescriptions, and dog walking. We weren’t able to match everyone and now lockdown is over the thousands of volunteers no longer want to be involved in the kindness programme due to life returning back to normal.”
“We are trying to give them small actions and we know this is called Microvolunteering but we are looking for a more appealing name to call our thousands of volunteers.”
It’s a good question, isn’t it? Microvolunteering is so established in the lexicon of Volunteer Engagement Professionals that we forget this term might not mean anything or be attractive to, anyone else.
My immediate reflection is that whatever term you use, you make it about what you do, what your goal is, and not the format of the work.
I suspect the term ‘kindness programme’ worked because people want to be kind and helpful, especially during the dark days of lockdowns. Replacing it with Microvolunteering makes the title about the form and structure of how people will give their time, not what they achieve.
So, my advice would be to keep the name ‘kindness programme’ but rebrand it as something that can be done flexibly, on people’s own terms, and to match their availability. Anyone can be kind at any time, it doesn’t take a big commitment, so make that really clear.
You can, of course, keep some of the original, more time-intensive roles. They will probably always be needed and some people will want to do them. It also gives an opportunity for people to scale up their commitment if they want to.
Maybe have a website for the kindness programme that allows people to choose things they can do based on how much time they have available. A good Volunteer Management System can help with this.
As to what you call the volunteers, one name for all participants would be great. Make no differentiation based on how much time they give. Perhaps:
Kindness practitioners?
Kind people?
Our kind of people?
Good neighbours?
Great Scots? (Ruth works for a Scottish organisation)
Anything but microvolunteers for sure.
Now it’s over to you.
How would you answer Ruth’s question?
Leave a comment with your ideas and don’t forget to ask your own question by emailing Rob now — rob@robjacksonconsulting.com, with the subject line “Ask Rob Anything“