You mean that the tools don’t like, do all the work? Then we are ALL out of jobs.

Okay, kidding aside, Jake you bring up a frustrating issue that is going to bite a lot of people in the arse within the next couple years. Community management. Beyond the volunteer networks, any and all communities are susceptible to inspiration overkill. Give them the platform, tell them its theirs, but don’t walk away or chaos ensues.

Counseling clients/leadership to “give up control” doesn’t mean abandoning ship. Engaged community members (volunteers in this case) deserve attention, stewardship, training, l-o-v-e. But in a hands-off kind of way.

Metaphor of the day: your community is a committee. It needs to be facilitated in some way to be productive and happy. Talent management at its best.

Not to belittle the unique challenges faced by volunteer network. Just thought it’d be worth pointing out similarities. So thanks, Jake – really strong (and scary) points.

Made me revisit community management discussions from the past – still like Jeremiah’s “4 Tenents of Community Managers” http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2007/11/25/the-four-tenets-of-the-community-manager/

The ability to make nationally or internationally scaled high skill volunteerism a reality has been an ongoing discussion for YEARS. Beyond my phone and my computer, the conversation comes up almost constantly whenever a group of the volunteerism guard get together. The folks thinking most significantly about this right now are Taproot Foundation, Corporation for National and Community Service (who are trying to figure out how and what to fund in a big way, but are primarily throwing spaghetti at the walls (which isn’t so bad, mind you)), the Case Foundation, a half dozen corporations (IBM, Accenture, Starbucks, Timberland, and Pfizer among them), Civic Ventures focusing on the Boomer Generation, United Way of America, the Brookings Institute, of course VolunteerMatch and Idealist.org, and about a dozen others.

(POL/Hands On says they are, but they aren’t doing much external through their transition).

In short: a new online network or service will do nothing (as has already been stated), and the politics and personalities of connecting people with volunteer opportunities runs much deeper than a web-service anyway. Even partnering is something that will mean being much more in depth than online integration or platform sharing. I’m as big a social media evangelist as they come (well, except for Qui), but volunteerism in general is inherently NOT about online platforms, and high-skill/pro-bono volunteerism most definitely is not.

The critical factor that is continuously overlooked at the highest levels of figuring out high-skill volunteer matching is the development and support of volunteer MANAGEMENT.

Imagine a company who said they would love to hire 1,000 or 10,000 new brilliant, specialized engineers to do something extraordinary, but didn’t hire a single new HR professional to recruit, hire, train, support, and maintain those engineers. That is essentially the approach most of the social sector, online world, and corporate sector is taking to the effort of increased high-skill volunteerism at the moment and it’s incredibly frustrating to watch.

A volunteer can’t just show up on site even simply to paint a fence. Someone needs to orient them, guide them, give them the tools, etc. A volunteer absolutely cannot show up and serve a vital high-skill function in a nonprofit or NGO (accounting, law, design, marketing, media, etc) without a leader in the organization hosting and working with them.

If we’re going to get better at the matching (which we SHOULD do) online, then we’re also going to have to simultaneously (or even previously) build and be tremendously better at the managing of volunteers too.

I don’t exaggerate when I say I could write ten pages of response here, but I’ll end simply by saying THANKS, QUI, for writing a great piece as always!

Another great network/website that was recently redesigned is JustMeans.com – they bring together social responsibility news, jobs and overall connectivity in the realm of doing good. Might want to check that out as well (or maybe point this guy in that direction).

Partnering up I think is the way to go and take advantage of venues that are already coming out to spread the word.