The Virtual Volunteering Wiki was developed in association with The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, a book that was published in 2014.

This page tracks news about virtual volunteering before 2013. The earliest media story regarding involving online volunteers that we can find is from 1995. There were earlier articles about online volunteers, but the term virtual volunteering or even online volunteers isn't used.

You can also view this curated list of the most recent news regarding virtual volunteering.

Or see this this page of automatically-generated news links to the latest web pages, blogs, and other online materials that use terms that relate to virtual volunteering. This is automatically-generated content; we do not control what shows up on these RSS feeds or what online materials get linked.

If a link is broken, please type it into archive.org to retrieve an archived version of the article.

Note that these are news articles, as opposed to research and academic papers, which can be found here.

Articles (in reverse order):

There are, no doubt, many more articles between 1996 and 2013 on virtual volunteering - on using the Internet to engage and support volunteers - but such articles probably never use that particular phrase. I've tried to find as many as I can via Google News, and some from the 1990s I had archived

2012: Volunteers are Copyright Owners, Too!, Entering into a copyright agreement with your volunteers can help prevent problems from arising later when you try to reuse materials they create. By Lesley Ellen Harris. INFORMATION OUTLOOK V16 N04 JULY/AUGUST 2012. Whether it be an article, image, video, business plan, table based on research, or other type of content, it is possible that the material being created by your volunteers is automatically protected by copyright (yes, even without registering the material or using a copyright symbol). At some point, the question may arise as to who owns the copyright in the work of your volunteers. Don’t wait and be surprised by the answer at a critical time, such as after an article or image created by a volunteer appears in your print publication. Understand your organization’s rights and those of your volunteers at the time you ask a volunteer to create a piece of work for you. The bottom line is this: generally, a volunteer will own any works he or she creates while volunteering for your organization. That is because the volunteer is the creator/first author of the work, by virtue of being the first person to put it into some sort of fixed form. The author is a copyright lawyer who consults on legal, business and strategic issues. She is editor of a newsletter, The Copyright & New Media Law Newsletter, which is available at www.copyrightlaws.com. She also teaches SLA’s Certificate in Copyright Management program and maintains a blog on copyright questions and answers. The second edition of her book, Licensing Digital Content: A Practical Guide for Librarians, was published in 2011.

May 2011: Press Release: Virtual Volunteering - Google Earth's 3D Geo-Modeling Community Lends a Helping Hand. Great example of virtual volunteering.

June 2011 Facebook for Volunteers , by Chris Bernard in NTen Change Journal, available through IdealWare

10, September, 2010, CNN Online volunteers make an impact. "The Peace Corps pamphlets had just arrived, but the then-Miss Shaw had just met the man she knew she would marry. She put the paperwork away in a bottom drawer and happily became Tiffany Shaw-Diaz. But her dream persisted, and one day while surfing the web, she found the United Nation's Online Volunteering program. She signed up for an assignment that very day. 'It was so exciting. I wanted to connect with people on a global level and that stuck with me. It was so exhilarating to be able to work for the common good. I worked with people from China, India, all over the world. The solidarity was so authentic,' says Shaw-Diaz. Last year, the UNVolunteers program had about 9,000 online volunteers from around the world. It marked the first time the program's online volunteers outnumbered its on-site volunteers."

October 30, Mobile-volunteering puts thumbs to work for good causes2009 Mobile-volunteering puts thumbs to work for good causes. "Combining the strengths of mobile technology, non-profit organizations and crowdsourcing (i.e. calling on members of the public to complete small tasks as part of a bigger project, like Wikipedia), new mobile-phone applications are making volunteer work all the more accessible... many of the micro-volunteer 'missions' transpire as thinly disguised iReports rallied toward a particular cause in a community. And given the application's relatively unchecked crowdsourcing, accuracy, authenticity and effectiveness remain big question marks in this experimental equation."

2009, Blue Avocado, Can Nonprofit Boards Vote by Email? by Gene Takagi and Emily Nicole Chan

1 June 2008, The Guardian. Virtual volunteers, real results. A new army of "virtual volunteers" is helping charities reach out to young people to offer advice or persuade others to give their time in a more practical way. Volunteers give their services online in what one charity says is an exciting way forward for organisations that can struggle to find enough people with time to commit.

Oct-Dec 2007 issue of e-Volunteerism:Why Can't We Persuade Our Field to Interact Online? Keyboard Roundtable article

Nov. 2007 Civic Engagement and the Internet: Online Volunteers, Mary C. Joyce, posting to Internet & Democracy Blog. Note discussion of possible underutilization of willing online volunteers.

2007 Rewards and Benefits of Online Volunteering: Some Testimonials -- a YouTube video from Macdonald Youth Services, Canada

November 13, 2006 The New York Times : Flexible Hours, Using Your PC and Never Leaving Home, by Pamela LiCalzi O'Connell. "Online volunteering, long thought of as more superficial than on-site volunteering, has entered a new, smarter phase. While many online volunteering opportunities still focus on simple tasks requiring little time, more and more provide ways for volunteers, who are working flexible hours at home computers, to have a more direct and meaningful effect. At nonprofit groups, online volunteer management has grown more sophisticated after a decade of trial and error."

Aspectos Básicos en el Desarrollo de un Proyecto con Voluntariado Virtual: El Caso de UNV-Egypt y the Volunteer Network Egypt, Un arti?culo por Carlos E. Jime?nez Go?mez Coordinador voluntario online del proyecto Volunteer Network Egypt, January 2006

July 2005, How Online Volunteers helped UNV Kyrgyzstan, originally published by the UN's Online Volunteering service.

March 2005, How Online Volunteers Helped Gwalior Childrens Hospital, based in both the UK and India, originally published by the UN's Online Volunteering service.

Online Volunteers of the Year 2005, Ana Maria da F.M. Saravia (Brazil), Carlos Jime?nez (Spain), Elizabeth and Tim Rose (Canada), Haingonirina Angie Ramaroson (Madagascar/USA), Jay Martin (Australia), Mohammad Ashaq Malik (India/Eritrea), Sandrine Cortet (France/USA), Sonia Ignatova (USA), Stephan Bren (USA), and Online Volunteer Team: Charles Forrester (Australia), Kashif Kamran (Pakistan), Priscilla Lynch (USA) and Taru Agarwal (India), originally published by the UN's Online Volunteering service.

February 2004, How Online Volunteers Helped UNITeS, a story of how online volunteers recruited via the UN's Online Volunteering service helped the United Nations Information Technology Service (UNITeS). Originally published by the UN's Online Volunteering service.

Online Volunteers of the Year 2004, Beatriz Iglesias (Spain), Biswajit Dash (India), Blandina Musvoto (Zimbabwean – then living in Denmark), Claire Suzanne Holland (USA), Flavia Trevisani (Italian – then living in the Netherlands), George Okello Gopal (Kenya), Ian Foster (Australia), Kalyani Suresh (India), Maria Yvette Reyes (Philippines – then living in Israel/Palestine) and Will R. Wallace (USA). Originally published by the UN's Online Volunteering service.

2003. Virtual Volunteering: Perspectives / Welcome to the world of virtual volunteerism! Published in Information Today. By Conhaim, Wallys W. Excerpt: "Creative efforts in the nonprofit sector have harnessed the Web to let willing volunteers provide their time and talents online. CompuMentor (http:// www.compumentor.org), a San Francisco nonprofit formed in 1987 to tap IT personnel as mentors for nonprofits new to computing, was the pioneer in this field. It has since passed the baton to others as it has developed additional technology-- related services such as TechSoup.com and DiscounTech. At least 1,000 organizations in the U.S. alone used online volunteers in 2000, according to the University of Texas-Austin's Virtual Volunteering Project. Generally, virtual volunteers help by providing technical assistance to an organization or direct service to its clients."

December 2003 "Online Power for Volunteer Action" and "Capacity Building in the Digital Age through Volunteer Involvement," essays written by Susan Ellis for the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) Conference on Volunteering and ICTs

Online Volunteers of the Year 2003, Anne Catherine Yon (USA), Deborah D’Amico (Canada), Kelly (Xiaodong) Zeng (China/USA), Lela Rachman Talogo (Canada), Mark Wireman (USA), Miodrag Zivkovic (Serbia and Montenegro), Paul Fifen Chimy (Cameroon/France), Raj Gopal Prasad Kantamneni (USA) Stanley Tuvako (Kenya) and Yasemin Gunay (Turkey)

Online Volunteers of the Year 2002: Adedoyin Onasanya (Nigeria), Angelica Hasbun (Costa Rica), Cynthia Holland (Canada), Javier Wilson (Nicaragua), Joanne K. Morse (USA), Laurie Moy (USA), Natalya Korobeynyk (Ukraine), Paula Santos Vizcaino (Uruguay), Terry Rosenlund (USA) and Yvonne Swain (USA)

"Web Opens World to Digital Volunteers." Online charity work fits your schedule, but extends your reach, say wired nonprofits. PC World. December 2020. This story is no longer available online that I can find. It was published at this URL originally: http://rd.yahoo.com/alerts/email/news/*http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/pcworld/20021227/tc_pcworld/108190

April 2001, How Online Volunteers Helped Tanzania Media and Youth Development Project, Tanzania, including a project focused on HIV/AIDS. Originally published by the UN's Online Volunteering service.

December 2000: Volunteering and social development, by Justin Davis Smith, Published by NCVO in Voluntary Action: the journal of the Institute for Volunteering Research. Vol. 3; Number 1. This paper was prepared at the invitation of United Nations Volunteers for discussion at an Expert Group Meeting in New York in December 1999. It notes that communication technology tools "open up new opportunities for voluntary activity" and "the spread of global information technology opens up new opportunities for home-based involvement in volunteering for groups, such as disabled people, who were previously excluded from participation" - both are references to virtual volunteering but without ever saying the term.

25 Nov 1999, The New York Times. Reaching Out for Help, or to Help, an article profiling organizations engaging online volunteers, featuring quotes from Jayne Cravens, then head of the Virtual Volunteering Project.

10 Nov 1999, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Mentoring by e-mail is a new cyber service. Uses the term "virtual volunteers." Accessed via newspapers.com.

7 October 1999, The New York Times. Charity Concerts to Go on Internet, an article about the NetAid initiative and concerts, which were being launched the following week. The article doesn't use the term "virtual volunteering", but says "The system will permit groups and people with particular needs to register them in a Netaid database. It will also allow people who are willing to donate particular skills or materials to register them in the database." This part of the NetAid initiative became the UN's Online Volunteering Service a few years later, and this UN virtual volunteering initiative continues.

4 August 1999, San Francisco Gate: "Running Lame: Most presidential candidates stumble online." By Hal Plotkin. "Internet users aren’t e-people. They are people. They live in communities. And they have much more to offer a political campaign than just their checkbooks." The article reviews how various candidates for President at the time were using their Web sites to recruit and mobilize supporters, and how Al Gore and Bill Bradley campaigns seemed to be the only ones that understood the potential of the Internet to involve and support volunteers.

28, 1997, L A Times, The Virtues of 'Virtual Volunteer' Efforts" An article by Gary Chapman about the "national summit" in Philadelphia on volunteerism, co-chaired by then President Clinton and former President Bush in 1997, as well as the launch of the Virtual Volunteering Project, directed by Jayne Cravens.

April 1997, Education World, review of the Hewlett Packard E-Mentoring Program. The HP E-Mail Mentor program creates one-to-one mentor relationships between HP employees (worldwide) and 5-12th grade students and teachers throughout the United States to help motivate students to excel in math and science. HP employees also mentor teachers who seek to incorporate current technology into the classroom. Set up as a "Win-Win" situation for Hewlett Packard employees and K12 education, the mentor program was designed to increase motivation in students to excel in math and science through genuine encouragement from a professional employee, provide better understanding of the working world and career opportunities, develop a concept of education that goes beyond the traditional classroom and to inspire students to take charge of their own learning, among other benefits. The process for joining the program is as follows: A teacher submits the on-line school contact application An HP E-mail Advisory Board will review the school contact application to ensure compliance with specific program requirements If the school contact application is approved, the school contact presents the program to targeted student protgs. (No more than 10 students should be assigned to each school contact. Additional school contacts must be designated if more than 10 students participate at that school) The students apply for protg positions via the "HP E-mail Mentoring Program" homepage. The protg applications are validated and then matched with HP mentor applications. Matching is based on shared interests and specific match criteria found in the mentor and protg applications. A "HP Mentor Matches for School" message is sent to each mentor/protg pair.

13 May 1996, The New York Times, Taking in the Sites; Now, It's Philanthropy Surfing on the Internet, an article about the proliferation of web sites that facilitate online giving or online volunteering in some way. Includes this: "One nonprofit group, Impact Online, was created to help charities use the Web. The group, in Palo Alto, Calif., uses its site to match what it calls 'virtual volunteers' with organizations that need them, and has begun a data base of group logos and missions." This might be the first use of the term virtual volunteers in a newspaper, but any article about Project Gutenberg in the 1990s would be about virtual volunteering, even if it doesn't use the term. For more information, see this history of virtual volunteering.

excerpt NetActivism, O'Relly & Associate, Inc, 1996, pp. 17-18

29 September 1995. The Los Angeles Times. "Westside computer center benefits from fund-raiser." Excerpt: “We’re very pleased with our sponsors and ‘virtual volunteers.’ We don’t know what they look like because they do everything on their computers, but they help out with whatever we need.” - Steve Glikbarg, co-executive director and founder of what was then Impact Online, “which bills itself as a ‘socially conscious’ web service in Palo Alto." Accessed via newspapers.com.

26 January 1995, Press Enterprise (Philadelphia). "Network puts kids on info highway." Excerpt: "Computer giant Unisys Corps. and officials from six of the country’s science museums unveiled a plan here this week that will help elementary school students skip the library to serve the Internet… Unisys will enlist its own staff as “virtual volunteers” reached through Electronic Mail (E-Mail) to answer questions by users." Accessed via newspapers.com.

The January 1995 article from the Press Enterprise is the earliest I can find a reference to virtual volunteering in a newspaper. The term was already being used by what was then a new initiative, Impact Online, coined by Steve Glikbarg.

Here are earlier articles about virtual volunteering but do not use the term virtual volunteering:

02 October 1994, Chicago Tribune. "Project building an on-line library." Article about Project Gutenberg. Quote about the founder of Project Gutenberg, Michael Hart: “He has about 450 volunteers around the globe typing or scanning additional volumes.” Accessed via newspapers.com.

10 July 1993. The Vancouver Sun. "E-text opens next chapter in information revolution." Article about Project Gutenberg. Quote about the founder, Michael Hart: “His effort is known as Project Gutenberg and involves scores of volunteers around the world working to create and distribute English language electronic texts. It began 22 years ago…now between 150 and 200 people are working Project Gutenberg rendering books that are not protected by copyright into electronic text versions.” Accessed via newspapers.com.

3 November 1992. Newsday. "Getting Up to Speed On the Computer Highway." Michael “Hart, whose title is professor of electronic text at Illinois Benedictine College, is leading a band of volunteers who aim to put 10,000 volumes on line by 2001. That effort is called Project Gutenberg, named for the inventor of the printing press… Hart’s volunteers, from New Zealand to Nebraska, use ‘scammers,’ devices that convert page after page of printed text into digital computer code.” Accessed via newspapers.com.