I loved the term byte-sized volunteering and it's how I enticed a lot of new volunteers into longer-term support for the Virtual Volunteering Project.
Years ago,
the hot term for this type of very short-term volunteer became microvolunteering
or micro volunteering (sometimes with space, sometimes
without) or microtasks. That name has, for the most
part, stuck. Some people include offline, just-show-up-volunteering activities in their definition of microvolunteering, others don't and limit it to only short-term online volunteering tasks. Others narrow the definition even further than that and say microvolunteering is a word to describe only those volunteering activities that are mobile-ready, that are tasks that can be done on a smart phone.
However you choose define it, at its heart, microvolunteering no different than the term that's been used for years for short-term offline volunteering: episodic volunteering: just as volunteers who come to a beach cleanup or participate in a Habitat for Humanity work day don't undergo a criminal background check, don't receive a lengthy pre-service orientation, don't fill out a lengthy volunteer application form, don't have to have special skills and may never volunteer with the organization again - they feel like they just show up and get to work - online volunteers that participate in a microvolunteering may get started on their assignment just a few minutes after expressing interest. The keyword is may, because that happens only if the organization has the right, tried-and-true volunteer management standards in place that create the conditions necessary for an online volunteer to get started right away.
Most sites that talk about microvolunteering or a byte-sized assignment don't offer any specifics on what microtasks look like - they just focus on "it takes just a few minutes!"
By contrast, here's the longest list you will find anywhere of microvolunteering in practice. However, note that this list would be very shorter if your definition of microvolunteering is limited to only mobile-ready volunteering (the task can easily be done on a mobile phone):
Mid-assignment reporting requirements might also be necessary if the deadline is a week or more after the assignment is given - many times, organizations can't just assume people are working on assignments, only to find out, once they need the work, that the volunteers didn't do it.
A volunteer can complete a micro assignment and then walk away from ever volunteering with your program again. But that would make it just drive-by volunteering - no relationship is established or cultivated, and you have no idea if the experience created greater awareness for the volunteer about your organization's work and those it serves. Your organization deserves more than that! and, as studies have shown, volunteers want more than that.
Your goal with microvolunteering assignments should be much more than to get some work done, if you want it to be worthwhile for your program to involve such short-term volunteers. The reality is that it's very hard to come up with micro task for volunteers that the organization really needs, or that are best done by a group of volunteers in little bits each rather than just one volunteer doing it all.
Your goal in creating micro tasks and engaging online volunteers in such should be to create such a positive experience that the volunteer stays interested and takes on another small task, or a task with more responsibility or greater time commitment, as well as becoming a fan of your organization, talking about your good work to colleagues, friends and family. You might even turn such a volunteer into a financial donor. More on that later.
Part of the microvolunteering phenomena is crowd-sourcing, a practice that is as old as the Internet itself, dating back to the 1970s. Before the World Wide Web, a popular Internet tool was USENET newsgroups, which were online communities put together around various interests, professions and topics, and much of the activity on these was what we now call crowd-sourcing (soc.org.nonprofit was a particularly popular crowd-sourcing resource for nonprofit representatives).
Crowd-sourcing is when a task or question is offered up online to anyone who might see it and would like to take it on, without that person having to sign up to participate as a volunteer. It can be as simple as writing, "How would you handle the following situation..." to an online community of volunteer resources managers. Or asking "How could we improve our online volunteer orientation" to your online community of volunteers. Or asking an online community for HR managers, "Would anyone be willing to share their company's dress code? We're looking for ideas." Or writing all of your current volunteers and saying, "What do you think of our new logo?" Crowd-sourcing is also called distributed problem-solving. It's usually not called virtual volunteering, but that's what it is.
Crowd-sourcing is not just for feedback and questions. For instance:
As long as someone was including the name of the organization that this was supposed to benefit (usually the ALS Association) from the ice bucket challenge, and the web site address so people could donate more money, sure, I would consider the Ice-Bucket Challenge as micro volunteering. But you have to be careful with these types of campaigns - a lot of people uploaded videos of themselves dumping ice water on themselves without ever naming the charity it was supposed to benefit, and that means it was just slacktavism or slackervism.
A misconception about microvolunteering and crowd-sourcing -- and, indeed, about all volunteering, including in its most traditional forms -- is that the primary goal is to get work done, or to get work done for free. These are old paradigms regarding volunteering that so many of us have worked for a very long time to move away from. Volunteering is about so much more: it's about building relationships with the community, increasing the number of people advocating for your organization and even supporting it financially, demonstrating transparency, and even targeting specific demographics for involvement in your work. Microvolunteering shouldn't be just drive-by volunteering; it takes far too much time to create microtasks for volunteers to make that worthwhile
The biggest advantage to creating microvolunteering
and crowd-sourcing opportunities isn't getting work done;
rather, it's giving current volunteers more and different
ways to participate (believe it or not, many of your
volunteers want to do more for you!), creating a way for you
to cultivate new supporters and build awareness of your
organization and its mission among more people. If you
aren't thinking of microvolunteering as a form of community
engagement but, rather, about just getting some tasks done,
you're doing it wrong!
Consider this research study by Points of Light American that measured interest in civic engagement in the USA as of May 2020. According to the survey, from the volunteer perspective, a worthwhile experience is:
Note what's not there: an assignment that is really short.
Never think of the primary goal of microvolunteering as getting work done. Your goal should always be to cultivate new supporters or to build awareness about a cause. You want to turn people who answer your question on a discussion group or take on a small online volunteering assignment into long-term supporters, people who tell family and friends about your organization, who have their perception changed about a particular issue your organization is involved with (why people are homeless, why the arts are important to teens, why there are misunderstandings about HIV/AIDS, why increasing literacy improves women's health, etc.), who take on more assignments for your organization and, hopefully, are so moved by your work that they make a financial donation.
Therefore, if your organization decides to make microvolunteering or crowd-sourcing activities available to people beyond your corps of vetted volunteers, make sure you have ways to capture their key contact information and provide followup to them regarding the project or issue they contributed to. Encourage these contributors to complete the briefest of online volunteering applications, to join an online discussion group, and/or to subscribe to your email newsletter.
People that want to online volunteers that take on microtasks should see Finding Online Volunteering / Virtual Volunteering / Online Microvolunteering & Home-Based Volunteering, a free online resource especially for people that want to volunteer.
The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook
available for purchase as a
paperback & an ebook
from Energize, Inc.
Completely revised and updated, &
includes lots more advice about microvolunteering!
Published January 2014.
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