A web of volunteers
Amid busy lives, some find 'cyber-service' an appealing way to help nonprofits do good work
Lily U. Burns had just taught an aerobics class and was racing to grab a bite to eat with her boyfriend and another friend when her knees buckled. "I feel sick," she said to her boyfriend.
Or at least that's what she thought she said. What actually came out of her mouth was gibberish. Her boyfriend, sensing what was happening on this midsummer day in 2006, asked her to say his name. She had no idea. Nor, terrifyingly, could she speak at all. At the age of 33, Burns was having a stroke.
She eventually underwent open-heart surgery last December to close a hole in her heart that had led to the stroke. For the past few months, looking to make sense of her experience through some kind of action, she has thrown herself into volunteer efforts for the American Heart Association, with this contemporary twist: Most of her volunteering has taken place online.
Thanks to a personalized Web page and her own diligent e-mail outreach to donors, Burns has raised $5,000 for heart and stroke research. Called "e-volunteering" or "cyber-service," such efforts have emerged as a way for time-strapped people to contribute to a cause by logging on to their laptops and desktops in their scarce available hours. While not leaving their homes or offices, e-volunteers might mentor at-risk children, craft grant proposals for a nonprofit organization, or lend financial, legal, or marketing skills to a favorite cause.
At the Concord-based Jericho Road Project, which connects the expertise of white-collar suburban professionals with the needs of community-based groups in Lawrence and Lowell, e-volunteers are vital, according to executive director Dan Holin. "There's this trend of volunteering remotely," says Holin. "Maybe 15 to 20 percent of our work is done that way."
For example, an information technology specialist, working "remotely," has helped develop a database so a Lowell group combating youth-gang violence can keep track of its volunteers and donations. Attorneys from the Boston law firm Foley Hoag, working online, have helped an arts league navigate the legal intricacies of establishing itself as a nonprofit. When a nonprofit group needs the eye of an editor on a brochure to advertise a Southeast Asian festival, or a food bank wants to fine-tune a grant proposal, the Jericho Road Project forwards them to a cadre of volunteers who are professional editors. The editors whip the publications into shape and e-mail them back.
"Many volunteers need and thrive on the personal interaction," Holin says. "But there are some volunteers that can't afford the time involved because of distance or just a lack of time, period. And there are some where their work doesn't require them to have a lot of face time."
A watershed moment for e-volunteering occurred after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast in 2005. The Katrina PeopleFinder Project mobilized volunteers to consolidate data on missing people from disparate websites and blogs. "They didn't have to go to New Orleans or Mississippi," says Deborah Elizabeth Finn, an information technology consultant to nonprofit organizations. "They could sit at their kitchen in Revere at their PC and process data. Even if they had only a half-hour, they could provide significant assistance."
Often, of course, online volunteering is combined with the old-fashioned, in-person kind. Today, for instance, Burns will lead the warm-ups for an estimated 10,000 participants for the association's 2007 Start! Boston Heart Walk, and will then take part in the 6-mile trek herself.
But it was the non-aerobic part of her participation that enabled Burns to raise so much money so quickly. When she registered for the Heart Walk, the association built a fund-raising Web page for her. Burns sent out an initial e-mail to family and friends directing them to the page. On it, they found a photo of Burns, standing on tiptoes on her bed, arms triumphantly aloft, with a caption that reads: "Look What I Can Do!" Below the photo, Burns makes her pitch in a direct, personal style: "I am doing this for some very obvious reasons - surviving a stroke and open-heart surgery."
She then urges friends and family to support the AHA, and - because the Web page is equipped with a feature that tracks donations - the names of contributors scroll past on an "honor roll" to the right of the photo. Paradoxically, Burns found that the online approach not only made it easier to ask for money but also made it easier to tell her story. "There's a bazillion walks out there. So why should anyone want to give money to me?" she says. The Web page allows her to answer: "Well, because I'm personally affected by this. And this is how I feel."
Burns, a Back Bay resident who is finishing a master's degree in intercultural relations while working at MIT and also teaching aerobics again, says the opportunity to be an e-volunteer "has made it so much easier."
That was the idea when the heart association launched the online program five years ago, according to Rich Proulx, director of customer systems. "Everybody has a busy lifestyle," Proulx says. "It's very easy to do. Just think how easy it is to do an online debit card or credit card. And it's live 24-7, so they can do it at their convenience. We deal with a lot of nurses and doctors, and they work a lot of weird hours, so this makes it easier for them to access the website."
The result? "We've gone from literally nothing to last year we raised $1.5 million just with the websites," Proulx says. "We've seen significant online increases." The next step for the heart association, he says, is to link with social-networking sites like MySpace and Facebook in a bid to enlist more volunteers and donors. The association also relies on e-volunteers to lobby legislators via e-mail on issues relating to heart disease or stroke.
More and more nonprofits are likely to look for ways to cross the digital divide and integrate e-volunteers into their missions. "Up to now, with small nonprofits, with anything to do with spending money on technology, what I would hear people say is: 'I can't afford to spend the money,' " says Finn, the consultant. "But in the last 12 months I'm hearing from small nonprofits who are asking me: 'Tell me how much money it's going to take to bring it to the next level.' "
Of course, sometimes there's no substitute for one-on-one contact, as Burns is quick to acknowledge. "I ran into my uncle today," she says. "He's the only person who told me he had trouble donating through the website. I said, 'Are you going to donate or not?' "
She laughs, and says. "I've become very direct."
Don Aucoin can be reached at aucoin@globe.com. 