For this 25-year retrospective piece, I am relying in part on material from Macduff/Bunt Associates, the parent company of MBA Publishing and the newsletter Volunteer Today—a mission founded in 1983. Macduff/Bunt Associates do workshops, publish books, and distribute cutting edge newsletters that uplift, energize, organize, and reward volunteers. I am using them as a springboard to launch an observation from my own 25 years in volunteer management—the last eight with Middleton Outreach Ministry.

In 1980, St. Luke’s Church gave birth on “Pledge Sunday” (June 6 of that year) to an apartment-based ministry called “Middleton Outreach Mission.” Back then (from 1972-83), I was directing teams of volunteers, a.k.a. college students, in dorm-based and campus-wide outreach on several universities and colleges in the Twin Cities.

To pull together a communications piece, I used a typewriter, magazine artwork, a trusty scissors and rubber cement to cut and paste. I was also using blue waxy stencils on an inky mimeograph machine to crank out teaching materials. Perhaps my predecessor at MOM, Gary Simpson, was relying on the same technology back then.

The Internet— a word which embraces both websites and email, as well as other electronic tools—was foreign to me. In 1980, I did not own a computer, much less browse it or use it to rally troops of volunteers. I doubt MOM had computers then, either.

Yet in 1987-97, I was trusting the Internet to connect with media resources as “the Gruen Group”—a one-man office operating out of Madison, but linked with 60 other writers and 16 publishers across three continents.

While the Internet in some form or another has been around since 1959, it is the growth of the web that has most impacted society at large and volunteerism in particular. Circa 1990-91, the web was invented to provide easier document sharing between scientists. Now it’s used for everything from online shopping to global networking. The Internet provides the nonprofit world with the most effective tool imaginable for learning, writing and networking. I’m told that 58 million of us access the web every day.

In this Information Age, the Internet provides ample information on volunteering for anyone interested in lending a hand. “Word of mouth” passes virtually via email and newsgroups. With the advent of the web, even low-budget MOM can publish its “brochure” and “Annual Report” where anyone with access can view it most cost-effectively and time-efficiently.

MOM’s Director of Operations, Ellen Carlson, a whole generation younger than me, researches everything on the web. Her answering machine refers phone callers to go the MOM website, for example, to sign up for “Adopt-A-Family” or to Volunteer.

Links to MOM are posted on other websites and volunteer clearinghouses, such as www@volunteeryourtime.org and United Way’s site, www@uwdc.org. The Internet has also made possible “virtual volunteering”—where people volunteer from the convenience of their own home or work computer. This has been a boon both for very busy individuals, who must have the flexibility of virtual volunteering, and for people with disabilities or those who lack transportation.

The Internet is a natural medium for “entrepreneurial volunteering,” such as online discussion groups and audio-visual seminars. Call me a dinosaur, but I still prefer those on-site conferences where I drive somewhere and meet someone face to face.

Yet there’s a virtual encyclopedia of knowledge out there that volunteer managers can tap into to get better at what we do. When I Google “volunteer management,” I find professional networking tools online, such as CyberVPM, VolulnteerToday, and eVolunteerism. I’ve downloaded many tools that benefit MOM staff and volunteers.

How does MOM use the Internet today? Every week I discover someone who now volunteers with MOM because they first found us on the web. We use the web to provide access to applications and other forms. MOM staff use email internally to communicate with each other and with existing volunteers, perhaps 20 times a day. I talk with one or more of my 16 Board members by email, daily, as we otherwise only meet in person every two months as a full board. Back in 1980, when I ran nine development committees, we had no email—everything was done by phone, by letter and in person.

An Internet-based newsletter will complement the one printed every quarter (IN TOUCH) or every month (The DC Door). Even now, every MTT article by yours truly, and every issue of IN TOUCH, is posted on MOM’s website, www@mompop.org.

Technology will also advance volunteer recognition, as this May we’ll publish on the web our congratulations, brief profiles and photos of “25 who made it happen” —all to mark MOM’s 25 th Anniversary Events. You will also find those stories spread on the pages of Middleton Times Tribune. (Some things never change, especially for this still print-dependent person.)

Speaking of 25 th Anniversary events, I invite you to go online at www@mompop.org to see what we have in store for you the week of June 6-12, 2005 . Join us, in person.

© 2005 Middleton Outreach Ministry

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