FAQs Resources for AGENCIES Resources for VOLUNTEERS About the Virtual Volunteering Project Subscribe to VIRTUAL VERVE What's new Site Index Home Page		direct contact online volunteers: online mentors, tutors, advisors and others working with clients (including students) This information was last updated on January 16, 2000 Direct contact online volunteers work directly with a client / recipient of your service. For example, a volunteer, via e-mail or a chat room, could: electronically "visit" with someone who is home bound, in a hospital or a rest home provide online mentoring and instruction via e-mail (helping students with homework questions, helping an adult learn a skill or find a job, or help prison inmates with studies or programs) help with language instruction (help people learning English) e-mail or chat room answer/support line, like a phone answer/support line, where people write their questions and volunteers answer them advance "welcoming" of people about to enter the hospital, go to summer camp, etc. from volunteers, and post-service follow up of the same group volunteers and/or clients working together online to create a project, such as writing about the news of their neighborhood, school, special interest group, etc. to post on a web site or use in printed material distance learning: training volunteers in a subject via the Internet support group members providing advice to each other via a chat room or private e-mail discussion group or newsgroup volunteers who supervise any of the above activities via the Internet and provide guidance, or ask for staff guidance, as appropriate Setting up this kind of "direct contact" component of a virtual volunteering program presents many special challenges. What are appropriate assignments for such volunteers? How will you screen these online volunteers? How will you evaluate these volunteers and supervise their interactions with clients? How will you protect confidentiality and prevent inappropriate interactions between online volunteers and clients? To answer these questions, the Virtual Volunteering Project offers initial first steps for those considering setting up a direct contact service component involving online volunteers, including online mentoring. information on monitoring/supervising online interactions between volunteers and clients, screening and evaluating volunteers that will work with clients virtually, guidelines for bringing together youth and adult online volunteers, and other safety guidelines for direct contact volunteering. an index of Resources for Volunteer Moderators and Facilitators of Online Discussion Groups. These resources -- some by the VV Project, many by other organizations -- can help both volunteers (including online mentors) and staff moderate (approve all posts) or facilitate (keeping the discussion flowing) online discussion groups, either via e-mail or via a chat/real-time platform.

The Virtual Volunteering Project focused primarily on online mentoring in Y2K, and we developed these resources, based on first-hand experiences, collaborations and feedback from other organizations and programs:

• Benefits of Online Mentoring. Why is it something worth pursuing?

• Initial first steps for those considering setting up a direct contact service component involving online volunteers, including online mentoring.

• Key Administrative and Management Tasks
  for an Online Mentoring Program
  A listing of all major administrative activities that must be completed BEFORE the launch a successful online mentoring program, from who is responsible for recruiting mentors to who will host the web site to who will stay in contact with parents and answer their questions about the program. Organizations can use this grid to make sure all tasks have been defined and are assigned.

• "Am I Ready to Involve Online Mentors?"
  A self-evaluation for both the sponsoring organization and each individual site to be involved in a program.

• Site Manager/Teacher Involvement
  The key element to sustaining an online mentoring program is the involvement of site managers, usually teachers.

• Suggestions for screening online mentors
  Expanding the information already available in our safety guidelines for direct contact volunteering.

• Suggested activities for online mentors and mentees
  These activities range from topics to discuss via e-mail, to web-based projects mentors and students can do together.

• Selected resources for online mentoring/teletutoring programs, including example materials from other organizations, general mentoring resources and detailed program suggestions that can help other agencies engage in similar activities.

• The most comprehensive online listing available of online mentoring and teletutoring programs involving volunteers, with profiles of more than 40 organizations.

• Telementoring: a View From the Facilitator's Screen, by Laura Amill, a telementoring facilitator/researcher in the Electronic Emissary Project at the University of Texas at Austin. How does an online tutoring program really work? What characterizes successful online tutoring program? What role do classroom teachers play in the success of such programs? This is a must-read essay for anyone involved with an online mentoring or tutoring program, or anyone interested in starting such a program.

These and other online mentoring materials are in development by the National Mentoring Partnership, and be available via the NMP web site sometime in 2001:

• Training Site Managers / Teachers Online
  The people who will interact face-to-face with protegés are the people that will make sure interactions are happening and intervene when they aren't. They will motivate and encourage protegés to participate. They are fundamental to the success of an online mentoring program! This resource will offer suggestions on how to prepare site managers /teachers for to ensure success.

• Orienting and Training Mentors Online
  How can best practices of face-to-face mentor training be applied online? What are specific needs of online mentors that are different than face-to-face programs? This resource will answer those questions and more, and link to examples from various organizations.

• Training Protegés
  It's obvious that mentors need to be trained before they begin participating in a program. But in face-to-face mentoring, a key reason that relationships have been successful has been because the protegés -- the persons that will be mentored -- have ALSO been trained. The same is true for online mentoring programs. This resource will offer suggestions on how to prepare protegés for participation to ensure success.

• Making a Match
  How agencies successfully match mentors to protegés. There will be tips for allowing mentors to select protegés and vice versa, as well as how program managers can facilitate successful matches.

• Sample Online Exchanges
  Every e-mail exchange between a mentor and a protegé is going to be unique. The age of the protegés and the goals of the program are going to significantly influence the content, length and frequency of exchanges. Still, potential mentors find examples of exchanges very helpful! We would like to provide a variety of examples of mentor/protegé exchanges on our web site (exchanges between adults and teens in a career mentoring program, exchanges between adults and elementary students in a tutoring program, and so forth).

• Sustaining Exchanges
  Best practices for keeping all participants -- mentors, protegés and site managers alike -- active in an online mentoring program.

• Evaluating an Online Mentoring Program
  How do you define success of an online mentoring or tutoring program? This resource will offer suggestions, based on the practices of existing programs.

 
Other Virtual Volunteering Resources
These files are updated frequently:

For Volunteer Managers

• Benefits of using the Internet to find and involve volunteers
  
• Examples of ways an organization can involve volunteers via the Internet
  
• Is your organization ready for virtual volunteering?
  
• Setting up and managing a virtual volunteering program
  
• Finding and managing technical assistance volunteers
  
• Volunteer activism via the Internet

• Safety in Online Volunteering Programs
• Involving people with disabilities in virtual volunteering programs
  Tips for outreach, accommodations, conversation, volunteer orientation and matching, evaluation and staff training. Information includes:
  • Working via the Internet with volunteers who have disabilities
    
  • Examples of Experiences Involving Online Volunteers and Youth With Disabilities
    
  • Making an agency virtually accessible to people with disabilities

• Marketing volunteer opportunities online
  
• Making email communications more effective
  
• Using Internet discussion groups for volunteers
  
• Using Real-Time Communications with volunteers
  
• Index of online resources for volunteer managers

• A self evaluation: Are you ready to volunteer virtually?
  
• How to find virtual volunteering opportunities
  
• General tips for volunteers working on virtual assignments
  
• Dos and don'ts for technical assistance volunteers
  
• General advice for volunteers for both online and offline opportunities, by volunteerism expert Susan Ellis

• Have you helped or do you help an organization via your home or work computer?
  Then We Want to Hear From You!

• How Your Agency Can Utilize the Virtual Volunteering Project
  Tips on how to use this Web site, information about our offline services, and how we can help you introduce or expand virtual volunteering in your agency.

• Virtual Volunteering Project home page

 
If you find this or any other Virtual Volunteering Project information helpful, or would like to add information based on your own experience, please contact us.

If you do use Virtual Volunteering Project materials in your own workshop or trainings, or republish materials in your own publications, please let us know, so that we can track how this information is disseminated.