Using Real-Time Communications (Chat, Instant Messaging, Ec.) With Volunteers

A growing number of organizations use real-time communications -- usually called "chats" or "chat rooms," "instant messaging", and sometimes called "synchronous conferencing" -- to hold online meetings with volunteers, to allow volunteers to interact with staff, clients, or each other, or to have live, online, real-time events.

Chat adds a new dimension to the Internet experience. One-on-one instant messaging between a volunteer and staff member can often solve problems more quickly, and lead to more understanding, than e-mail. Live, instantaneous interactions can help strengthen the bonds among participants and help build community. Chat rooms added to your web site can make your site a desirable destination for regular visits, even when you haven't just added fresh content. And the dialogue from these real-time communications is easily (and, often, automatically) archived for later reference.

What is a "chat"?

How Are Organizations Using Chats to Involve Volunteers?

Real-time communications are not appropriate for every program or scenerio

Chat Tips for Humans

Where to find chat rooms and software

What is a "chat"?
A chat session is simply a "live" text-based conversation: a participant types a comment or question and it is immediately available for another person, or a group of people, to review; other participants respond, and these comments are immediately available for review as well.
Chats can happen via instant messaging or via an online space, called a "chat room." They can happen via a special software, via your web site, or via "rented space" be by another company's web site or system.

Are chats private? It depends on how you have set up the chat. For instance, you can require members to be pre-approved before they can enter a chat room, or you can issue a unique password for access to only those you want to participate in your chats. For instant messaging, you can configure your settings so that only people you have already approved can "ring" you with an instant message.

Chats can be a special or regular online event -- a half-hour chat on a particular topic or featuring a special guest the first Monday of every month, for instance -- or they can be something that users can enter or exit whenever they wish.

How Are Organizations Using Chats to Involve Volunteers?

Some organizations use a chat room to make a major announcement to volunteers, then giving them the opportunity to provide immediate feedback and ask questions that can be immediately answered. An agency could use a chat to introduce a new member to others in the group and allow them to interact in a more lively, interactive way than an e-mail list. Volunteer managers sometimes add all of the volunteers currently involved with the organization to their Instant Messaging "address book," allowing these volunteers to send an instant message to the manager whenever he or she "sees" the manager online (instant message use with volunteers is explored in depth in this resource by the United Nations Information Technology Service.

Other organizations have used chat rooms to bring volunteers and clients together online to collaborate on a project (the Theatre As Digital Activity program at the San Jose Children's Musical Theater is an excellent example of this). Some use chats as a pre-face-to-face meeting, to build support or consensus for a proposal before a decision is made or official, onsite vote is held.

Some organizations use chat rooms as a way for volunteers and clients to ask questions of an "expert" in a particular subject or field, or to "meet" with the Executive Director of an agency.

Many organizations explore holding online board meetings via live chats. You can definitely hold discussions (with no voting) this way, but not all U.S. states or countries recognize this form of virtual meetings as official (as of January 1996, California had passed an amendment to state law allowing this, but with certain requirements). Check with your state attorney general office for more information.

Chats are particularly popular among young people. The culture of a chat is fast, with short comments coming in quickly and constant. It's much more like a face-to-face discussion than an e-mail-based or newsgroup, although sometimes, people write thoughts they might never say in-person (see our information on Online Culture for more information, as well as this resource by UNITeS).

Real-time communications are not appropriate for every program or scenerio
Chats require users to all be at their computers at the same time, whereas an email-based discussion group or newsgroup -- also known as asynchronus communications -- allow users to participate, ask questions, provide feedback, etc. at anytime of the day, as often as they want. Chats often require that all users have the same software or operating systems. Chats among a group often require a high-degree of facilitation to keep the conversation going and pre-planning to get enough participants, a featured expert, etc. Chats also require that participants have a good understanding of how the technology works, and a high comfort level in using it.
Email-based discussion groups and newsgroups often have a much higher percentage of lurkers (people who read but don't post) than chats. Having 100 people on such a group is usually not overwhelming, because only a small percentage of them may actually post frequently -- the rest will lurk or post infrequently. Having 100 people on a chat, however, if the group is large, can become overwhelming, because most of the participants will engage in conversation, so consideration needs to be made in how many participants are ideal for your chat situation. Also, chats usually show everyone who is logged in, not just those who are posting; this means when someone enters a chat room, that person's name or alias gets posted to the group ("Jane Doe has entered the chat room"). A new participant might feel uncomfortable by this.

Finally, security and confidentiality of participants should be considered before creating an agency-sponsored chat environment. Will participants be using real names and email addresses or aliases? If they use aliases, will the chat room moderator know their real names? Will the discussion be private/password protected, or open to anyone?

Chat Event Tips for Humans
The key to a successful chat event is determining a mission/reason for it, and expressing this mission clearly and effectively to potential participants. Why is real-time communication necessary for your volunteers? What do you want the volunteers to value about the chat? What do you want to happen as a result of a chat?
A successful chat event also takes more than participants -- you will also need people filling these roles:

Facilitator, to keep the group focused, post items to generate appropriate and useful discussions, remind participants of the ground rules or topics for discussion, and sometimes step in to calm nerves when online arguments get out of control. This person also promotes the group to others and explains it potential participants.

Administrator, to help with technical issues/problems, delete/add members, and archive the conversations.

Chats also may require a Moderator to actually filter content, to keep out improper posts (jokes, advertising, insults); and an Expert or Special Guest, representing a particular field or issue, who answers questions from participants.

VOLUNTEERS CAN FILL ALL OF THESE ROLES. Just as with any task, match volunteers to roles based on their experience and interest.
The chat owner must make incentives obvious and valuable to increase and maintain participants' motivation. The information and interaction provided via the chat must be seen as valuable by participants. Some groups emphasize a sense of responsibility in members -- participation is part of their volunteer commitment -- to maintain participation in chats.

Other suggestions:

Make sure the facilitator or moderator of the group, and whomever that person reports to, has experience participating in chats, so that they understand procedures (from both technological and group dynamic perspectives), the dynamics of live online conversations, etc.

Make sure all participants have been told about the purpose and rules for the chat prior to participation

Make sure all participants understand the role of the facilitator or moderator

Encourage new participants to observe a chat for at least a few minutes before actually posting themselves

Send regular reminders about chats to volunteers, highlighting special features of particular online events, such as special guests or a particular topic of focus.

Encourage participants NOT to dominate the conversation. This may mean sending out a regular reminder, or it may mean communicating directly with a particular participant.

Make archives of chats available via your Web site, and remind participants that their posts will be archived and reviewed by others

Send an e-mail to everyone five-10 minutes before the chat, reminding them of the event and encouraging their participation

Welcome people as they enter the chat room, just as you would in a face-to-face meeting

For more on this subject, visit The Moderator's Home Page, Resources for Moderators and Facilitators of Online Discussion, at http://jan.ucc.nau.edu/~mpc3/moderators.html. This is a growing set of resources, mostly scholarly, for moderators of online discussions, including chats, listservs and newsgroups. This is an extensive bibliography of netiquette guides, sample editorial policies, using online discussion groups in classrooms, tips for moderating, and information on teaching online.

Safety in Online Volunteering Programs
Information to help your agency create general safety guidelines for all online volunteering programs, suggestions and examples for those managing programs involving youth as online volunteers, and suggestions for bringing together youth and adult online volunteers.

Using Instant Messaging With Volunteers
UNITeS (www.unites.org), the ICT volunteering initiative of United Nations Volunteers, has created this resource to help illustrate the advantages for using IM to work with volunteers, based on feedback from various online discussion groups, from its own staff experiences, and other resources.

Also see Internet Discussion Groups For Volunteers. Many organizations use e-mail lists or newsgroups for their volunteers. These asynchronus online tools allow agencies to easily make announcements to volunteers, and sometimes also allow volunteers to interact with each other, get suggestions and feedback, and ask questions. They can also serve as a written record of participation, concerns, trends and issues for volunteers. Unlike chats, volunteers can participate whenever they wish, and they don't need special software to do so.

Computer Aided Facilitation Tips
http://www.facilitate.com/Tips/
An excellent list of tips for both those who will faciliate an online discussion group and the agency who will sponsor such. By Facilitate.com, a for-profit company and producer online conferencing tools.

The Facilitator Training Manual by the Stop AIDS Project at http://www.stopaids.org/facilitatormanual/facilitator.html is an excellent example of a detailed, comprehensive guidebook for a volunteer facilitator. This guide is specific to a person faciliating a particular demographic in a face-to-face setting, but much of its recommendations are applicable to facilitating any group, on or offline. Provides suggestions for guiding facilitation, beginning a meeting, active listening, "Summing Up and Moving On," dealing with differences, and challenging participants, and much more!

The Self-Help Sourcebook Online
http://mentalhelp.net/selfhelp/
Sponsored by Mental Health Net. If you are interested in starting or participating in an online or offline self-help group, this resource offers ideas for starting both online and offline groups, how to arrange online support group meetings on commercial networks, how to encourage participation in online support groups, a searchable database of hundreds of national and demonstrational model self-help support groups, and opportunities to link with others to develop needed new national or international groups.

Dr. John Grohol's guide to Starting a New Online Support Group is focused primarily on how to do the technical aspects of setting up a group via e-mail, USENET, a commercial chat site or your own web site.

Preparations and guidelines for chatting online, http://www.safetyed.org/help/chatlive/chatlive.html, by SafetyEd International.

Online Community Toolkit
http://www.fullcirc.com/community/communitymanual.htm
A great set of tools regarding online communities, from what they are to how to facilitate them to sample online community guidelines, rules and member agreements. This collection of helpful articles are by Full Circle Associates Nancy White, Sue Boettcher and Heather Duggan.

Using Online Chats in Lessons
http://henson.austin.apple.com/edres/ellesson/onlinechat.shtml
This is on online lesson for teachers that gives suggestions for use of chats and guidelines for setting up chat sessions in support of curriculum activities, but the tips offered are excellent for anyone interested in setting up a chat, particularly those that may involve youth.

WELL Community Guidelines, at http://www.thewell.com/conf/guidelines.html, are an excellent example of rules for online communities and moderators. Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (WELL) began in 1985, starting with a dialog between the writers and readers of the Whole Earth Review. The WELL is now a "cluster of electronic villages on the Internet." There are more than 260 Conferences open to WELL members, covering subject categories such as "Parenting," "The Future," or "Pop Culture." WELL members have founded advocacy organizations like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and their experiences have been used to explore online culture and community (such as in Howard Rheingold's The Virtual Community.

Groupware Links
http://ww2.UsabilityFirst.com/usability/cscw.html
CSCW or "Computer-Supported Cooperative Work" is the study of how people work together using computer technology. Typical types of applications include email, awareness and notification systems, videoconferencing, chat systems, multi-player games, and realtime shared applications (such as collaborative writing or drawing). This site offers more information about CSCW, as well as many, many helpful links.

These resources were developed originally for The Virtual Volunteering Project and were written and compiled by Jayne Cravens, unless noted otherwise. Thanks to Tegan McLane at the San Jose Children's Musical Theater and Annie Douglas at Sidelines National Support Network for their input for this resource.

All Coyote Communications Tip Sheets are works-in-progress. If you would like to add something to this tip sheet, please e-mail me with your suggestion; if your contribution is used, you will be credited. Please include your name, e-mail address, Web address (if applicable), the name of the company you represent (if any), and any other information you'd like to share.

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Jayne Cravens
Coyote Communications
Services for Mission-Based Organizations
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