[Photo credit: AVP Volunteer 2 by yuan2003, on Flickr]

As any charitable organization knows, volunteers are superstars. They give love and expertise and don’t ask for a dime in return. They can be especially helpful if your organization has a website. Bearing in mind that an entire Web development project is long-term and requires dedicated knowledge and commitment that you’re better off hiring someone to do (upshot: it’s easier to fire someone whose work you’re not happy with), there are still plenty of other tasks you can assign out to people who want to help. Here are a few.

1. Social networking cheerleader
2. Add comments to blogs
3. Contribute blog entries
4. Participate in discussion on bulletin boards
5. Data entry (i.e., cutting and pasting info into a new site)
6. Website promotion
7. Adding your website to directories
8. Writing news updates about events
9. Website literacy workshops
10. Checking for dead links
11. Updating old content
12. Convert press releases for websites
13. Usability testing (i.e., make sure everything works in a logical way)
14. Bug reporting (i.e., look for and report errors or problems)
15. Identify requirements for new development
16. Browser testing
17. Taking pictures for the website
18. Formatting and uploading pictures
19. Making videos for the site
20. Uploading videos onto a service like YouTube or Vimeo, and adding them to site
21. Help manage wiki

Anything we missed? Add your ideas below.

Come to the 2009 Massachusetts Conference on Service and Volunteering from the Mass Service Alliance June 4 in Marlborough, MA, and you can hear Monique Cuvelier of Talance, Inc., present on how to use YouTube in your volunteering programs. You’ll see some examples of organizations that are doing it well, and how volunteers can help spread awareness.

It’s the special session on social media at the end of the conference. We’ll also be doing a drawing for a $300 Talance gift certificate, which you can use for web development or web strategy consulting, and a copy of Jill Friedman Fixler’s excellent book Boomer Volunteer Engagement: Collaborate Today, Thrive Tomorrow, published by Volunteer Match.

Plus you can pick up a free – yes, free! – copy of our 2009 Massachusetts Non-Profit Social Media Report at our table in the poster session.

Hope to see you there!

[Welcome to the Talance Friendly E-mail Newsletter. This is text of the issue our e-mail subscribers just received. Sign up on the lower right-hand side of the Talance homepage.]

Hi, Friends!

If a picture is worth a thousand words, how many words is a video worth? And how much is that video worth if it travels virally, propelled by someone other than you, and saves you effort and boosts awareness of your organization?

In short, a lot.

Many of you have figured that out already. You turn to YouTube to learn about other organizations, for tutorials and movies from your friends and colleagues. And you’ve seen that free and wide-reaching video-sharing sites not only let you tell a story through moving pictures, but they open up the conversation to your fans. This means they can sing your praises for you, and you have a chance to build a stronger relationship with them.

We’re so excited to be presenting on just this topic at Massachusetts Service Alliance’s 2009 Conference on Service and Volunteering on June 4 in Marlborough, Mass. Learn more and register here: http://www.mass-service.org/

Our own Monique Cuvelier will be presenting the closing session, Using YouTube in Volunteer Programs. We hope you can come and learn a bit about engaging volunteers through video and share some of your stories. We’ll also be holding a drawing for a $300 Talance gift certificate and a copy of Jill Friedman-Fixler’s book Boomer Volunteer Engagement: Collaborate Today, Thrive Tomorrow.

If you can’t make it, but you’re on Twitter, you can follow the discussion at #MCVS.

Remember that Talance is offering a 30-minute free webinar on Does Twitter Matter for Non-Profits?, Tuesday, June 23, 2009 from 2-2:30pm Eastern. Learn how you can make sense of this madly growing tool and how it applies to you.

»Register for this free webinar now!

Have a technology question? Ask it, and we’ll answer! We answer a reader question in the blog every week for the benefit of everybody. We’ll review your question before posting (don’t be shy about asking – no question is stupid!) and get back to you with a response.

»Ask a Tech Question

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Talance has helped clients launch scores of projects, ranging from websites to online newsletters to CRM projects. Please click here to schedule a time to talk about your next project or to request a proposal.

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Jill Friedman Fixler, one of the country’s top experts in helping nonprofits work with volunteers, has just published a book, bound to be a hit: Boomer Volunteer Engagement.

It shows organizations step-by-step how to engage Baby Boomers as volunteers to build organizational capacity. It’s a great idea, especially because nonprofits can expect a growing Boomer workforce to start pitching in.

Check it out!

Volunteers are a gift to a nonprofit website. The problem is, well, they’re volunteers. You’re counting on them to help out, but you’ve got respect their time and other limitations. A salary is a powerful incentive you can’t use with a volunteer.

It’s a chronic limitation for synagogue websites. The webmaster for a New York-based synagogue was talking about this with me the other day. She said, “One of the biggest challenges, of course, is that the site is managed on a fully volunteer basis and there is only so much time I can devote to it.”

We effectively face the same challenge with Talance’s company website – we squeeze in enhancements between other client projects. But knowing that anyone who comes to our website forms judgments on the quality of work we do based on what they see there, we also know it’s vitally important to keep performing upgrades.

My solution is to set up what equates to a project management checklist with a priority number next to each task and put it in a central location. Whenever a team member (including myself) has a bit of free time, we just pick something off the list and do it. It seems easier to attack in bite-sized bits, and things do eventually get done.

We have our own project management software we use, but you might look at Google Calendars and Docs & Spreadsheets for hosting a centrally accessible spreadsheet you can use for a tasklist. I think simpler is always better when it comes to tracking a project.