1. How to build a community of
volunteers
Lauren Cucinotta

2. How many of you work with or want
to work with volunteers?

3. Where do you find
volunteers?

4. Volunteers are the users that are so
passionate about your product that
they want to take action

5. Working with volunteers
is a balance between...

6. Practical
Emotional

7. Practical
•Scale
•Outreach
•Product
development
•Giving away
control

8. Emotional
•Passion
•Creativity
•Innovation
•Fun

9. A community built on trust

10. Over 10,000 events
~ 1800 active licensees
162 countries

11. Volunteer Communities
• Levo League (Local
Levo)
• Google (City Experts)
• TED Open
Translation Project
• DuoLingo
• Mozilla
• YEC
• The Fetch

12. 3 things to think
about...

13. 1.Where will your business benefit from
volunteers?
2.Where in your workflow will you work
with volunteers?
3. How do you track their impact?

14. Where will you benefit
from volunteers?

15. Some areas =
• Content creation
• Localization/globaliza
tion
• Product development
• Outreach

16. Where in your
workflow do you work
with volunteers?

17. Examples
• Local events
• Local outreach
• QA testing
• Content creation

18. When figuring their role...
• Volunteer community members (do not equal) employees
• Not getting paid
• Not full-time
• Don’t have insider knowledge how the team works, or of the
hard-to-define team dynamic

19. Tips
• Set clear boundaries
• Be realistic
• Be experimental!
• Allow them to decide how much they can take on (they lead,
you facilitate)
• Keep it useful for everyone
• Remind everyone the “reasons why we are here”

20. The structure will change over
time, you won’t know until you
experiment!

21. Tracking the impact of
volunteer programs

22. Content
• What percentage of your content is from
volunteers?
• What percentage of content is what volunteers
do?

23. Outreach
• Do your volunteers reach markets that you can’t?
• How many more people were you able to reach?
• Do they give you local insight?

24. Product development
• Has an idea from a volunteer become a product?
• Do volunteers help with product release and
testing?

25. 7 building blocks of
successful volunteer
programs

26. Passion

27. • Create a product that people can be
passionate about
• Give people the ability to share their passion
How do you harness
passion?

28. Some areas =TEDx

29. Think about...
• What are things about your core product that
people like?
• Where are places that you can put passion into
action?
• Where are there opportunities to share passion?

30. Rules

31. Create parameters to give
you room to play

32. YEC

33. TEDx

34. Think about...
• What are the minimum parameters you would feel
comfortable with?
• Rules will change over time
• Give them the tools they need to carry out
responsibilities effectively

35. Mission

36. Why are we here?

37. Mozilla

38. Duolingo

39. A mission promotes
community, collaboration,
and can even diffuse
conflict

40. How can you do it?
• Write a manifesto co-created by you and your
volunteers
• Repeat a common phrase/ethos in communication
• Create the feeling in meetings, and in person
events

41. Empowerment

42. Empowerment is the
opposite of control

43. Levo League

44. How can you give volunteers
the freedom to innovate?

45. Recognition

46. Recognition is your
currency

47. How can you give recognition?
• Thank you!
• Credit
• Public
acknowledgement
• Title
• Badges

48. Google City Experts

49. Engagement

50. How do you keep people
interested in what they are
doing? And coming back for
more?

51. Examples
• Community education
• Events
• Leadership opportunities
• Connections
Examples

52. TEDx

53. Provide opportunities for
connection, growth and
new frontiers

54. Impact

55. We all want to work on
something we feel is
important

56. How can you make
volunteers feel they are
making a difference?

57. TEDx

58. Practical
Emotional

59. Trust is essential

60. Collaborate, build,
experiment with and
empower your
volunteers