"These live, instantaneous interactions can help strengthen the bonds between participants and help build community. "

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 others to review; other participants respond, and their comments are immediately available for review as well.

Chats can be hosted on your own Web site, or, they can be hosted by another company's web site or system. However, when meeting in a chat room hosted by a third party, your conversation is usually not private -- anyone can enter the chat room, and they are privy to whatever you have to say. Your chat room may not be easy to find by someone who wasn't contacted directly about its location, but the possibility of it being found is still there.

Instant pager/chat applications, a form of direct messaging, offer more privacy. To work, all of the participants have to have the same kind of pager/chat software; a user signs on to the Internet and then launches the pager/chat program. A few moments later, users see a list of anyone else that is also logged on in the chat room and running the software, and everyone can then engage in an entirely private chat session.

Chats can be a 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, say, an e-mail list.

Other organizations have used chat rooms to bring volunteers and clients together online (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, on-site 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 have asked the VV Project about holding online board meetings via live chats. You can definitely hold discussions (with no voting) this way, but not all states 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 a list serv or newsgroup, although sometimes, people write thoughts they might never say in-person (see our information on Online Culture for more information).

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 usually 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 or 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, 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 Tips for Humans
The key to a successful chat 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 also takes more than participants -- you will also need people filling these roles:

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:

Visit http://www.serviceleader.org/vv/chatware.html for more information on  where to find chat rooms and software