Idea Center - July 2010 Archives
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How chapters & social media are alike
My aha for the day (maybe the week or month!): associations are approaching social media the same way they approach chapters and other components. The aha came out of reading an insightful post from Scott Gould on How I Profile A Community’s Participation To Inform Next Actions. About four paragraphs into what Scott warns at the start is a long post, there is the statement that triggered by aha:
Relationship is participation with one another.
Two thoughts followed my aha. First, that explains a lot about why associations are reticent to embrace social media for as with components, success requires they “give up” control while steadfastly remaining committed to supporting the efforts. Second, it’s just likely that associations will have a forever “love-hate” relationship with social media as they do components (particularly chapters!) because it’s seen as a competition. Of course there is a more compelling reason to figure out how to effectively operate in the social media sphere than there ever was on the components side. This is all tied into the fact that social media or media 2.0 is a game-changing force. So just maybe, associations will succeed in this arena more so than the components arena. This was certainly be true if we’re willing follow the lead of folks like Scott.
Scott’s post goes on to provide a very interesting approach to profile participation specifically to fuel group action and I highly recommend you read further. And while you do, consider these similarities between social media and components and ask if we truly embark on building our skills and shifting our culture to embrace the power of the social media, can we apply this throughout our associations? Will this equip us with creating the association of the future that embraces social as a way of being (no-one says it better than Jeff De Cagna) and lets us grow all our networks – including chapters, SIGs, CoPs, councils, groups, fans, etc.?
Social Media & Components both are:
- Built on community
- Built by participation
- Reflections of the community involved
- All about sharing and shared beliefs, experiences, needs, wishes …
- Driven by collaboration and co-creation
- Out of our (HQ’s) control
- Going to exist with or without us (HQ)
- Having a profound effect on our brands (good, bad, indifferent)
- Having a profound effect on our bottom line – they drive engagement which drives dollars
In what other ways do you see the two similar? And can creating a culture in which one thrives, help the other too as well?
Taggies Target Fab Nonprofit Tag Lines
Taggies is the nickname for the 2010 Getting Attention Nonprofit Tagline Awards & Report created by Nancy Schwartz, who works with nonprofits and publishes Getting Attention blog and e-newsletter. This year the awards added a new category for programs – like your volunteer program. In fact, Robert Rosenthal, from Engaging Volunteers sent out a call to all nonprofits to do just that. I think the call is really to grab our attention on the importance of having a tagline.
We know how important volunteers are to us. Yet we spend far less money, time and marketing effort on selling our volunteer programs. My partner and I taught a series of courses on developing volunteer management programs for the Nonprofit Leadership Development Program at Anne Arundel Community College in which we included an entire section on marketing. We pointed to successful brands like the American Red Cross volunteer and the Girl Scout Leader as examples of organizations that really understood the value of creating a volunteer brand.
Associations haven’t embraced this though. Have you seen or heard of a tagline used by an association for its volunteer program? A Google search turned up nada. I think it’s because we focus so intently on the organization’s tagline and those cool taglines for membership campaigns and conventions. What if we shifted some of that effort to creating a brand for member volunteer program? Volunteers are after all our engaged members. Highly engaged members after all drive retention, acquisition and participation. So there’s an ROI here for those that need that to trigger action.
I did find some interesting ideas which associations could build on…
- Produce Marketing Association’s volunteer page headline (that could become a tagline): “be the face of change.”
- American Water Works Association’s get involved page calls volunteers the “cornerstone on which AWWA was built.” Could the tagline be “We are the cornerstone”?
- Volunteer Pilots Association’s tagline is People Flying People in Need – yes the tagline is the association’s tagline but it’s also the volunteer tagline by virtue of the fact that the association is all-volunteer.
- Young Alumni Volunteer Association’s tagline is Connecting People Through Volunteering which could work as a volunteer tagline for any of us.
- American Marketing Association’s tagline is marketingpower … could they use networkingpower for their volunteer efforts?
- The Virtual Volunteer Project has an interesting recruitment tagline: Don’t Just Surf, Volunteer and list of other options (most of which are pretty lame) including “Click into Action” that might get you thinking
And my favorite:
- Professional Volunteering – the killer app! This is the headline for a blog posting by one of my fan association volunteer’s Nick Senzee written way back in 2006.
If you need some help working on a winning tagline, check out Nancy’s pointers from “The Perfect Association Tagline” from AssociationBizNow or in her article “What Makes A Strong Tagline Work,” Communications News, December 2009, ASAE & The Center.
And in any case, take 3 minutes now to enter your nonprofit’s taglines. The deadline for entering is July 28. All entrants will receive a free copy of the fully-updated 2010 Nonprofit Tagline Report in late 2010. It’s billed as “the only complete guide to building your organizational, program, fundraising or special event brand in 8 words or less—filled with how-tos, don’t-dos and models,” so it’s gotta be worth the 3-minutes.
Buzz2010 Inside Wisdom on Chapter Relations
I couldn’t attend the second installment of Buzz 2010 this past Tuesday (enjoying vacation) but was delighted to see the twitter stream and the recaps from a number of great sources including Jamie Notter’s Polices are good. Relationships are better. And the kernel I picked up from Jamie is really wisdom from Wendy Harman at the American Red Cross: if one of her chapters isn't in compliance, instead of a cease and desist letter, she reaches out to the chapter and asks how she can help. She is investing in the future (building relationships) while working through a troubling situation today.
How many times in our day do we stop to remind chapters what they haven’t done or have done wrong vs asked them how we can help?
As Jamie noted so perfectly: “Asking for help will contribute to building a relationship. Telling someone to stop doing something or you'll call a lawyer damages relationships.”
More coverage on Buzz 2010:
- Twitter stream on #buzz2010
- SocialFish (yep the creative minds behind it all!)
- Biznow
Missed the first two? Check out videos (the second will be available August 11th). And, don’t miss the third and final on August 18th Social Media ROI with Brand strategist Olivier Blanchard.
Beyond the Quiz
Rebecca Leaman's post on Wild Apricot blog got a number of us (including my post on E-harmony for Volunteers) started in reflecting on quizzes for volunteers. We are always looking for ways to reach out and engage members as volunteers. Quizzes give us another way of doing that but Robert Rosenthal challenges us to look at where these quizzes drop would-be volunteers off in his post Turning Prospects into Happy Volunteers. That's a good question and he gives us a example to consider with the WE Tv quiz which takes the volunteer just short of the real destination.
The point of this post though is to direct you to the real destination because its a cool example of how we can aggregate all the volunteer opportunities for our associations into one portal and then match members to opportunities based on interest and geography (and yes think global as well as local). That would really help power our chapters and districts as well as our national needs. I figure this could feed a number of our needs like:
- Strenghtening our brand across the country and the world
- Building engagement at many levels
- Collecting engagement data (or at least interest) on members on the local level
- Building a stronger volunteer database
- Making volunteering more visible - which enhances the retention message on several levels
An A+ for this Leadership Development Workshop
The Promotional Pro
ducts Association International (PPAI) hosted the 2010 Regional Association Council’s 11th annual Leadership Development Workshop (LDW) last month in Grapevine, Texas. And while it was focused on its 175 executive directors and volunteer leaders from all 28 regional associations, it offered lessons – and lots of ideas – for associations which are planning leadership conferences.
I had an inside view and the opportunity to give the keynote Back to the Future for Associations and a break-out session The Secrets to Creating an Exceptional Volunteer Experience. I took away so many great ideas on logistics, on involving the members and leaders in the planning and the event, on managing volunteers and more. And I relished the opportunity to be at a volunteer and staff event that had an abundance of energy.
There were so many reasons for that energy. According to PPAI’s Senior Manager of Regional Relations, Laura McKinney, CAE, the huge hit this year were “the First Timers Buttons … and we will build on that success with a First Timers Orientation in 2011. I would suggest this small but powerful piece to anyone putting on an event. It engaged our first timers very quickly with each other, the RAC Board, the not-so-first timers and the presenters.”
Laura was an instrumental force in the event and is someone any components relations person should chat with if you are interested in building a great program and relationship with regional organizations.
Here are some of things I picked up from the event and Laura:
- It starts with the speaker prep. As a speaker I received timely updates as the event was planned, gentle reminders, useful background on the audience, and an easy to use customized intro slide
- Then to help us create better presentations, we received two links: Jeffrey Cufaude’s article on how to “Make your handouts suitable for framing” and Seth Godin’s post on avoiding creating Really Bad Powerpoints.
- Awaiting attendees in the opening session room were paperboard coasters with the message “Effective Boards Focus on What” Not “How”. Great “opening” thought!
- They began with event with a full-day program focused on ED’s – The Executive Directors Learning Forum. Too often we don’t focus on the EDs but they are often the glue that holds a local group together and can be the national office’s BF.
- The program offered 33 sessions of which 15 were on brand new topics chosen based on attendees’ needs and input. This made the event a true leadership conference. Some of the new topics included “Budget Puzzlers” (on non-dues revenue), “Board Building Blocks” and “Why Y? Generations of Volunteers & Now You’ll Know Y”.
- One new feature were a series of Learning Labs at the end of day 1 where you gathered by domain (membership, professional development, tradeshow, leadership) to being pulling together a master calendar for each association. The Master Calendars are a great tool – provided by PPAI – that helps leaders plot out their year in a way that supports good planning, decision-making and priority-setting. Its rally becomes a masterpiece. Attendees were introduced to in the general session so they could actually use it throughout all the sessions.
- One-on-one consulting sessions with PPAI staff in professional development and marketing were a popular feature.
- RAC Bucks were a fun element that let us speakers get into the game. RAC Bucks are monopoly-type money that we got to distribute to attendees as a “reward” during our session to highlight attendee participation. I gave out RAC bucks for great questions, sparking an idea, offering a solution, being enthusiastic, and in one case for simply disagreeing with me. Why? Well, if we don’t challenge each other we don’t really learn. At the closing session, these bucks bought attendees cool prizes.
- SOBs (Speakers Out of the Box) Lego people were also given out throughout the conference. These built into a district dinner creations another teambuilding activity (check out the photos!).
- Encouragement for first-time attendees! PPAI covers the registration costs for up to five members from each Regional Affiliate and two of the five must be first-time attendees. That’s how they got 40% of attendees as first-timers.
- Discourage multi-tasking by requiring cell phones be silenced in a friendly way. If you’re cell phone went off you had to make a $5 donation to the foundation.
- Flip the cocktail hour. The opening dinner was in fact dinner followed by open bar social hour. This allowed people to eat at a reasonable hour and then socialize as long as they wanted.
- Great giveaways including a tee shirt, bag and handy binder (see the photos).
- Robust event website with a full resource section with all the handouts which reduced paper!
- Of course they also actively used Facebook – both an event page and RAC page – and Twitter hashtag #ldw2010. While there wasn’t a lot of activity there, these efforts tied into the sessions on social media and gave attendees that hands-on learning opportunity.
The entire event earned an A+.
Volunteering Made Easy
Office Depot has it right - customers want things to be easy. That goes for busy members as well. We need to make it easy to volunteer. ASAE's Decision To Volunteer study and countless others tell us volunteers want to easily be able to find the right opportunity, sign up and do it. What's interesting is that community service volunteering has really taken this to heart and there are countless of new portals that facilitate that. Associations on the other hand still put up barriers like:
- Working off a "call for volunteers" schedule that gives potential volunteers basically one door to enter.
- Designing visible volunteer opportunities around traditional governance positions (you know what I mean, committees, chairs, officers ...).
- Requiring long forms that collect all sorts of information that in the end isn't really used (and to often exists in our databases and files).
What if modeled our efforts after the community service organizations? And what if we pooled like associations together to promote volunteering just as these community service groups do? Here are couple of neat portals I recently found – and notice that they all put “easy” in their title:
- Do-It – Volunteering Made Easy – love the bright look!
- One-Brick … Volunteering Made Easy – notice the call “Become An Event Manager” – better than become a volunteer
- Volunteering Made Easy – takes the call up a notch and serves as a full resource for organizations and volunteers
- VolunteerSpot … Doing Good Just Got Easier – Provides a neat tool for coordinating volunteers
Even if you can’t rebuild your portal, reframing the call is a first good step. Check out how The American Academy of Ophthalmology’s Young Ophthalmologists framed their call in “Volunteering Made Easy: Three Ways to Use Your Passions and Skills for Good.”
We just can’t get enough … basics
Over the past
two months I have had the chance to spend time with nearly 1000 volunteer leaders and many chapter executives from a wide spectrum of associations – promotional product professionals, family physicians, diabetes educators, case managers, subcontractors, principals, event professionals, public relations professionals… . I am awed by the dedication they show and the enthusiasm they share. And I am troubled by the fact that one recurring bit of angst comes up over and over: we can’t get enough volunteers.
Here are excited, dedicated members saying one of their toughest problems is getting more of them. I think it’s a lot like the conversation I hear when I’m talking with other parents. We just can’t get our kids to be more like us.
The problem is that we’re stuck in the thinking that we’re the only model. And, we’re so plugged in that we forget what’s its like to not be plugged in. So we skimp on some of the very basics.
So getting back to basics, here are some rules we can live by and habits to break.
7 Rules You Can Live By
- Create a welcoming environment – say “hello,” “please” and “thank you”
- Match your needs to people – work in opposite direction identifying needs and then looking for people with requisite skills; avoid the Peter Principle: don’t over-promote
- State expectations clearly – define a job well done; ask for public acceptance & commitment early (what will be done by when)
- 4. Coach & Mentor regularly – it’s about giving constructive feedback tackling positives & negatives (don’t sandbag!)
- Communicate frequently – keep everyone in the loop and up-to-date; avoid surprises
- Reward volunteers – Meaningful Reward = what is of value to volunteer + affordable/appropriate for organization
- Re-purpose volunteers to avoid burn-out
8 Habits to Break
- Give a job/task that doesn’t make a difference!
- Delegate a job and … then take it back.
- Delegate a job that is never done … offers no chance to celebrate completion.
- Fail to explain what’s expected of the volunteer.
- Fail to have an end date.
- Hold endless, pointless board meetings.
- Discuss the same topic or issue over and over and over again.
- Disregard generational differences.
And, as a bonus, here are 2 Actions We Can Take:
- Ask … 9 out 10 say YES when asked; 40% initially volunteer because they are asked!
- Listen … for the WIIFM
The other day in the middle of dinner my kid challenged me to listen. Guess what. I did. And he’s different than me. And that’s good.
What will it take for you to feel the same about your volunteers?
E-Harmony for Volunteers
The “trick” to building your volunteer base is matching members to the right job. Making a good match is as much art as science. The trouble is that in associations we haven’t been even practicing the science much less the art. Instead, what we do is list the jobs we need done and then put out a call.
What if we turned the process on its head? What if we applied a little e-harmony/match.com science and art to the process? E-harmony has its 29 Dimensions ® of Compatibility. What if associations did the same?
It seems that I am not alone in wondering this. Rebecca Leaman over at the Wild Apricot blog found a number of very interesting quizzes for volunteers to discover their type and find a good volunteer match. I took most of them and found that they really seemed to zero in on me as a volunteer. I liked best the questions on the Readiness Quiz from workopolis.com though because they made me think about my “readiness” over my type. But, the others really asked me questions about me and pointed me in a direction.
It would be interesting to figure out the questions that bridge these two – that help members really assess if they are ready and also show them that based on their assessment, they can find a place that truly fits.
A couple of years ago, we created a simply Volunteer Self- Assessment that addresses at least half of the question:
A Volunteer Self-Assessment
The best part about being an [association – insert yours] volunteer is …
The greatest strength I bring to volunteering is …
The most challenging part of being a volunteer anywhere is …
The area of weakness for me in my volunteer role with [association] is …
The skills and abilities I’m successfully using in my [association] volunteer work are ...
I want/need to improve the following skills to make my [association] experience more successful:
How do you match your members to volunteer opportunities?
Always in search of ideas.
