Idea Center - November 2010 Archives
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Thanking & Recognizing Volunteers - Take 2
This week
’s #assnchat was all about Recognizing & Thanking Volunteers. Great topic for Thanksgiving week!
It’s an interesting topic for this group because we are all volunteers and in fact this whole program is volunteer-created and run. KiKi L’Italien is the fiercest of us all by week after week moderating this hour-long Tweetchat on association topics – without pay! So let me start this post with a public THANKYOU to KiKi! And a public thank you for Jeff De Cagna, who with his volunteer hat on began this wonderful chat series.
As the conversation worked around the issue, it struck me that this is an issue which continues to burn brightly. To attract interest and lots of discussion. Why, I ask, are we still in need of asking and discussing this topic? Why indeed are we in associations still struggling at all in this area? We were founded by volunteers. We are fueled by volunteers. We are volunteer-organizations.
I have a theory. And it comes out of watching this volunteer-led #assnchat and other ASAE-volunteer endeavors – which are by-and-large successful. We don’t see our association’s volunteers as peers. We see them as a resource. We see them as “kids.” We see them as customers. And since our volunteers generally show up regardless, we put our focus on ourselves. We focus on getting our task list done. As association executives who are volunteering together, we see each other as peers. We do a good job of thanking and recognizing each other.
Watch as volunteers in your association recognize each other. They lavish praise. They give each other gifts.
If we took that same respect to our association’s volunteers I wonder if we’d just do better at thanking and recognizing. I wonder if it would just become so commonplace that it would be non-topic?
To get that, we do need to be deliberate in our intentions. And from today’s chat there were several good examples of how we can be deliberate. For example, we chatted about tracking volunteer activity. Most associations just aren’t doing it. I always wonder why not? In our AMSs it’s a no-brainer to track basic demographics, member categories, dues paid, donations, registrations and subscriptions. Why is it that volunteer activity isn’t just another set of fields?
We also talked about how to keep volunteers involved by having path through the organization. As Cecilia Sepp smartly noted “I don't like when volunteers are pushed out after years of hard work. It's like ‘we got what wanted & now we don't know you.’” We are so focused on filling the board that we forget or just don’t put our attention to all the other roles in our organizations that members can fill. We don’t think life-time volunteer. Well if we want a life-time member, we better start!
For more ideas on thanking and recognizing, check out the full chat, and a couple of past posts on this blog: best ways to recognize; spreading love; and a New Year’s Resolution: Thanking volunteers.
Happy Thanksgiving to all!
Get Used to Sharing Control!
Before I finished reading Maddie Grant and Lindy Dreyer’s book Open Community I was already raving about it. I passed it around the room of the leadership conference where I was speaking. I had earmarked page 48 “Get Used to Sharing Control.” My presentation and workshop was focused on business planning for state groups. And this chapter of 3 paragraphs summed up the biggest challenge and greatest opportunity for chapters in a way I couldn’t: “you are, in essence, sharing control…”.
Yes these three paragraphs are about on-line communities. But the message isn’t confined to the world of the web. No matter what community you are talking about and working with the issue of sharing control is a key to success. I actually think of it as sharing destiny. You see when we all share the same goal, all yearn for the same destiny, it’s not a matter of who’s got control. It’s a matter of assigning jobs and making it happen. When you are a chapter in the midst of putting together your annual plan, it can’t be about who’s in charge but about who’s on the team to get the job done. It has to be about sharing responsibility and therefore control.
I love Maddie and Lindy’s closing statement for this chapter: “That’s a whole new kind of control, and your community is your safety net.”
As I read this chapter, there is also a clear message for national staff as they look at their virtual and face-to-face communities. In both cases, sharing control lets the community take ownership and in that act they become a driven community. A driven, engaged community serves its members and achieves goals. An engaged community - be it on land or in the ethernet - is your safety net!
How do we help communities become safety nets? As national association staff, we need to determine what rules and policies are critical from a legal and risk standpoint and get rid of the rest of them. we need to shed old structures and ancient bylaws. These freedoms allow communities to set the boundaries that make sense to them; It allows them to choose the goals that will make a difference to them. It allows them to thrive.
There are many other messages in the book including an intriguing chapter entitled “Citizens versus members.” Now there’s another conversation! So just go buy it. And watch for more about the book since I'm proud to say we're on the virtual book tour!
A Game-changer for Chapter Awards
The National Association of Realtors "2010 NAR Game Changer contest" is a winning idea - twice. The contest is a fresh take on the chapter award. It also became a fresh take on how to jumpstart new ideas and new energy at the local level. And, it really is a fresh take on how to support chapters.
In a nutshell, NAR asked its local executives what game-changing program or project would they love to try if they had the resources. A panel of judges then sifted through 250+ submissions, selected about a dozen which NAR then both funded and provided access to a professional consultant to assist in implementation. NAR also gave a cash prize to a number of runner-ups.
That is neat enough. But it gets better. Ideas - even those implemented - too often go unshared. To keep that from happening, NAR created the typical "database" of ideas for leaders to look out, the typical listing of winners to peruse and the very untypical Game! That's right - a GAME (with a slick host and sidekick).
In one project NAR:
- Motivated state and local leaders to think outside the box (and rewarded them for doing so!)
- Used an innovative approach to increasing financial support to their local and state groups (great R&D for the whole association too!)
- Created an exciting - and easy-to-use - way to categorize, store and share ideas
- Gave their very busy (and likely overwhelmed) state and local execs a bevy of "tried" ideas with details
- Boosted national's value proposition for states
- And got their constituents talking about them (read Judith Lindenau's super account)
I am going to quess there was one additional beneft to this project: staff excitement.
Do you have a game-changer to share?
Truths About Volunteering #19
Don't make me "ask permission from the mother ship."
This quip is from an ASAE listserv posted today by a CRP (component relations professional) who's asking for advice on how to respond. It's also a quip that I've expressed in my volunteer roles and have heard endlessly. How to respond? Another volunteer responded plainly: "Paint a clear picture of what the end game is, then let me figure out the how".
A Volunteer's Story: Kelley Gillespie
This time, we talked with Kelley Gillespie, special event planner and president of GEM Events who splits her time between association volunteering with International Special Events Society-Greater Washington Chapter (ISES DC) and philanthropic volunteering with the March of Dimes and her children’s school The Langley School in McLean VA. Kelley looks to volunteering as a way to connect and stay connected to her profession and her community.
I feel passionate about ISES DC and March of Dimes, but there are different motivations for volunteering. ISES DC is about networking and keeping up-to-date on trends in the special event industry while March of Dimes is philanthropic, purely a way to give back to the community.
Kelley joined ISES DC in 1996 at the invitation of several colleagues. At the time, ISES DC was the only association dedicated to the special events professional, so she saw it as an opportunity to get to know others in the industry. For the first few years, her involvement was sporadic. Then in 2004, she was asked to serve on the board. A strong believer in volunteerism, she readily agreed, and since that first ‘yes,’ has served as VP of Membership (2004-2006), President Elect (2006-07), President (2007-08), Past President (2008-09), and Co-chair for the 2009 Expo.
Kelley’s involvement with ISES DC allows her the chance to get to know others in the special events planning community, the chance to continually learn about changes in the industry (i.e., the newest products), and the chance to connect with vendors necessary to her own success. She’s the first to say that she gets as much from the association as she gives.
On the personal side, Kelley is an active board member with March of Dimes Maryland – National Capital Area since 2004. Her tenure has included communications chair and events chair. She currently serves as the Division Chair of the Washington DC Division. Kelley became active with March of Dimes as a response to her own experiences of having a premature baby in 2000. Again, she was asked to serve on the board, a chance she quickly seized wanting to give back to an organization that helped her with her own struggles. Finally, Kelley is quick to help out in her children’s school since her oldest entered pre-school several years ago. Kelley describes her volunteer work with March of Dimes as a way to give back to a medical community that saved her son’s life. Likewise, her volunteerism with her children’s school is a way to connect with the school community and show her appreciation for the school’s mission.
Regardless of the differences between her reasons for choosing to volunteer for each organization, Kelley finds the experiences rewarding on all levels. During Kelly’s time as president of ISES DC, the chapter won an ISES International award for the 2007 Expo. This was especially thrilling because it meant the whole chapter was recognized for the collective efforts of its members. On the philanthropic side, as Event Chair for March of Dimes, Kelley successfully increased the size and scope of one of their main fundraisers, Signature Chef Auction, by doubling the proceeds and tripling the size of the committee. Kelly served as chair for four years, and has spent the last two as an active member on the committee.
Now Kelley, who joined each board after being asked, is doing much of the asking encouraging others to volunteer, and trying to find ways to keep them engaged: "There are people who volunteer and people who don’t. I always have, and as someone who is now trying to recruit, I’m interested in what is it that makes people volunteer. I’m also interested in seeing what kinds of people volunteer and how they are connected to the organization. Finally, when I talk to people on the committees, I ask them ‘why are you motivated and how can I keep you motivated?"
Have a story to share? Tell us. And connect with us on our Association Volunteers!
Technology and the College Student
In her post on October 14, 2010, Peggy writes about how new technology is making its way into the education system. As a 'non-traditional college student' (which means it’s been a long time since I graduated from high school!), I too have been introduced to a new way of learning.
Take one class I participated in just last spring where two groups of college students from two city universities were sent into the streets of Central Baltimore to find some creative inspiration. What did we do with all these creative musings? We created the Wiki page, Writing Central Baltimore; a collaborative literary database of the fiction and non-fiction writings by students from the School of Communications Design of the University of Baltimore (UB) and The Writing Seminar of Johns Hopkins University (JHU).
Mentored by instructors Jane Delury (UB) and Tristan Davies (JHU), we spent the semester discovering the past, present, and possible future of Central Baltimore focusing on four historic neighborhoods: Barclay, Greenmount West, Charles North, and Old Goucher. Based what we discovered, we each wrote a series of short sketches, participated in a group project, and created an individual project spanning several pages with internal and external links. As you can see, the imagination soon ran wild with stories about long walks, baseball, lost history, and environmental and social issues.
I’ll admit that, at first, the experience was a bit daunting for this 50-something college student, but the final payoff was more than I could have imagined. I not only worked on my writing skills, but I also learned a bit about the technical side of the wiki page (although don’t ask me for advice), and the power of social media: The Jones Falls Watershed Association, who was valuable to my research for a project about the Jones Falls, promptly linked to our pages. What’s more, Writing Central Baltimore will continue to grow with plans for future classes to collaborate and add to its content, proving that the era of the standard college class is coming to an end as social media tools such as the Wiki become more accessible.
So I guess my experience shows that collaboration, social media tools, and the right incentives really do drive creativity!
Important Tidbit! The project was supported by a grant from the Central Baltimore Partnership, the Central Baltimore Higher Education Collaborative, and a Provost's Grant for Innovation in the Arts from Johns Hopkins University.
Always in search of ideas.
