Tag Archives: leadership

For Executive Directors: It’s Time for Mandates Regarding Volunteering Engagement.

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graphic representing volunteers at work

Volunteer engagement is not going to expand, nor be worthwhile, at any nonprofit unless senior management does more than pay it lip service.

Nonprofit executive directors: you cannot keep treating volunteer engagement strategies from the point of view of “Wouldn’t it be nice if…” You can’t keep crossing your fingers and hope it somehow happens or that problems somehow work themselves out. Because none of that is going to happen on its own. You can’t just encourage volunteer engagement – it’s time for you to REQUIRE it.

Executive directors must MANDATE certain activities regarding volunteer engagement at their organizations, with some or all staff, or it won’t happen – or it won’t be successful and may, in fact, create frustration, disappointments, public relations problems, even safety and safeguarding problems.

What mandates regarding volunteer engagement look like:

  • Nonprofit executive directors include requirements for volunteer engagement in certain paid job roles – meaning certain staff have to include a goal of involving volunteers in their work. And when performance review time comes around, executive directors must look at how well each manager has – or has not – involved volunteers in their programs, and take necessary corrective action.
  • Nonprofits must provide regular training for all staff expected to work with volunteers and must provide time for staff to take part in workshops and to read about different aspects of volunteer engagement (screening, recruitment for diversity, safeguarding, etc.). And those expected to work with volunteers should have official opportunities to provide feedback to judge how well the executive director is supporting these capacity-building activities.
  • Nonprofits must have a systemic, well-thought-out process, IN WRITING, for onboarding volunteers, training volunteers, supporting volunteers, getting feedback from volunteers, and tracking information about volunteer engagement, as well as a way to generate performance reports on all of the aforementioned.
  • Executive directors must address volunteer engagement problems directly and as immediately as possible, like managers not following the official process to onboard volunteers, or managers not responding to questions or requests from volunteers in a timely manner – and that includes reviewing the performance of managers who are volunteers themselves.

I can feel the aversion from some readers. MANDATE volunteer engagement?! That’s not nice! It’s so harsh! Gee – we require staff to follow accounting procedures, we require staff to follow human resources policies, we measure staff performance on how well they communicate their work with management and other staff, how well they get along with other staff and clients, etc. and take corrective action when they come up short… Why have requirements for other business processes but NOT for volunteer engagement?

I’m not saying every staff member at a nonprofit has to involve volunteers. It’s not appropriate nor realistic for every staff member to involve volunteers. But if you, the executive director, do not mandate volunteer engagement in the job roles of those staff members you DO want to involve volunteers, and if you don’t support staff members in engaging and supporting those volunteers, volunteer engagement isn’t going to happen – or it’s going to be substandard and may, in fact, create something more than just frustration at your program.

If you are a nonprofit executive director and you need to learn more so that you can be a better manager of volunteer engagement at your organizaton, start with reading From the Top Down: The Executive Role in Successful Volunteer Involvement. I consider it mandatory material for any nonprofit executive director. It’s worth every minute you spend reading it.

You can also peruse my own materials on the essentials of volunteer engagement (free).

And if you think engaging volunteers is easy and that your staff should be magically better at it, consider that your board of directors is made up entirely of volunteers. How much support do YOU need to work with your board members, even to just manage a meeting? Why do you think your staff needs less time and support for working with volunteers than you do with the board? No mandates work without providing appropriate support.

If you have benefited from this blog, my other blogs, or other parts of my web site and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

Fans of Superheroes Are Acting Like Superheroes

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Back in the 1990s, I noticed online communities of fans for the X-Files, Xena, Buffy: the Vampire Slayer, other TV shows and various entertainers and sports teams engaging in volunteering, activism and philanthropy. It was more than virtual volunteering: it was the creation of intentional communities, where fans used their passion and sense of fellowship to support a variety of good causes. I noted that many of these online groups weren’t directed by any formal organization to engage in philanthropy; the fans decided to engage in these activities on their own.

I wrote and published an online article about it in July 1999: Fan-Based Online Groups Use the Internet to Make a Difference. My article includes examples of such groups at that time, with comments from members regarding their online philanthropic activities and what makes them successful.

That DIY fandom-for-good spirit has continued online, and I’ve paid attention to one of those more recent efforts in particular: The Harry Potter Alliance. The HPA has raised money for various causes and lead campaigns to create awareness about hunger, bullying, child slavery and more. The group also has the Granger Leadership Academy, named for the Harry Potter character Hermione Granger, and the Wizard Activist School, which create programming and workshops aimed to inspire and train members in a variety of topics, including feminism, environmental issues, fighting racism, social justice, conflict resolution, leadership styles, goal-setting, and on and on.

We founded the HPA in 2005 with a simple idea: what if fans used their passion and creativity to make activism more fun and the world a more loving, equitable place? For almost sixteen years that idea has driven hundreds of thousands of fan activists to organize protests and charity drives, to write letters and make calls, to donate books and time and money to make their communities better for all.

The Harry Potter Alliance is changing its name to Fandom Forward, and it’s now for fans of Avatar, Star Wars, Percy Jackson, Doctor Who, Marvel, DC and, of course, Harry Potter – and most everything else out there in the sci-fi / fantasy / superhero world. Its purpose is to turn fans into “heroes.”

We use the power of story and popular culture to make activism accessible and sustainable. Through experiential training and real life campaigns, we develop compassionate, skillful leaders who learn to approach our world’s problems with joy, creativity, and commitment to equity.

As it became more and more clear that our community had grown even bigger than the boy who lived, we started talking to friends from all corners of fan organizing about how to move forward together. We talked to you, our community members, about what you wanted to see next. Over 1,000 of you weighed in, and the answer was overwhelmingly consistent: this place we’ve built? It doesn’t belong to just one fandom. It’s for anyone who believes in the power of stories and fans to change the world. It’s for everyone, and our name should reflect that. 

Fandom Forward even offers its own virtual volunteering management guide. My favorite advice from the guide is section 4, on cultivating leadership among volunteers. The entire section is terrific. I like this especially:

Default to trusting volunteers. This is a big one, and something that is hard for a lot of people to grasp. After doing this for 15+ years, however, we whole-heartedly believe in the idea that you can and should default to trusting your volunteers. Of course, this doesn’t mean you should give anyone access to your organization’s most sensitive information. But if you have a task that needs to be done that involves giving a volunteer an organizational log-in to a website, give it a try! We’ve found that most people can be trusted. If anything goes wrong, you simply remove the volunteer from that task or the organization. However, most times it will go right.

I’m fascinated by this and other fan-based efforts for many reasons: because I’m a fan myself of many of these stories, because I love seeing the Internet used for good, because there are frequent stories and studies claiming that there is a decline in young people wanting to volunteer – stories and studies that ignore these efforts – and because of complaints that younger generations aren’t joining traditional civic groups like Rotary, Optimist, Lion’s, etc. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: younger generations ARE volunteering, ARE getting involved in their communities – but they are doing it in different ways. Maybe the local civic group didn’t bother to create any social media channels to talk about their work, haven’t updated their web site in years, and have spent more time complaining about declining numbers than trying to do an honest assessment of why that is happening. Maybe the local fire station makes it clear that only career first responders are the superheroes and volunteers are just there to roll hoses and serve coffee, or doesn’t make it crystal clear how a person would become a volunteer first responder. Maybe these groups need to pay more attention to Harry Potter fans.

If you have benefited from this blog or other parts of my web site or my YouTube videos and would like to support the time that went into researching information, developing material, preparing articles, updating pages, etc. (I receive no funding for this work), here is how you can help. 

A History of Americans as Volunteers – a book you need

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My long-time colleague and friend, Susan Ellis, along with Katherine Campbell, wrote the book on volunteerism in the USA – literally. It’s called By the People: A History of Americans as Volunteers. The latest and last version is the New Century Edition (2005) and it’s available for purchase from Energize.

I remain stunned that this book isn’t cited at least once in most academic papers regarding volunteerism. It certainly should at least be referenced in any course at a USA college or university regarding volunteerism. It should be cited throughout Wikipedia articles on anything related to volunteerism or community service as well, and cited in any article that dares to try to talk about the history of volunteer firefighting in the USA.

The book does a fantastic job of showing how volunteers helped to form some of the largest organizations in the USA today, from Goodwill to the YWCA to the American Red Cross to the Sierra Club – efforts often lead by women – and how volunteers have played such an important role in establishing the American character, one that relishes community-driven, independent and do-it-yourself driven efforts to address community needs and concerns. The book provides repeated examples of how volunteers seized a social issue in the USA, amplified it and pushed for it to be addressed, from the abolition of slavery to the health of soldiers to the civil rights movement and so many things before and after. I love how the role of women in leading volunteering efforts is repeatedly cited, not regulated to one chapter but permeating the book in example after example.

The parts of the book about volunteer firefighting history are particularly enlightening. The book notes that, in the early days of volunteer firefighting in the USA, in the 1800s and 1900s, “Because of the danger involved, being a volunteer fireman carried social status. Rivalry was strong among the volunteers, and street fights frequently erupted as companies battled to reach fires first.” The fights sometimes lasted for days! The authors quote A History of the People of the United States by John Bach McMaster, who said of the firefighter fights, “Of all causes of disorder they were the worst. Around their houses hung gangs of loafers, ‘runners’ who, when an alarm was run, ran with the engines and took part in the fight almost certain to occur.” These mob scenes ultimately brought an end to voluntary firefighting in the major cities in the USA, though volunteer fire brigades in urban settings came back during times of war.

It would be interesting to see if a revision of the book would have addressed the approach of the volunteer firefighting union in the USA, which actively discourages volunteer firefighting in a push for professionalization of all roles, or the rise in anti-volunteering movements – but, sadly, Susan passed away earlier this year, so the book will not be revised.

Virtual volunteering started as soon as the Internet began, in the 1970s, and the 2005 edition of By the People: A History of Americans as Volunteers mentions virtual volunteering at least five times – it’s an example of just how in-tune Susan was with emerging trends in volunteerism (while now, in 2019, there are still some researchers and consultants who will try to say virtual volunteering is “new”). There’s also good mention of the International Year of Volunteers in 2001, a global campaign that was one of the most popular designations by the United Nations in its history of such “Year of” declarations.

I do have some criticisms. For instance, I’m shocked that the authors don’t go much more into the role that volunteers played in forcing the US Government in the 1980s to address the AIDS crisis, to elevate discussions about HIV, and to meet the needs of people with HIV/AIDS. The unique mobilization of volunteers in these causes is worthy of an entire book itself, and certainly worthy of more than a small mention in this book. 

Also, there is nothing about American Indians before their time being forced on reservations, except their violence towards whites. There are documented examples of volunteer aid from American Indians to early White settlers and these are worthy of note.

And then there are some jaw-dropping statements. One is that “Not until well into the twentieth century did most Americans have the leisure and subsequent need and desire for the arts.” In fact, most Americans – and most people – have always had a need and desire for the arts and made time for such! The music and theater of the 1800s throughout the USA still influence the music, theater and folklore of today!

Two others statements in the book are, I’m sorry to say, worthy of outright condemnation.

On page 116 is this: “One unique aspect of the Civil War was that hardly any women were raped during the open hostilities… Then came Reconstruction, and with it the influx of the corrupt northern profiteers who riles up the freed slave and changed the South into a crime-ridden area. For the first time, women were not safe from rape…” It’s a paragraph I have read and re-read and just cannot fathom how anyone outside of a delusional Southerner who longs for the myth of the Confederacy would think it’s true. The sexual violence against black women alone during the time of the Civil War should have prevented these sentences from ever being written by these authors. Any suspicions that this assertion of “hardly any women were raped” during the Civil War was confirmed by the research of Kim Murphy, and though her book did not come out until 2014, her research didn’t, I remain dumbfounded that anyone thought otherwise. Maureen Stutzman’s article “Rape in the American Civil War: Race, Class, and Gender in the Case of Harriet McKinley and Perry Pierson,” which appeared in a 2009 issue of the University of Albany’s journal “Transcending Silence,” also offers perspectives on the truth about sexual violence in that period. In addition, Reconstruction, once Ulyss S Grant assumed office, brought black Americans incredible opportunity and liberty, allowing them to become property owners, business owners and office holders in numbers never imagined. Reconstruction did not make the South a “crime-ridden area.”

The other statement is this, on page 117: “In the beginning, the Klan’s concern as a volunteer group was to control crime, not to punish people with unpopular political views.” In fact, from its founding, the Klan was a terrorist organization that sought to restore white supremacy by threats and violence, including murder, against black and white Republicans. This is indisputable! The 1871 Congressional Hearings on the founding and early activities of the Ku Klux Klan, with their heart-wrenching first-hand testimonies of people who were terrorized by the Klan, accurately and thoroughly document the immediate and widespread terrorism by what was then a new organization. Only someone who believed the outrageous narrative of Birth of Nation would ever assert otherwise. I’m going to assume that the authors’ viewpoints on these issues GREATLY, VASTLY evolved since they wrote these words and they would never make such assertions in their later careers – based on my relationship with one of the authors and her dedication to human rights, I just cannot imagine otherwise. 

But even with these jaw-droppingly inappropriate statements, By the People: A History of Americans as Volunteers is a book anyone who writes about volunteering needs to reference. I refer to it regularly. It is a treasure-trove of information. 

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Why Girls Want to Join the Boy Scouts

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I am really torn about the Boy Scouts of America’s decision to allow girls into their programs.

I love the idea of Girl Scouts of the USA, and I have some very precious memories of my time as a Brownie and Junior Girl Scout, especially regarding a week-long summer day camp that made me hunger for outdoor activities, something I still enjoy to this day. The emphasis at so many international humanitarian agencies on girls’ empowerment shows why the agenda of the Girl Scouts is still so needed and so relevant all over the world. In addition, the Girl Scouts have long been inclusive, far more than the Boy Scouts: they haven’t required girls to say the God part of their pledge since the 1990s, they have allowed transgendered youth since pretty much the moment they realized there were such, and they have no prohibition against gay leaders or members, unlike the Boy Scouts until very recently.

The Boy Scouts are saying they are now allowing girls into their ranks so that they can pursue Eagle Scout status. But the Girl Scouts of the USA has the equivalent of Eagle Scout status. It’s called the Gold Award. Remember the teen girl who brought to light that New Hampshire still allowed child marriage and she was pushing for that to change? That was her Girl Scout Gold Award project. I would like to see that award get the same coverage and respect as Eagle Scout status. But the reality is that not only does the press rarely mention it, Girl Scout leaders rarely mention it to Girl Scouts. I’ve talked to many Girl Scout leaders about the Gold Award, and many have either never heard of it, don’t really know much about it, or aren’t convinced it’s all that important and something their girls really want to work towards.

When I returned to the USA after living abroad for eight years, I was determined to volunteer for the Girl Scouts. I didn’t want to be a leader, but I wanted to help somehow. Maybe I could be a chaperone on a camping trip! Maybe I could lead some hikes! Maybe I could help recruit more girls to join, and more volunteers to participate! Maybe I could help connect girls to activities about computers, science and the arts. I was so excited to help.

I signed up on the Girl Scouts of Oregon and SW Washington web site in the Fall of 2009, within days of moving into my first home in Oregon. I was contacted promptly about the next and nearest service leader meeting, so I had immediate high hopes. I faithfully attended most of those meetings and any local events – and one in Salem – for more than a year. I immediately volunteered at that first meeting I attended to help with communications. Within two months, I felt the resentment from several of the leaders who didn’t like me, an “outsider”, and didn’t like being asked for information about events they were having: they wanted to just do word-of-mouth among other leaders they liked, and leave out those leaders they didn’t. Some wanted to fly below the “official” radar, which has strict requirements regarding reporting, especially about finances. The new service unit leader put together an amazing recruitment event, and we had one of the largest turnouts of new girls our area had had in years. Several troop leaders resented the success of the event and that we tried to follow the appropriate protocols in assigning new girls to troops. There was a holiday event held by one troop that I didn’t hear about until the night before – and I was told that it was “always done this way and everyone already knows about it.” I kept asking about camping, hiking and STEM-related activities, I offered to help girls get their computer-related badges…. but I slowly learned that a lot of Girl Scout troop leaders aren’t interested in those things – they just wanted to host pizza parties and mani-pedi parties for their daughters and their friends. (and please note: I love mani-pedis – they just aren’t why I joined Girl Scouts).

I also asked lots of questions of the state office about how and why certain decisions were made, why certain things weren’t communicated beyond a page on the web site or a printed brochure we may never see, why social media was so under-utilized, why we never got to do joint activities with the parallel Spanish-speaking troops formed in our area, etc. I rarely got replies to my emails. The communications manager for the state office finally called me at home as I was starting the second year of volunteering and said, per my questions, that she “couldn’t” work with me anymore. So I resigned my volunteer post.

In my year and a half in Girl Scouts, here’s what I also saw: the change the Girl Scouts leadership is pushing for, for more STEM-related activities, for more outdoor-related activities, and for more leadership-building activities, aren’t at all being embraced on the grassroots level. On my way back from a training from the state office in Portland, the leader I was riding with said she didn’t like what the national office was pushing for because it was “too socialist.” I was flabbergasted.

I shared some of these frustrations about trying to volunteer with Girl Scouts on my Facebook account this week, as well as being torn about the Boy Scouts decision. I wasn’t expecting the replies I got.

Here’s a comment from an Oregon friend:

I couldn’t agree more about GS leadership, at least around here. I even tried to be a leader so my girls could be in Girl Scouts, and I did not get good vibes or feel welcomed at all. I left. I refuse to be a part of such an organization.

Another Oregon friend:

I loved being a Girl Scout. I hate the Portland office for Girl Scouts. A few years ago, my daughter wasn’t allowed to join the local troop at her school because they said it was full. Then I was told she could join another but after two months of playing phone games and weirdness, I gave up. Then my daughter told me another girl joined the “full” troop. Pissed me off.

And yet another Oregon friend:

This is exactly what I experienced with trying to get my daughters in. I tried to become a leader, but they didn’t seem to even want that. I don’t want my daughters in an organization that sends that type of message.

A comment from a friend in Iowa:

I am a part of an outdoor Girl Scout community, learning because I am a novice, and while I would love to build this side of our troop, my co-leader has slowly allowed all other activities to be more important for her daughter, and it’s tough to schedule anything. Our SU fall camp out, which is not roughing it at all, is coming up, and she was considering going late so her daughter could go to her volleyball game first. Seriously. My daughter is missing theater class for camp. One girl left the troop because she doesn’t like to get dirty. Only my daughter enjoyed drawing with charcoal recently, while the others were worried about getting dirty (but at least they tried!). I don’t know how you get girls to go out and rough it, or their parents to help make it a priority… I really like the girl led, girl empowerment focus of GS. We need that, we need a space for girls to build confidence in a safe space, outside the comparison to boys, or the sense that their being a girl is somehow an issue. That said, I feel like the GS structure leaves so much in the hands of the troop leader, and it’s not easy to combine your stuff with other troops. You really have to work at it. It sounds like the pack and troop aspect of Boy Scouts has the advantage in that respect, with combined resources. I’m in a great service unit, big and active, but even that is challenging to get people connected and to share resources. If it’s going to change, it has to from the inside. They are making effort to do it, and I appreciate that, but overall, I still do a lot of legwork myself, because the stuff council provides can be rather dry. And there are so many other things people are involved in, that I think it’s just not a priority for them to offer up their help and ideas, much less have their girls be more active. I don’t know if that’s the same with Boy Scouts or not. I do know that a lot of boys will try to get all their outdoor stuff done by like 7th or 8th grade,  because they also get very busy in upper grades.

A comment from a friend in Kentucky:

I tried to put my daughter in the first year she was eligible. They had scheduled their very first troop meeting for Thanksgiving break at school, which seemed really odd to me because so many people travel at the holidays. And we too were out of town. So I emailed and called several times about a follow-up meeting or an alternate meeting and never got a response from whomever that was that heads that up here. I gave up.

Not all of my Facebook friends had complaints. One of my Facebook friends in Texas, a guy, wrote:

I was a GSUSA adult leader of Girl Scouts for many years doing single interest groups in backpacking. Many were the nights when my girls ranging from 6th grade to junior college hit the trail with 50 pound packs, walked farther than nearby boys groups, made camp and ate and laughed and told stories without “benefit” of the outhouse sized trailers towed along by the boys, and fell to sleep with the sound of the wind across our pup tents, the hoot of owls and the thrumming of the boy scouts generator.

THAT is the experience I was looking for but never found here in Oregon.

How many other people are out there that tried to volunteer with the Girl Scouts but never got a callback, or were turned away because an insular group didn’t want their participation? How many girls are there that tried to join a troop and never got called back, or joined and found the troop didn’t provide any activities that matched their interests? How many girls left because they had no idea what the Gold Award is and how awesome it is to pursue it and attain it? How many other Girl Scout state office employees are dropping the ball on customer service and outreach?

Girl Scouts of Oregon and SW Washington, Girl Scouts of Kentuckiana, Girl Scouts of Greater Iowa, Girl Scouts of the USA – are you listening?

I bet girls that want to join the Boy Scouts will immediately get contacted about their interest. They will immediately connect with activities they want to do: archery, camping, hiking, canoeing, fishing, computers, and more. They will be reminded at every gathering that they are a part of something special, and their support of each other is as important as their individual interests. And the phone calls from their parents will be returned promptly by Boy Scout leadership.

I debated a lot writing this blog. I support the Girl Scouts of the USA – in principle. I am not at all a Girl Scout hater. I want the Girl Scouts to succeed as an organization. I tried to be a part of helping to make that happen. But, obviously, Girl Scouts has a problem. It has many problems. I hope it will address those problems.

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Things I learned in Kentucky last month

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This week, I’m blogging and launching new web resources based on my experience in October as the Duvall Leader in Residence at the University of Kentucky’s Center for Leadership Development (CFLD), part of UK’s College of Agriculture, Food and Environment.

Monday, I blogged about one of my workshops regarding Democratizing Engagement. Specifically: has the Internet democratized community, even political, engagement. Yesterday, I launched a new web page about online leadership.

Today’s topic: things I learned while in this program, as well as before, during and after presenting in my hometown in Henderson, Kentucky for the Kentucky Network for Development, Leadership and Engagement (Kyndle), serving Henderson, McLean, Union and Webster counties in northwestern Kentucky:

  • People under 30 love Instagram. When I asked University of Kentucky students, and a small group of high school students, what they were using, they said Twitter and Instagram more than anything else. Snapchat also was always mentioned, though not as widely used. Periscope got mentioned a few times as well. Facebook is long gone as a regularly-used tool by the students I addressed.
  • Different communities, neighborhoods and cultures use vastly different online communications tools: I thought Topix, an online forum founded in 2002, was long gone, like Cupertino’s first official online community for its citizens, built on FirstClass. But, no – Topix still very popular in some communities, probably because of the ease of anonymity in participating in its online discussions/debates.
  • I’m not the only one that thinks nonprofits are using social media too much as an old-fashioned advertising tool and not nearly enough as an engagement tool – this article in the Chronicle of Philanthropy came out on the Friday I left Lexington. It is amazing to me that I’m still talking about this – something that I first read about back in the 1990s via the Cluetrain Manifesto.
  • Twitter remains so much better than Facebook when it comes to promotion and networking and engagement. I tweeted a lot, and was almost always retweeted or “liked”, and got lots of replies. By contrast, Facebook resulted in few “likes” – and maybe two comments.
  • Email is still a killer app. An email about one of my evening workshops, sent to various student organizations by a student energized by one of my earlier workshops, resulted in probably twice as many people as expected attending that evening event. In addition, my appointment for this residency was because of an email I sent to faculty at the CFLD last year about The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook and my ties to Kentucky.
  • People under 30 are volunteering, they are passionate about various causes (particularly the environment), and they want to volunteer even more! And they do not see their community service and political activism as merely getting tasks done: they see it as building community, as career exploration, as career preparation, and as fun. And they will stuff envelopes if you tell them why that really, really matters… and give them pizza.
  • A lot of people over 30 have given up on using social media, because they have no idea how to control the onslaught of content that came their way – they felt flooded with useless information, rants and hurtful comments, so they stopped signing on. Facebook in particular makes it oh-so-difficult to figure out how to put different friends on different lists, to hide people without unfriending them, to prevent certain friends from seeing a status update, to unlike pages, etc.
  • GooglePlus just doesn’t get talked about… except by me, who still finds it valuable…
  • If I didn’t attempt to use humor in my workshops, I might offend fewer people, but wow, I, and my audiences, would die of boredom.
  • Lexington, Kentucky is a jewel of a city, and my hometown of Henderson is infinitely more fun than it was when I was growing up there.

That’s what I learned. I wish I had thought to survey the students while I was there – I could have found out even more. They were a gold mine of information. I also talked to faculty and nonprofit staff from different organizations, and they were all lovely and interesting and fun – but I cannot lie: the students were my favorite audience.

Online leadership: what is it?

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This week, I’m blogging and launching new web resources based on my experience in October as the Duvall Leader in Residence at the University of Kentucky’s Center for Leadership Development (CFLD), part of UK’s College of Agriculture, Food and Environment.

Yesterday, I blogged about one of my workshops about Democratizing Engagement. Specifically: has the Internet democratized community, even political, engagement?

Yesterday, I launched a new web page about online leadership. There is plenty of information about leading and supporting a team online, and I reviewed some of those suggested practices and resources in my workshop, but I wanted to focus this new web page solely on online leadership, on engaging in activities that influence others online, that create a profile for a person as someone that provides credible, important, even vital information about a particular subject. To me, leaders are looked to for advice, direction, knowledge and opinions on specific subjects, and their online activities, collectively, influence the thinking of others. And they engage online – they don’t just post information. They discuss, they acknowledge reactions and feedback, they even debate.

I’ve made it a web page, rather than a blog, because it’s a resource I intend to regularly update and maintain, part of my portfolio of online resources about working with others online. But your comments about the page, here on this blog, are welcomed!

University of Kentucky Duvall followup

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logos for u of kentucky programsThe last week in October, I was the Fall 2015 Duvall Leader in Residence at the University of Kentucky’s Center for Leadership Development (CFLD), part of UK’s College of Agriculture,Food and Environment, in Lexington. CFLD supports leadership related activities within the UK College of Agriculture, the University of Kentucky campus, the local Lexington community and counties statewide. My visit was sponsored by the W. Norris Duvall Leadership Endowment Fund and the CFLD, and focused on leadership development and community development and engagement as both relate to the use of online media.

It was a fantastic experience! I just can’t say enough about how well the residency was put together, how well my time was utilized. My time and knowledge were fully exploited – exactly as it should be! Thanks, Lissa and Dakota!

Here is a list of topics for all the workshops and consultations I created and delivered for such:

I cover all of these topics throughout my web site and in The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook, but I will be blogging in detail about a few of the aforementioned individual topics in the coming weeks, because there’s more to say – particularly “Democratizing engagement: leading in a virtual world,” which proved to be a fascinating project and discussion. 

1028151154This consultancy got off to a rocky start, so I’m very glad it ended up working out so very well. My favorite part was getting to talk with the university students: they ask fantastic questions, they make me think, and they are so fearless when it comes to just about everything (except asking questions in class). AND THEY USE SOCIAL MEDIA: they were tweeting about what I was doing, replying to things I was posting, inviting people to later workshops – loved it! I want to give a shoutout to the University of Kentucky football team in particularly, as two of its players provided some key input in three of my classes that really helped move things along – and as one of those players went on to score a touchdown a few days later against Tennessee, perhaps I should be brought in to address the entire team?

They say that, to be a great at a sport, you have to “leave it all on the court” or “all on the field.” I tried to do the consultancy version of that in Kentucky last month. Proud of my work but, wow, I’m still exhausted!

Here are some more photos from this fantastic experience.

And I’ll say it again: oh how I dream to teach an entire university course (or two!)

Recruit board members to be board members, nothing more

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I have heard many representatives of nonprofit organizations say things like:

  • We need an attorney on our board, to take care of all our legal issues.
  • We need a PR person on our board, to help with marketing.
  • We need an IT expert on our board, to also help with IT issues.

In fact, there’s someone on the TechSoup community saying something like this now. And my response is: No, you do NOT. There are many reasons this is a BAD idea, and this article from Hildy Gottlieb, “Finding Pro Bono Help through Board Recruitment,” details why better than I can say myself!

Yes, it is a great idea to seek pro bono help for your nonprofit or NGO! By all means! You can get volunteers who are accountants, experts in public relations, and even lawyers to help your nonprofit organizations. But there is a BIG difference in recruiting a volunteer for his or her expertise, so that he or she will provide your organization that expertise, and recruiting a volunteer to serve on your board.

Board members are there to govern –

to lead and guide the organization towards the community’s highest

aspirations. Board members are not there to do the work that should be done by

staff and/or volunteers.

More at “Finding Pro Bono Help through Board Recruitment.”

Also see:

  • Pro Bono / In-Kind / Donated Services for Mission-Based Organizations:
    When, Why & How?
    There are all sorts of professionals who want to donate their services — web design, graphic design, human resources expertise, legal advice, editing, research, and so forth — to mission-based organizations. And there are all sorts of nonprofits and NGOs who would like to attract such donated services. But often, there’s a disconnect — misunderstandings and miscommunications and unrealistic expectations that lead to missed opportunities and frustrating experiences. This resource, prompted by the topic coming up at the same time on a few online discussion groups I read, is designed to help both those who want to donate professional services and those who want to work with such volunteers. It’s applicable to a variety of situations, not just those involving computer and Internet-related projects.
  • Short-term Assignments for Tech Volunteers
    There are a variety of ways for mission-based organizations to involve volunteers to help with short-term projects relating to computers and the Internet, and short-term assignments are what are sought after most by potential “tech” volunteers. But there is a disconnect: most organizations have trouble identifying such short-term projects. This is a list of short-term projects for “tech” volunteers — assignments that might takes days, weeks or just a couple of months to complete.
  • Recruiting Local Volunteers To Increase Diversity Among the Ranks
    Having plenty of volunteers usually isn’t enough to say a volunteering program is successful. Another indicator of success is if your volunteers represent a variety of ages, education-levels, economic levels and other demographics, or are a reflection of your local community. Most organizations don’t want volunteers to be a homogeneous group; they want to reach a variety of people as volunteers (and donors and other supporters, for that matter). This resource will help you think about how to recruit for diversity, or to reach a specific demographic.
  • Using Third Party Web Sites Like VolunteerMatch to Recruit Volunteers
    There are lots and lots of web sites out there to help your organization recruit volunteers. You don’t have to use them all, but you do need to make sure you use them correctly in order to get the maximum response to your posts.

LinkedIn for Nonprofits? The Good & Bad

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I love LinkedIn. It’s how I stay connected with so many of the colleagues I’ve worked with or presented with over the years, or people whose work I am intensely familiar with (and who know a great deal about my work as well).

What’s kept LinkedIn so valuable for me is that I don’t connect to just anyone on LinkedIn; I reserve my connections there for real colleagues – employees or volunteers, doesn’t matter – and treat their contact information there as oh-so-precious. It’s my online address book for current and former co-workers. If it went away, I’d be lost, as it’s my professional address book and my way to know who is where.

I appreciate all my LinkedIn colleagues who gateway their Twitter feeds to their LinkedIn status – that way, I can more easily catch up with what they are up to without having to subscribe to their Twitter feeds.

I tolerate LinkedIn groups. They are clunky: hard to navigate, bury discussions, make it hard to see who else is a member, and are severely limited (you are limited in how many discussions you can actually join). But worst of all, the content seems to be mostly pleas for employment, rather than substantive discussions/debates. YahooGroups is a MUCH better platform for discussion – easier to use, more features, allows much more control by individual members in terms of how they receive messages, and many of the groups are rich in content.

I would love it if more organizations would put their events in the LinkedIn event feature. Then everyone who is attending – including those who are presenting – could show via LinkedIn that they are attending, which is then seen by everyone they follow, and which then might lead to even greater attendance.

I appreciate that LinkedIn has a section for users to input their volunteer experience. But I don’t use it. Why? Because whether or not I was paid to head a project, manage other people, facilitate an online event or represent an organization shouldn’t matter in terms of my profile; the nature of that work, that accomplishment, that leadership should be what’s most important. Why should some of the best work I’ve done be segregated elsewhere on my profile merely because I wasn’t paid to do it?

Is LinkedIn of use for nonprofits and NGOs? Of course! In addition to what I’ve said above, it’s also a great way to review new people you are connecting with elsewhere – on Facebook, that you meet at this or that reception or read about in a newspaper article and think, hey, that might be a a great candidate for our marketing position (paid or volunteer – doesn’t matter!), or as a possible board member.  

But a word of advice: never email someone you have never met with an invitation to be a board member at your organization, no matter how great their profile is on LinkedIn. You need to make sure this person is going to be a good match at your organization before you offer him or her a leadership role, and that takes interviews and reference checks.

Should you use LinkedIn as I do? Maybe. Maybe not. My point with all of the above isn’t so much to say, use it like me, but to say: think strategically about how you use it, at least review all of the various features, and test many of them for yourself as well, to see if they are worthwhile for YOU, specifically.

Also see:

Pro Bono / In-Kind / Donated Services for Mission-Based Organizations:
When, Why & How?

Short-term assignments for tech volunteers

How to get rid of volunteers

11 Replies

Last week, I signed up to help at a community event, held yesterday.

Just. To. Help. To assist.

Yesterday, when I arrived at the event site – a public school – I found out I was in charge of the entire event. More than 30 kids would be there in an hour, expecting me to lead them through 90 minutes of activities that were completely foreign to me.

I don’t like kids.1 And I noted this at the time I signed up to help. I care about the cause, however, and as I was new to the committee – I just joined last week – I wanted to prove myself as a reliable, helpful committee member. By assisting at an event. By helping someone else in charge.

But there I was, in charge of an event I knew nothing about. About to face more than 30 kids, all under the age of 12.

I wasn’t scared. And that was good, because kids smell fear. No, instead, I was angry. Kids smell anger too, but it tends to make them listen to me. And that played to my advantage during the event – they never crossed that line into chaos that a large group of kids can so easily dissolve into.

Then there were the other adult volunteers, who were also there just to help, just to be nice. And they just kinda stood there, watching me try to pull it together. And as I was bossing those confused volunteers around in a frantic attempt to pull the event together, I wondered: Have each of these people been registered with the school and had a criminal background check? Is it my responsibility to check into that before they participate? Come to think of it, no one at the school checked to see that I was who I said I was, or asked me for my school volunteer I.D. number. How do I know any of these adults are safe to be around these kids?

I pulled the event off, on a very basic level. I drew on my experience as a manager of people, projects and events, on my two years of experience volunteering with the Girl Scouts (I’ve noticed that troop leaders at events get the kids started on an activity immediately and have them keep repeating it until volunteers are ready to move them on to the next activity), my experience having coordinated and directed more live events than is probably healthy for any one person in one lifetime, and by channeling my ever-so-bossy-but-organized Great Aunt Cornelia, who is still a legend in my family for her management abilities.

Also, it turns out none of the adult volunteers were predators nor inclined to ignore kids engaging in dangerous behavior. Lucky kids. Lucky me.

In addition, the volunteer that was supposed to be in charge did have all of the materials and equipment ready to go at the site – that helped tremendously. However, she was astounded, upon arrival just after the kids started the first activity, that the emails she sent in the preceding days weren’t understood by me and others as completely signing off on responsibility for the event (she had, indeed, said in those emails she would be late, and said myself and another volunteer would be the “leads” for the other volunteers until she got there, and some emails came with attachments… But, of course, I thought the school principal would be in charge, since she was cc’d on everything, since I have no experience at all with this kind of event, since I had made it clear I was just signing up to help, and since, to her knowledge, I have no experience doing anything like this. And I don’t like kids).

Was the event a success? In my opinion, no. It wasn’t bad, and the kids had fun and were kept busy, but the reality is: the kids didn’t really learn anything about the subject at hand. They had fun, and they walked away happy, and that’s nice – but they didn’t walk away retaining any knowledge, which was the entire purpose of the event. No minds were changed, no behaviors altered – and that was the mission of the event. A lot could have been done at the event to create that knowledge, to ensure things were remembered, to better ensure some behaviors would change, but I would have needed more than 90 minutes of prep to make that happen.

In addition, this could have been an event where not only did kids get some really essential knowledge, but also, some adults could be inspired to help at future events. And that’s why it was a stark reminder about why I – and others – train in volunteer management issues (as well as why there are so many books on event management). And why so many schools and other organizations struggle to find volunteers.

Let’s face it: a great way to drive away volunteers is to sign them up to help at an event and, when they show up, tell them they are in charge. Or have them confused about what they are supposed to do, and feeling generally unsupported. Or have them bossed around for a couple of hours by a very confused and angry me.

Volunteer management isn’t just mindless bureaucracy, with forms to fill out and procedures to be followed. It’s about ensuring that an organization or program or department mission is met. It’s about ensuring volunteers don’t show up and just do some seemingly random activities. It’s about creating experiences that lead to awareness and inspiration – not just getting some work done. It’s about ensuring safety – not just keeping fingers crossed and hoping everything works out.

And effective volunteer management is what keeps volunteers coming back again and again.

Volunteer management also isn’t just one person’s responsibility; some person at that school trusted a volunteer explicitly with organizing a safe, meaningful event for students from the school. Who was that person? What is he or she going to do about what happened yesterday? Does he or she even know what happened – and what didn’t happen? Did they just walk by and think, yeah, the kids are having fun, no problems here? Are they reading this blog right now?

I know the volunteer that was supposed to be in charge isn’t reading this blog: she also sent me an email last week proudly stating that she doesn’t read blogs and isn’t on Twitter or Facebook. Just like so many people I’ve met here in Oregon, I’m sorry to say…

Here’s a positive: I’ve never been more dedicated to the fundamentals of volunteer management and effective, program-based planning than I am right now.

I still don’t like kids though…

————

1. Okay, I don’t hate kids. I sometimes find them quite amusing. I really love watching them learn. And I’m passionate about girls knowing just how many choices and opportunities are out there. But I do not think kids are automatically cute nor innocent nor sweet, and I also don’t like parents and other adults who think of kids as precious snowflakes who have every right to scream in a restaurant – though I cut a lot of slack on airplanes.