Tag Archives: management

latest moment of volunteer management madness

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Many of my blogs and web pages are inspired by first-hand experience as a volunteer or as a volunteer manager. And, sadly, it’s often bad experiences, usually as a volunteer myself, that lead to new blogs and web pages.

Of course I don’t name the organizations that inspire these blogs, and I try to put a very positive spin on these, to help other nonprofits, NGOs, libraries, schools, public sector agencies and other mission-based organizations to not make the same mistakes I’ve experienced. I consider them learning experiences, and I want others to learn from them as well.

Here’s some of these blogs and web pages that were inspired by my own experiences as a volunteer:

Here’s the latest moment-of-volunteer-management-madness inspired by a real organization:

This particular multi-state organization has leadership volunteering roles, on the local level, to handle the organization’s project management, including the management of local volunteers, in individual communities. But often, some of these local leadership roles are not filled, because no one is interested or no one has the time to do all of the tasks a particular role requires. Therefore, the lead volunteer for all other leadership volunteers in that community gets saddled with all the roles that aren’t filled, in addition to all of his or her other volunteer responsibilities.

One group of leadership volunteers in one community had a brilliant, oh-so-logical idea for lessening the burden on the lead volunteer and getting necessary tasks done: allow volunteers to commit to completing individual tasks, rather than the entire, hard-to-fill, leadership roles. For instance, allow one volunteer to be in charge of the online community for local volunteers, another volunteer to be in charge of updating the web site, and another volunteer to help with designing paper fliers – which, altogether, are most of the duties of the communications manager volunteer.

There were people ready to assume these much less-intensive volunteer roles. That means all the tasks of that role get done, the local lead volunteer manager – a volunteer herself – wouldn’t be overburdened trying to do these tasks as well as her other responsibilities, and maybe, after a few months, one of these task-based volunteers would decide, hey, I think I could do the entire job myself – I’m ready to commit to the entire leadership role! It’s a fantastic opportunity to cultivate new leadership volunteers – people who might get a taste of the experience and decide they would love to take on a more substantial role.

So, great idea, right? Well, not according to the organization. An employee representative who attended the local meeting where this idea was introduced quashed the idea. She said that the entire role has to be filled by one person and absolutely cannot be divided among several volunteers. Since no one is going to take that role in its entirety, all those tasks are going to be assumed by the already over-burdened team leader.

What a mistake! What a missed opportunity to cultivate new volunteers and new leaders!

Well, at least I got a new blog out of it…

 

Are Interns Exploited?

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A Guardian blogger is outraged at what she sees as exploitation of interns at charities in the U.K. She doesn’t think interns are volunteers; she thinks they should be paid. She asks Should major charities offer unpaid internships?, and has a poll on the subject as well.

The Guardian blogger is outraged first because “These are not just tea-making, post-sorting roles – they are proper jobs with real responsibility.” Um… yes, volunteers are capable of roles that come with real responsibility. In fact, volunteers are capable of leading paid staff in projects. Many organizations actually reserve roles with “real responsibility” specifically for volunteers rather than paid employees, for reasons that have NOTHING to do with money. Is the outrage that these volunteers are – gasp – university graduates?! Sorry, but I don’t at all buy that argument against volunteers/unpaid interns.

The other argument I can more agree with: by requiring interns to work full time, and to make a three, six, even 12-month commitment, companies involving these volunteers are excluding otherwise capable people of these internships, because these people cannot afford them. Any time a volunteer engagement program excludes various people only because of the lack-of-financial resources of these people, the organization is losing out on talent, and people are being denied a valuable, even essential, experience.

And I have a big problem with this from the article: when the Guardian blogger interviewed charities involving interns in longer-term commitments, “they all stressed that their ability to continue to carry out their important work relied heavily on the contributions of their valued volunteers.” That means: we involve unpaid staff because we can’t afford to pay people. We wouldn’t involve volunteers if we could afford to pay staff for these activities.

As I blogged about yesterday, I am firmly in the big tent regarding who is a volunteer: pro bono consultants, executives on loan, court-ordered community service people, online super fans, online community members, and, yes, even interns: they are all volunteers. If my organization is not paying you, and you are providing time and talent to the organization in any way, you are a volunteer. If you want to call yourself an intern, that’s fine, so long as your experience is seen by us both as primarily a learning experience for you.

A much better question: why does an organization involve volunteers, including interns? If it’s the reasons the Guardian blogger heard then, indeed, these charities need to have their employees packed off to some volunteer management trainings immediately, because they are living in the dark ages regarding volunteer engagement. Just as some jobs are best done by paid employees, some nonprofit/NGO/charity jobs are best done by unpaid staff! Certain positions should be reserved specifically for volunteers.

As I’ve blogged about before: the majority of programming by the Girl Scouts of the USA is delivered by volunteers, not because volunteers save money, but because volunteers are the best people to deliver the Girl Scouts leadership programs for girls. Even going all-volunteer can be the right thing to do for all sorts of reasons that have nothing to do with money saved: It’s been true for the Pine Creek Information Center, it’s been true for the Aid Workers Network, and it’s true of lots of other organizations. In fact, I question the credibility of nonprofit organizations, NGOs, charities and even government agencies focused on services to the public, like schools and state parks, that do not involve volunteers in a variety of ways, including in decision-making and high-responsibility roles.

Now, with all that said: yes, there are many nonprofits, NGOs, charities and others that exploit interns (and other volunteers, for that matter), by treating them merely as free labor. Once upon a time, at an employer I won’t name, I raised a fuss about how I felt some staff were treating interns (merely as free labor). We ended up creating a mission statement for involving interns:

Such-and-such organization is commited to helping to cultivate new professionals in the field of name-of-field-redacted. Therefore, we reserve certain tasks and roles for interns, to provide career-development experiences to emerging professionals.

We also created written guidelines about:

  • what tasks could and should be reserved for interns
  • written role descriptions for interns, shared with other staff (including the HR department)
  • what training an employee that wanted to involve volunteers would have to commit to provide his or her interns
  • what experiences an employee would have to commit to providing interns (what staff meetings and site visits they should attend, a project for the intern to lead, etc.)
  • creating a performance plan and learning plan for interns at the start of the internship, and then evaluating activities based on this plan at least midway and at the end of the internship, in writing
  • how the intern will evaluate his or her own experience, including the support and supervision he or she received (or didn’t!)
  • a six-month cap on all internships (no person could serve in an unpaid internship past six months)
  • how the employee should represent his or her involvement of volunteers, including interns, in his or her own performance plan

Such guidelines for involving interns make the internship focused primarily on being a learning experience rather than a getting-work-done experience. It raises the bar on justifiying the involvement of interns, reducing the risk that interns will be exploited. It also raised the bar on who could be an intern; it meant internships were reserved for emerging professionals in a particular field.

Why not do this for ALL volunteer roles? Because not every volunteer wants to be an intern or wants this kind of learning experience – a lot of volunteers would balk at the idea of creating a learning plan, having a six-month cap on their service, etc. Talking to all volunteers about what they want out of their experience is always mandatory. 

Oh, and for the record: yes, I did an unpaid internship right after I graduated from my university, a million years ago. It was for three months. And I had to pay for my own housing and travel to the site for the summer. Was it worth it? Totally, in that it lead to paid work at another nonprofit two months after the internship ended, gave me skills I use to this day, and put me in the pathway of people who are my friends even all these years later. But my supervisor was awful, and delighted in watching me work 14 hour days while she went out to dinner; her horrible treatment inspired me to treat interns — and all volunteers — far, far differently than her, and remains in the back of my mind whenever I speak, write or train on the subject of volunteer engagement.

Also see:

Another anti-volunteer union; includes a review of the value of volunteers

Volunteers are suing!

Volunteers – still not free! Even at Wikipedia!

Government support re: volunteerism increasing worldwide (but not their financial support)

Going all-volunteer in dire economic times: use with caution.


Tags: volunteer, volunteers, internships, interns, community, engagement, young, professionals

TweetChat re: virtual teams on July 11

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TechSoup will host a TweetChat on 11.July at 10am Pacific USA Time regarding working with virtual teams.

Also known as distributed teams, virtual teams have come together for a day, a week, many months or even years to work on a project together for a nonprofit, an NGO or other mission-based organization. Your organization may already be involving a virtual team now and not even know it:

  • a committee with members who discuss and plan online rather than at onsite meetings
  • a mix of volunteers and employees collaborating on the development of a new online tool
  • a group of volunteers around the world working together to develop an HIV education curriculum

I’m particularly interested in this topic, as I’m currently revising the Virtual Volunteering Guidebook – specifically, I’m revisiting yet again this week the chapter that addresses the subject of virtual teams, a subject that did not appear in detail in the original book. I have been compiling resources and case studies on the subject for quite a while now, and want to make sure the chapter that includes this subject addresses all the fundamental elements required for virtual team success, no matter what online tools you may use with such a team. Woe to the volunteer manager – or any nonprofit professional – who does not know how to work with virtual teams!

You can watch the TechSoup event on Twitter as it happens on July 11 (and even participate!) or look in to the archive of the chat later. Here’s more info from TechSoup on how to participate.

I have more details about live tweet events here on my web site, on this page about using micro-blogging, in case you are wondering what this will event will really look like.

Follow me on Twitter @jcravens42, and follow @TechSoup as well, so you will stay up-to-date about this and other events to help build the capacity of nonprofits, NGOs, libraries, and other organizations that involve community members to meet their goals.

Tags: volunteering, volunteers, community, engagement, international, volunteerism, volunteering, collaborative, collaboration, virtual, teams, staff, employees

What you say vs. what you do re: volunteers

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You say volunteers are more than just free labor at your organization… but your annual report talks only about how much money volunteers saved (by showing how many hours they contributed and what this would have been in paid staff time otherwise).

You say you want committed volunteers that exude quality… but then you don’t respond to their emails or phone calls promptly, if at all.

You say you don’t have time to do this or that… but balk at the idea of allowing volunteers to take on any of those tasks.

You say you want steadfast, fully-invested volunteers… but you respond to every idea they have with, “At this time, we can’t address that/allow you to do that” or “We’re forming a committee to look into that – it’s employee only, however. Check back with me in six months.”

You say you want to engage more professionals as volunteers… but you don’t/won’t create volunteering opportunities in which those professionals might be interested.

You say you want your volunteers to represent the diversity of your community, or to reach under-represented groups… but you are unwilling to change your recruitment methods to reach different groups. “But this is how we’ve always done it!” or “I don’t have time to input every volunteering assignment into VolunteerMatch.”

You say you want volunteers to participate in decision-making… but you don’t invite volunteers to planning meetings, and don’t offer possible strategies up for discussion at volunteer meetings or on your online community.

You acknowledge that the best way to keep volunteers long-term is to create lots of short-term, “quick win” opportunities that keep them hooked… but you don’t create these short-term assignments regularly to attract new volunteers.

You want everyone at your organization to involve and value volunteers… but, as volunteer manager, you don’t push to work with staff regularly to help them create volunteer opportunities that support their work, or, as executive director, you don’t ask staff members to include their involvement of volunteers in their annual performance plan.

You say you want to be as valued at your organization the fundraising manager… but you don’t regularly, precisely show to all employees and the board how volunteers are as essential to the organization as financial donors.

You say you are a modern organization… but you still think of volunteers in terms of real volunteers and online volunteers.

One organization inspired this blog in particular, but to be honest, I’ve seen all of the above at dozens and dozens of organizations. You could substitute the word member for volunteer and it would read the same.

Now you be honest. Have I described your organization? Is what you say about volunteers at your organization matched by what you DO?

Stop multi-tasking; FOCUS instead!

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Back in August 2009, I blogged that Stanford University had published a study that the AP called “surprising”: people who multitask are more easily distracted and less able to ignore irrelevant information than people who do less multitasking. Chronic digital multitaskers were found to be not as good at switching between tasks, compared with people who weren’t chronic multitaskers. In other words, multitaskers cannot concentrate on a single task and do it well; instead, they do a lot of things not very well. They get LESS done than single-taskers.

“The huge finding is, the more media people use the worse they are at using any media. We were totally shocked,” Clifford Nass, a professor at Stanford’s communications department, said in the AP article.

As I said at the time:

Huh? Shocked? Really? Are Stanford researchers THAT out of touch and naive?

I wasn’t AT ALL shocked. It was confirmation of something I’ve known for a long, long time: multi-tasking muddles minds.

In this article in Time from November 2010, Turning Your Phone Off as a Technological Gesture of Affection, the Stanford study is explored further, with this observation:

Multitaskers overestimated their abilities. So, for instance, when your brother insists he’s listening to your story, even as he texts his girlfriend, he really does believe that he’s hearing you. But chances are, he got only every other word.

It’s the same in the workplace: you are not listening to that phone conference while you are checking your email. YA colleague calls on the phone to discuss something or deliver information and he or she knows you are not really listening, as you are trying to IM or fill out a form at the same time – meaning he or she will have to repeat it all later when you realize you don’t know something you should. At a meeting, people ask questions that are fully answered in the two page document they claimed to have scanned on the plane.

At conferences, it’s impossible to strike up conversations with people around you — something essential to make a conference valuable — as they all have their heads buried in their lap tops or PDAs, talking to people elsewhere instead of the people right there next to them, eager to connect.

So why not embrace true digital efficiency and give one slice of attention to each task, even just a few minutes, so that you do all tasks well? It’s amazing how much more work you get done when you single focus! Close your laptop in meetings and workshops. Put the phone or PDA away. Listen, look, make eye contact. Do it just a few times a day, and you will be amazed how much more information you discover and retain, how many MORE connections you make!

I now have a rule during my presentations: if you are going to have your lap top open, you have to be in the back rows; the front and middle rows are reserved for participants; my workshops are interactive, and I’m tired of asking a question to a room full of people or having people break into groups to work on a quesiton and having those at their lap tops look up and say, “Huh? What? Huh?”, or updating their Facebook screens while people behind them watch their screens instead of me. I put a lot of work into my presentations; if you aren’t there to participate, I’d actually rather you not attend at all.

The ability to concentrate on a single task, to get it done properly and completely, or to concentrate on a single content source, reading or listening thoroughly to the information provided, is rapidly becoming a lost skill, and the workplace, public discourse and even every day community life is suffering for it. We’re not becoming more efficient and productive: we’re becoming more distracted, less inclined to complete tasks on time, less likely to do a quality job, and less likely to really, substantially connect with new people. It also affects our quality of life: there are generations who seem to not know how to become engrossed in a movie, how to sit and people-watch, how to just be in the moment, and that means they aren’t really satisfied with anything.

But it’s more than just being ignored while I’m putting my heart and soul into a workshop or watcing co-workers founder in meetings: People are crashing their cars while texting. And even worse: people are making up their minds about world events, government policies, candidates running for office and proposed activities by various organizations based on snippets they’ve glanced at online or on comments heard by a pundit on the radio or TV as they are doing two or three other things at the same time. Debates have become easy for me to win these days because I actually still READ and have more than sound bites to refer to.

My tag line on Yahoo for a few years now has been “Read More Books.” The world would be a better place if more people did, not only because knowledge is a wonderful, empowering, enlightening thing, but also because it would teach people the power of “single-tasking“, or the power of concentration, of focus.

Take just 10 minutes every other hour to read something, in silence, related to your work — memos from colleagues, abstracts from journal articles, an executive summary — without doing anything else. Don’t answer your phone while a colleague is in your office. Turn away from your computer when you are on the phone. Sit and listen intently to a presenter for even just the first 10 minutes, without doing anything else. Introduce yourself to two people sitting near you at a workshop. Never ever write emails while trying to listen to a phone call, a presenter or a colleague. These are little things. And if you do them, you will LOVE the results!

Okay, after that lecture here’s some levity re: Facebook. Enjoy – and don’t do anything else while you watch it, because then you will actually enjoy it!

 

Knowledge transfer – it’s more than a buzz phrase

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Every organization – every nonprofit, charity, non-governmental organization (NGO), civil society organization, government agency, for-profit business – large or small, anywhere in the world, has subject matter experts (SME), each with a deep knowledge and understanding of business-critical information. At nonprofits, some of these SMEs are paid staff, but many are volunteers.

You often find out who these SMEs are when they go on vacation and you suddenly realize you don’t know how to update text on the home page of your web site, or you don’t know how to direct a person who calls who wants to volunteer, or you are going through the list she left of everything to do Monday morning and, at the end of Tuesday, you aren’t even half way through the list.

Most organizations hire paid staff and recruit volunteers specifically because of the paid staff or volunteers’ particular area of expertise, expertise that the staff person has spent years cultivating in university academic studies and/or professional and volunteering experiences. You could never expect such a person to transfer all of his knowledge to a co-worker, a new hire, or a partner organization. However, there are business-critical functions at your organization that various staff members are doing — probably every staff member, including volunteers — that must be documented. Looking at a mission-based organization (a non-profit or an NGO, for instance), these critical functions could include how to:

  • update/change text on the web site
  • use the 5-10 most common functions on your phone system
  • direct phone calls and emails appropriately, for the entire organization or just within one department or program
  • direct inquiries from potential volunteers
  • direct inquiries from the media
  • retrieve data from a computer system backup
  • start a computer system backup, or how to ensure an automated backup took place
  • moderate your online discussion group
  • coordinate the logistics for any kind of meeting your organization has regularly, on site or online

This knowledge often needs to be conveyed to people with a lower level of technical expertise than the person in charge of these tasks – even if the person in charge of a task is an individual contributor with no staff to supervise — like the receptionist — while the person who needs to know is a senior manager.

(I have a firmly-held belief that the receptionist of an organization is often the most knowledgeable about what’s happening at the organization, and he or she is always one of the first persons I talk to if I’m consulting with an organization regarding its communications or volunteer engagement practices – but I digress…)

Content management systems (CMS), like a simple Intranet, that allows staff to upload and read each other’s information, and to share what they are working on, greatly assist in effective knowledge transfer and staff cross-training, but only if everyone has access to such, is encouraged to contribute to such, and is evaluated per their contributions to such. It’s about establishing a culture of internal transparency and rewards for sharing as much as it’s about creating a CMS. By contrast, partitioning information so that only certain people have access to it (knowledge hoarding), limiting it to folders in the file cabinets next to our desks, leads to inefficiency, duplication of effort, confused messages and errors.

This free document by Keith De La Rue details how to build a knowledge transfer toolkit. It’s a highly technical, jargon-filled document, and sometimes you will want to yell “Why don’t you just use plain English?!” Still, you will find it helpful if you want to ensure that business-critical information and practices at your organization are identified and documented. “This toolkit includes a range of individual elements, comprising content management, communications, learning and multimedia elements, coordinated as a managed program. Approaches to maintaining the currency and accuracy of content, dealing with knowledge hoarding and the relevance of social media principles will also be addressed.” Here’s more about Keith De La Rue.

 

Volunteer centers need to re-assert themselves

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graphic by Jayne Cravens representing volunteersIn 1995, I started volunteering with a new nonprofit organization called Impact Online, which later became VolunteerMatch. Impact Online created one of the first web sites that allowed nonprofit organizations to recruit volunteers. Many organizations faxed their volunteering assignments in to us, because they didn’t have Internet access; I was one of the people who helped type those assignments into the online database (if an organization didn’t have email, potential volunteers called the organization with volunteering opportunities they were interested in). At that time, Impact Online was also trying to promote the very new idea of virtual volunteering; the organization was already involving online volunteers itself, and knew of at least a dozen organizations who were engaged in the practice; it wanted to try to get other organizations to do the same. Two years later, I was working for Impact Online, directing the Virtual Volunteering Project.

Back then, I talked to a lot of volunteer centers about ImpactOnline/VolunteerMatch, trying to encourage them to, in turn, encourage the organizations they worked with to use the web site to recruit volunteers. And most of the replies were along the lines of:

But if organizations use that web site to recruit volunteers, no one will call our volunteer center any more! There will be no need for our volunteer center!

Which, of course, wasn’t true, and I did my best to debunk that fear-based myth. I heard it again from volunteer centers in Germany 10 years later, and I heard it from volunteer centers in Australia just last year! In fact, I still sometimes hear it even here in the USA. Yet, I haven’t heard of any volunteer centers closing because of the many volunteer recruitment web sites out there.

One of the biggest reasons traditional volunteer centers are still needed: many organizations that need volunteers, and potential volunteers themselves, don’t know how to use volunteer recruitment web sites properly. Organizations post poorly-written assignments, or post one mega/general announcement instead of listing individual volunteering opportunities separately (which means potential volunteers cannot find the service opportunities they are looking for). Or the organizations don’t know how to identify volunteering assignments to post to such a site. Organizations don’t understand that they have to reply to people quickly, or the volunteer management protocals they must have in place before they post any assignments. Potential volunteers sign up for opportunities before thinking about what their availability is for volunteering, or need advice on which opportunities would be right for them (if you doubt me, just have a look at YahooAnswers Community Service). Volunteer centers are needed to address all of these issues.

In addition, traditional volunteer centers are needed to

  • provide expertise to corporations about employee volunteering,
  • help coordinate group volunteering efforts,
  • help communities prepare for disaster response with volunteer,
  • help people who want to serve on a board of directors at a nonprofit,
  • offer courses in the effective engagement of volunteers,
  • educate the public – and public officials and even the press – about the importance of volunteerism, to counter myths about volunteer engagement (It’s a great way to save money! Fire your staff and replace them with volunteers!),

and on and on.

So, volunteer centers: quit resisting third party volunteer recruitment web sites. Encourage their use among your clientele, and focus your energies on all of the many areas related to effective volunteer engagement where your expertise is needed!

Volunteer engagement understood intuitively

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graphic by Jayne Cravens representing volunteersAt the series of workshops I was a part of this week, another presenter talked about how instrumental volunteers — young Russians who had studied in the USA at some point — were regarding the success of a recent university fair in Moscow, where representatives of USA universities and potential students were brought together. The volunteers helped the representatives get to and from the fair, helped them at the fair, and took them on customized, personalized guided tours of Moscow. The representatives said in their evaluations of the fair that the volunteers were one of the best parts of their experience, because of the incredible energy and support those volunteers provided.

To someone who was listening who didn’t know much about volunteer engagement, it sounded like these volunteers magically showed up for this event, knew exactly what to say and what was needed, and when the representatives left, then disappeared into the ether. Of course that wasn’t the case at all: talking to the organizer, I found out that the volunteers were recruited from among students with whom he had already been associating and who had already been studying, working and socializing together for at least a few months. He already knew they were great speakers, that they knew how to be helpful to foreigners, that they understood Americans in particular, and that their English was up-to-snuff. So, yes, the volunteers were screened. And, yes, the volunteers received a volunteer orientation that clarified expectations, though that isn’t what the process was called. The volunteers got a t-shirt with the name of the event on the front and the world “Volunteer” on the back, and many representatives insisted on taking photos with “their” volunteer — volunteer recognition. And the volunteers had FUN – they are all asking when they get to do this again

I’m sure the person coordinating this event has never read a volunteer management book or attended a workshop about volunteer engagement. He’s not a part of any online discussion groups for managers of volunteers. He doesn’t call himself a manager of volunteers. Yet, somehow, he intuitively knew all of the elements that are required to engage volunteers and support them so that they can, in turn, support others. I’m sure the volunteers didn’t know they had undergone volunteer screening activities nor attended a volunteer orientation — they had simply had a LOT of fun and got to do something they really wanted to do.

And one more thought: I frequently hear that Eastern European young people just don’t “get” volunteering, that they don’t see why they should provide work for free. Yet this guy had to turn people away who wanted to participate in volunteering to support this event! His organization is a volunteer magnet!

This guy is asking volunteers to do a LOT of work and exude quality in that work.

So…. what does he know that you don’t?

Also see my favorite volunteer engagement resources.

Greetings from Budapest, Hungary!

Nonprofits: Use the Car Mechanic Business Model

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I’m in Budapest, Hungary where, yesterday, I presented an all-day intensive onsite workshop for education advising centers throughout Eastern and Western Europe affiliated with EducationUSA, a global network supported by the U.S. Department of State. My workshop was regarding business planning and creating revenue streams/fee-based services. I’ve certainly done business planning and managed fee-based services at nonprofits, and I’ve consulted on this subject before with nonprofits, but I have never trained on it.

It was a fascinating challenge for me to develop a hands-on workshop that would be relevant to an audience representing so many different countries, and, therefore, very different rules, different cultures, etc. (countries included Azerbaijan, Cyprus, Georgia, Lithuania, Russia, Portugal, Ukraine, the UK, Germany, Slovenia and Spain). To get everyone on the same page regarding what I meant by business planning, fees, customer service, and financial sustainability, I used a car mechanic as a model — a car mechanic, it seems to me, is a rather universal concept, someone we are all familiar with, even if we don’t have a car.

To be provocative, I ofcourse used an image of a FEMALE car mechanic.

And then I talked about what makes a car mechanic successful:

  • Her prices are reasonable (at least understandable – why she charges for what for a particular task or material).
  • She helps you to understand what she will do.
  • She can give you an immediate, realistic estimate for how long a job will take and when she can do that job.
  • She does the job she says she will do, on time.
  • She exudes quality.

In short, her customers TRUST her, because of the above activities and approach.

And then we related that back to nonprofit businesses – how, really, we have to do all those same things regarding our organizations, even if we have just one funder who gives us a mega-grant to pay everything.

I think it worked really well at setting the stage for all the rest of the workshop, if I do say so myself. I’m sure that most car mechanics don’t use the forms and exercises I used with these centers, like a SWOT analysis, to develop their business plans. But the car mechanic approach seemed to help my oh-so-multi-cultural group understand how to use those tools.

One of the biggest takeaways that attendees seemed to really seize on: clients who are expected to pay for something anticipate gaining significantly more from an organization than those who get the service for free. That slide got referred back to again and again.

And, finally, I have to thank Michael Keizer for posting the infographic shouldiworkforfree.com in the comments section of a recent previous blog of mine – I ended up using it in the workshop, after being reminded of it by my colleague Ann Merrill, and the group not only laughed, they said it actually helped them in thinking about what to charge for!

Added bonus: you can see my photos from this amazing trip.

More about my consulting services and my training services.

cover of Virtual Volunteering book with hands raising up various Internet connected devices

A reminder: The Last Virtual Volunteering Guidebook provides detailed advice on creating assignments for online volunteers, for working with online volunteers, for using the Internet to support and involve ALL volunteers, including volunteers that provide service onsite, for ensuring success in virtual volunteering, and for using the Internet to build awareness and support for all volunteering at your program. Tech tools come and go, but certain community engagement principles never change, and those principles are detailed in this comprehensive guide. You will not find a more detailed guide anywhere for working with online volunteers and using the Internet to support and involve all volunteers. It’s available as a digital book or as a traditional paperback. It’s co-written by myself and Susan Ellis.

If you have benefited from this blog 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.

Aid in Haiti is failing

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A few weeks ago, the radio show This American Life did an great show focused on aid in Haiti. If you want to understand the roadblocks to improving things in Haiti, it’s worth your time to listen to this show. Notice how some of the blocks are because of policies donors have implemented to try to prevent corruption.

It can be hard to get your mind around, but aid actually sometimes harms people, rather than helping, even in Haiti. There are stories of rice farmers in rural parts of Haiti not being able to sell their crops because, with all the rice donations from other countries, there is no market for products. Would-be Haitian contractors are also missing out on jobs because foreign contractors are being chosen by aid agencies instead. Sometimes cheaper, or even most modern, doesn’t mean better, in the long-term, for local people needing the aid.

Time has a story Haiti’s Failed Recovery: Who’s to Blame? that presents the two camps regarding why recovery in Haiti is failing:

For the anti-NGO camp, Haiti is a case study in the hypocrisy of the global relief bandwagon that descends on poor countries victimized by wars, famine and natural disasters. A growing chorus of critics accuses humanitarian-aid groups of using misery to validate their existence, spending funds inefficiently and creating a culture of dependence among the people they are supposed to help… If you belong to the “blame Haiti” camp, you’re less likely to ascribe the post earthquake mess to outsiders than to the country’s defective political culture. In recent years, development economists have sought to explain why some countries lift themselves out of poverty while others chronically underachieve. Stable, transparent institutions – like police, courts and banks – are critical to the success of poor nations. But Haiti’s long history of disarray has left it with few institutions worthy of trust. For those who emphasize such internal factors, Haiti wouldn’t be saved even if every dollar of aid money were spent and every NGO disappeared tomorrow. Until the country’s political class proves it can govern, Haiti’s people will continue to suffer.

I certainly offer no solution — it’s a systemic problem across sectors that defies a simplistic solution. I will say that aid agencies need to be reading these stories and looking at their messages to the public and to donors. They need to be showing how many local staff they are hiring versus how many foreign staff they are bringing in, and highlighting what steps they are taking so that Haitians are not just contributing to their own relief, they are leading it, and will eventually take over from the aid agency completely. They also have to be open about corruption – don’t shy away from talking about problems with transparency, even if it’s just in internal reports or reports to donors.

It’s not time to give up. But it is time to pay greater attention.

ADDITION ON JAN. 12:

John Mitchell, Director of ALNAP (Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in Humanitarian Action) has posted a blog about how the media is portraying what is happening in Haiti. It’s very much worth your time to read.