Tag Archives: management

Initial feedback on UNV plan to integrate volunteerism in development

Leave a reply

United Nations Volunteers has proposed a plan to further integrate volunteering in peace and development action. UNV is now collecting feedback on the Zero Draft to revise it before submission to the UN General Assembly in 2015.

I’m still digesting the report, but at first read, the two recommendations that got me the most excited/agitated:

  • Strengthen the evidence base for the impact of volunteerism through concerted research…

and

  • Exchange practices in the areas of volunteer management, safety and security, innovative approaches such as online volunteering, inclusion of marginalized…

Regarding the research recommendation – hurrah! Research is so needed, particularly regarding what works, and what doesn’t, in

  • engaging groups of volunteers onsite in one-time, just show up activities – not just park cleanups, but hackathons and edit-a-thons
  • involving youth as volunteers,
  • involving teams of volunteers online
  • microvolunteering online
  • involving volunteers from other countries (organizations wanting to or expecting to host such volunteers need guidance on assignment development, necessary support for volunteers, training for those that will work with such volunteers, etc.)
  • measuring the impact of non-traditional volunteer engagement, such as hackathons and edit-a-thons, group volunteering, and episodic/microvolunteering (online or onsite), on the participating volunteers, on the organizations they support, on the causes they support, and on the communities in general
  • involving volunteers that represent a range of cultures and languages in group volunteering, online volunteering (particularly in teams), and traditional volunteering (commitment of more than just a few days, with a set time and place to be regularly)
  • recruiting volunteers from among ethnic and religious minority groups and creating a welcoming environment for such
  • using volunteering as a way to build cultural understanding among different religious, ethnic, economic or age groups
  • the costs of involving volunteers (because, of course, volunteers are never cost free; there are costs associated with engagement them)

I hope there can also be a promotion of the growing body of research regarding online volunteering  / virtual volunteering.

Regarding the volunteer management recommendation: I’m even more excited about that than the research recommendation. Without more promotion of the necessary systems and practices needed to support and engage volunteers, no other action recommended in this plan will work – every other recommendation will be doomed to failure. For too long, campaigns have focused on encouraging people to volunteer, rather than helping organizations to involve volunteers. I’ve been recommending this action since I first became involve in UNV back in February 2001, while directing the UN’s Online Volunteering Service and managing the online components of the United Nations Information Technology Service (UNITeS). I can’t take the credit for it finally being a priority, however.

That said, I STRONGLY disagree with the suggestion from the report that, as a part of the promotion of volunteer management, that we:

Advocate for the implementation of  the methods suggested in the ILO  Manual for Volunteerism  measurement; Member States to integrate the ILO  methodology in their household surveys.

The ILO Manual has NOT been agreed to as the measurement of volunteerism by most volunteer-involving organizations. Far from it; the ILO manual uses the old-fashioned, highly controversial method of measuring volunteerism by assigning a monetary value to volunteer hours. This kind of measurement for the value of volunteerism is something that has caused a tremendous backlash from unions and other working people, who see this as fuel for corporations and governments to say to nonprofits and non-governmental organizations, “Cut paid staff and replace them with volunteers.” Did UNV learn NOTHING from the backlash from the UK’s “Big Society” push which used a similar measurement for the value of volunteers?

There are much better ways to measure the value of volunteers. It’s time for UNV to promote those more modern ways.

Also, volunteers as are not free, I would have liked to have seen this statement explicitly in the report. It would have been nice to see an explicit statement saying, “Corporations and governments have to be prepared to help fund organizations in the engagement of volunteers.”

I’ll be reading the report more thoroughly in the coming days and formally responding via UNV’s mechanism for such. I encourage you to do the same.

When volunteers compete

Leave a reply

Have you had problems with mission-competition among volunteers: an environment where volunteers compete in terms of more-devoted-to-the-cause-than-thou, or have mission-purity-tests for their fellow volunteers?

Some examples:

Several years ago, an animal shelter in a large city asked me for advice. They were working towards becoming a no-kill shelter. That means they wanted to create the conditions that would allow them to never have to kill adoptable dogs and cats – where they could have the resources to house every adoptable dog and cat, at the shelter or in foster homes, and get those animals adopted permanently as quickly as possible. That’s a massive undertaking. It requires vast amounts of money, facilities, messaging and volunteers.

The shelter was quite successful in recruiting a lot of volunteers to the cause, but a problem had appeared, and was growing: volunteers who were against hunting wanted to exclude people that were hunters from volunteering at the shelter. Arguments were erupting among volunteers with different viewpoints about hunting. A lot of volunteers were threatening to leave, either because they did not want to work with hunters or because they felt such hostility from other volunteers.

A few years before that, I was volunteering with a pro-choice coalition, made up of members representing a variety of groups working to ensure women’s access to safe, legal abortion services. Some of the groups were focused primarily on improving legislation and helping law enforcement to understand their responsibilities, while other groups were focused on defending health clinics from protesters on a day-to-date basis. Some groups members were anti-religious, while others felt their religious faith was the basis for the pro-choice work. While everyone was on the same page regarding reproductive choice, feelings about abortion varied HUGELY. Volunteers from both groups clashed often over which was the best approach for protecting women’s health decisions.

I thought about these two situations when I read this comment from a friend’s Facebook page:

This…..this whole “Lemme tell ya somethin’ ” attitude….. is THE reason I am getting out of dealing with non-profits. I will not be volunteering to do anything for a non-profits ever again. I can not tell you how many times I’ve gone into a situation full well knowing that I will put my prejudices aside ( organic food) to work for the larger picture ( sustainability or local farmers…etc…..) only to realize that *I* am the only person in the room who has checked their own personal agenda at the door.

Preventing this kind of mission competition among volunteers is far easier than trying to solve a problem that has festered too long. Some ideas:

  • Screening volunteers for attitude
  • Explaining to volunteers at their orientation, at other meetings and in your online group for volunteers what the mission of the organization is, and that the mission is ALWAYS the primary objective – that it can usurp how long someone has volunteered with the organization, a long-practiced tradition at the organization, etc. Be explicit about what mission competition among volunteers might look like, and why you want to discourage it.
  • Explaining to volunteers at their orientation, at other meetings and in your online group for volunteers your written rules regarding respect among volunteers. Very easy to find statements regarding workplace respect on Google.com or Bing.com.
  • Explaining to volunteers at their orientation, at other meetings and in your online group for volunteers your acknowledgement of different points-of-view among volunteers regarding why they support your organization’s mission.
  • Talking with volunteers directly that may be creating this mission-competition among volunteers.

 

How do you know if you are facing this problem? ASK! Ask volunteers why they are leaving, and ask volunteers what stresses them at your organization. Don’t just ask once: ask in informal meetings, ask at formal, official meetings, ask in feedback surveys, and ask on your online community.

Growing backlash against volunteerism?

Leave a reply

I first learned of people being against volunteerism back in 1997, when a three-day bipartisan presidential summit aimed at boosting volunteerism and community service efforts across the USA kicked off in Philadelphia.  I was directing the Virtual Volunteering Project at the time. There were arguments from both the far-right and the far-left, and I did my best to compile them. When I would bring up these arguments at various volunteerism conferences or on online groups, my colleagues usually just scoffed – it’s just extremists, it’s not something we need to worry about. 

Since then, I’ve kept an eye on these arguments against volunteerism, because I feel strongly that the arguments must be addressed. Organizations recruiting volunteers need to have these arguments in mind when they are crafting recruitment messages and when they are talking about the value of volunteers. When organizations ignore these arguments against volunteerism, or deny them, they end up with dysfunctional volunteer engagement programs, lack of support for volunteer engagement and, sometimes, very pad PR.

This came to mind over the weekend when I saw this comment in a friend’s Facebook feed:

I’d rather find the means of capitalization and pay people to do the work at hand than to bother with the volunteer work ethic or ability. I was never more personally insulted than as the president of the board of my church.

If you are talking about volunteer involvement as a way to save money, and volunteer contributions in terms of monetary value, then you are part of the problem – you are creating the fuel for these political arguments against volunteerism. And if you are not asking volunteers why they are leaving your organization, and addressing those reasons, you are creating ex-volunteers who are sharing their views with friends and colleagues and further creating a bad image not just for your organization, but for volunteering as a whole.

My other blogs and web pages on this controversy:

Note that the links within some blogs may not work, as I moved all of my blogs from Posterous to WordPress a few months ago, and it broke all of the internal links. Also, some web pages on other organization’s sites have moved since I linked to such, and I either don’t know or haven’t been able to find a new location for the material.

How Our Minds Mislead Us

Leave a reply

I discourage those that are screening volunteers from going with their “gut.” I like to remind them that everyone in the Penn State/Second Mile scandal went with their gut instead of following good policy and procedures. I’ve also brought up times when I hesitated to involve a volunteer because of a gut feeling, then decided I needed to go with real observations and fact, and ended up involving WONDERFUL volunteers that I almost passed on because I realized I had some prejudices that I needed to work on.

This recent blog from Brain Pickings, which notes various scientific studies that have shown that intuition is “sometimes helpful but often misleading.” It focuses on a new book by John Brockman: Thinking: The New Science of Decision-Making, Problem-Solving, and Prediction. In the book, Nobel-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman notes:

“There is no sharp line between intuition and perception. … Perception is predictive. . . . If you want to understand intuition, it is very useful to understand perception, because so many of the rules that apply to perception apply as well to intuitive thinking. Intuitive thinking is quite different from perception. Intuitive thinking has language. Intuitive thinking has a lot of word knowledge organized in different ways more than mere perception. But some very basic characteristics [of] perception are extended almost directly to intuitive thinking.”

The essays and lectures in this book don’t discount intuition altogether; what this book, and others, are trying to show is that intuition is more feeling than fact, and that always trusting your intuition can have dire consequences – just as always ignoring it would.

I would love to read this book. I often find these kinds of books so much more helpful in working with volunteers than other books that focus on management, even volunteer management.

Also see:

Volunteer managers: you are NOT psychic!

The question I get asked again & again

3 Replies

I often feel that most letters to Dear Abby and other advice columnists can be summed up thusly:

There is this thing I need to do or say, because I’m suffering per the behavior of someone else, but I don’t want to address it because it’s going to make me uncomfortable to say or do what I need to say or do, it’s going to make other people uncomfortable, and the people I’m speaking about/to may end up not liking me, have their feelings hurt, etc. So how can I do or say this thing that I really need to do in such a way that no one will be angry, I won’t be uncomfortable, everyone will listen, all is well afterwards with no resentment or hostility, and I get the change in behavior I need?

And I realized over the course of the four presentations I did in the last two weeks that most questions asked by managers of volunteers can be summed up thusly as well.

Two of my most popular blogs are about how managers of volunteers are under pressure to always please volunteers  and The volunteer as bully = the toxic volunteer. Both of these blogs reflect the aversion of managers of volunteers to conflict, complaints and uncomfortable conversations.

This aversion comes from a misplaced notion that managers of volunteers must be:

  • always nice
  • never confrontational
  • always welcoming of all volunteers no matter what those volunteers might say or how they may act
  • make everyone happy at all times

How do we change that expectation of managers of volunteers – both from others and by ourselves?

Also see this oh-so-popular blog, the Volunteer Manager Fight Club.

Why I’m not outraged at the IRS

Leave a reply

Each year, the IRS reviews as many as 60,000 applications from groups that want to be classified as tax-exempt.

501(c)(4) tax-exempt status is a different nonprofit category than organizations like homeless shelters, arts groups, animal groups, etc. The (c)(4) status allows advocacy groups to avoid federal taxes, just like 501(c)(3) orgs, but the status doesn’t render donations to the groups tax deductible. The primary focus of their efforts must be promoting social welfare – and that can include lobbying and advocating for issues and legislation, but not outright political-campaign activity. Also, these groups do not have to disclose the identities of their donors unless they are under investigation.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s January 2010 “Citizens United” ruling lead to a torrent of new 501(c)4 groups: the number of applications sent to the IRS by those seeking 501(c)4 status rose to 3,400 in 2012 from 1,500 in 2010. MOST of these applications were from conservative groups. And many of these organizations flout the law in terms of not being involved in political-campaign activity – if you saw the whole process where Stephen Colbert oh-so-easily formed his own 501(c)(4) organization, you know what I mean.

So what was the “extra scrutiny” by the IRS? Good luck trying to find out specifics beyond the phrase “extra scrutiny” again and again. It took me an hour on Internet searches to find out enough to make this list of what the “extra scrutiny” was:

  • more details on what “social welfare” activities the organizations were undertaking
  • speakers they had hosted in meetings
  • fliers to promote events
  • list of volunteers
  • roles/works of volunteers
  • lists of members
  • list of donors
  • positions on political issues the organization was advocating

Some groups have claimed they were asked who was commenting on the group’s Facebook page, but I can’t find any confirmation of this claim.

Of course, this “extra scrutiny” is a fraction of what many of these same people outraged at the IRS were demanding regarding the now defunct nonprofit group ACORN. It’s the same scrutiny these conservatives were screaming about wanting for arts organizations back in the 1990s, in their attempt to eliminate all government funding for arts organizations. And probably most importantly: no organization was prevented from engaging in the activities it wanted to, not even those with pending status. None. Zilch.

This scrutiny is not only what I have been asked for in every nonprofit and government-related job I have held in the last 15 years (yes, I have been asked by a government agency to provide a list of paid staff and volunteers – they wanted to see if our arts organization was involving “enough” volunteers”); these are details I have long encouraged nonprofits to provide on their web sites, to show transparency and credibility.

So, I’ll be by usual blunt self: any nonprofit organization, no matter what their designation, that can’t easily provide details on its programs – who, what, where, when – as well as information the number and role of volunteers and information on any activities that might be considered political advocacy, shouldn’t be a nonprofit. And if that organization is a political group, it should have to provide a public list of all financial donors. Period.

But, no, I’m not going to provide a list of volunteers. Their roles and accomplishments, yes, but not a list of volunteers.

In fact, let’s get rid of (c)(4) nonprofits status altogether. You want to form an organization that engages in political activities? Form a PAC. 

My sources:

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/05/israel-related-groups-also-pointed-to-irs-scrutiny-91298.html#ixzz2TSsJpVJ1

http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/05/14/us-usa-tax-irs-idUSBRE94B08I20130514

http://www.southcarolinaradionetwork.com/2013/05/15/at-least-2-sc-tea-party-groups-say-they-were-singled-out-by-irs/

http://www.coyotecommunications.com/outreach/scrutiny.html

http://www.salon.com/2013/05/14/when_the_irs_targeted_liberals/singleton/

Free online courses for relief & development workers

4 Replies

Last Mile Learning provides free, contextualized learning resources to professionals working in the development and relief sectors. Last Mile Learning is an initiative of LINGOs, a non-profit organization that promotes sustainable global development by building the capacity of the people delivering programs around the world. The Last Mile Learning facilitator resources are free and open source.

Each course in the Last Mile Learning includes a set of curricular materials that can be used by facilitators to lead face-to-face workshops or facilitated on-line training events (in both blended asynchronous or blended synchronous formats).

Courses relate to:

People Management
Project Management
Coaching Projects in the Development Sector
Harassment Prevention Project Identification and Design
Selection Interviewing Project Set Up
Delegation Project Planning
Performance Management Project Implentation
Managing through Meaningful Conversations Project Monitoring, Evaluation and Control
End of Project Transition

I’m quite excited about this initiative and these materials. I haven’t checked the materials out fully, but I’ve worked with LINGOS and know it’s a credible organization.

If you complete a course:

  • blog about it
  • share that you did so on your CV and LinkedIn profile
  • share it on your social networks (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)
  • make sure your employer knows, if you think they would want to know that you are engaged in professional development activities

Without a Champion, Your Initiative Won’t Survive

Leave a reply

In 1994 or so, while working with various community initiatives in San José, California, I was introduced to a concept I hadn’t heard before: that any project, initiative or program must have a champion in order to be sustainable and have real impact: a person who will advocate for that project or program with colleagues and potential supporters, that will fight for that project or program, that will argue for it, and that will be seen, through their actions, not just words, as a person absolutely committed to such. Without a champion, a project, initiative or program fails.

Over the last 20 years, I’ve seen this concept proven true again and again.

I’m not talking about causes – it goes without saying that a cause needs a champion. I’m talking about a project or program – it could be the introduction of a new database system, a reform of your human resources department, a program to bring theatre activities to classrooms, an HIV education program, an online discussion forum, an anti-bullying initiative, etc.

I have watched well-funded initiatives with a full team of staff fail because there was no champion. There might have been someone designated to be in charge of the initiative, or funded to work on such, but he or she wasn’t a champion, as I have defined it; rather, the person did basic things regarding the job – answering emails, generating reports, building a web site, supervising staff working on such, etc. – but nothing beyond that. The person might say he or she is committed to the project’s success, but the actions that demonstrate that kind of commitment aren’t there – the person rarely attends meetings or events regarding the project, he or she doesn’t participate in the project in some obvious, very visible way, the person doesn’t bring up the project frequently in meetings or presentations, he or she doesn’t push for an online or traditional marketing strategy to promote such, the person doesn’t link the project to other initiatives at the organization, etc. After a few months or a year or even a few years, when the money runs out, the person or team that worked on the project shrugs and says, oh well, sorry that didn’t work out. And the project ends and is forgotten.

I have seen fledgling, under-funded initiatives thrive because there was a champion – an employee, a volunteer, or a funder. I heard that person, that champion, talking about the initiative to others, frequently, I saw that person seeking out participation from others – other employees or volunteers, senior staff, clients, members, donors, the press, other organizations. I saw the importance of the program through that person’s actions. There was an obvious commitment to success for that program that could be seen just by watching that champion. The champion may not be the person working full-time on the project – it could be a senior staff person or other leader/decision-maker at the organization who ensures, through staffing and budget allocations and organizational strategies, that the project is going to happen, is going to be successful, and is seen as essential by the entire organization.

Consultants can’t be champions. They can be be essential contributors, they can undertake activities that are fundamental to a program’s success, and they can feel passion for a program or project. But, ultimately, they cannot be the project’s champion – they are short-term, part-time workers. They will be gone when the money runs out – and they may be heart-broken at not being able to participate in the project anymore, even weep for it (I have!). This isn’t a question of the value of consultants – there is NO question that consultants often play an essential role to a project or program’s success. But if there is no champion at the organization among staff – particularly staff that are in decision-making/leadership roles – it doesn’t matter how much a consultant cares or how hard he or she works: that project will fail.

There can be more than one champion for a project; the most sustainable projects and programs have more than one. Think of a nonprofit theatre; when you talk about the performances such an organization undertakes with any staff member, you will find champions throughout the organization. You will find people in almost every department that, if the entire executive staff left and the budget were cut in half, would step up to ensure that organization continues to produce performances. But that in-school outreach program the theatre undertakes might have just one or two true champions, and after 20 years of success, if those people leave and are not replaced with champions, the marketing and fundraising departments may suddenly start questioning whether or not that program should continue.

Not everyone working on the project has to be a champion. The web master doesn’t have to be a champion for the project. The administrative assistant doesn’t have to be. The database designer does’t have to be. Most of the staff on the project doesn’t have to be. But there MUST be a champion, someone internal, that is pushing the organization regarding the project, or it WILL fail.

When you want to start a project, program or initiative, or you start working on such, you can predict the success of such based on identifying the champion. If you can’t identify such – and if you cannot be such – then that project will be short-lived. I guarantee it. And when you are a consultant working on such, it’s particularly frustrating. And if you’re like me, you weep a lot.

What do NGOs understand that USA nonprofits don’t?

Leave a reply

Last week, I got to be a part of the program for a group visiting Portland through the US State Department’s International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP). It was the fourth time I’ve gotten to be a part of the program over the years – the first time was in Austin, Texas, back in the 1990s. This time, visitors were from Egypt, Afghanistan, Liberia, Tunisia, Latvia, Greece, Mexico, El Salvador, Morocco, South Africa, Cameroon, the Philippines, Ethiopia, and more.

Talking with leaders of NGOs from all over the world is incredibly energizing – for me, it feels like coming home. Many are stunned that I’ve been to their countries – or that I even know where their countries are, what language they speak there, etc., in contrast to so many people in the USA. I’m sorry to sound the snob, but my fellow citizens are notorious worldwide for our ignorance about the rest of the planet, and not even having a passport, and I’m proud to be in contrast to that stereotype.

(just last week, I had to explain to a very close friend what the European Union was – she’s a very intelligent person, but if none of the news outlets ever mention the EU, how would she know what it is?).

This time with the IVLP, I was part of a small group of members from the Northwest Oregon Volunteer Administrators Association (NOVAA); instead of a traditional workshop, we divided up and each spent time with three people, for 20 minutes, talking about volunteer engagement, and would switch to a new group every 20 minutes. It allowed me to get one-on-one time with more than half the NGO representatives, and that’s always delightful. Many of the problems they face regarding volunteer engagement are the same as anywhere: trouble mainitaining volunteer motivation, volunteers not finishing assignments, too many volunteers one day and not enough another, etc. I hope they found my references helpful – hard to address everything in just 20 minutes!

One moment for me that I particularly loved: how integral social media is for many of these NGOs in working with volunteers. I loved hearing about all the ways they recruit, interact with and support volunteers using various social media tools, reaching volunteers via their phones as much, if not more, than via their computers – all said that, for the most part, email is dead for their young volunteers (people under 40) altogether. These NGOs haven’t needed workshops or conferences to convince them these tools are valuable; they’ve seen their value immediately. When I told them just how many nonprofits here in the USA refuse to use Facebook, Twitter, or other social media tools to work with volunteers, about how, if nonprofits here do decide to use such, they often give social media responsibilities to interns and senior management stays away from such, and how often I’ve had hostile reactions to the tech practices that these NGOs, by contrast, have fully embraced, they were floored. And they laughed. A lot. And when I told them that, in Oregon, in the supposedly oh-so-tech-savvy Portland area, I have had women younger than me say, “Oh, I don’t have email, so send that to my husband’s/daughter’s address, and he/she will print it out for me to read,” their jaws dropped.

True, many of these NGOs aren’t recruiting ethnic minorities, religious minorities and other marginalized groups as volunteers in their countries – and don’t see why they should have to make volunteering more accessible to such. They don’t see who they might be leaving out as volunteers by totally abandoning offline recruitment and support methods. In short, their volunteer engagement is not perfect and needs to further modernized, especially in terms of being inclusive – but what they are doing in terms of leveraging networked technologies in recruiting, involving and supporting volunteers is far, far ahead of what most nonprofits are doing in the USA. And all I can say is: WELL DONE. And keep teaching me!

Another big emphasis for these NGOs in particular is involving young people as volunteers – young people who are unemployed or under-employed, people under 40 with some education but who cannot find jobs. These NGOs see volunteer engagement with young people as a way not only to build the skills of those young people so that they can get jobs – or even start their own businesses – but also to give these young people a sense of civic responsibility and community connection beyond protesting in the streets. I was happy to help address some of these ideas in my very limited conversations, and welcomed their online inquiries so I can send them to further resources.

And, finally, I apologize to the guys from West Africa who were offended I hadn’t been to any of their countries yet (I’m trying!), and if the guy from the Philippines does not send me the photo he took of myself and the guy from Afghanistan wearing the cowboy that he bought in Texas, with both of us making the “hook ’em horns” sign, I will be DEVASTATED.

POSTSCRIPT: Not devastated.

For more information about my training.

Also see:

Hire me in 2013 – let me help make your organization even better!

Leave a reply

Blunt headline, I know, but it gets the point across: I’m available as a trainer for your organization or conference, or for short-term consulting, for long-term consulting, and, for the perfect opportunity, full-time employment in 2013!

As a consultant, I specialize in training, advising, capacity-building services and strategy development for not-for-profit organizations (NPOs), non-governmental organizations (NGOs), civil society, grass roots organizations, and public sector agencies, including government offices and educational institutions (altogether, these organizations comprise the mission-based sector).

Capacity-building is always central to any training or consulting work I do. Capacity-building means giving people the skills, information and other resources to most effectively and efficiently address the organization’s mission, and to help the organization be attractive to new and continuing support from donors, volunteers, community leaders and the general public. My training and consulting goal is to build the capacities of employees, consultants and volunteers to successfully engage in communications and community involvement efforts long after I have moved on.

My consulting services are detailed here. I can deliver both onsite and online services. Also, I love to travel (especially internationally!).

In 2013, I would love to create or co-create an entire course as a part-time or full-time instructor at a college university within any program training nonprofit managers, social workers, MBA students, aid and humanitarian workers, etc. I am most interested, and, I think, most qualified, to teach courses relating to:

  • public relations (basic public relations functions, outreach to particular audiences, crisis communications, how to address misinformation / misunderstandings, how to deal with public criticism, etc.)
  • strategic communications (systematic planning and utilization of a variety of information flows, internal and external to an organization or program, to deliver a message and build credibility or a brand)
  • cross-platform media and electronic media (using traditional print, synchronous and asynchronous online / digital communications, and emerging digital technologies effectively, and integrating the use of all information flows)
  • public speaking
  • community engagement (involving community members as volunteers, from program supporters to advisers, and creating ways for the community to see the work of an organization firsthand)

Would I consider giving up the consulting life and working just one job, either as a full-time consultant for a year or a full-time, regular employee? Yes! In that regard, I am looking for opportunities to:

  • manage/direct a program at a nonprofit, university or government agency.

or

  • direct the marketing, public relations or other communications activities for a major project or program at a nonprofit, university or government agency – a corporation that matches my professional values.

I have a profile at LinkedIn, as well as details on my own web site about my professional activities. I’m also happy to share my CV with you; email me with your request. If you have any specific questions about my profile, feel free to contact me as well. References available upon request as well!

Looking forward to hearing from you! Questions welcomed!