Digital Arts Service Corps - management

6 Volunteer Management Presentations

Kelli Williams — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 16:03:59 +0000

These are some of the resources I present to donors and to agencies. They are rough and they require extra explanation in many places. But, since I haven't trademarked them, unfortunately, I am sharing them with you. Feel free to email me with any questions...I also have a list of websites and reading that supplement this. I'll get it on the wiki sometime soon hopfully.

Volunteer for Beer

Kelli Williams — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 14:28:26 +0000

At least that was what we were going to entitle our volunteer alert. Thought better of it at second glance. The Director of Teaming for Technology and I attended the John Mayer concert on Tue. night at our area's big amphitheatre to work a concession/vendor stand as a fundraising project. There was quite a process to be invitied, to host a stand, get certified to sell alcohol, etc. etc.--it took the better part of a month. We showed up excited and left dejected. It was chaos and we ended up not only not making money but losing it. We will not be going back for round 2! However, a very positive aspect of the adventure was the public recognition our project received. It was a great networking opportunity and we were right in front of our core market that we need/want to reach. And since we were holding beer they wanted we had their undivided attention. We had people come back all night long to buy from us because we had made a connection with them about where their money was going. So, from a marketing/community outreach project it was a slam dunk. Money, not so much.

On the home front, I am struggling to find the happy medium between two bosses. One, my immediate supervisor, understands that this is a "people" business and relationship building and face time are of the highest importance when you're getting ready to ask somebody for something. Her superior, while very nice and very understanding, does not seem to grasp this aspect of the non-profit sector. Having spent 30 years in the for-profit world might have something to do with the disconnect. We use Volunteer Solutions as a volunteer agency/opportunity management tool here. It is essentially a dead tool--is not being used and has not been used for close to 2 years. It is my assignment to revitalize the volunteer outreach that Triangle United Way does directed through Volunteer Solutions. I delivered my first synopsis of work last week at a staff meeting, on the day that marked my completed first month of service, and had quite a bit to report. My comments were that while I thought Volunteer Solutions was entirely capable of doing what was being asked of it, since it had not been used in so long I was going to have to be essentially doing its job for at least 6 months. I relayed the information and reactions I had received in my recent site visits to our member organizations in the last few weeks--all of which had been negative. The highlights from my meetings were that the TUW is "big brother" and has very little understanding of its agencies. I had to report that, from what I saw, those perceptions were true and it was going to take a lot of 'bridge building' on my part to the program directors and volunteers to get them back in the habit/mindset of turning to TUW and Volunteer Solutions for their needs. It's an uphill march, but I stressed that it is one that I think is not only worthwile and capable of being reached--it is essential for the namesake of Triangle United Way. So, I have a big job but I am encouraged by the support of my superiors (my colleagues will get there eventually) and the people I've met at our agencies. This is apparently an issue that has been tossed around for a few years without a solution, so, to quote one of my bosses "we went and got you." It's ok to be both flattered and scared by that comment, right?

Nonprofit Competition & Concept Map

Ben Sheldon — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 14:57:54 +0000

At this summer's CTCnet Conference the thing I most took away--or rather, repeated to the most number of people--was something said by the keynote speaker, Ami Dar, the creator of Idealist.org.

He was asked by someone in the crowd something along the lines of "In what areas do you want to see nonprofits develop into the future?"

Ami Dar responded that an area that he saw as important was acknowledgement of nonprofit competition. His brilliant reasoning was this:

In for-profit companies, everyone accepts that competition takes place; it's a given. Businesses identify the areas in which they compete, and from this, also gain an understanding of the areas in which they don't compete. In the areas in which they don't compete, businesses can cooperate. Nonprofits, in general, are not aware of, or acknowledge that they compete (and they do), and because of this, they cannot collabrate as efficiently or as effectively as possible.

My own example of this is the Detroit automakers. Ford and GM are incredibly competitive in car production, features, pricing, dealerships, etc. But at the same time, they have an incredibly strong combined lobby for setting safety and emission standards, things that affect the entire industry. They know where they compete and therefore know where they can work together.

So this has been rattling around in my head until I read two things:

This first was "Learning How to Learn" by Joseph D. Novak, D. Bob Gowin, and Jane Butler Kahle, which lays out some very interesting models and heuristics for visualizing information.

The second was A Typology of Nonprofit Competition: Insights for Social Marketers by Robin J. Ritchie and Charles B. Weinberg.

Putting them together, I made this using OmniGraffle:

Download the PDF