Last Night of Conference

Dinner with a great group of National Conference Volunteering and Service in  Chicago was a perfect end to this event. By the way, I took my tie off after this photo.
For me, conference was a turning point after what has been a very difficult period. It affirmed, I am making a diference in people's lives.

Thank you to everyone at NCVS 2012 for your encouragement!

NCVS Launch

Here we are in a HUGE darkened hall for the start of the 2012 National Conference Volunteering Service in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Sixteen speakers are scheduled for the next 90 minutes! Seven too many to my way of thinking. There are 4300 people at the Conference but I think a lot of people are playing "hookey"! I would say 3000 people present?

We started with the US National Anthem sung by a young guy from the Junior ROTC here in Chicago. A very simple and moving without being syrupy. The mayor of Chicago noted this guy had sung in three places this week that the mayor had been at!

President Obama appeared for a short welcome speech via pre recorded video. He got a huge applause. I suspect if he had been here in person, he would have been a hit.

Michelle Nunn, CEO of Points of Light (I am interested that the Hands On brand is not being emphasised this year) followed welcoming us to the conference in Chicago. we got a lot of reasons as to why this was a perfect city to be in from a political point of view.  Personally, I thought it was the architecture, food and art! LOL. It was noted that there were 7000 volunteers who spent a day painting Chicago schools recently. Brilliant! There was a connection made between that service and the highest graduation rate ever from Chicago Public schools. I am not sure how fresh paint results in this outcome? Do we also risk reinforcing the stereotype that the only volunteer work is this unskilled service?



She introduced the  Mayor of Chicago, Rham Emmanual, who I thought was refreshingly unpolitical and a very natural communicator. He noted that the high school completion rate for Chciago just hit 66% and noted that every President, Governor and Mayor believes in service (and volunteering????????). I was interested that Wisconsin has the country's highest high school graduation rate (90 per cent) and Nevada 56.3 per cent. I didnt know what party the mayor was from but I found him to be inspiring and funny.

Michelle spoke next. Sorry Michelle, I would love to see you delivering a much more human speech, mixing it up with the crowd. Lots of facts and way too many big words and phrases didn't grab me.

Dr Jill Biden, First Lady of the United States who came across as very human. She has had a son who was stationed in Iraq for a year and she has  been working to raise support for those who serve in the armed forces. It always surprises me for a country with such a military complex, that practical support )post service medical, employment and counselling)  for military members and their families is not as comprehensive as it could be.

People loved JR Marteinez, as would be expected. -and so they should. He was funny, serious and human. Not someone I had encountered before (I don't watch TV). According to Wikipedia: in 2003, Martinez sustained severe burns to over 40 percent of his body while serving as a United States Army infantryman in Iraq. Following his recovery, he has traveled around the country speaking about his experiences to corporations, veterans groups, schools, and other organizations.


In 2008, Martinez was cast in ABC's daytime drama, All My Children in the role of Brot Monroe.[12] His character also served with the U.S. Army in Iraq and was injured in combat. Martinez first appeared on the program on Friday, November 7, 2008.

Neil Bush, Chair of Points of Light followed.

Barbara Bush is 87 (as of ten days ago) and was as funny and compelling as always. She likes to say it as it is. I love hearing from her.

It was at the point that when Lauren and Pierce Bush appeared for an interview, I tuned out. Too many speakers. I got irritated with some of the runway lines that emerged eg 90% of kids whos parents got to jail will themselves go to jail. We know that. The solutions are not simple but are vital. Pierce was funny. The interview was too long. Melissa Harris-Perry was superb as interviewer. Would have loved to hear from her.

Kevin Bacon, made a brief appearance to talk about Six Degrees .org. What was kind of amusing was he told us to forget about him and concentrate on the website. Ironic seeing he was there to tell us this! I also didn't quite fully get what his site was about.

Merri Dee-good quote: "When you step out to help somebody else, you help yourself first."

Patrice DeCorrevont, CEO Govt and non profit banking was actually quite interesting. (Much better than last year's Chase speech). We dont often expect the bankers to be interesting Patrice!! NB I have my US bank account with Chase.

This brought us to the end of the Opening which ended up being almost two hours. The South Shore Drill Team saw us out with a great performance.

My assessment? Overall, very good. I stand by my earlier comment: Six less speakers please. The More human the speeches, the better they work. The glaring absence for me, was the absolute non mention at any time of managers of volunteers. Do 7000 people paint schools spontaneously? No. I think its a shame that the peak body for volunteerism in the USA does not mention, focus on, feature or interview the very people who recruit, support, train, mobilise, motivate volunteers. If it does not appear here, what hope do we have of anyone else featuring volunteer management? Seventeen speeches?????!!




Off to the exhibit hall for the NCVS Chicago opening celebration. Check out my DVD at the Resource centre!! LOL Come and say hi and get in a photo with me!!

Doing Less with Less

The launch of SAVE started with an excellent challenging presentation by Jan Masaoka, Executive Director, California Nonprofit Association and Editor, Blue Avocado.

She challenged us to think about how do we get attention for volunteering, volunteerism and volunteer management.

Jan started by saying we need to disagree more at these events and challenged the group to do so. Impressively, she was not defensive when three people challenged some of her points.



A few points that struck me:

• Lets stop trying to do more with less- why not accept we can do less with less. Doing more with less is ultimately unsustainable. Do we aim to do so much less that we do everything with nothing?
• We have been trying for twenty years to change the attitudes of our organizations to volunteering and volunteer managers. time to stop. Time to ind external ways to bring change?
• Can we start giving awards to the Foundations that ask no questions about volunteering and volunteers to highlight the absence of volunteers in people's consciousness?
• The focus on National (and stipended) service has undermined volunteering.
• Volunteer managers job is not to keep volunteers happy. That limits our work.
• Why do we not talk about the lack of diversity in North American volunteering at these conferences. 
• When we talk about diversity, we automatically assume diversity is a good thing when it may not suit all organizations. 
• She hates the phrase Philanthropy used for volunteering. 

I found her to be an excellent presenter and she certainly got me and others thinking. Thank you Jan.

National Conference Chicago -Here we come!

It is three weeks until the US National Conference for Volunteering and Service in Chicago, Illinois. This will be my eleventh conference- have been there every year since 2002. It is one of the highlights of my calendar and I never get much sleep at it, trying to catch up with everybody while Tweeting and live blogging!!! Let us connect in some way. I am not having a display table this year as they have, frankly, got too pricey for me but you will find me in the Exhibit Hall a lot.

I have recently posted on May 17 on the NCVS Blog: Concentrate on People, Not Problems. Check it out and let me know what you think!

I am volunteering to present three sessions at the Conference:

• Sunday June 17- Global Lesson for Fostering Vol. Engagement -as part of the Summit on Advanced Volunteer Engagement(SAVE) 
• Monday June 18 Essential Leadership Skills   also part of SAVE
• Tuesday June 19 Volunteer Management Toolkit - Session is sold out. Surprise, surprise- we had 185 people attend it last year. Shout out if you are attending it. Boring Hashtag: #NCVS2848 Last year's was better: #voltools Am going to use both.

Last year's Blog Posts:

• NCVS Grand Opening
• Meeting People at NCVS
• My Session Report: Volunteer Management Toolkit

See you soon!!

Men in Volunteer Management

Across the world, whenever there is a conference, workshop or meeting about volunteering, there are usually about 90% women and 10% men.  Sometimes it is 100% women. Except if it is an emergency services meeting or sports.
Why?

Gwen is doing some research to find out why? She is pictured here interviewing me at the National Conference on Volunteering and Service.

What are your theories?

NCVS On Generation Service Project

100 kids from New Orleans helped create seed packages to start community gardens in Birmingham, Al devastated by disasters today. I was so impressed with the leaders from the on-generation advisory committee...astounding.

Volunteer Management Toolkit

A brand new workshop is always a learning curve. The Volunteer Management Toolkit was being presented by me for the second time.

I knew I was distracted by it when I left my Credit card and flash drive in the Kinkos store as I printed off stuff for my workshop. They were there two hours later when I returned. Phew!

Thank you to the 185 people who squeezed into a room for the North American debut of this workshop- please let me know what you think? 

In the past we have had a room monitor who helps with tasks like this. Not sure if they are not doing that this year or I didnt get one. It meant I was more frenetic than normal!

I welcomed people and ran around giving out  groovy coloured sticky notes pieces of paper.
based on the length of time in community engagement/volunteer management:

• Green -under 1 year
• Blue 1-5 years
• Pink 6-9 years 
• Purple over 10 years

Interestingly, we had lots of green and pink but not as many blues and purples in the room.

We talked about the key tools you need. The piece of coloured paper was used for a couple of interactive exercises.

I was fascinated at how many people have much work to do on their very first tool (message me for what that tool is). A lot of work. Good luck guys. Am happy to come and help your agency work through things like:

• Knowing where you are going with your community engagement strategies
• Identifying and meeting meet agency goals (strategic & operational) 
•  managing change
• Knowing needed skill sets of agency

We engaged people in lots of adult education opportunities with people mixing into pairs, triplets groups and mega groups. 

In the end we identified THE tools for a volunteer program by voting. The information re these tools will be typed up soon. 

Thanks for everyone who came up and gave me feedback on the session. There is not a formal evaluation of every session at NCVS this year. Some workshops are being audited - mine was not one of them. Sorry, I dont like that. How do you keep quality control at this learning event and how do I learn as a presenter? Especially as this was my second time presenting this session.

Only two people tweeted using the session hashtag #voltools Why does NCVS insist in hashtags on every session..does anyone use them????????


Next workshop tomorrow morning at 830am: How to Sabotage Your Volunteer Program.

NCVS Conference Opening

I have been in New Orleans for three days and today was the National Conference on Volunteering and Service opening. Having been involved intensively with the pre conference Symposium for Advanced Volunteer Engagement, I already feel well and truly in conference mode!

I must admit I really enjoyed the opening.

The opening was held in a mostly darkened room which meant seeing other people or taking photos was not easy.  There were four large screens which projected movies and elements from the stage. We started with some terrific music and we kept coming back to terrific music. Well done on this. I tweeted at one point that I felt like dancing. Other people remained still- not sure if shy or overawed at being in a darkened room with 3000 people. Applause however was loud throughout and at times standing ovations.

The theme: Champions of Service.

I thought the music was great and there were some terrific stories about volunteerism in New Orleans.  My favourite was about the musicians neighbourhood in New Orleans planned by Harry Connick jr and Branford Marsallis is on track for 70 houses in an area ruined by Hurricane Katrina. These houses are built largely  by volunteers. I saw the project last time I was in New Orleans and was impressed. I have to be honest, I had never heard of Branford Marsallis (I am  not a huge jazz music follower) but I loved, loved, loved his audio visual presentation. The project is astounding.

I liked what the Mayor of New Orleans Mitch Landrieu had to say along the lines of "give more, get more". He was short to the point and full of the right energy! Thanks mayor.

Also interesting for me was the question Chad Pregracke posed: -Why do we  know all about the lives of  celebrities but not these phenomenal amazing service projects". How nice would it be for Who magazine to feature some of our unsung volunteer heros!!! People loved him and his example of cleaning up the rivers of the USA!

My first criticism of the opening session was that while there were some heart warming and fun stories of volunteering, there were too many for me. The audience lives those stories. We dont need to be told volunteering is wonderful again and again. We know it and believe it already. See my concluding comments below.

The weirdest part of the opening was that Michelle Nunn and Robert Velasco, II,  Acting CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service whilst on stage together were placed at two podiums  at some distance from each other. It kind of felt like there was some sort of gap between them.

Of course what is weirder is that no one can get the to the question on everyone's lips: why did Patrick Covington, the CEO of the Corporation for National and Community Service step down from the role after 16 months on May 27? At that time, he said he was  taking an “opportunity in the nonprofit community” without saying where his next gig would be. The resignation came after such a short time in the role, in the midst of turmoil over CNCS's budget and a week before their joint National Conference with Points of Light. Strange timing. For everyone who keeps asking me: I dont know why he has gone but its very odd. There is not even a press release about it from CNCS. Anyone able to illuminate?

Michelle shared a nice story about a little girl Riley Hebberd who saw that the kids in African refugee camps didnt have toys. She gave her own toys to them, persuaded her school friends and has now started a foundation that sends toys to Africa. This is proof that young kids "get volunteering". I am sorry, in the back of mind came the nagging question: "do the kids want/like the toys they get?" and "how can we get the kids out of refugee camps instead of sending toys".  I dont like being cynical but having lived in Africa and having worked with some well intentioned  but inappropriate donations, I wonder. Then the other part of me said "does it matter?". Surely some good can be blessed in some way?

That was a good lead in to the presentation by the founder of Kaboom  Darell Hammond who builds children's playgrounds.

The Target gift was very much appreciated and it was nice to chat to some of them! They looked amazing in their bright red t shirts saying "thank you for your service". Great touch. I think I want to give mine to Riley Hebberd's toy program.

Theres always a lot of politics at the NCVS opening (this was my tenth). Robert Rosenthal of Volunteer Match (picture right) noted, however, in a Tweet that "90 mins in, I think I can count Obama references at #NCVS opening session on one... finger?".

As is usual with the NCVS Conference opening.....tooo long with too many talking heads...I d cut a few out (but who of course?)  One person said to me that they counted 20 speakers in the two hour session. One of the segments included a 25 minute chat between "political consultants" James Carville and Mary Matalin. There were some gems in their discussion but it felt way too long for an opening session. Post podcasts on line and we can check them out.

The whole show ended with Roots of Music playing again.

Overall rating for the NCVS Opening Session: 8.5 out of 10.

What did you think? Comments welcome below:-

Volunteer Management Skills

Sue Hine who writes the blog Management 4 Volunteers says: "Your excellent blogs of May 24 and June 6 have reminded me of the cartoon drawn up at the first Aus Retreat for Advanced Management, Canberra 2005 (see below).  Worth resurrecting I think"

Sue, you are right. Here is a volunteer manager top to toe:

• Close to sainthood
• visionary
• Big ears = good listener
• Ability to sniff out new opportunity
• Passion
• Hidden talents
• Conflict Resolution
• Dynamic
• Fast Action

Thanks Sue!

Savor the Experience

The other conference being run at the same time as the US National Conference on Volunteering and Service in the NOLA Convention Centre is the Wound, Ostomy and Continence Nurses Society.

The theme of that Conference is "Savor the Experience".

I beg your pardon?

One can only assume that they mean New Orleans and its "flavors, the music, festivities" not the experience of wounds, ostomies and incontinence???

Meeting People @ NCVS

One of the features of the National Conference on Volunteering and Service is meeting people from all over the USA. Here are some of my meetings:



Delores Morton is the Vice President, HandsOn University and provides the strategic direction and vision for the National Conference on Volunteering and Service and for management of the organization's training programs. Well done on the 2011 Conference! And look she is still smiling at the end of it all!!

 The National Parks Volunteers in Parks Network were present at the Conference led by the amazing Joy Pietschmann.


There are between 390 and 400 National Parks in the USA (how many have you visited? Volunteers serve by answering visitor questions, presenting living history demonstrations in period costume, Building painting  and making cabinets and giving guided nature walks and evening campfire programs.

Hostelling International USA had five representatives from across the country. I showed them my Youth Hostel membership card and they invited me to hang out with them for lunch. Three of the group came to my workshops: Sabotage and Tools (and said affirming things). We had lunch at Mothers in New Orleans. In a single year, Mother's is a NOLA institution. Closed for a very short time because of Katrina, Mothers has served the city since 1938 and serves up every year:
175,000 pounds (75 000 kg) of ham and roast beef,
quarter of a million "biscuits" (Aussies think savoury scones), 150,000 loaves of French bread and a tonne of hot pepper sauce.


The first U.S. youth hostel opened in Northfield, Massachusetts in 1934. Today 60 hostels provide accommodation to locals and visitors. 

Was great to see Lisa Crittenden Hardwick again. Lisa is Marketing and Sales at Industries for the Blind. Prior to that she was the Director of this National Conference for the Corporation for National and Community Service. 

Mike Sheridan with one of his team from Eastern University...I think its Charlene,...sorry, do please correct me! This is where one of my heroes Tony Campolo teaches. Mike is married to an Australian! He is with the School of Leadership and Development and he was telling me they feature a series of non profit focussed courses including a Master of Science in Nonprofit Management

These guys are with the National Center for Appropriate Technology. The Center provides  access to appropriate technologies including house Weatherizing, training farmers, monitoring energy use and demonstrating renewable energy technology.


Todd Hunkler is based on Montana and Jordan Goldsmith on the right is with  Pennsylvania Energy Corps.  Todd got his passion after studying in Australia. While there he learnt to enjoy watching Australian football!

Tracey Leigh Seabolt is with Learn and Serve America. Their work got over one million students involved in service-learning. Learning which built knowledge  confidence, self esteem and allowed people to stay at school. 


Learning which is threatened by 100% cuts to the Learn and Serve America budget. Their budget? 40 million US dollars. I noted this is about the cost of two missiles. 


Tracey wants to visit Australia one day.

Brendon L. A. Barclay is the Executive Director at Sustaining Urban Villages in Atlanta, Georgia. Pictured here with his wife and youngest son, he is due to receive an award at the Conference for his work. Here is a video of the agency building an outdoor classroom in Georgia. 

 

Fred Lugo is President of the National Senior Corps Association (NSCA) Board of Directors and Executive Director of Coming of Age Austin Metro! 


































Katie Reeves also works with  Coming of Age Austin Metro! Pictured here with Martin (Marty) Molloy)  at my workshop this morning.  Marty is from Greater Philadelphia Cares

 Sarah Christian and Jennifer Bennett from Volunteer Match. This agency (one of my favourites) provides online services to match volunteers and agencies committed to civic engagement.  78,000 nonprofit organisations are connected to millions of volunteers:-  5,436,839 Referrals Since 1998 (see this live map for current activity).

Joan and I had an interesting conversation at Kinkos when I went back to collect my lost card and jumpdrive (see this post for that story!). Joan works with Mayflower RSVP in Plymouth, MA. We have met a few times over the years (this is my tenth NCVS!)

Davida Gatlin from Generation On  who exist "To inspire, equip, and mobilize youth to take action that changes the world and themselves through service" We talked about engaging different generations in service before my workshop on that topic.


Davida is organizing a service project here in New Orleans for local 13 yo 16 year olds Tuesday

Matt Lyttle, Emergency Response Program Manager from Volunteer Fairfax. Like myself, Matt volunteered in Central America: he in Nicaragua and myself in El Salvador.

Natalie Smith, Manager of Business Training Services, Points of Light Institute and Wayne Svoboda from Volunteer Partners in Lincoln, Nebraska. Volunteer Partners have an amazing mentoring/support for non profits program involving triplets.

Daphne Ferris Mayer Keys (left) from Campus Crusade for Christ International and Cindy Battles (right) from Operation Mobilization

Tony Goodrow and Anne Wiseman from Volunteer Squared.















The faculty and team of the Symposium for Advanced Volunteer Engagement.. what a great group (left to right):

• Lori Jean Mantooth, Points of Light Institute
• Sue Carter Kahl, Commissioner at California Volunteers 
• Erin Barnhart, Effective Altruism
• Martin J Cowling (me!)
• Jill Friedman Fixler,  JFFixler Group 
• Sarah Jane Rehnborg,  The RGK Center 
• Betty Stallings, Building Better Skills
• Katie Campbell, The Council for Certification in Volunteer Administration 

What skills does a 21st C Manager of Volunteers need?

In my workshop session today, we concluded that "volunteering" which has evolved and changed rapidly in the last ten years will again look very different in ten years. The way volunteers are coordinated and managed will change rapidly. For example:

• If "mandatory" volunteering continues to increase, this will change the way we recruit and screen volunteers.
• The increasingly sophisticated involvement by corporates in supporting volunteerism will impact structure of volunteer roles
• Social media will change the way we market volunteering, recruit and recognise volunteers
• The lifestyles of Boomers will change the way we offer roles
• The acceptance that many volunteers have very high level of skills will change the way we train volunteers.

We played with some quite radical scenarios for a volunteer program in 2021. For example:

• not calling volunteers "volunteers"
• not having managers of volunteers as we know them today
• using apps to recruit volunteers
• employing paid people to undertake "menial" or routine tasks and engaging volunteer skills to  undertake high level work eg establishing marketing strategies or fundraising campaigns

As a group, we dont know which ones of those will happen but we did identify the skills needed for a 21st Century volunteer manager. What do you think of the lists? How many of those are in the people managing your volunteers? How many are you developing in yourself?

Connie (Wonder Volunteer) talks SAVE workshops

The Symposium for Advanced Volunteer Management has finished for the morning. I interview Connie, one of the volunteers helping support the Conference about the feedback from the seven workshops that were conducted this morning:

1.    “Deviant” and “Mean” Aren’t Just Difficult Volunteers ~ Sarah Jane Rehnborg
2.  Building Active Commitment and Support to Your Organization’s Volunteer  Engagement ~ Betty Stallings and Sue Carter Kahl
3.  To Be or Not to Be Online: The Web, Social Media, and Volunteer  Engagement ~ Erin Barnhart
4.  Empowering Skilled & Pro-bono Volunteers: New Roles for Staff & Volunteers ~  Jill Friedman Fixler
5.  Balancing Professional Leadership and Spirit ~ Martin J. Cowling
6.  The Future of Volunteer Management: Wrestling with Our Demons ~ Katie Campbell

I am official!

I am now officially registered for the National Conference for Volunteering and Service in New Orleans, Louisiana!