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!!

Dinner at SAVE

Tonight, we were divided into groups to go out to dinnert. I was joined by eight delegates from across the United States and Canada at Chicago's historic Berghoff restaurant at 17 West Adams Street, Chicago.

The restaurant serves yummy German food. I had a Jäger Schnitzel- a pork cutlet, sautéed with mushrooms, bacon and jagermeister infused sauce, flanked on either side with caramelized root vegetables and spaetzles.

We had a nice relaxed dinner talking about some key issues to do with volunteer management especially empowering volunteers and risk management issues. Thanks everyone!

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!!