My Australian National Volunteer Week

For National Volunteer Week in Australia, I am having a very busy week:

• Yesterday, I was in the Northern suburbs of Melbourne, presenting at the Hume Global Learning Village May Forum on Volunteering: challenges, trends and opportunities. 

• Today, I am in my home area hosted by Volunteering Resource Service Mornington Peninsula- looking at how to attract future volunteers

• Wednesday morning, I am looking forward to an important discussion with the City of Boroondara about what we think volunteering will look like in 2021 (IYV +20!)

• Thursday, the City of Port Philip is presenting a forum on Recruitment and Policy - and I am the forum presenter! Should be a very practical and fun session!

• Thursday night, I am involved in a virtual presentation for the Linking Learning Looking volunteer Conference in the Clarence Valley. I am presenting about "Online Tools for Volunteer Engagement". The actual session will have participants physically present in the Grafton area of New South Wales, Australia  (a region about 2000km (1200m miles) from my home) and other participants online from anywhere in the world! You can join us!

• Friday morning I head down to the second biggest city in my state: Geelong for a joint Volunteering Geelong/G21 event looking at Mega trends in Volunteering 

Saturday I am taking my nephews to the football and celebrating my second nephew's 8th Birthday.

Have a great week!

Monday Motivation; Australian Volunteer Week May 9, 2011

The theme for  the Australian National Volunteer Week: May 9 to May 15 2011 is "Inspiring the Volunteer within you"


I found this quote today and think its a perfect description of volunteering and volunteers.



Never mind searching for who you are.  Search for the person you aspire to be.  ~Robert Brault,


Thank you to all my fellow volunteers this week and every week.

I am in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA

Am excited to be back in this state for the Wisconsin Volunteer Coordinators Association state volunteering conference. I was last here four years ago. Thanks guys for believing me all this time!

The theme of the Conference is Preparing for Change. We are at the Crowne Plaza, Miluwakke Airport so the whole conference has an aeroplane theme to it.

They dont know it yet but this is the opening video:

I am very proud of this little effort.  I am not overly excited about the end of it but in the context it wont matter. We shall see how it goes down in my presentation on Preparing for Change. What do you think? Would this grab your attention at the start of a keynote? I will let you know tomorrow.

Monday Motivation 2 May 2011

How true is this?

In every failure lies the seeds of success
-Deepak Chopra

May Musings on The Cowling Report!

In April, The Cowling Report hit a record number of readers! The Blog has been increasing in readership steadily since I started writing it in December!  Thank you to everyone who reads and recommends The Cowling Report We have readers on every continent (except Antarctica!). I also like those who comment (hint hint)


The top three The Cowling Report Blogs ever are:

1. Friday Facts: No follow through (looking at spontaneous volunteers) published Apr 15, 2011 with seven comments added to the blog
2. But What does it Mean? My provocative post on the Australian Volunteering week Poster. Eights comments were left.
3. Completely Unqualified Trainer? You're Hired published Dec 19, 2010 -this struck a nerve with 11 comments. It is my favourite Blog post so far, to be honest!

In the month of April, the top three posts were:

1. No surprise that the top blog post ever was also Aprils!: Friday Facts: No follow through
2. They are Watching Me  published Apr 23, I shared my dismay that my IPhone records my every location continually- 
3. My April 11 Blog on US National Volunteer Week with only two comments (you can still add some)

I am feeling a little busy for the rest of May.

I have two conferences (one in Wisconsin and one in New Zealand) plus the Australasian Retreat for Advanced Volunteer Management 

and a very, very busy National Volunteer Week in Australia. Lets see how my blogging goes.
In the meantime, love your feedback!

Volunteer Animal Soup

Wednesday Night, I was privileged to share with volunteers from Hospices across the Greater Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington areas of the USA.

I introduced them to some friends from Australia:

 The Koala (NB not a bear) is a well known Australian icon. Weighing 7 to 14kg (15 to 30 lbs),
Koalas are covered with thick, gray almost  waterproof fur.

Koalas have great coordination.

Amongst its many unique characteristics, including its strong rear legs and pouch, the kangaroo has a very strong back bone. 

 The ant eating echidna are a shy solitary creature. Short, strong limbs with large claws allow them to be powerful diggers. They will dig in and remain fast if needed.

My personal favourite is the Bilby. With some similarities to the bandicoot, this cute creature has amazing ears which means it listens well.












The Platypus is another favourite. Lives in water, burrows in the earth- duck bill beaver tail, poison spur, egg carrying mammal. Talk about adaptability.


The wombat is a heavy slow moving creature but can reach speeds of 40 km/h (25 mph) when threatened. Wombats defend their burrows aggressively








I asked the volunteers which animals they were and got them to draw renditions of their "volunteer animal".

Koala- great coordination
Kangaroo- Strong Backbone
Echidna- digs in
Platypus- adaptable
Bilby- great listeners
Wombat – solid and reliable

We need all types in volunteering. Which are you?

Have we gone too far?

On Wednesday, I spoke with the Advanced Volunteer Managers Networking Group of the Northwest Volunteer Administrators Association in Portland, Oregon. 


I was looking at the question: "have we gone too far'. In the last decade volunteering has become more organized, more structured and more sophisticated. 

We now have a position where I believe 40% of agencies are way behind the game in terms of volunteer management. This is based on my work providing training and consultancy to agencies and undertaking Volunteer Program Assessments. One third are on the way to "getting it right", a very small number are indeed there.  Some are poised in the verge of taking steps "too far" and are in danger of creating volunteer programs that are too organized, too structured and too controlled. 


The question I posed was how do we balance professionalization & the spirit of volunteering?


I suggested four broad strategies to tackle this balance:

1. Becoming Wholistic Volunteer Managers
2. Identifying the Real Risks in our programs (ie not being too cautious or too complacent)
3. Viewing Volunteers as Customers giving us their most precious resource: time
4. Being real about the protections we need on our programs

The group identified ten actions that we could do to achieve these (notes will be added here soon regarding these).


I asked participants to identify which action(s) they were going to take and make a commitment to starting them in two months. I also asked them to pair up to find an "accountability buddy" to check in with their progress. (I have done this a few times and today, one of the participants fed back while they liked meeting another volunteer manager they did not having them check up on her.).


My average score for the training was 9.1 out of ten. One person gave me 30 out of ten which we rounded to 10 out of 10 (Thank you to that person).


Pictured here with me are Carie Bauer of Oregon Volunteers and Victoria Eggleston, Volunteer Coordinator for the City of Tualation, Oregon

Monday Motivation 25th April 2011

"Commitment means moving through a door of change through which you do not intend to return."
-David Simon, M.D. and Deepak ChopraFrom the book, The Ten Commitments: Translating Good Intentions Into Great Choices

They are Watching Me

I just learnt something about my Iphone that I am not sure I wanted to know.

I use my iPhone to check into places with Four Square. I know that when I take a picture that the IPhone "tags" the picture with my location information. I know that the GPS can track wherever I am with the phone.

I did not know that my IPhone keeps a record of every cell phone/Mobile phone tower that it receives a signal from. From the day I switched it on, it has recorded where I am.

On top of that, my IPhone records that information and saves it. In addition, that information can be downloaded from my phone to ANY and EVERY computer it syncs with.

Peter Warden and Alasdair Allan,  "data scientists" discovered this whilst doing research and announced it this week. They describe the situation in this blog post saying: "our iPhone, and your 3G iPad, is regularly recording the position of your device into a hidden file. Ever since iOS 4 arrived, your device has been storing a long list of locations [latitude and longitude] and time stamps. "
I decided to check it out using a tool they they have developed called iPhone tracker. Sure enough here's my world map of all my activity since July, 2010  (I could not get my IPhone to work on my last Middle Eastern trip).

 I use three different mobile phone carriers- Tmobile in the USA/Canada, 3 in Australia and 2degrees in NZ. The system keeps tracking me no matter what. Warden and Allan note that "only the iPhone records the user's location in this way"
They add: "We're not sure why Apple is gathering this data, but it's clearly intentional, as the database is being restored across backups, and even device migrations." 

This is the picture of my cell phone usage in Australia and New Zealand since July, 2010:

"By passively logging your location without your permission, Apple have made it possible for anyone from a jealous spouse to a private investigator to get a detailed picture of your movements." Take a look at my city: Melbourne on 7th October, 2010". I had a busy day in Geelong (a city west of of Melbourne), the downtown and Eastern suburbs of Melbourne . I think the clumps in the west occurred in my travel out to Geelong. I can even zoom down to my house!

The scarey thing is that I gave Apple permission to track this. In their terms and conditions for  iTunes program (which is pages long) there is a paragraph about "location-based services" which says "Apple and our partners and licensees may collect, use, and share precise location data, including the real-time geographic location of your Apple computer or device. This location data is collected anonymously in a form that does not personally identify you and is used by Apple and our partners and licensees to provide and improve location-based products and services. For example, we may share geographic location with application providers when you opt in to their location services."

The good news is the researchers said that at this stage, the data "does not seem to be transmitted to Apple itself".

If you want to encrypt your data, here advice on how you can do it. 

Idaho Bound!

I am very excited to be one of the Keynote speakers (with Susan J Ellis of Energizeinc) at the 2011 4H National Extension Conference on Volunteerism April 18 - 21, 2011 in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. The conference is designed for all extension faculty and staff who work with volunteers and volunteers programs.

The theme is: Recruit, Ready, Retain.

I am speaking April 19. Its always great to get back to Idaho!

Conference webpage
Conference facebook