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???

Monday Motivation 6 June 2011

You can teach a student a lesson for a day; but if you can teach him to learn by creating curiosity, he will continue the learning process as long as he lives.

Clay P. Bedford

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!

Registering for Symposium for Advanced Volunteer Engagement

Here are the friendly support team looking after everyone at the Symposium for Advanced Volunteer Engagement (SAVE) in New Orleans, Louisiana. Left to Right: Lori Jean Mantooth, and Jesse Salinas Tricia Thompson.









Have a listen to Lori Jean being interviewed at the desk by me - with no warning:-

Betty Stallings and Martin J Cowling en route to New Orleans!

Having finished three days in Toronto, Canada for PAVR-O with Betty Stallings. We are now en route from Toronto to Houston to New Orleans. I videoed Betty as we walked through the corners of Toronto airport.

Hear what Betty has to say about our weekend plans at the Symposium for Advanced Volunteer Engagement.......

Looking forward to having people join us in person, on line through The Cowling Report and/or via twitter:

Main conference: #NCVS 

Symposium for Advanced Volunteer Engagement:   #NCVSSave

My Tuesday Session: Volunteer Management Toolkit: #Voltools

My Wednesday Session: Sabotage! How Volunteer Managers Sabotage Their Program: #NCVS5493

Sweet but not very educational

A little while ago, I was invited to speak at a Volunteer Recognition event linked to volunteer week. My brief was to inspire, encourage and  I felt it went well. 70% of the attendees gave me a 10 out of 10. A number said they wanted to hear more.

One person said: "Sweet but not very educational". It was an inspirational talk! How educational could I be?

The Cowling Report hits new Record Readership

My blog celebrates six months this week. And six consecutive months growth in the number of readers. I am floored and honoured. I also saw more followers join the blog. Thank you. Its great to get comments from people also on the journey in the not for profit world and despite my laments, comments rose during May also.


The Top Ten most popular posts for May 2011 were in order of most to less read:

1. By far the most read (but not most commented on) Friday Facts: No follow through - my April 15 post about spontaneous volunteers. Its touched a chord in Twitter land too
2. Followed closely by The Power and the Passion in Volunteer Management which I only posted one week ago. It has had a lot of comments made about it on Twitter- but I have not had too many comments on the blog post itself.
3. My December 19 Post Completely Unqualified Trainer? You're Hired continues to pull people in-its one of my favourite posts. 
4. The fact that I was in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA for WVCA Conference came next. The blog post featured my editing prowess for a video opener to my key note. 
5. Cancer Sucks, The post about my sister who was diagnosed with cancer just on two weeks ago who have sent my family and I much welcomed messages of support
6. Volunteer Animal Soup was a fun presentation I gave at a volunteer recognition event in portland, Oregon in April.  I would love to present it again because it worked nicely.
7. I like my Monday Motivations but I get almost no feedback on them. People liked the one on May 2nd about success because lots of people read it! Thanks to Wendy M for her comment in it
8. My January post about disaster management: Thunderbirds and the Aussie Floods/Haiti earthquake suggests we need a coordinated international approach to disaster management
9. My review of the Kings Speech which I wrote back in February had more readers this month than it did in February. 
10. The Poster that wont go away considers a very clever way of undertaking a survey- only allow people to give positive feedback.  

Upcoming June 2011

Love to see what triggers interest this month. I will be in four countries in June: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA.  I will be reporting on a daily basis from the US National Conference on Volunteerism and Service in New Orleans, Louisiana.  In addition I will be tweeting from the Conference. The hashtags are:
#NCVS for the Conference
#NCVSSave for the Symposium for Advanced Volunteer Engagement 
##NCVS5493 for my session on how managers Sabotage their Volunteer Program 
  #Voltools  a session on the tools you need to be a successful manager of volunteers
Both those sessions are full.
Still not convinced that we need all those hashtags but the NCVS people keep pushing them all on us. 


Then I will be updating you on National Volunteer Week at the end of June in New Zealand. This will be my first return visit to Christchurch since the earthquakes.


Love to have you follow and send your comments please