Lately, I’ve been hearing a lot about the way that fundraising appeals work best when a one-on-one connection is made with the potential donor.
I recently heard about the “world’s first interactive donation poster” and thought it was an interesting concept.
Would it motivate you to give or do you find it a little creepy for a poster to acknowledge you?
Friends,
One year ago, as President Obama signed the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act into law, he proclaimed that this landmark legislation would “connect deeds to needs. It creates opportunities to serve for students, seniors, and everyone in between. It supports innovation and strengthens the nonprofit sector. And it is just the beginning of a sustained, collaborative and focused effort to involve our greatest resource — our citizens — in the work of remaking this nation.”
Remaking this nation with engaged citizens is exactly what we will focus on during National Volunteer Week 2010, and one exciting, new tool for this work is the Volunteer Generation Fund created by the Serve America Act. With many states anticipating cuts in critical social services and the federal government facing low or no growth in domestic spending, we must apply creative, cost-effective initiatives to address pressing social ills. The Volunteer Generation Fund is such an initiative.
Competitive, small grants issued through this Fund to nonprofits and state service commissions will be applied to strategies to strengthen the nation’s volunteer infrastructure. Specifically, funds would be designated for activities that expand the reach of and enhance the effectiveness of volunteer activities that support the nation’s priorities of education, poverty, health care, unemployment, and the environment. For instance, an organization receiving a Volunteer Generation Fund grant could focus on recruiting, screening and placing corporate volunteers to tutor in at-risk schools. Another might apply the grant to training volunteer leaders to implement hundreds of volunteer-run financial literacy sessions for low-income, working families.
A modest investment to tap great potential
The Fund is not about spending money to get people to do what they already could or should do.
- it is about a modest investment in how public and private institutions – hand in hand with the millions of individuals who have stepped forward to serve — can unlock tens of millions of dollars in volunteer time and talent to meet the needs of our most vulnerable citizens.
- it is about recognizing the vast potential in concentrated community service initiatives. The federal government’s full-time national service programs engage approximately 100,000 individuals annually — the vanguard of our service leadership. But there are millions of Americans who are or could be engaged in part-time community service.
- it is about seeding the commitment to a lifetime of service in a vast segment of the population.
- It is about utilizing community service as a source of local innovation, applying the vast pool of committed volunteers to address real community problems in creative ways.
For instance, we know that engaging community volunteers as mentors with our youth has a direct effect on achievement and graduation rates. With a Volunteer Generation Fund sub-grant, a local nonprofit could design a program, unique to that local community, that trains and screens willing adults to mentor those young people most in need of intervention.
Building a Secure Foundation
Congress appropriated $4 million for the Fund last year, and the President’s proposed FY2011 budget for the Fund is $10 million. But even at $10 million, that level of funding is only 16 percent of the amount authorized by the Serve America Act. During National Volunteer Week and beyond, we must let our elected representatives in Washington know that millions of people are ready to serve.
Our citizens have rallied around the President’s call, but the challenge before us as a nation is this: do we have the infrastructure, in our nonprofit sector, to meet the demand? Are we constructing a secure foundation to connect those willing to serve to meaningful, results-driven volunteer activities? The Serve America Act’s Volunteer Generation Fund can be that foundation.
National Volunteer Week is an opportune time to contact your lawmakers in Washington and convey your strong support for a fully funded Volunteer Generation Fund at the $60 million level for FY2011.
In the News
In Service,
Michelle Nunn
Because we’ll be exploring ways to use social media for social good at the LEAD Summit in Washington, D.C. next week, we thought we’d experiment and have a little fun with foursquare during the event.
We’re curious about how foursquare might be used to mobilize people to take action, but since many of us still aren’t using this mobile application, we thought the LEAD Summit might be a good excuse to download it and give it a try.
LEAD Summit participants can “check in” at the event and compete to become The Mayor.
I realize that technically the LEAD Summit is an event, but we’ve entered it in foursquare as a place.
[Because this is an experiment.]
I also understand that Mayoral status is awarded to the person who “checks in” at a foursquare location most frequently and this might mean that those interested in becoming The Mayor of LEAD will have to cheat by repeatedly checking in.
[Did I mention this was an experiment?]
This will probably mean that participants vying to be The Mayor will be bent over their smart phones checking in over and over again and not paying attention to the speaker…
[I know, I know, there are a few sticky places in this experiment. It's a leap of faith.]
Twice during the summit, we’ll call out the reigning Mayor and, each time, he or she will receive a $100 gift card from DonorsChoose.org.
DonorsChoose allows you to select a worthy education related project to which you can donate the full value of the card.
[These make excellent gifts you know. Just sayin'.]
If you’re planning to join us at the LEAD Summit in DC next week, I hope you’ll play along on this one.
May you become The Mayor of the Lead Summit!
More information on DonorsChoose.org
Founded in 2000, DonorsChoose.org is a nonprofit Web site where public school teachers describe specific educational projects for their students, and donors can choose the projects they want to support.
After completing a project, the donor hears back from the classroom they supported in the form of photographs and teacher thank-you letters. To date, 88,000 public and charter school teachers have used the site to secure funding for $30.3 million in books, art supplies, technology, and other resources that their students need to learn.
Through DonorsChoose.org, individuals from all walks of life have helped 1.8 million students.
Follow them on and and read their blog!
Do you want to create high-impact, well-managed community projects that make a meaningful difference and engage neighbors and residents?
If so, HandsOn Network would call you a volunteer leader, someone who sees a local need and takes the initiative to find a solution.
(We love you guys!)
Okay… you’ve identified a need in your community and you want to to meet that need, what’s next?
Step One: Identify Nonprofit or Neighborhood Partners
Contact the appropriate local nonprofit or community organization to introduce yourself and your idea.
For example, if you want to organize a project to capture the oral histories of local seniors you may decide to work with a local senior center.
Similarly, if you want to restore a local stream bank, you may need to work with the local department of parks and recreation and /or the local neighborhood association.
Schedule a meeting to discuss your project idea and determine the next steps.
Ask what other stakeholders should be consulted and involved.
If you’re working in a community, strongly consider holding a meeting to discuss your idea with residents and be sure to incorporate their leadership, ideas and support.
Step Two: Initial Site Visit
Work with your partners in advance to plan the project.
Determine what date(s) and time(s) you will hold the project and begin to develop an understanding of how you will manage it either on the day of the event or from one session to the next.
On your way to the site, take note of any odd driving directions. Providing this information will keep your volunteers from getting lost on their way to the project.
During the site visit, ask questions that help you understand the agency or neighborhood’s greatest needs and the ways that your one-time or ongoing volunteer support can have the greatest impact.
Consider using the HandsOn Project Work Scope Planner to break your project down into tasks, estimate the number of people needed for each one, the amount of time each will take and estimate the materials needed.
Carefully consider the types and amounts of materials you’ll need to complete each of the project tasks so that your volunteers will have what they need when they show up to help and you can make the best use of their gift of time.
Brainstorm with your agency partner about how to secure the needed tools and materials.
Can the agency provide them?
Can you ask volunteers to bring tools from home to support the project?
Can you work together to solicit the support of local businesses?
Determine the type of participation that you can expect from the agency during both the planning phase and the project itself.
Will they have supervisors and potential agency / community volunteers to work with you at the project?
Make sure you exchange contact information and plan your next meeting and the next steps.
Step Three: Recruit Your Friends to Help
In order to lead a great one-time or ongoing service project you’ll need volunteers!
It is important to develop a volunteer recruitment strategy to ensure a successful project.
If you have too few participants, the project will likely go unfinished, but too many will likely mean that some will have little to do and might feel that their time was ill spent.
To prevent this, consider organizing a volunteer registration process.
This can be as simple as you keeping a list or spreadsheet of the names and contact information for those that signed up.
Alternatively, you can experiment with online tools such as or Volunteer Spot.
Pre-registering volunteers also enables you to talk with interested volunteers about the skills, supplies or friends they might be able to bring to the project.
If your project is small, you may be able to both organize the project and recruit the volunteers.
However, if your project is large, requiring many volunteers, you might really benefit by identifying an individual who would be willing to lead volunteer recruitment for you.
Consider recruiting a volunteer to serve as The Official Chairperson of Volunteer Recruitment.
[Real leaders empower others, right?!!]
Here’s a long list of recruitment ideas.
Step Four: Advanced Preparation
Call your agency contact to review project details and confirm logistics.
Arrange for the agency or neighborhood representative to prepare a brief presentation thanking your volunteers for coming and explaining how their time will contribute to the overall cause.
Schedule a final site inspection if necessary.
Pick up any tools and materials that have been donated or arrange to have tools picked up and delivered to the project site.
Make sure all tools and materials are at the site, in your possession (in the trunk of your car!) or otherwise immediately available.
Make any final calls to landscapers, gardeners, painters or other specialists you have recruited.
Think through contingency plans for inclement weather, too many or too few volunteers showing up on the day of the project and any other potential problems you can anticipate.
Confirm event logistics and details with volunteers.
Strategize about how you will manage your volunteers at the project. How will you make it such a great experience that volunteers return again and again?
Consider planning a group discussion at the end of your project, structured time for volunteers to think and talk about what occurred during the project.
This group conversation can often deepen volunteers understanding of the social issue your project addressed and increase their commitment to service.
Step Five: Manage the Project
What additional suggestions do you have?
If the power of the internet is enough to persuade , I wonder if it could mobilize people to make a spontaneous and meaningful difference.
I am intrigued by the current flash mob trend where people, who have never met, come together for an impromptu dance, prank, stunt or performance.
(You may remember hearing about Improv Everywhere’s flash mob where .)
Out of the flash mob culture, Carrotmob was born, a network of consumers working together to reward businesses that make the most socially responsible decisions.
In the first ever Carrotmob event, a liquor store agreed to invest in upgrades that made their store more energy-efficient.
To reward their efforts, hundreds of Carrotmobbers showed up at once to support the winning store.
The line of carrot mobbers extended out the door and around the corner. (And consequently attracted other shoppers.)
Last weekend, my colleague Catherine participated in a local crop mob.
A crop mob is sometimes a group of young, landless, and wannabe farmers and sometimes experienced farmers and gardeners, who organize help sustaining small, organic farms on the fly.
The crop mobbers believe that working together builds and empowers communities.
It sounds a lot like a community volunteer project, right?
In her recent post called Mobbin‘, Marcia Stepanek of Cause Global asked if Cause Mobs are next.
I’m interested in the idea of Cause Mobs, but also a little conflicted.
On one hand, I am intrigued.
It could be phenomenally inspiring to those participating, and those who witness, to see hundreds or thousands of people spontaneously contribute to the social good.
At the same time, the seasoned volunteer manager in me furrows her brow and skips right to the details of implementation.
“How can we make sure the Cause Mob meets a real, unmet need?” my inner volunteer manager asks skeptically?
“How will we know we if we are going to have too many or too few Cause Mobbers?”
“What if too many or too few makes the project ineffective, or worse, what if too much or too little participation causes the project fail?”
[My inner volunteer manager can be a bit of a curmudgeon.]
Assuming the details could be worked out, what types of Cause Mobs might work?
If we organized a Cause Mob food drive could we set a record for the largest amount of food collected in the shortest period of time?
Could we create a park out of a reclaimed brown field in a single afternoon?
What ideas do you have?
How would you ask a spontaneously assembled crowd of strangers to change the world?
Usually service-learning refers to volunteerism used as a tool to enhance the teaching of K-12 curriculum.
At HandsOn Network, we also use the words to describe the way that service experiences change people, even adults.
Service is a journey, right?
Each of us is transformed by the experience of giving.
Sometimes this happens quickly in cataclysmic ways, and other times it happens slowly, over time, like a rock being smoothed in a river.
Being an impatient person, I always want things to happen quickly.
[And efficiently because I am a Virgo, but that is another story.]
It is a tremendous privilege to help facilitate the awakening that happens for people as they get involved in serving others.
Here are a few easy ways to sprinkle a few transformation accelerators into your community project.
Posters: place posters above each project task area with a quote and/or a comment relating to the work volunteers are doing.
Graffiti wall: place a large piece of paper on the wall and ask volunteers to write or draw something representing service or their experience at the project.
Think Tank: Challenge volunteers to act as a “think tank” to address specific challenges the organization or nonprofit faces.
Discussion groups: if time and space permits, facilitate a discussion with your volunteers at the end of the community project – maybe at a nearby restaurant!
Discussion Overview
Tips for Getting a Conversation Going
Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions. —Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
Recruit Your Friends
Recruit Volunteers through Neighborhood Schools
Recruit Volunteers through Places of Worship
Recruit Volunteers through Local Businesses
Encourage teams of employees to participate (suggest the team wear company t-shirts to promote their corporate community spirit!)Recruit Volunteers through Local Clubs & Organizations
(Rotary, DAR, PTA, The Peoples front of Judea…)
Recruit Volunteers using Traditional and Social Media
Other Ideas
Be sure your recruitment message includes the project description, date & time, any special skills, tools or other resources needed and information about how you want them to sign up.
What ideas do you have?
What would you add?
On April 21, we will celebrate the first anniversary of one of the service movement’s greatest accomplishments: the passage of the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act, which authorized the largest expansion of national service in America since FDR created the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression.
Please help mark the passage of the Act and honor Senator Ted Kennedy, who dedicated so much of his legislative work to building the service movement, by sending ServiceNation a short video thanking him and/or telling us how your life has been touched by service. (No need for professional editing – ServiceNation would just like to have your personal story.)
ServiceNation will collect these videos and edit a select number of them together into a video reel that will be shown at an event in Washington, DC celebrating the anniversary of the Serve America Act. They will then present Victoria Reggie Kennedy with a DVD of this video compilation.
Here are some tips for recording your video:
Make sure your face is well-lit, and don’t sit with a window or light source behind you
Sit close to the camera for better sound quality and speak clearly into the microphone
It’s OK to speak more deliberately
Do a couple of takes and make sure you can hear everything that is said
You can do this by yourself or in a group, and consider filming in a place that has significance for the testimonial
If using a webcam, stack your computer on books so that the camera is level with your face
Lastly, don’t compress the quality of your video – you’ll probably want to upload the highest resolution file that your webcam or handheld camera outputs.
Please submit your video response by April 12th – upload your videos .
Updated:
Here’s Michelle Nunn’s video tribute…
T
oday’s guest post comes from David Bornstein, a journalist and author who specializes in writing about social innovation. He has published two popular books on the subject, “: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas” and “.”
Today I’m launching a new media site which will I hope will be a valuable resource for HandsOn Network, its affiliates and nonprofit partners. The site is called Dowser (www.dowser.org) — which refers to a person who uses a divining rod to find water — and it will report exclusively on stories of social change.
Today, so many people — volunteers and professionals — are demonstrating new ways to bring about transformational change. But their stories are scattered and often hidden from view. At Dowser, we’ll bring them together.
When I was starting out as a journalist in 1991, I stumbled upon an article on the Grameen Bank, the anti-poverty bank that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006. Up until then, I had imagined that poverty was unavoidable. But I became so intrigued by the idea of micro-finance that I quit my newspaper job in New York and traveled to Bangladesh to see it for myself. Since then, I’ve spent almost 20 years writing about social innovators around the world.
That one newspaper story changed my life. In Dowser, I hope to present stories that have the potential to change your life — by highlighting new possibilities, pathways and ideas to make a difference.
Every day, Dowser will provide detailed coverage in an effort to discover who’s solving what and how in various fields.
We’ll be looking for promising ideas and models and tracking emerging career opportunities. When stories pop up that are of direct relevance to the HandsOn Network, we’ll let you know.
More important, when you come upon great stories of social change in your communities, please let us know by submitting an idea! We’ll be on the lookout for them.
I hope you will think of Dowser as service to help you chart your own changemaking path at whatever level suits you. I look forward to building this site with you. There’s a feedback section on the site. Please let me know what’s working and what isn’t.
Thanks for reading!
follow:
