Today’s blog post comes from Antoine Colonna d’Istria, an intern with HandsOn Network helping to developing Skills-Based Volunteering programs.

On the second day of the Skills Based Volunteering Boot Camp, we took a yellow bus to reach the Little City Foundation facilities; a non-profit that assists and empowers children and adults with autism and other intellectual and developmental disabilities.

We observed a consulting session for Little City presented by Chris, Tiffany and Karla from HandsOn Suburban Chicago (HOSC). They are using the SAVE Model developed by HOSC. In the room the leadership team, the CEO and some key stakeholders of Little City were present to answer questions.

The main goal of the consulting session is to uses the SAVE Workbook to assess readiness of the non-profit to engage in SBV projects.

The workbook contains several fields that the volunteer center and the non-profit fill together. To begin, the non-profit lists its programs, with a clear statement of its vision and goals.

Then, the participants will agree on the drivers and obstacles around achieving these goals – through a kind of SWOT process. After the analysis of the internal organization’s structure and the business model, the goal is to discover SBV opportunities. An hour and a half later, volunteers using their skills and competences were considered extremely valuable in a lot of areas of Little City organization! The session had worked perfectly and everything seemed easy.

Back in the bus, we had a few questions. Would all readiness assessment sessions go as smoothly as this one? No – some non-profits aren’t as ready as they need to be.

What happens in those cases? The smartest thing to do is to plan several consulting sessions – it is also a great gain of time and quality for the connector organization to prepare sessions in advance. Doing this homework is crucial, and doesn’t require a huge time commitment.

For example, the annual report and the nonprofit organization’s website can reveal inconstancies in key messages or a lack of an overall strategic plan. This can lead to the first important SBV projects. The role of the connector is to assist the recipient to facilitate the process. The HOSC team also stresses that it is vital to have the leadership team, and the board, committed to achieving significant changes. The Action Center, as an active open listener, will translate the information collected through this exercise in real projects.

During the afternoon, we went back to the explanation of the SAVE program with the Set Stage phase (Ready->Set->Go). At the end of the Ready Stage a Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) is signed by the Action Center and the recipient NPO.

The Set Stage can begin: another session will be organized with the connector and the recipient to refine the projects. A list of 4-5 opportunities is ranked according to several criteria: Impact, Effort, Timeframe, Complexity, Resources. Evaluating the impact or timeframe of a project requires some practice and knowledge.

At this stage, skills-based volunteers and potential project managers are invited to participate, as well as some of the NPO staff to define priorities. The first projects will often be for a group of volunteers to come and analyze. The experience of HOSC is showing that it is better to split projects in different steps than trying to source huge projects. Better to begin small and be successful!

The best projects for SBV should be important, not urgent, and require high skills. We’ll look at what makes up the Go Stage in our final post!

Antoine Colonna d’Istria is intern with HON for 6 months to help developing Skills-Based Volunteering. He studies Corporate and Public Management at HEC and Sciences Po Paris after a BA in Philosophy at La Sorbonne. He is the co-founder of the young French non-profit Pro Bono Lab. Back in France, his objective is to help identifying community needs and replying to it in using corporate human resources and best practices in volunteer management.