Archive for May, 2011

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Everything I Need to Know about Volunteering I Learned from Dirty Jobs

Tuesday, May 31st, 2011

You might be wondering just what a cable television show about hard working men and women who earn an honest living doing the kinds of jobs that make civilized life possible for the rest of us has to do with volunteering. Well, you’re in luck.

Be open to new things. Every show, Mike Rowe takes on a new job, and he’s always willing to learn what the new job is. Just like Mike, when you volunteer you should be open to doing something new. Even if you signed up to do a certain task, keep an open mind and be willing to do something different. You never know when you’re going to stumble into your new favorite thing.

Be willing to learn something new. Mike has had over two hundred jobs where he’s had to learn how to do something new. It probably won’t take as many tries for you to find the volunteer position you love, when you’re doing something new be open to what is being asked of you – even if it’s something that you do in your every day life. If you’re asked to do something other than what you signed up to do, try it out! You can always tell the volunteer manager that it’s not your cup of tea.

You’ll never know quite what you’re getting into. You might not get covered in eel slime or charcoal dust, but you’ll never know what can happen when you’re volunteering. You might find something that you’re really passionate about or you might find something that you never knew was fun. You might meet some great new people and make some new friends.

You have to ask. At the end of every show Mike Rowe asks his viewers to send in their jobs that could fit in on the show. Mike does the same thing that any volunteer manager has to do, he asks them. If Mike didn’t ask for people to send jobs in he wouldn’t know that picking blueberries was a dirty job, and if a volunteer manager doesn’t ask people to volunteer, they probably won’t.

There’s always another job. Dirty jobs has been on for six seasons, and there doesn’t seem to be a lack of jobs for Mike to do. There’s no lack of volunteer opportunities, either. Many nonprofits wouldn’t be able to provide the level of services that they provide without the hard work and dedication of volunteers, and they can always use a hand. Don’t believe me? Check out the list of opportunities through your local HandsOn Action Center.

Each job is important. Each job Mike does exists because it’s important to the industry he’s working in. Each volunteer job is important, too. Volunteers are important to the nonprofits that they work with because they allow the nonprofit to provide services at a level that wouldn’t be possible without them. Whether those volunteers are working directly with clients or providing support behind the scenes, their work helps to improve the communities they live in.

What was your dirtiest volunteering experience? Let us know in the comments!

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Helping Military Families Is As Easy As …

Monday, May 30th, 2011

By Bailey Bernius, Public Relations Specialist, National Military Family Association. Today’s post originally appeared on the National Conference on Volunteering and Service blog.

In communities all over the world, military families are living a unique lifestyle in order to serve our country alongside their service member.

It can be difficult for those not familiar with the military to understand this lifestyle and to figure out their role in helping military families in a time of need.

Everyone has a role to play in supporting military families – not just their friends and neighbors. Employers, educators, community leaders, government leaders, and health care professionals can all help support military families in unique ways.

For more tips and ideas, read the National Military Family Association’s Finding Common Ground: A Toolkit for Communities Supporting Military Families.

Here are some simple ways civilian families can help the military families who are living right in their own communities.

Hang out: Where appropriate, invite the spouse of a deployed service member to go out to dinner, see a movie, or go to a concert. Getting out of the house is a great stress reliever during a lonely time.

Be yourself: Look for opportunities to help by matching your own talents and resources with the needs of another.

Volunteer: Organizations all over the country are helping military families. Whether it is with time, money, or talents, it is the volunteers that keep these much-needed services running. Check out your state volunteer website or use the search engine on Serve.gov.

Provide a helping hand: When a service member you know is deployed, offer a play date for their kids, run errands, assist with home repair, mow the lawn, cook dinner, or help with anything else that is so much easier to do when there are two parents in the home.

Show your appreciation: Business owners can offer military discounts for service members and their families.

Give a taste of home: Bake or cook for single military personnel who are living in the barracks or invite them over for a holiday when they’re stationed away from home.

Be a friend: Having a spouse deployed is extremely difficult and having a shoulder to lean on eases the hardship.

Be understanding: Civilians can offer employment opportunities to military spouses and understand that their lifestyle may cause time gaps in a military spouse’s resume. It can be hard to establish a career while having to move to a new duty station every few years. Co-workers can rally behind the family of a deployed service member, providing a close-to-home support group.

Help make a house a home: Organize your neighborhood association to make newly-arrived military families welcome in your community.

Support education: Make military children feel welcome when they arrive in your children’s schools. When possible, be lenient with tryout dates and admission cut-offs. Recognize their achievements at other schools and find the best fit for them to thrive.

Be a proud American: Through actions and words, at every opportunity, support the men and women of the military. Never take for granted the individual freedoms these service members work tirelessly to safeguard and defend, often at great personal risk and sacrifice. They do it not only for themselves, but for their family members who support them daily in their patriotic service and privilege.

Keep your flag flying high!

* This information was gathered from more than 4,000 military spouses surveyed by the National Military Family Association.

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A Returned Peace Corps Volunteer’s Story, Part 5

Friday, May 27th, 2011

volunteer volunteerism, volunteering, teicher, rpcvToday’s blog post comes from Perry Teicher, a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer who served in Kazakhstan from 2007-2009.  This is the second of five posts about his Peace Corps service.  Be sure to read the first, second, third and fourth posts.

Charity parties focused on young professionals, while an everyday occurrence in America, are still a relatively rare concept in Kazakhstan.  Around Halloween 2008, two Kazakhstani friends and I had the idea to host a charity party in Aktobe, Kazakhstan.  Except for the occasional event organized by multinational corporations, charity parties are uncommon in Kazakhstan.  Due to abundant natural gas fields, Aktobe has an emerging small and medium business environment.  There are a significant number of young professionals who spend their new wealth at clubs.  I invited three Kazakhstani friends to help as we aimed to create an opportunity for young professionals that would be fun and engage guests in supporting marginalized groups.

We enlisted support from multiple sources, retails outlets, restaurants, clothing stores, and other local businesses.  I took the lead on development, but worked with my co-planners in delegating responsibility and identifying partners.  A cafe provided us free space and singers and dancers performed for free.  Businesses donated substantial prizes to help raise money.  Over 100 guests came to our first event.  We raised substantial money and started popularizing the concept that individuals can support their community while enjoying themselves.

Over the next year, we planned a total of three events, raising over $10,000 that all directly helped children with disabilities and poor families.  The project succeeded because we developed a new model that fit community needs.  We focused on creating an environment that fit the interests and personalities of our donors while engaging them in a completely new type of cause.  Rather than highlighting the gap between donors and marginalized groups, we focused on their ability to help.  We established partnerships with individuals who had something to gain from working with us: the new bar owner who boosted awareness of his bar and local businesses that could be known as supporting a good cause.  Individuals donated because they trusted us and the purpose of the fundraising.  We kept detailed accounts of our revenue and donations and could show the the impact.  Inspired by our initiative, other groups around the country have started charity parties based on this model.

This model can’t work everywhere, but there are some valuable lessons that could be applied to other events:

1)  Identify the needs of the community

2)  Look for unserved niches

3)  Combine existing initiatives into a new idea

4)  Establish trust

5)  Identify tangible benefits that partners and participants can receive

Blog: http://treshombresaktobe.blogspot.com/

Pictures:

Perry Teicher is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Kazakhstan, 2007-2009).  He is Co-Founder and President of TheGivingApp, L3C, a company focused on creating mobile applications for non-profits.

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5 Tips for Dealing with Difficult Volunteers

Thursday, May 26th, 2011

The volunteer seemed excited to give their time to your organization, but something isn’t quite working out. Maybe they’re not performing like you’d hoped they would, or maybe they’re disrupting the work of others. Maybe they complain about everything from the office being too cold to the closest bus stop being too far away.

Don’t get overly anxious about the situation. Stay calm, and try to address the situation in a way that’s respectful to your volunteer and beneficial for your organization. Here are some tips to make things easier:

Keep calm (and carry on).

The volunteer you’re working with is getting on your last nerve, and you’d like nothing more than to start yelling the next time they come up to you and complain about the kind of soap in the washroom.

This is not the best course of action.

If the volunteer comes to you with a problem and you know you aren’t able to keep a cool head, let them know that you’re a bit busy but you would like to talk to them about their problem. Schedule some time with them the next time they’re in to talk to them. Go about the rest of your day, it will help you get away from being frustrated with your volunteer.

The Feedback Sandwich

You might want to start the conversation with the volunteer with a list of things that are frustrating you. It’s not the best course of action, even though it might feel good to get it all off of your chest.

Try starting the conversation with something positive about the volunteer. Let them know that you appreciate the work they’ve been doing or their dedication to the organization’s mission, or how it’s great that they’re the only one that can make a database return just the right information.

(Try not to make it sound like there’s a “but” coming when you do this.)

Address the behavior that’s causing friction. Don’t do it in a way that accuses the volunteer of something, and try to avoid assigning blame. Ask the volunteer if there’s something that you can do to help them with whatever is wrong. This could be the time where you find out that the volunteer’s allergic to something in the soap in the washroom and not just being picky.

Follow up with something else positive about the volunteer’s work. People tend to remember the last thing that was said in a conversation, and if it’s something positive it will help to maintain a positive relationship with your volunteer.

Empathize

When you’re talking to your volunteer, really listen to what they have to say. Let them know that you understand what they’re saying, and that you’ve had some rough patches too. This might be cliché, but it works. Things calm down when people can tell their story and know that they’re being heard.

Offer Support

Talk about what can be done to remove some of the obstacles facing the volunteer. Suggest some actions that you can take to help remedy the situation. Empower the volunteer by letting them know that you can back them up if they need help making their situation better.

Get a wide lense

It’s easy to focus on the situation as it’s happening – the complaints or the disruptions. Take a deep breath and pull back from the situation. Remember that you’re all working together to help support the mission of your organization. Lifting eyes to the prize can smooth tensions and inspire renewed effort.

How have you successfully dealt with a difficult volunteer? Let us know in the comments!

 

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5 Tips for Encouraging Volunteers to Become More Involved

Wednesday, May 25th, 2011

Volunteers are great. They help us to do the work that we wouldn’t be able to do without their service.

How can an organization help to create a stronger relationship with a volunteer and help them to become a leader in the organization? Here are some tips to help build a stronger relationship with your volunteers.

Ask them for more.

When you first got your volunteers, you had to ask for them, right? Just like asking someone to volunteer is the best way to get them to volunteer, asking a volunteer to step into a larger role with your organization is the best way to get them to do it.

Have a plan in place for when the volunteer says yes.

Chances are you’re going to be asking your volunteer to do something that they haven’t done (or done with your organization) before. Make sure there’s a plan in place for training volunteers on their new tasks before you ask them to do them. Asking a volunteer to do something and not being able to show them how to do it is a great way to lose the volunteer.

Trust your volunteer.

Give them a bit more freedom to do things. You asked the volunteer to do more with your organization because you trust them and the work they do, right? Let them try things on their own. They just might come up with a million dollar idea (maybe literally!) that helps your organization grow.

Let your volunteer grow their own programs.

After you know that your volunteer is working well in their new role, let them build something unique to them and their role in your organization. Don’t just tell them to do something new, though! Ask them to make sure that it’s something they’ll have the time to devote to, and that it’s something that they want to do.

Don’t forget that they’re volunteers.

After months of being involved with your organization, a volunteer can start to feel like part of the organization’s staff. This isn’t a bad thing, but it is important to remember that the volunteer is still a volunteer. Don’t forget the little things that let volunteers know that you appreciate the work they do, and don’t forget to say thank you!

For more on creating service leaders in your organization and across the country, check out Max Klau’s post about service and leadership development on the National Conference on Volunteering and Service blog and today’s post on the importance of service leader development on the Points of Light Blog!

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Posted in Volunteer Management, Volunteer Recruitment, Volunteering | 1 Comment »

Getting HandsOn in Rome

Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

Today’s post comes from Mauro Cipparone, one of the co-founders of Romaltruista, a HandsOn Network affiliate in Rome, Italy.

“How does this way of volunteering REALLY work?” was the question that kept me wondering.

Almost 2 years ago, Odile and I had just spent time interviewing Pedro, the head of SAI-Milano. SAI helps immigrants with legal matters as well as in finding a job. I knew Pedro for several years, having volunteered in SAI myself when I was living in Milan.

Odile is the founder of Milanoaltruista (HandsOn Milan, Italy), which didn’t exist yet at that time, and I was trying to help her with getting a feel for what issues and questions prospective partners might have in working with an organization such as HandsOn, particularly in a country such as Italy where “giving back” is not as much part of the culture as in other countries.

Pedro felt quite skeptical. “How can you take a Mr. or Mrs. anyone and put them in front of people with real issues and needs? How will they know what to do?”

To become a SAI volunteer, extensive training is provided, followed by a period of working alongside an experienced volunteer. SAI volunteers are very experienced, however, they are few, and mostly retired. Very few younger people commit to volunteering there – it’s too inflexible.

I felt quite unprepared to answer. I had my own ‘what ifs.’ For example, how to manage risks and ensure volunteers do not cause problems to the clients they are trying to help or have problems themselves? When I made my mind up, two years later, that I wanted to start-up Handson Rome (Romaltruista) together with some friends, I decided my first task was to really understand how projects work and what motivates people to volunteer the HandsOn way. A friend of mine had invited me to visit him in New York, so I decided to go there and spend a week volunteering HandsOn on projects.

First, I attended the compulsory orientation.

We were met by a very energetic long term team leader. I was struck by the enthusiasm that was coming across, and the wide range of volunteering opportunities. The crowd was mostly quite young – exactly the people we wanted to engage in Italy. The gentleman did a great job at explaining how it’s “as much or as little volunteering as you want” – precisely the type of volunteering that is missing in Italy.

In the following days, I have been helping children with SAT preparation, working in the Native American film festival, serving lunch and dancing with Holocaust survivors, writing CVs, teaching about the environment, taking kids to the Natural History Museum, helping children to do theatre.

I believe the key success factor of these events is the team leaders. I was impressed to see how far they go and how much energy they put to make projects a success. For example, Kimberly, team leader of the environmental project, became an environmental expert starting from scratch and designed the syllabus of the environmental training herself, while creating an intranet to share resources with fellow team leaders that run similar projects around New York.

I understood that the key to involving and using effectively one-off volunteers without experience lies both in the quality and enthusiasm of team leaders, and in the careful design of the project.

Risk management is ensured by keeping people together as a group and by ensuring partner organization staff and team leader monitoring. Finally, I have understood that when people genuinely want to help, their hearts lead them to figure out the right way to do it, even if they don’t have extensive training behind them. In the end, it can be very rewarding for both the giver and the receiver of help.

It has been a very rewarding experience, both in terms of providing answers to my questions, and personally. Thanks to the help of Handson network, I also had the chance to meet several people of the New York Cares management team, who gave me a very insightful view of how the organization is run – a precious bonus, that I hope will help us to avoid some mistakes and focus on the key issues from day one while we try to start up handson in Rome. I wish to thank Handson Network and New York Cares for the great support and inspiration that they provided…. and for the feeling of being welcomed  into a very large family- a much needed sensation as we embark upon such a challenging start up!

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Seven Questions to Ask Before Recruiting New Volunteers

Monday, May 23rd, 2011

Deciding that your organization needs volunteers isn’t as simple as looking at a pile of work that can’t be done with existing staff and saying, “We should get some volunteers.”

It’s a decision that shouldn’t be made lightly – volunteers can be a positive addition to your organization, but your organization needs to answer some questions to find out if you’re able to support volunteers.

Why do we need volunteers?

Can volunteers add capacity to the organization? Will volunteers be needed for a specific project or will they be helping your organization for a longer period? Before you start recruiting volunteers, make sure that your organization knows what kind of work volunteers will be doing with the organization.

What role does our volunteer program play in our overall mission?

Laying out exactly what the volunteer’s role with your organization is will help your organization to understand how volunteers can be helpful and help to ensure that volunteers have a positive experience working with your organization.

Does staff understand the pivotal role that volunteers play in our efforts?

Making sure that staff understand the role of volunteers in the organization helps staff to identify work that volunteers can assist with and make a more welcoming environment for volunteers.

What are the benefits to the individual who volunteers in our organization?

Understanding the answer to this question helps to give your organization a sense of what the recruiting message can look like and what your organization can do to help retain volunteers.

Are the volunteer opportunities for clearly defined?

Having a clear position description that are flexible can help volunteers and staff know exactly what volunteers’ role with your organization will be. This will make finding work for volunteers easier and volunteers will know what to expect on their first day.

Who do we want as a volunteer?

If your organization is looking for a certain kind of volunteer, knowing who that person is can help to inform your recruitment strategy and help you to narrow your outreach for volunteers.

Are we prepared for the response from volunteers?

Before you put out your first call for volunteers, make sure there’s a plan in place to process people who want to volunteer. Who will screen and place volunteers? Will the volunteers need training? Who will do it? Making sure there’s a plan for responding to volunteer inquiries will help to reduce the amount of time between a potential volunteer expressing interest in your organization and the person starting to volunteer.

 

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Posted in Volunteer Management | 2 Comments »

How A Spring Break Lead to Service

Friday, May 20th, 2011

Today’s post comes from Alison Lucci, AmeriCorps Community Resource Coordinator with Girls Hope of Pittsburgh.

I stumbled upon AmeriCorps like it was a great coffee shop or a gem of a thrift store – it was a pleasant surprise. I was a student at Kent State University spending my first spring break with 400 new pals. Our group descended on the Gulf Coast to assist with relief efforts after Hurricane Katrina.

I was physically and mentally exhausted halfway through the week, but I realized the neighboring tent always hosted a boisterous bunch in the evening. I had to know who these crazy people were.

Were they overjoyed at the copious amounts of grits and sweet tea we’d consumed? Did they like the military cots we were sleeping on? How did they handle the daily dose of destruction and grief? Most importantly, weren’t they tired?

I discovered they were AmeriCorps members. They had been living in their tent for three months, providing comfort and assistance to anyone who would accept their help. I made two mental notes:

1. Wow, they really are crazy

2. I must look into what this AmeriCorps thing is

A few years later, I quit my newspaper job, packed my belongings and moved back to Pittsburgh to take an AmeriCorps position working with nuns and mentors. Ok, that wasn’t exactly the job description, but it was hard to wrap my brain around these unfamiliar aspects.

Mentoring was a foreign word to me before I came to Girls Hope. I didn’t have one, and I wasn’t sure why anyone would need one. Since I was tasked with structuring and coordinating a mentoring program, I attended mentor trainings, webinars and researched the benefits of having a mentor.

I learned that it would be impossible for Girls Hope to fulfill its mission to nurture, house and educate academically capable young women and support them through college without having mentors. Every staff member and volunteer is an informal mentor just by being present.

I’m now 9 months into my AmeriCorps term at Girls Hope of Pittsburgh.  Any given week, my to-do list may range from networking with local professionals to digging holes in the landscaping or updating our . For me, the variety of tasks performed and skills gained is the beauty of AmeriCorps. There are few other places where you’ll be encouraged to take on new projects and learn from them.

I’ve also found that nuns and mentors are truly some of the best people to work with. (I really had no doubts about either!) I would happily spout off a slew of reasons why we should all have a mentor. I might even recant my statement that I never had one. After all, where would I be without the lively AmeriCorps members next door?

If you’re looking for a challenging new opportunity, wisit www.americorps.gov to find an AmeriCorps position that will take you wherever you want to go!

Alison Lucci is a writer by trade, dreamer by choice and thrifty just because. When she’s not immersed in words or volunteer projects, she take comfort in kayaks and campgrounds and enjoys cooking when challenged by the contents of a sparsely stocked kitchen.

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Five Reasons We Love AmeriCorps Members

Thursday, May 19th, 2011

volunteer, volunteerism, volunteering, americorps, americorps weekIt’s AmeriCorps week, and we thought we’d take a day to point out why we love AmeriCorps and the great people that sign up to serve every year!

Dedication AmeriCorps members sign up because they want to make a change in their communities. The work is hard and the immediate rewards are low. AmeriCorps members tutor students, build homes, help to feed the hungry, work to restore the environment, and get things done for America. They do it because they understand the importance of volunteers in helping to build communities.

Drive AmeriCorps members are the hardest working folks in show business. AmeriCorps members are required to serve a certain number of hours during their service year and a lot of members meet that number before the end of their contact. This doesn’t mean that they get to stop working or they get any extra benefits for working more hours than they’re required to work. They keep working with the causes and organizations that they believe in and helping to run programs that serve clients that might not be served without the members’ work.

Ideas AmeriCorps members bring a new way of thinking to the organizations they work with. Just like AmeriCorps members get to be change agents in their communities, members get to be change agents in their organizations too. AmeriCorps members have started new programs that serve their organizations’ clients in ways that previously didn’t exist. They also bring skills to organizations that might not have been there before their service.

Achievement AmeriCorps members get things done for America. Whether it’s supporting programs that existed when they joined their organizations or starting new programs, AmeriCorps members help the organizations they serve with to meet the needs of more people than could have been helped without their service.

Continued Service Even after their terms of service, AmeriCorps members continue to get things done in their communities through their local AmeriCorps Alums chapters. Most major cities have Alums chapters (you can find a local chapter here) with Alums continuing to serve their communities after their terms of service are over.

These are only some of the reasons that we love AmeriCorps members. Why do you love AmeriCorps? Let us know in the comments!

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Building a Playground and a Lifetime of Service

Wednesday, May 18th, 2011

Today’s post comes from Michael Nealis, Interactive Strategy Coordinator for Points of Light Institute. He served as an AmeriCorps member for two years with Volunteer Maryland.

I still remember the first day of my AmeriCorps service. I walked into a room full of people that I didn’t know and who seemed infinitely more qualified to be leading volunteer programs than I was.

At that time in my life, I had only studied volunteerism. I didn’t volunteer anywhere, and I never had.

I felt like what I was being asked to do wasn’t possible. How could I start a volunteer program and make it successful if I didn’t know the first thing about actually volunteering?

I was scared that I would fail, and I was even more scared that I would disappoint the people I was serving with.

Two weeks later, I set foot on my service site with a two-inch binder full of program ideas and best practices, a few ideas in my head, and a healthy dose of worry.

I was walking into a government agency that didn’t have any formal volunteer program and was being asked to build a volunteer program around something I didn’t know much about.

I spent the first month just trying to learn about volunteer programs, the issues I would be working with, and trying to meet everyone I would be working with (and remember their names).

It took me three months to get the program off of the ground, and another four months to get to a place where I felt like I was running a successful program.

That’s when I took a week off and walked away from my program to build a playground.

A community playground in the neighborhood I lived in had been burnt down by an arsonist, and the community came together to raise funds to rebuild it. An AmeriCorps member that I served with was working with an organization that was involved with the rebuild and asked our class to come out and help with the build.

I thought it would be a great test of my program’s ability to run on it’s own without a lot of maintenance if I was out of the office, so I signed up to help.

I wasn’t quite sure what I was getting myself into.

The playground was about five thousand square feet, and over a thousand people came to work on the playground over the course of the week-long build. I got to meet everyone who walked onto the construction site because I was working in the tool shed, handing out tools to the volunteers.

I met people from the community, AmeriCorps members from across the state, and people that came from hundreds of miles away because they had worked on the first playground and wanted to help to rebuild it.

Working on the playground taught me more about what it means to live in a community than I ever learned in school.

I got to see the power of people working together, not only to build a playground, but sharing their lives with each other.

I went back to my service site with a renewed sense of purpose. I had a better understanding of the work that volunteers were doing, not just on the project I was working on specifically, but with every organization in every community.

I signed up for a second year with my AmeriCorps program and helped a fresh class of AmeriCorps members understand the importance of volunteerism in their communities.

My term of service changed my life for the better. I’m forever grateful for the people I served with, the people who led my program and mentored me to become the man I am today, and the people that I met who worked to improve their communities.

I am AmeriCorps, and I always will be.

Don’t forget to celebrate AmeriCorps week this week! If you see someone sporting their AmeriCorps gear, throw them a high-five and thank them for their service!

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