Archive for the ‘Equip’ Category

2011 National Conference on Volunteering and Service

Monday, May 9th, 2011

This year’s National Conference on Volunteering and Service is being held in New Orleans; a city that understands the effect that volunteers can have on a city. After hurricane Katrina and the Gulf oil spill, thousands of volunteers from all across the country came to New Orleans and the Gulf Coast to help rebuild and recover. These volunteers have given of their money and time to help rebuild, but there’s still a lot of work done to bring the Gulf Coast back to the way it was before the recent disasters.

While, overall, the conference helps people who work with volunteers in the nonprofit and for profit sector, there are three program tracts that will help attendees to tailor their experience to be the most useful for them. The tracts look at the impact that volunteers can have on their community, the strength that volunteers bring to bear when they serve, and how volunteers help to build and support communities.

volunteer, volunteering, volunteerismLooking at the impact of volunteers highlights the individual, institutional, and community change that volunteers can bring about through their service. Sessions in the impact track focus on specific solutions that volunteers can bring to economic, environmental, and health problems, disaster management, and veterans’ and education issues that our communities face.

The strength of volunteers is highlighted in sessions that help volunteer managers to more efficiently direct that strength. These sessions will help to harness the innovative ideas, partnerships, and passion that volunteers bring to the organizations that they serve with. Proven methods and emerging trends in volunteer management will be shared in sessions that can help volunteer programs to adapt to the ever changing social and socio-economic realities of society and the volunteering sector.

These sessions will help you to learn how to more effectively manage volunteers and manage for results, how to bring the power of technology and media to bear to support your programs, how to leverage partnerships for results, and how to work with businesses to build successful employee volunteer programs.

Sessions that focus on community not only look at the places where live, but the groups that people belong to and build themselves. These communities can be harnessed to create massive change, and are already primed for volunteering, leadership, and service.

Boomers and youth have a lot to contribute to their communities. There are Cities of Service across the country that are using volunteers to address some of those cities’ most pressing issues. Faith-based and neighborhood organizations are stepping up to fill in where services are lacking in communities. Service is being reimagined across the country, especially service in rural areas.

This year’s Conference is taking shape to be the largest Conference to date. There will be knowledge shared and connections made here that couldn’t happen anywhere else. And, among all of the learning and networking, we’ll be sure to take some time to celebrate everyone that is working so hard to improve their world through service.

To find out how to register for the National Conference on Volunteering and Service, click here. To find out more about what will be happening at the Conference, follow and like the Conference .

You can find out more about the National Conference on Volunteering and Service on the Points of Light Blog, which looks at what the Conference offers the volunteering sector, and a video from New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu.

Getting Ready For Disasters

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2011

We’re starting to enter the time of year where severe thunderstorms, tornadoes, and flooding will be more common than it was over the winter. Severe storms can pop up with little notice, and you might not have time to get everything you need together in one place before the storm strikes.

Preparing a disaster kit on a sunny afternoon can help keep you safe when the clouds roll in. While you can purchase a disaster kit with a lot of things that you need in it, you can also build your own. Building your own lets you include things specifically for you and your family.

You can even make a volunteer project out of building your disaster kit by helping others to build their own disaster preparedness kit.

What do you need for your kit?

  • Three-day supply of non-perishable food.Try to avoid overly salty foods. Look for foods with a high water content. Canned foods are great for this, but don’t forget a can opener!
  • Three-day supply of water – one gallon of water per person, per day. Buying commercially bottled water is best here. Be sure to pay attention to expiration dates!
  • Portable, battery-powered radio or television and extra batteries. Emergency radios that run off of a hand crank are great to include. No need to worry about extra batteries!
  • Flashlight and extra batteries. Forever flashlights (flashlights that run off of a crank or can be charged by shaking) are great here too. No worries about batteries for these, either!
  • First aid kit and manual. You can buy a first aid kit, or you can put one together yourself. FEMA has great suggestions about what to include in a first aid kit.
  • Sanitation and hygiene items (moist towelettes and toilet paper).
  • Matches and waterproof container.
  • Whistle. A whistle is a great way for letting people know where you are!
  • Extra clothing.
  • Kitchen accessories and cooking utensils, including a can opener.
  • Photocopies of credit and identification cards.
  • Cash and coins. Think about setting up a bank account specifically for emergency funds. Be sure to keep cash with your disaster kit, too.
  • Special needs items, such as prescription medications, eye glasses, contact lens solutions, and hearing aid batteries. Don’t forget to check your prescriptions regularly so that you’re not keeping expired medicine with your kit.
  • Items for infants, such as formula, diapers, bottles, and pacifiers.
  • Other items to meet your unique family needs.

Pack your disaster kit in something that’s easy to move in case you have to leave your home. Backpacks are great for packing your disaster kit in. Look for one that’s a bright color so you can easily find it in a hurry.

When you make your disaster kit, don’t just throw it in a the back of a closet and forget about it. Every few months, check on it to make sure all of the items in it are still good (food, water, prescriptions, and batteries all go bad).

Do you have a disaster kit in your home? What have you included in yours to help you feel safe? Let us know!

(If you want to be super prepared, add a crowbar to your disaster kit. You never know when the zombie apocalypse will happen!)

 

Wrapping Up the Skills Based Volunteering Boot Camp, Part 2

Tuesday, April 26th, 2011

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.

Wrapping Up the Skills Based Volunteering Boot Camp, Part 1

Tuesday, April 19th, 2011

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

We left Atlanta on a cloudy Sunday morning and were greeted in Chicago by a cold but beautiful day. The team at HandsOn Suburban Chicago – formerly the Volunteer Center Northwest Suburban Chicago- welcomed us. By 1pm the representatives of the HON Affiliates / Volunteer Centers from all over the country arrive: Kansas, Ohio, New Jersey, Texas, Georgia, Michigan, New York… all gathered in the “Windy City.”

The purpose of the Boot Camp is clear for us. We are in Chicago to go in depth in the subject and share best practices – a peer to peer exchange regarding Skills-Based Volunteering (SBV) to demonstrate to nonprofits how this powerful tool that can make a tremendous impact in their community.

But, was the purpose of the Boot Camp obvious for everybody? What are the Action Centers’ expectations? And how is SBV perceived and developed in their local communities?

Although they are all at different stages of development, our participants-HandsOn Action Centers in both larger and smaller cities-seem to have the same expectations about SBV. Seeing that SBV could help them meet the growing demand for services from their communities and local corporate partners, they’ve expressed a desire for a sustainable model and some pre-designed programs to implement. Perfect! This is exactly what the Boot Camp was meant for!

In our three day Boot Camp, we will detail the Strategic Action for Volunteer Engagement (SAVE) program developed by HandsOn Suburban Chicago. This program is organized in three stages: Ready, Set, and Go, designed to address nonprofit organizations’ capacity building challenges in a scalable and flexible way.

A key factor for successful SBV projects-and maybe the most important one-is the readiness of non-profits receiving the services of these types of volunteers.

There are few nonprofits ready to welcome and manage skill-based volunteers and projects. The first step a nonprofit organization needs to take to avoid difficulties is a deep readiness assessment. Taking this assessment will help to avoid engaging in risky projects that may discourage volunteers.

In the following blog posts about the Skills Based Volunteering Boot Camp, we are going to learn – through the SAVE program – how the “readiness assessment” phase will truly help the agencies to source internal SBV opportunities. The best way for volunteer centers to learn how to address the challenges that may come up, is to launch an internal SBV project for their own organization with all the various steps and processes.

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.

If You Build It…

Thursday, March 31st, 2011

Today’s blog post comes from Charon Gaskins, an AmeriCorps member with HandsOn Network.

For  as long as I can remember, I’ve been doing community service.  In college, I joined a community service sorority, Gamma Sigma Sigma National Service Sorority.  As a member of this sorority I sought after a variety of service projects for my chapter to complete, I never thought about organizing our own projects.

It could have been because I was in college, taking a full load while still being active on campus, planning a project just didn’t seem like something that was easy to do.  Flash forward a few years later and here I am planning my own community service projects!  Through working with the GetHandsOn Campaign, I’ve been able to test out several of the project playbooks.

With the help of the resources I’ve found on the website, I’ve successfully organized several different projects in my community.  From a snack and learn with elementary students to tilling the land and potting seeds for a community garden, this has been an amazing experience.

I was invited to speak to a group of 3rd and 4th grade students about what community service is.  From that discussion, I had the students identify three areas where they were interested in doing community service.  The group of students stated they wanted to work with senior citizens, so from there I worked to find a local senior facility for them to service at.

The excitement these students had while working with these seniors was heartwarming, and the seniors were so excited to have a group of youth come to visit them.  I was told the students began bugging their teacher about their next service project on the way home from that project!

My most recent project was helping in a garden in the Atlanta area.  There was a lot of maintenance this garden needed, because over the years they lost a lot of their volunteers.  However, there is still a community of people that depend on this garden for fresh foods.

Using social media and making announcements in our different circles, we were able to get about 35 people out in the hot sun ready to work. We tilled about two acres of land and potted over 300 seeds   The volunteers for this project ranged from the ages of 13-60 years and everyone walked away from the project excited about coming back to actually plant the seeds in the garden in late April.

One of the volunteers at the garden was actually someone that receives food from the garden and though she is suffering from lupus, she wanted to help out in whatever way that she could.  It’s stories like this that keeps me motivated, doing everything in my power to leave a community changed by my presence.

I’ve had the opportunity to create several projects that focus on different areas and get my friends and family interesting in doing more service.  Several times a week I get a call about a group that is interesting in doing community service, or someone has an idea about a project that they want to do but need some help making it happen.

Working with the GetHandsOn campaign has been one of my greatest joys because it has given me the opportunity to really work with people in the community that want to make a change.  There are people that want to change things in their community but maybe sometimes it just seems so unattainable.

The truth is making a difference in your community doesn’t have to be some huge endeavor; it can be just one or two hrs.  If you are looking for ways to get involved in service check out Get HandsOn or HandsOn Network’s Action Centers for opportunities in your area!

Charon serves as an AmeriCorps National Direct member.  She is a member of Gamma Sigma Sigma National Service Sorority.  She is based in Atlanta, Ga. where she is active in the West End Community.

40 Ways to Love Your Community on Valentine’s Day

Monday, February 14th, 2011

1. Organize your child’s classroom to make Valentine’s cards for residents of a local senior center.

2. Plant trees in a local park or green space.

3. Visit and entertain the patients at a local children’s hospital.

4. Tutor a child.

Volunteer
5. Volunteer to be the story hour reader at the local library.

6. Help a deserving neighbor shovel snow, rake leaves, clean gutters or wash windows.

7. Donate to the local food bank.

8. Cook and serve meal at a local shelter.

9. Lead a coat drive and deliver gently worn coats to a local homeless shelter.

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10. Make and send care packages to service men and women overseas.

11. Collect combs, toothbrushes, shampoo and other essentials for a homeless shelter.

12. Adopt a grandparent.

13. Volunteer to pick up groceries or medicine for a senior citizen.

14. Give some time to delivering meals to the homebound.

15. Organize a dance or sing-along event at a local senior center.

16. Teach someone something you know.

17. Paint an educational mural at a local school.

18. Teach English to someone who needs help learning it.

19. Turn a vacant lot into a vibrant community green space.

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20. Plant flowers instead of giving cut flowers.

21. Organize a public issues forum in your community.

22. Create a wildlife habitat, nature trail or outdoor classroom for a local school.

23. Recycle.

24. Carpool.

25. Give your time to the local animal shelter.

26. Be a mentor.

27. Give up your seat on the bus or train to someone who looks tired.

28. Give blood.

29. Sign up to be a scout leader.

30. Coach.

31. Organize a project for Global Youth Service Day.

Volunteer32. Be a good listener.

33. Advocate for legislation you care about.

34. Shop and eat locally.

35. Thank someone.

36. Trust.

37. Recognize someone who’s been a “point of light” in your life. Nominate them for a Daily Point of Light Award.

38. Recruit a friend to help.

39. Find a volunteer project at HandsOn Network.

40. Look for the good in all people.

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8 Volunteer Management Behaviors that Lead to Effective Volunteer Programs

Friday, February 11th, 2011

1. Recruitment
Word-of-mouth continues to be the primary gateway into service. Effective recruitment strategies offer variety, flexibility and meaningful experiences.

2. Supervision
Volunteers who are supported, coordinated and well managed are likely to feel positive about their volunteer experience and stay.

3. Role Clarification
Written position descriptions equip volunteers with the tools they need to deliver maximum impact and receive a sense of personal fulfillment.

4. Development
Training and development is important to nourishing strong volunteer leadership and extending the volunteer life cycle.

5. Resource Procurement
While volunteers are unpaid by definition, they are not cost free. Resources are needed to deliver effective volunteer management programs.

6. Balancing Skilled & Unskilled
Volunteers bring a wide array of skill sets to the table. Assessing the required skills for specific tasks enables the best use of volunteer man power and minimizes resource expenditure.

7.  Appreciation
While volunteers do not participate for the sole purpose of reward or recognition, it is important to acknowledge and thank volunteers to promote an ongoing culture of service.

8.  Retention
Engaging volunteers is only the first step. Incorporating the seven aforementioned volunteer management behaviors helps to avoid the costly cycle of recruiting and training new volunteers.

These ideas originally appeared as a sidebar in IBM’s Service Jam White Paper and were contributed by The Department of Communities, Queensland — Australia’s lead government agency addressing issues in service and volunteerism, managing volunteers requires time and resources. We loved the list and wanted to share it.  You can download the full Service Jam white paper here.

8 Standard Practices of Service Learning

Thursday, February 10th, 2011

How do we institutionalize a culture of service so that it transcends calls to service, generations, countries, cultures and time?  I often thought that if we could make service a true rite of passage in a person’s life – starting early in school, providing opportunities and inducements along the way, and igniting a passion to something beyond the pursuit of material goods, it would be a good start.” —John Bridgeland, President and CEO of Civic Enterprises, IBM Service Jam.

The difference between teaching service in schools and service learning is that service learning is integrated into the curriculum.

Every service learning opportunity should be tailored to meet specific academic goals.

The National Youth Leadership Council suggests that successful engagements will incorporate the following eight elements:

1. Meaningful Service

Service learning actively engages participants in meaningful and personally relevant service activities.

2. Link to Curriculum

Service learning is intentionally used as an instructional strategy to meet learning goals and/or content standards.

3. Reflection

Service learning incorporates multiple challenging reflection activities that are ongoing and that prompt deep thinking and analysis about oneself and one’s relationship to society.

4. Diversity

Service learning promotes under­standing of diversity and mutual respect among all partici­pants.

5. Youth Voice

Service learning provides youth with a strong voice in planning, implementing, and evaluating service learning experiences with guidance from adults.

6. Partnerships

Service learning partnerships are collaborative, mutually beneficial, and address community needs.

7. Progress Monitoring

Service learning engages participants in an ongoing process to assess the quality of implementation and progress toward meeting specified goals, and uses results for improvement and sustainability.

8. Duration and Intensity

Service learning has sufficient duration and intensity to address community needs and meet specified outcomes.

Service-learning is not an add-on to the classroom lesson, it is the classroom lesson.” -IBM Service Jam

Learn more about Service Learning at the upcoming NYLC Conference to be held in Atlanta, April 6-9, 2011.

You can also find great service learning curriculum and ideas at generationOn.

These standard practices originally appeared as a sidebar in IBM’s Service Jam White Paper. We thought it was great and wanted to share it.  You can download the full Service Jam white paper here.

Taking A Step Back to Follow

Tuesday, February 1st, 2011

volunteer volunteering volunteerismToday’s post comes from Kenneth Tran, an AmeriCorps member serving with HandsOn Network

Have you ever run into a situation when you have too many leaders and not enough followers?

I know I have.

Being part of almost too many team building workshops and retreats, I realize that if everyone tries to step up at the same time and hears only their own voice, very rarely does anyone get anything accomplished. Most often, resulting in everyone leaving with a bad taste in their mouths, sprinkled in with some cursing under their breath.  A lack of clear direction can make any service project hard to complete.

Sometimes, the best way to be a leader is to take a step back and simply follow.

When you’re able to follow, you learn a lot from observing the action and directions of others. You see what works and what didn’t, and in turn you also learn what leadership style synchs best with you.

As part of the Get HandsOn Challenge team, we wanted to take what worked in the past for HandsOn Network and bring that to our online members, so that they could develop their leadership qualities in community service.

For the second stage of the Get HandsOn Challenge, we launched Follow the Leader the day after MLK Jr. Day. We want the initiative to encourage service leaders to extend their dedication to service on one day to a commitment that will extend through our lifetime, as Dr. King Jr. would have envisioned.

With the first leg of the campaign, we wanted leaders to Tag their friends and family into joining service commitments and share their passions that drive them. A lot of these commitments were great and could lead to promising community change, but there was not a starting guide from which people could refer to. Passion with no direction can be often troubling, and even disheartening.

Now with this second leg of the Get HandsOn Challenge, we compiled 15 successful community projects in easy-to-follow Project Playbooks that will help Service Leaders carry out their commitments. The guides give instructions from the planning/ brainstorming of the project to your final evaluation/ wrap up. All easy to organize and most importantly- easy to follow!

Another cool feature the Get HandsOn website has now is a Playbook Forum, where members can post about their projects – what worked, what didn’t, how it went, etc. The forum gives another opportunity to follow what others have done and take bits and pieces that can be added to our own community leadership repertoire. All of this helps us when it‘s time to lead our own project and carrying them out successfully.

So are the most successful leaders the best followers? I would say so. They learn to listen to those working for them, take charge when things need to be done, but also know when to take a step back when others want to lead. Following doesn’t have to be a passive action – actually I say far from it! By actively following the leader, you are learning skills and values that will only help you when its your time to shine.

Ken serves as an AmeriCorps National Direct member through the HandsOn Network with Points of Light Institute. He is based out of Atlanta, working with two other Americorps National Direct members on the Get HandsOn Challenge, a national campaign to help execute real-world value-directed projects by inspiring, equipping and connecting people to making positive change in their communities.

6 Ways To Make Volunteering More Fun

Monday, January 31st, 2011

We loved seeing the 66% increase in people choosing “The Dreaded Stairs” over the escalator after the stairs were made more fun in this video.

It got us thinking… if we made a conscious effort to make our volunteer projects more enjoyable for volunteers, would we see a 66% increase in the number of volunteers who return to the project the next time it occurs?

Seems like a theory worth looking into, right?!

Here are a few ways to make your volunteer project more fun:

1.  Foster Introductions.  Most of us enjoy meeting new people.  Consider starting the project with an activity that introduces your volunteers to at least one new person.  Try adding an ice breaking activity to the opening moments of your project.

2.  Play Music.  If your project involves physical activity, like landscaping or painting, consider adding a soundtrack!  Imagine your volunteer crew singing along and / or adding dance moves to the day.  What fun!

3.  Break Bread. Consider taking a break for breakfast, lunch, dinner or a snack.  People connect with each other at meal times.  If you don’t have the budget to provide refreshment, try making the project a potluck.

4.  Create Conversation. We humans love to connect with one another.  Consider building in a closing conversation where your volunteers can discuss the difference they made, concerns they may have and next steps they’d like to take.  (We know it sounds serious – but it really is fun!)  You can find ideas for building group reflection into your project here and here .

5.  Make Memories.  Take photos and / or video of your volunteers at work and share the results on Twitter and Facebook.  Your volunteers will have fun commenting on the memories made.

6.  Celebrate! Consider closing your project with a celebration of the accomplishments your volunteers made.  This could be a celebration at the project site or a meet up at a local restaurant afterward.

Enjoy!