Tag: Peggy Hoffman

Who’s Doing Mission Driven Volunteering?

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 1 Comment on Who’s Doing Mission Driven Volunteering?

From the new Spark whitepaper, The Mission Driven Volunteer, written with Peggy Hoffman:

The Maryland Association of CPAs realigned all their volunteer roles along a grid where the X-axis represented high value to members and the association and the Y-axis represented alignment to strategy. Then volunteer teams used that grid to pull resources away from committees and chapters doing low priority work and refocus those resources on activities and projects that were in the high-high quadrant. This eventually ushered in a complete governance restructuring, including a leaner Board and a reorganized staff, and a shift in the organizational philosophy of volunteering.

The National Fluid Power Association reorganized their volunteer program to focus on engaging members in ideation, development, and delivery of new programs, products, and services that aligned with the strategic direction of the association, and doing that  efficiently and in a way that would break out of the traditional hierarchical organization chart. This resulted in a new volunteer structure that allows anyone who wants contribute to do so at the level that fits the needs of that individual volunteer, with strategic communications flowing out and level of engagement flowing in.

The Oncology Nursing Society completely revamped their governance model to be based on the principles of adhocracy, which replaces bureaucratic structure with an organic entity that thrives on decentralizing work and responsibility, and capitalizes on the involvement of many different voices. In the end, only two standing committee remain (Nominating and Audit). The rest of the volunteer work of the association is done by task forces who come together, do the work, and disband.

Want more? Download your free copy at http://bit.ly/13Wwe1F.

 

What Is Mission Driven Volunteering?

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

From the new Spark whitepaper, The Mission Driven Volunteer, written with Peggy Hoffman:

A number of research studies and innovative volunteer-supported projects…provide us with a new working definition for volunteerism: giving one’s time and talent to drive mission. This new definition draws on two intrinsic motivations to volunteer, with the focus on the outcomes of volunteering and the functions needed to drive those outcomes. This turns the image of volunteering, which traditionally starts with a Board and trickles down or begins with the job title and then the description, upside down.

Want more? Download your free copy at http://bit.ly/13Wwe1F.

 

Problems with the Current Model

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

From the new Spark whitepaper, The Mission Driven Volunteer, written with Peggy Hoffman:

The current model of volunteering in associations, based on standing committees, is broken, leading to:

  • Difficulty recruiting volunteers
  • Do-nothing committees
  • Poorly attended meetings
  • No new ideas
  • Volunteer burn out
  • Disengaged and disheartened volunteers

All these are artifacts of a system that values form, position, and title over function, meaning, and action.

This model is pathological for several reasons:

  • It ignores the reality of generational differences.
  • It handcuffs organizational decision-making.
  • It limits opportunities for involvement.

Want more? Download your free copy at http://bit.ly/13Wwe1F.

 

Announcing: The Mission Driven Volunteer

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 1 Comment on Announcing: The Mission Driven Volunteer

I’m excited to announce the third Spark white paper – The Mission Driven Volunteer – co-authored with Peggy Hoffman, CAE, President of Mariner Management.

This week, I’ll be blogging about the contents of the whitepaper.

The basic premise is:

Associations’ current model of volunteering is broken. Standing committees value form and position over function and effectiveness. They ignore generational differences, produce slow, inefficient, and unoriginal decision-making, and limit participation.

Mission-driven volunteering is a new model that allows associations and our volunteers to focus our limited resources, measuring everything we do by how well it supports and contributes to the mission of our organizations. Mission-driven volunteers embrace ad hocracy and micro-volunteering, allowing diverse groups of members to contribute in ways that make the most sense to them.

I’ll be writing more about each of these points this week, but in the meantime, pick up your free copy at http://bit.ly/13Wwe1F, no divulging of information about yourself required.

Walk a Mile in Their Shoes

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE

The presentation Peggy Hoffman, Eric Lanke, and I recently gave at ASAE’s Marketing, Membership and Communications Conference on volunteer engagement was about learning to manage volunteers by being a volunteer, aka “Walking a Mile in Their Shoes.”

I addressed this topic by sharing my story of volunteering with the National Capital Area Food Bank as a means of illustrating the following points:

  • Learn by doing: What can we learn about what works, what doesn’t work, and what our volunteers need to be successful by volunteering ourselves?
  • Have a defined task: Do your volunteers know exactly what you need them to do?
  • Create clear expectations: Do your volunteers know what constitutes success at their volunteer tasks, and how they’ll know when they’re done?
  • Match skills to opportunities: Do you work to find out what your volunteers are really good at and really passionate about before matching them with assignments?
  • Ensure their time is well spent: Do you respect your volunteers’ time?
  • Show that their efforts are appreciated: Do you make sure your volunteers see the impact of their work? Do you report back on what happened with the ideas and recommendations they provided?

Per our session design, I then asked attendees to apply those principles to answering the following question: What have you learned from your own experiences as a volunteer that you can bring to your role as a manager of volunteers to improve their experience with your association?

Our session participants came up with some great advice:

One woman talked about her experiences as a soccer mom to point out that we need to be careful not to over-complicate or over-manage the process. If people want to volunteer, make it easy for them to contribute and get involved. Be ruthless about stripping away any unnecessary hurdles.

Another attendee warned us, based on her time serving on the PTA, to beware death by meetings. It can be hard for 100% volunteer organizations to find good facilitators, but that’s critical to respecting your volunteers’ time. When people are forced to waste time in long meetings that go nowhere and accomplish nothing, they quickly become disillusioned and disengaged.

One participant referenced phone banking to raise money for a college alumni association to illustrate the importance of communicating with your experienced volunteers. If processes, procedures, goals, policies, etc. change, new volunteers won’t know any different, but your experienced volunteers will be confused, and, again, potentially turned off to volunteering for your organization.

What have you learned from your own experiences volunteering that you can apply to your association work to help you do better by your volunteers?

Dump Your Committees

Posted on | by Elizabeth Weaver Engel, CAE | 1 Comment on Dump Your Committees

Volunteerism is changing.

I know I’m not the first person to think – or write – about this. Hell, Peggy Hoffman and Cynthia D’Amour have built their businesses on working with new volunteer models. But recent events have conspired to bring it top of mind for me.

The thing about standing committees is that they’re standing.

Think about that for a moment.

Not “walking.” Not “running.” Not “flying.” Not “innovating.”

Standing. As in “still.”

OK, that may be excessively harsh.

One of the problems with standing committees is that they can easily become zombies, continuing on with calls and meetings and reports to the board whether or not there’s actually anything for them to DO.

Now maybe, at some point in the past, nobody really cared all that much. It was part of your community responsibility to be on the call or in the meeting or to write the report, and if nothing was happening, you were OK with that. Common good and whatnot. At least that’s the theory about Boomers, although I tend to think it’s way less true than everyone pretends it is, but whatever.

One thing we know about following generations is that we’re at least more comfortable expressing our irritation with wasted time and effort. We want to come together, GSD (Get Shit Done), and move on.

What does that remind you of? A task force, right? Bring together a group of people who are genuinely interested and skilled in the task at hand, work on it until it’s done (whether that’s an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year…), have a nice happy hour to celebrate your success, disband.

I know what you’re about to say: “Our standing committees are set in our bylaws. Do you know what a pain in the ass it is to try to change our bylaws?”

Actually, yes, I do, having been through it in prior associations. And you do probably have to maintain a standing finance committee. But just because something is hard to do doesn’t mean it’s not a good idea.

Scared?

What about an experiment?

The next time one of your board members comes up with a great idea that doesn’t have a natural home in one of your existing committees, try putting together a task force to work it, and see what happens. If it goes well, try disbanding one of your standing non-bylaws-mandated committees (you know you have at least one) and spreading their work to some task forces. If that goes well, maybe it’s time to open the conversation about which standing committees you really have to have, and which you don’t.