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Responses to:
Keeping an Eye on Things in the Year Ahead
Submitted on 21 January 2005 by Cissy
Waldron Seibel, United Rehabilitation Services (UCP),
Director, Development & Communications, Dayton,
OH USA
Well, this topic certainly brought
a wealth of responses! Perception is reality and we
professionals do a poor job of changing the existing
perception of Volunteer Management/ Administration not
being a career. Typically,
we don't aggressively tell our Executive Director
that we expect a line item in the budget, want to present our story
to the NPO Board, expect to be involved in the Startegic
Plan for our NPO...the list goes on. I teach
Urban Issue: Volunteer Admininstration in
the undergraduate & MPA
program for a local University and this poor perception
of Volunteer Adminstration still applies in the next
generation...until we change it through teaching. Susan
is right. We must be our own best advocates,
take responsibilty for our profession or spend more
time talking about our sad-case. We
are THE force that is key at every disaster in the world,
from birthing centers to hospices. Just think of
the real dollar and person impact YOUR position reaps
for your organization. But,
if we never point that out, how will people or generations
know and value our impact?
Submitted on 11January 2005 by Dave
Gynn, Coleman Professional Services, Volunteer Coordinator,
Kent, Ohio USA
Volunteers in 2005 are looking
for quick, meaningful activities. Folks
who are willing to volunteer for the same activity one day a week
forever are not around anymore. We need to organize our volunteer
requests around specific short-term activities. It takes more
time, more volunteers, more training, more staff buy-in; but it is
what volunteers are looking for.
Submitted on 7 January 2005 by Pam Bell
"Will
faith based volunteering emerge as the new volunteerism?" I
think you miss the point. It's not whether it is a major
section of volunteer work, but will it continue to be seen
as "religious" and
thereby not considered "community" volunteerism. For
decades, the "religious" institutions
have volunteered. In fact, most religions see this as the
act of bringing God's compassion and love to the world, not
as the evangelism of conversion. In this country we have
always classified religious institutions as some how maligning
or tainting true community volunteerism, when in fact they
are community driven and community based. True, there are
some religious communities investing a heavy evangelistic
message with their outreach, but these are a minority of
religious groups volunteering to make the world a better
place to live. Even so, they bring all the elements of compassion
and positive change into communities across the world. So,
it's not whether religious community service is the new volunteerism,
it's whether the country will recognize the contribution
as part of the societal mainstream of volunteerism.
Submitted on 7 Jan 2005 by Arlene Stepputat, Integrity
International, Author/Consultant, Santa Barbara CA
The
area of service and volunteerism that I am exploring at
a deeper level for myself and I hope for others is what I might
call, "the consciousness of service." I am looking at what
inner skills really make the difference between being a true
servant to others versus a do-gooder or worse a "fixer." I
am looking at how to close the gap between the sense of us and
them and look at how to experience it from a real place as just
us. Revisiting the classic, How Can I Help by Ram Dass
and Paul Gorman and asking that at a deeper level. To this
end I am leading a class through community college and hope to
dialogue with others to explore the heart of service from an
ethical, psychological, and spiritual place. Using my book, The
Caring Heart, too.
Submitted on 5 January 2005 by
Hillary Roberts, Project Linus NJ, Inc., President,
Keyport/NJ USA
"What are YOU keeping your
eye on this year?"
Self-education that includes informed decision making, priority
to industry research, and a community of commitment to
SHARE accurate results. 2) the promotion of professional
certification becomes a industry standard, and 3) will the industry
welcome newcomers eager to meld the head spinning advances in
communication technology with the sophisticated practice of goal
oriented global results.
"What unanswered questions do you have about future
events and volunteering?"
- Will agencies learn to partner time, talents, funding
and missions to better serve their local "village"?
- Will experienced
nonprofit professionals mentor newcomers utilizing new and
innovative methods?
- Will this sector collaborate on one definitive
text, a master handbook if you will, on the awesome topic of
nonprofit culture.
- Who will the new players be during this exciting
time in nonprofit?
- Followship-an under utilized management style that encourages
professionalism from volunteers and assists the goals and motivations
of those VM's clearly wish to attract.
After five years of self education, certification, volunteer management
and exciting partnerships, I have come to the realization that
the non profit industry all too often shoots itself in the foot. Those
innovators, mavericks and futurists we meet and read about need
to be encouraged; in real time on hot issues.
CHANGE will come. Inclusion in the process begins with each
of us. When we open our hearts, we must remember to open
our minds.
To quote a smart man, "BE the change you want to see in this world."
Submitted on 5 January 2005 by Mary Rose McCarthy,
St. Patrick's Hospital/Marymount Hospice, Co-ordinator of
Volunteers, Cork Ireland
A big challenge facing volunteering in Cork is the requirement
that students demonstrate volunteering experience in order to
get a university place to study medicine. As these are
final year students already pressured with looming final year
exams the focus of their attention is on fulfulling an entry
requirement not on volunteering.
Can we as an organisation respond to this student need without
diluting the concept of volunteering? Is it possible
to make it a meaningful experience for an already overburdened
student? Can the organisation benefit without risking
patients or organisation ethos? From the point of view
of the colleges it is just another box on application form. Doing
a few hours voluntary work will not determine the potential
of a student to become a good doctor. It is a co-ordinators
nightmare to find roles and times for students who would wish
to be somewhere else. And yet there is that nagging voice
that says make this a meaningful valid expereince and who knows
they may return to volunteering many times again over the coming
years.
It will be interesting how this will develop over the next
few months both locally, nationally and in the UK.
Comment from Susan Ellis on 5 January 2005:
Glad to see the quick responses below, thank you. But since
the "community service debate" has been waged often before (for example,
see some of the responses to a
previous Hot Topic), I'd like to encourage everyone to focus on the
two questions I posed at the end of my essay this month:
- What
are YOU keeping your eye on this year?
- What unanswered
questions do you have about future events and volunteering?
Submitted on 5 January 2005 by Loy Thomas, Rehabilitation
Institute of Chicago, Director, Volunteer
Resources, Chicago, Illinois USA
I have a couple
of comments regarding the Community Service -- I refer to these
programs as "Service Learning or Educational Service
Learning" programs to distinguish from "punishment/court referral" placements. I
have been working with students for the last 20 years in these programs
and it is been great. What is important is that the school
compliment the actual volunteering with educational seminars in the
school system. We also ask our students to write about what
they have learned. Some schools ask that they pick a topic
area that relates to their assigned volunteer placement and research
information and write a paper or give a presentation. This
helps them to learn about something they didn't know, provides meaningful
writing experience, research experience and potentially public speaking. It's
up to the Volunteer Directors to work with the schools to improve
this most important opportunity for learning.
Submitted on 5 January 2005 by Kris Martinson, American
Red Cross, Youth & Volunteer
Coordinator, Rochester, MN
I have a wonderful
relationship with our local community corrections office,
and have had great luck with that collaboration. Our office
has had a variety of community service volunteers that range in
age from 9 to 87. In many cases youth are referred to us
and once they realize that the projects they are working
on really benefit our programs and that we will treat them
with respect, things are great! I strongly believe that for
many of the young participants, community service gives them
their first chance to feel good about themselves and hopefully
a glimpse that they can make a difference!
I also have several high school youth that participate in school
organized "community service" volunteering. They are also an awesome
source of help to us!
I agree it is confusing that both programs use the term community
service...but isn't volunteering simply volunteering? I work hard
to educate my staff not to treat volunteers differently no matter
how they are referred.
Submitted on 4 January 2004 by Mary T. McGuire, Volunteer
Interfaith Caregivers-SW, Faith in Action, Director, Houston,
TX USA
I guess I wasted the 2 trips I made to Peru with Prison Fellowship. The
experiences would have made a great show, the first was full of
anxiety about being locked in with armed guards, trash and dead
cats; the second trip with prison riots shutting down our destination,
long bus trips to a backup site packed into a 12 passenger van
(we had 16 plus the driver), being Presbyterian and staying in
a Catholic nunnery. Yet the changes from the first trip to
my second 4 years later showed that we made a difference in just
being there and caring. Maybe we didn't get the roof fixed,
but we empowered the women prisoners with our demonstration of
caring without strings so that they would care for themselves.
Submitted on 4 January 2005 by Suellen Carlson,
Lutheran Social Services, Director of Volunteers, Jamestown,
NY USA
First, the judge who sentences me to
dealing with individuals who have to do community service
does not have a clue about how much work it adds to my life,
not to mention the aggravation. I stay out of the situation
unless the individual is closely related to one of our staff
members and I am feeling particularly beneficent at the time.
Secondly, I have flown under the radar regarding the high school
which states that to graduate you have to have 70 hours of "volunteer" time.
Give me those middle school kids anytime! The high school kids are
too busy, too overloaded, and in many cases looking for a real job
(or working at a job)where they can make money to go to school, etc.
Spare me from surly teenagers who just have to put in their time.
Whoever comes up with these ideas about "volunteering" needs to involve
those of us who are actually in the trenches. I have high school
volunteers, but they all either started when they were younger and
I know they are committed to our facility, or in many cases they
were referred by another teenager who volunteers here. The young
people know that we are serious about their time, that they are needed
here, and that we don't just take anyone. The only way we will make
an impression on the folks who come up with the mandatory "volunteering" plan,
is to close off their avenues. In addition, it's important to take
every opportunity to educate the public about volunteers and volunteering.
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