Hot Topics

This Month's Responses

March 1998
Some Nagging Questions...
By Susan J. Ellis

 

This month we've made changes and added features to the Website area we now call Connecting to Others in the Field (it used to be called "Educate Yourself"). This process made me consider some of the difficulties related to professional networking. So this month's "hot topic" is a potpourri of nagging questions --what do YOU think?

Nagging Question #1 - Why do so many people affiliate only with directors of volunteers within their own setting specialty and not also with the field at large?
When I ran the volunteer program for the Philadelphia Family Court, I belonged both to justice-related volunteerism groups and to generic, any-setting groups. Why? Because they met different needs. When I was with my justice colleagues, we could focus on specialized questions such as frustrations with probation officers, confidentiality about juvenile offenders, etc. But our frame of reference was narrow. In the general volunteerism associations I gained a broader understanding of why some challenges exist regardless of setting. I also gleaned lots of seed ideas from other types of facilities to adapt and apply in my setting.

When we compartmentalize ourselves by only attending setting-based training workshops or conferences, or only reading books and journals with our specialized vocabulary, we don't challenge ourselves. Hospital DVSs should occasionally read something written for volunteer programs in the cultural arts, and vice versa. Make it a point, at a conference, of speaking to someone whose name tag indicates a setting far different than your own.

Nagging Question #2 - Why don't we read and write more?
Some of you will head for the hills when you see this question! My reputation for nagging people to WRITE about what they do is probably unparalleled. But too many of us are so busy "doing" that we won't make time for reflection, new learning, and sharing with others. True professionals keep themselves informed. And career ladders are built by gaining recognition through published articles.

By the way--this includes my dismay at how many of you read the monthly hot topic (we know because the Website server gives us a daily count of "hits"), but how few of you respond! (Hint, hint - go ahead and challenge me!)

Nagging Question #3 - Why aren't we using our networks for clout and advocacy, as well as for self-education?
As Marilyn MacKensie has said, we are "terminally nice." It isn't in the nature of many directors of volunteers to take a stand and fight. One value of a professional association is that it allows collective assertiveness while protecting the identity of individuals. We need more DOVIAs which do things like produce and distribute "position papers" on the value of a director of volunteers or protest if a volunteer management job is eliminated in their community. Some great groups are out there already--please multiply!

Nagging Question #4 - Why don't we involve volunteers who are leaders of other volunteers in our professional associations?
This is part of a longer, self-contained "hot topic" that I'll tackle some other time. But I fervently hope that we are past the days when we defined "professional" as "paid." Our professional associations ought to be about function, not salary. Anyone who is in a leadership position managing volunteers should be welcome. So why do we have so few association members or conference participants who are officer of all-volunteer civic clubs--or who are administrative volunteers in our own agencies?

Certainly at the local DOVIA level we should be able to welcome more people. If every one of us who is a member of a DOVIA enrolled just one key volunteer we'd double the DOVIA membership, give us a sounding board back home for ideas heard at meetings, and provide recognition and personal development for a volunteer leader. We also ought to schedule some workshop sessions on the weekends or in the evenings so that leadership volunteers with other day jobs can attend conferences. But we'll have to do some work to reach them and make them feel welcome.

Your turn....

Read People's Responses