For land line and dsl:
We have had a positive experience with Integra. The process was good. We provided a few months of usage and their staff provided an assessment stating they could save us at least $100 a month. It was actually more like $200, so you can imagine we are thrilled. If you use Integra tell them you heard from Haas Foundation becase they will give us a referral fee.
For wireless/cell:
Since then my husband discovered a resource to review cell phones and plans which helps us adjust our plan and save a lot of money. This resource is www.myvalidas.com. You get one free evaluation and then pay, however we saved 20%-30%. If you buy a package it's $1 per bill. but you can get one evaluation for free, which helps you to see the value.
Dominoes is a perfect game & metaphor for trust, volunteerism, and demonstrating a cause and affect when a volunteer makes a commitment and then with no notice just decides to not show, not follow through, or not give the agency any transition.
Others are left to pick up the pieces...often impactly the experience in obviously a negative way.
When this happens I find myself checking my values...gee is this the way I would treat others?
Confucious says " What you do not want others to do to you, do not do to others".
If you have created a tool like this (a charter, agreement, game plan? ) let me know. I am pondering.
Thanks for listening,
Bonnie
EVERYBODY, ANYBODY, SOMEBODY AND NOBODY
By Charles Osgood
There was a most important job that needed to be done,
And no reason NOT to do it, there was absolutely none.
But in vital matters such as this, the thing you have to ask
Is WHO exactly will it be who will carry OUT this task.
ANYBODY could have told you that EVERYBODY knew
That this was something SOMEBODY would surely have to do.
NOBODY was unwilling. ANYBODY had the ability.
But NOBODY belied that it was his responsiblity.
It seemd to be a job that ANYBODY could have done,
If ANYBODY thought he was supposed to be the one.
But since EVERYBODY recognized that ANYBODY could,
EVERYBODY took for granted that SOMEBODY would.
But NOBODY told ANYBODY that we are aware of,
That he would be in charge of seeing it was taken care of.
And NOBODY took it on himself to follow through and DO
What EVERYBODY thought that SOMEBODY would do.
When what EVERBODY neede so did not get done at all.
EVERYBODY was complaining that SOMEBODY dropped the ball.
ANYBODY then could see it was an awful crying shame,
And EVERYBODY looked around for SOMEBODY to blame.
SOMEBODY should have done the job and EVERYBODY would have,
But in the end NOBODY did what ANYBODY could have.
I am often asked..."how do you do it?" How do you have so many volunteers and volunteers who do such fabulous work? I have been asked this enough that I now understand that people wonder, "can I really trust a volunteer?" My answer is of course "yes". Absolutely yes, however it is with strategy and honesty about expectations from the start. Things to keep in mind are
- Have clear expectations, including a meaningful title, a position description, and a game plan. The game plan is a project plan (ours is called a stoplight). Often their first is created together with the supervisor.
- Have clarity around ownership. Who owns the task, project and outcome?.
- Be really clear on deadlines and check in. Have a way for the volunteer to ask for support.
- Can the volunteer tell you who their supervisor is?
- Does each volunteer have a place to retrieve messages, know how to submit their hours?
- Has each volunteer had an orientation?
- Do they know where to look or who to ask for support? Or who their supervisor is?
- Our agency gives each volunteer who wants one a key to the office. Volunteers are welcomed at the office anytime they desire.
- Is the assignment the right fit? We have 2 people always join in for the volunteer interview. It could be two staff, one volunteer and one staff, if could be two volunteers. Typically the person who requested the position is part of the interview. This makes for a smooth transition later on. Also, both people must agree. If one person is a maybe, then we pass on the volunteer. When in doubt do with out. It may sound mean, or harsh, but having the right person on the team is really important. And really listening to our volunteers is key. Very rarely do we override this process. I have on occasion taken a risk, and then shared with the candidate that we want to make sure this is the right fit for both of us.
So above is more of the mechanics, However, what I have learned it is that our values are what guide us. Even in our little office, we have about 80 volunteers from over a dozen countries. So we need to park our assumptions at the door.
Things that are red flags
- If a volunteer says "I am just a volunteer". We manage our mission through our volunteers. Volunteers are signing up to implement our mission and saying yes to real responsibility. Not to just help or assist but rather to do and own some project or assignment to completion. Help is great but at the end of the day if all we have is helpers and no doers we are really in trouble. So again, being really clear about what does support look like and what are the expectation (upfront) the less drama you should have later on.
- If a volunteer says, yes to a task and then minimizes the task, be careful. This is a red flag because first and foremost you need to make sure the person is owning the entire assignment. If they need help or coaching or more training that is a different matter. Having more discussion around how to ask for this help is really the key. If they are not the right fit, then move them asap to a new role that is more comfortable for them or meet and have the difficult conversation around sorry this didn’t work out.
- ROI (return on investment)...about once a year we have brought in a volunteer who we felt was an excellent fit, only to find out that the training time far exceed the return on our investment. For some volunteers, because we are very technology oriented, it has revolved around a volunteer not being able to grasp the different web-based applications we use. We will meet, discuss comfort level, fit and options. In one case a volunteer moved happily to another role, but most often it has resulted in the volunteer resigning. Over time we have gotten better at describing our technology requirements, but we still find it challenging. The key here is if a person is working a shift say for 3 or 4 hours, and each week, they take 3 hours to support the person, week after week then is really is time to evaluate ROI. This is always difficult. It is not about the person but rather a reflection on the fit.
- Supervision model...we often have volunteers (we call them leads) supervising other volunteers. Sometimes it is not the volunteer that is implementing the assignments ability or fit, but rather the supervisor hasn't taken the time to instruct or coach or the supervisor might be new in their role and not know how to delegate. Our leads are invited to a monthly planning meeting with my staff, which we call an offsite meeting. At our offsite meeting we review all the stoplights during the morning. Stoplight at a thinned down project management excel spreadsheets which shows each person what they are working on over the course of the next month. Each person lists their status on tasks, red (in trouble, over budget or past due or lacking skill set), yellow (might be in trouble), and green (on target). We ask all leads to submit even if they cant’ attend (many have day jobs and cant’ attend). Soon we will be posting these on a SharePoint server for any of our volunteers to review.
- There are 3 steps to supervision (simple version):
- Tell the volunteer what you need them to do. (everyone’s style here is different. A lot depends on the task, people etc.. I would urge you to not micromanage unless safety is involved, but rather operate from a value of how would you want to be treated? I champion trust.
- Do it with them. Particularly if technology is involved.
- Watch them do it. Particularly if technology is involved.
Often is a volunteer is struggling, it often leads back to the supervisor not doing one of two of these steps. I know because I am guilty of this as well. (Smiling) And yes, I know better. Some of this is timing and the pace of the non profit. Not to excuse this, but as a supervisor you may at times need to be brief, but always leave the door open for more clarification or a check in later. Embrace and encourage questions to be asked. Encourage reflection. With reflection comes learning. If you see someone go down a path that is dead wrong, again take ownership and ask for a meeting. Don't wait.
It is about the little things:
We know budgets are tight. However sometimes it is about what support looks like. We try and have snacks and water, soda etc. in our office. Also we provide for parking or bus tickets who need this support. In addition for all “in state” volunteers we provide workman's comp for injury while volunteering. I think we pay .10 an hour. This is a mutual responsibility in that we need our volunteers to register their hours to ever make a claim. For our annual event we also provide a shirt as a thank you as well as ID. Bottom line, how you treat your volunteers should reflect how you would want to be treated. With respect and timely support and with Trust. If you are iffy regarding trust, then don't bring them onboard. Remember when in doubt do without.
- Mood:accomplished
Karen Bantuveris Founder of VolunteerSpot calls herself the "Chief Evangelist" of VolunteerSpot. To quote Karen "this is a fancy way of saying that I get to spend my days interacting with users (like you!). I get to learn more about them, the volunteer work they do, and how we can improve VolunteerSpot for them and you."
So what is VolunteerSpot?
This is a web-based scheduling software calendar tool for non profits and school groups to manage their volunteers. It is new...and in Beta testing mode. I am hoping to connect with Karen this week and will ad more comments in this article once I do.
Karen seems very interested in input, feedback and learning about the users needs (refreshing) as evidenced in my welcome email I recieved.
"As you may have noticed, VolunteerSpot is new and we don't have all our whistles and bells in place yet. As we are working to get our help functions and tutorials up, I wanted to let you know about a resource section in our blog called How 2 VolunteerSpot: Tips, Tricks and Technical. Here you can find suggestions for getting started, examples of how to structure the 'To Do and To Bring' screen for your signup, how to use the My Activities tab to monitor your activity, and more (just scroll down).If at any time you have questions, suggestions to share, or want coaching in setting up your signup, you can just reply to this message (it comes from my personal email); I would love know what you think about VolunteerSpot. I would also like to learn more about your good work and how we can improve VolunteerSpot to make it an even more valuable signup tool for you and your volunteers."
Contact Karen at:
Karen Bantuveris
VolunteerSpot, DOING GOOD just got easier!
www.VolunteerSpot.com
KKBantuveris@VolunteerSpot.com
Our working title for our product is VVM; Virtual Volunteer Module.
We anticipate a new name by the end of our Beta test time.
What it includes is:
• Bulletin board; for announcement your staff can post to volunteers, whenever they want
• Time tracking tools to post and recognize volunteer hours--by projects and roles.
• Contact information
• Upload for key documents like volunteer personnel policies
• E-mail to 2 people within your organization for instant communication from your volunteers; such as your volunteer coordinator or executive director.
• Login and Passwords system: your team assigns and sets up a login and password
• Documentation help area for both the user and the administrative staff
• Volunteer recognition
• Photos of volunteers
• Biography/resume' sharing with other volunteers including a volunteer directory
• Agency branding for your site; you will be able to select custom colors and upload your logo
• Hours report for each volunteer is available
What is to come:
• Additioanl Report functions
• Improved graphic look
• Evaluation
Benefits:
The benefit of this system is its “open” system, meaning your staff no longer updates all the changes, the volunteer does. The volunteer updates their own e-mail, phone, and daily hours whenever they submit their time.
Beta Test approach:
Copyright of the primary software remains with Haas Foundation. We anticipate you may be renting a portion of a SQL server for $210 a year from a provider selected by us. This allows us to update to improve all products at once (SaaS is being evaluated as a possible solution/approach).. .
Anticipated beta tests costs: We anticipate needing to charge, however we are re-evaluating this approach in light of the challening economic times.
Beta Test slots are on a first-come first-served basis. Contact Bonnie Hilory, Executive Director bhilory@ haasfoundation.org or 206 352-1199 wk or 612-7002 cell.
We are seeking one type of agency for each of the following:
- Hospital: vacant
- Museum: pending
- PTA: vacant
- YMCA: Vacant
- Girl Scouts: Vacant
- Teen Center: Vacant
- Foundation : Vacant
- University Intern program: Pending
- Senior Center: Vacant
Our Claim:
We have been using VVM software for two years now. When we launched this for our Alpha testing (internal) our volunteer coordinator went from 16 hours a week, down to 2 hours a week. She no longer had to chase people down for their time, contact infomation and communcation became streamlined. She was able to focus on recruitment & recognition.
Other partners wanted:
SaaS or CRM software provider that is colloborative and not greedy, but wanting to help a non profit achieve a sustainable high quality Volunteer Management product.
Scheduling volunteer software- we don't want to offer this but anticipate our clients will have this need.
Exit Strategy discussions- our goal is to create through BVeta and evaluation phase with the intent to decide on one of three exit approaches:
- We create a for profit arm of our non profit and sell this ourselves, as a cause marketing approach (fundraising ) for our non profit.
- Enter into a sale agreement with a company that providses royalties to our non profit. Wiht the IRS, we have been told royalitites do not count as income but rather in the donation catagory. (More research is needed, but this sounds interesting).
- Just use the product for us and not proceed.
- Location:Seattle
1. Tech Soup
http://www.techsoup.org/index.html
Interconnection
2. http://computers.interconnection.org/
State Surplus (Washington)
3. http://www.bluefeathertech.com/technoid/w
Step one: Identifying your agency's needs- which are ever changing is the first step.
Step two:is to clearly write up your needs. Make is realistic, be honest about scope (how many hours, and responsibility) and make the description interesting, but accurate. Be clear, it is virtual or on location?Step three: Always have the listing that is out on the web, listed on your agencies website.
Step four: Part of the technique is knowing where to post vacancies. This is what this article will be about:
Most sites require to post that you have a login and password. One consideration of for your agency to keep a list that you can share with others who want to help keep the postings current.
Sites to post :
Volunteer Match: http://www.volunteermatch.org/
Founded in 1994 Four MBA's – Mark Benning, Joanne Ernst, Steve Glikbarg, and Cindy Shove – draft plans to launch an online nonprofit to promote community involvement.
Downside: Currently they do not facilitate volunteerism outside the United States.
Upside: Interface for the administrator and volunteer candidate is pretty intuitive, with good results in large metro areas. In smaller communities, this resource might not have the traction of visibility you need. Free to post.
Best fit: Board members, office help, graphics, web developers, volunteer coordinators, you name it, post it. Strong virtual recruitment.
Your local United Way:
See Seattle/King County as an example: http://www.uwkc.org/volunteer/solutions/d
Founded: varies, in the US as early as 1913.
Downside: Why duplicate services? I would have liked to have seen United Way strategy to be to formulate a relationship with Volunteer Match who has a superior product vs. put there hard earned resources into keeping up a site that really needs updating. As you will see it is not as intuitive to use, hard to navigate for the administrators who are posting. Really poor search engine.
Upside: Strong training for volunteers interested in serving as board members. Locally known for recruiting board members. Free to post.
Best fit: Board members, office support, local in office volunteers
Craigs List: www.craigslist.com
Founded: in 1995 by Craig Newmark, Craigslist is a central network of online communities, featuring free online classified advertisements – with jobs, internships, housing, personals, erotic services, for sale/barter/wanted, services, community, gigs, resume, and pets categories – and forums on various topics. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craigslist,
Downside: Ads only last a week, requiring one to post frequently
Upside: Wide reach, world wide, simple, intuitive to use. Volunteer classifieds are free.
Best fit: Graphics talent, web development, IT support, event help, technology help, leadership help
Idealist : http://www.idealist.org/
Founded : 1995 by the parent organization called action without boarders. Originally, idealist.org was launced as contact.org. Check out their history here: http://www.idealist.org/en/about/history.h
Downside: They have tons of postings, but a strong search engine.
Upside: Extremely diverse community, creative postings, Free to post.
Best fit: interns, graphics, web development, leadership roles, virtual help
Board net usa: http://www.boardnetusa.org/public/home.a
Founded: According to their copyright on their web is shows 2001 with a vision "to have more knowledgeable and diverse leaders on more nonprofit boards serving their communities for the public good." Agencies who are located in the US and who have an EIN can post vacancies. Prospective candidates also post their resume'/bio. However contact info and replying are up to the candidate.
Downside:Extremely competitive. You must meet and call right away. Most prospective board members are choosing between two or three non profits. On the tech side the user names are clumsy because they require words and numbers and then use the email for the password recovery. Making the email the login would solve the awkwardness of this.Upside: I really like the confidential nature of the process for the prospective volunteer board member. Nicely done. Free for both parties.
Best fit: Board of Directors
Volunteering in America:
If you are wondering how your states rates on volunteering check this out: http://www.volunteeringinamerica.gov
What makes volunteering rewarding? Fun? Relevant?
Each volunteer has clearly defined roles and goals. Each role has relevance to our mission and assignments are not busy work. Plus volunteers who work in the office have an-basket area to check on messages, and a reserved work space. We provide parking and bus passes for ouir volunteers. We have a refrigerator and cabinet often filled with goodies requested by the volunteers. Chocolate is a staple. About three to four times year, someone steps up to organize a social of some sort. We have had boat trips, picnic, potluck, rubber stamp party, open house, BucaDiPeppo nights, shooting pool at Jillians, etc.
The right people on the bus
Jim Collins authored Good to Great. Even better wrote a small monogram (about 75 pages) for the social sector. He also has a CD which is great for a long car ride. His pep talk is get the right people on the bus. He doesn't really say how, but I think we are getting there. We have two full time staff and three (8 to 10 hour a week ) PT staffers. All the rest is accomplished because of the contributions of our volunteers. We have a series of 20 questions we do for all volunteer applicants (we adjust a little for web and graphics). The key is two people team interview...and the questions are consistant. Then our wonderful volunteer coordinators do the volunteer background checks and at least 2 reference checks. Then the two folks that interview need to say "go" or "no go..."to me, the Executive Director. What we are looking for are people who are wanting to make a difference in the lives of others, that they can work independantly and work in teams. We also informally differentiate between people who want to assist and or people who want to lead. We need about 70% leaders and 30& support help. We get about 150 applicants a year, however we only interview maybe 1/3 annually. For that we bring on board typically about 1/2 to 3/4 of the people we interview.
Real meaningful roles
This is so subtle and yet very real. We rely and depend on our volunteers to complete their commitments/tasks on time and on budget. We expect to coach, train, support and sometime re-direct (rarely).
The right match
Interviews are about us getting to know the volunteer and vice versa the volunteer getting to know us...and what the opportunities or organizational needs are. We try and test out ideas during the interview and hear thier passion. When volunteers are nervous or don't interview well, we sometimes don't get the right fit. Also, phone interviews are a little more challenging when trying to evaluate passion...but it really depends on the person. To be clear, the right match does not imply that you need to be an expert...in an area. You may enjoy writing, but want to gain experience in editing. Or you may have taken several class in web development and want to apply your learning. To us, the right match is what gets you excited (passion) and also meets our organizational needs. ( we are not intersted in adding more our plate or new ideas...bringing on a volunteer should be about helping the organization meet it;s current needs. It is a win-win when the passion of a volunteer and the needs of the agency align.
Real responibility & Documentation
Some volunteers are shocked at what our volunteers do. One of our best example is, we have published two books, both were managed by a project manager (volunteer), a dozen editors (all volunteer), a lead editor to help have the stories read with one voice and a graphic designer (volunteer). Plus the 430 stories were submitted by our grantees all volunteers. for our volunteers we ask that they help-document (we use Visio and have created a standard operating procedure (SOP) or a pass down manual.
Supervision and Feedback 3 out of our 5 staff each supervise volunteers. We have 2 web developer contractors who each supervise 5 to 6 volunteers and we have typically 12 to 20 leads that are volunteers who each supervise; interview, train, supervise and support other volunteers. Our supervisors and leads and interns receive performance evaluation training. Staff and interns are required. Leads are highly encourage and support volunteers are optional, leaving the deciion to the volunteer.
The Speed of Trust
http://books.google.com/books?id=0KIU3Wh
This is a must have, must read book. It wasn't until I read this book (by Stephen Covey) that I began to understand why our agency's culture was so responsive, nimble and high functioning. The key is trust. We totally trust our staff and volunteers. We encourage people to clarify expectations, roles, goals, deadlines etc. The difference is we do not micro-manage. Nothing is faster than "the speed of trust" (page 15, Chesterton). To people not use to this, it can feel chaotic and unorganized. In fact it is the opposite. When I hear "we are just volunteers" it is typically someone new to us or perhaps we are not the right system for them. I personally do aspire to that attitude.
Flexibility
So pretty much our volunteers all have other roles (student, mom, spouse, etc.) or their "day job". What we have gotten better at is understanding what their availability is and then assigning a task. Take the book project as an example...if someone said to us, I love to write, and I have 1 to 3 hours a week, we would want them to edit. However, if they have 5 to 10 hours a week and have proven to be a strong editor, then we would talk with them about possibly being our lead editor which is the second and final editor for the stories. A stronger leadership role, but they must have the time to do all the stories.
One other note; sometimes there are lulls or life just gets in the way. A volunteer might have a family member who gets sick, or health related issues. The big thing is communicaiton and creating a transition plan with the volunteer. They are always welcomed back.
Location: Virtual vs. in the office vs. a hybrid
Virtual volunteerism and hybrid volunteers are on the rise. Nothing beats building a relationship with volunteers in the office however with Webinars, and sites or online solutions like using google docs to share docs. We have volunteers from Canada, India, England, and the US. We also have volunteers from over a dozen states. I love the impact of such diversity and support, not too mention depth and quality. I feel truly touched and extremely fortunate.
Project planning
We have adopted the stoplight method. I was first introduced to this while at the Museum of Flight. Ideally all leads and active volunteers and staff would each submit their projects and status and dates due. Status is were truth telling comes in. Our metric is red is overdue by 6 weeks, yellow is 2 weeks overdue and green is on track. We also have a metric for budget..Each organization would establish it's own metrics.. We build this out using an excel spreadsheet and then one of our volunteers complies all spreadsheets into a PowerPoint. We meet monthly which we call offsites (typically away from the office). The first part of the meeting is spent going over stoplights...what is amazing is the teaming and suggestions on ways to work together. When all stoplights are presented everyone understands what is occurring in the organization and what is going well and who needs support. It is a transforming meeting...often leading to tougher dialog, such as gaps, duplication, competing resources, etc. Explore Jim Lewis's book called Working Together: http://books.google.com/books?id=QjKMRr7
Communication
We have a unique circumstance which really help us and possibly your organization as well. When I was getting my masters i wrote my final paper on how to improve our volunteer communication and how to make managing volunteers more enjoyable/efficient. We have developed software and are working on version 2 currently in hopes of having this become "fund earning" for us vs. fund raising. What we have is a self service approach. Our volunteer coordinators set up the new volunteer providing them with a temporary login and password. The volunteers log their hours (hopefully each day they volunteer). When they log in there is a bulletin board with message from our volunteer coordinators about what is going on, welcoming new volunteers, etc. We use email and we also have contact contact and send our volunteers agency newsletters as well.
Recognition
With the software we created with a click of a couple of buttons we can pull up the value of the volunteer hours. Each time the volunteer submits their hours online. In addition, we have an annual volunteer recognition event where we honor our volunteers. We have a volunteer of the year award which is a vote of their peers. We also have a newcomer of the year award, and a President award (awarded by our Board President). KEY: we are committed to tracking hours as this quantied the savings and contribution of our volunteers. Each year the number of hours and volunteers has grown. In four year we have save the agency over $300,000. That is huge in my book.
Transparency
We are working on installing Sharepoint...once this is up and running we will be able to have an agency calendar, upload all our minutes and stoplights for the offisites (staff meetings) etc. We want folks to be able to know where to look or who to ask. Also for those in our office, we do not store any docs on our local computers. The reason is we have nothing to hide. (remember we trust people)., This allows our IT volunteer to back up from one place nightly and allows any of us to easily look up whatever we need and to help each other. It does require cleaning up from time to time and training.
Accessible So with this modern day workforce the only challenge I clearly understand is that our volunteer are world wide. Time zones are different and I don't want people to worry about when is an appropriate time to send an email or leave a vm message. So the downside is it can feel like a 24- 7 operation....wait...that is because it is! So the key is flexibility works both ways. Any volunteer can request an appointment with a staff member or their volunteer lead...the deal is it just needs to be mutually agreed to the best date and time. It always works, because we empower and trust.
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bonnie_h_09- Bonnie Blair Hilory
- Haas Foundation
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