2011 Workshop Sessions
Workshop levels-
Novice: person new to field; little or no experience.
Intermediate: some experience; able to apply skills and knowledge.
Advanced: well developed skills or knowledge of field; able to plan, execute, learn/reflect, and adapt.
Level: All/of general interest
Session 1: 9:20-10:50
Session Title: Semester of Service: Tackling Childhood Obesity and Childhood Hunger Presenter: Susan Abravanel, Vice President of Education at Youth Service America and Patrick Carson, School Health Coordinator at Oxford Hills School District
Description: Young people are eager to make a difference in real-world problems, especially those that most affect them. Learn about an effective school and community-based program that engages youth in a "semester" of service and learning responses to the mirror-image problems of childhood obesity and childhood hunger.
Level: All/of general interest
Session Title: Volunteer Recognition- One Size DOESN'T Fit All!
Presenter: Jen Lobley, Extension Educator for Volunteer Development at UMaine Cooperative Extension
Description: Come to this workshop and explore why it is important to understand volunteer motivational factors when thinking about recognition. As a workshop participant you will participate in a "gallery walk" to share ideas, complete a team activity to better understand formal and informal recognition, be provided with time to create a plan-of-action and take home lots of ideas for showing appreciation to your volunteers.
Level: Novice
Session Title: Motivation-Based Position Descriptions & Recruitment Strategies
Presenter: Lori Tsuruda, Executive Director of People Making a Difference and President of Boston Directors of Volunteer Administration
Description: Develop volunteer position descriptions and recruitment strategies based on modern understanding of human motivation. Learn what makes people act, and how to •Use titles and incentives which attract particular types. •Customize templates for your organization's needs and benefits. •Use position descriptions in effective planning, supervision, and performance measurement.
Level: Novice
Session Title: National Service Criminal Background Checks Requirements
Presenter: Michael Ashmore, Grants Program Officer at Maine Commission for Community Service
Description: An overview of the requirements for Criminal History Record Checks for participants in programs funded by the Corporation for National and Community Service including Why, What checks, for Whom, When they must be done and How to. In addition, participate in a discussion of general risk management practices and leave with pertinent materials.
Level: All/of general interest
Session Title: AmeriCorps in Maine (required for AmeriCorps members)
Presenter: Pam Zeutenhorst, Program Officer for Volunteer Sector Initiatives at Maine Commission for Community Service with Maine AmeriCorps Program Staff and Members
Description: Who are you & what do you do? This session is for all AmeriCorps members and is an introduction to AmeriCorps and AmeriCorps*VISTA Programs in Maine. Second year members and alums share their experiences and answer your questions. Let the AmeriCorps networking begin!!!
Level: All/of general interest
Session Title: Mapping Success in Employee Volunteering: Drivers for Success
Presenter: Dahlia Lynn, Ph.D, Associate Provost for Academic Affairs and Dean of Graduate Studies, Muskie School of Public Service at University of Southern Maine
Workshop Description: For profit organizations face an increasing demand and growing need to play a greater role in addressing community problems and their employees are key to any organization's efforts. Until recently, employee volunteering was often relegated to the margins of corporate citizenship. However, brought into the organizational core, employees can strengthen corporate citizenship from the inside of the organization, adding value as organizations nurture and retain employee talent.
By strengthening corporate citizenship communities are strengthened and employees can advance career skills, gain an improved understanding of their community and enhance organizational culture. Employee volunteer and giving programs can lead to meaningful and substantive impact in the community and can transform social and corporate sectors if tapped. But how do you structure employee volunteering and giving programs to have a high impact?
This workshop will explore the evidence based practices that generate community and organizational impact and the drivers necessary to help organizations strengthen their corporate citizenship, achieve effective community involvement and high impact employee volunteering.
Level: Advanced
Session Title: Legally Advocating for Your Programs
Presenter: Brenda Peluso, Director of Public Policy at Maine Association of Nonprofits
Description: Nonprofits in Maine can and should advocate for their missions and there are fairly easy to understand rules governing what nonprofits can and cannot do. Join us for this session as we explore these questions: "What is advocacy?", "When are my activities purely educational and when do they cross the line and become lobbying?", "What roles can AmeriCorps members play in mission advocacy?", and "What is the difference between electioneering and lobbying?"
Level: Novice/Intermediate
Session Title: Going Green: Engaging Students in Science and Math through Service-Learning
Presenter: Tracy Harkins, Education Programs Manager at KIDS Consortium
Description: Come prepared to participate in an interactive workshop to learn what service-learning is and how students and teachers have been using it to make their schools and communities healthier and environmentally sustainable (e.g. increased energy efficiency, use of alternative energy sources, higher recycling rates, healthier food at school.) Walk away with resources to help build student ownership, authentic community involvement and academic rigor through a service-learning project. See how STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) outcomes can be achieved through a service-learning project. The award winning KIDS Consortium's model of service-learning assists teachers, administrators and community partners as they work with K-12 students to identify, research and address real community challenges.
Level: All/of general interest
Session Title: Strategies for Including Volunteers with Disabilities: Providing Accommodations
Presenter: Janet May, Coordinator of Transition and Adults at Center for Community Inclusion and Disability Studies at University of Maine
Description: This session will provide participants with specific tools and methods to assist them in offering reasonable accommodations to volunteers with disabilities. Methods for adapting activities and examples of accommodations will be shared.
Level: Intermediate
Session 2: 1:10-2:40
Session Title: Building Community Through Service-learning
Presenter: Susan Abravanel, Vice President of Education at Youth Service America
Description: Double the impact! This workshop shows how community-based organizations and schools can collaborate to engage and educate youth, enhancing both the quality of education and the quality of life in a community. Learn how to build a service-learning partnership that meets everyone's "bottom line!"
Level: Novice
Session Title: Who's Up for a Challenge?
Presenter: Jen Lobley, Extension Educator for Volunteer Development at UMaine Cooperative Extension
Description: This workshop will offer an interactive format to learn how to deal with the sometimes challenging behaviors of volunteers. Using a four-step process, participants will practice redirecting difficult behaviors by working through examples of challenging scenarios. Participants will learn skills and take away tools to help them apply their learning to their own challenging volunteer situations.
Level: Intermediate
Session Title: Building Media Relationships
Presenter: Megan Emery, Children's Technician at Lewiston Public Library
Description: How can you take your social media use to the next level and start getting measureable results? How do you get your programming into the papers? By building relationships! We'll discuss how to start building relationships in traditional media that will serve your program and your community and how to effectively create a social media image that folks will respond to and interact with not just skim over or (gasp!) ignore.
Level: Intermediate
Session Title: Foundation Grants: A Guide to Finding Funds for Your Nonprofit
Presenter: Alicia Nichols, Professional Fundraising Consultant at Alicia J. Nichols Fundraising Counsel
Description: The world of foundations and grantwriting can be quite intimidating for small to medium size nonprofits. Don't be scared! Foundation Grants: A Guide to Finding Funds for Your Nonprofit is designed for nonprofits that currently do not apply for grants, or are applying for very few. We will cover: 1. What is a grant? 2. Where do I find foundations? 3. How do we apply for grants? 4. What do I need to know and do to apply? 5. The importance of research prior to submitting a grant application. 6. How to find and use foundation resources. 7. How to communicate with foundation staff. 8. How to determine your eligibility for particular grants based on the foundations' published guidelines. 9. How to create a grant application plan. 10. How to develop a foundation-specific application checklist. 11. Do you need to consider using an outside grantwriter - and what should you look for? This will be a "conversation" and not a lecture, with lots of participant interaction. Emphasis will be placed on how to describe the value of volunteers and explain the impact of your volunteer program within a grant application. This "PowerPoint-Free Zone" workshop will provide ample opportunity for questions and dialogue and is designed for novice to intermediate skill/experience levels.
Level: Novice
Session Title: Transforming Leaders into Volunteer Champions
Presenter: Kaira Esgate, Executive Director of Reimagining Service and Pam Zeutenhorst, Program Officer for Volunteer Sector Initiatives at Maine Commission for Community Service
Description: Engaging and valuing the contributions of volunteers goes beyond effective volunteer management practices alone. Buy-in from senior leadership is critical in securing necessary resources and engaging volunteers in meaningful ways. Using recent research, workshop attendees will learn how to make a compelling case about the importance of volunteer engagement to senior leadership.
Level: Advanced
Session Title: Building Healthy Communities
Presenter: Shammara Wright, Senior Manager of After-School Programs at generationOn
Description: This presentation will highlight the tools needed to combat childhood obesity through service-learning in ways that create academic, personal and civic results in youth, facilitators and the community. Attendees will learn why service-learning is a good fit for addressing childhood obesity and how their program can implement curriculum that makes it easy to teach about nutrition and physical fitness, parental and community involvement, building partnerships and addressing real community needs through service.
Level: All/of general interest
Session Title: Diversity in Maine: Culturally Competent Volunteer Programs
Presenter: Marjorie Withers, Director of Community Caring Collaborative
Description: Culture effects all our interactions and our behaviors. It is the context in which individuals create their lives and experiences. Whenever we work with people or interact in relationship we need to be culturally respectful and aware. Marjorie's workshop will focus on becoming culturally aware and informed in our relationship building with others.
Level: All/of general interest
Session Title: Collaboration Building for Volunteer Programs: Preparing for the Good, the Bad and the Unknown
Presenter: Brenda Zollitsch, Ph.D candidate at Muskie School of Public Service at University of Southern Maine and Principal at BMZ Consulting
Description: Have you ever wished your collaboration could accomplish more? For volunteer programs, collaboration can mean greater reach, more service, increased shared resources and much more. However, programs that want to engage in collaboration need to understand and be ready to address the many needs and commitments required to make collaboration work. This workshop will help participants understand the components of true collaborative partnerships, identify key factors for collaborative success and common pitfalls to avoid, provide an interactive opportunity to work on identifying improvements for their own collaboration, and share a set of tools participants can access to help them as they work on building collaborative partnerships.
Level: Intermediate
Session Title: Theory of Change
Presenter: Maryalice Crofton, Executive Director of Maine Commission for Community Service
Description: Theory of Change is a new approach to conceptualizing social change in the community. Developed by the Aspen Institute, it's been adopted by major private and public funders worldwide. Theory of Change can help to target your most valuable resource-human capital provided by your volunteer force-where it will have the most impact in bringing about long-term social change.
A Theory of Change provides a roadmap for achieving long-term change. If done well, that roadmap can be read by staff, partner organizations, funders, and constituents and will show that you know how to chart your course. More importantly, if it is done well, you have the best chance of making the change in the world you set out to make and of demonstrating your successes and your lessons along the way.
Topics to be covered include: defining Theory of Change, how to get started, when to use them and what the process looks like, and benefits and challenges of the model. Also covered will be a comparison of this model to Logic Models.
Level: Expert
Session Title: Strategic Use of Volunteer Program Audits
Presenter: Karen McDonald, Board Member of AL!VE
Description: More than ever, funders and stakeholders are demanding impact. How do you use Volunteer Program Audits to explain the true value and impact of your volunteer program? How can audit and evaluation processes increase commitment to the Volunteer Program? In this session, participants will have the opportunity to share ideas about how to perform program audits to increase board and management commitment to volunteers and an organized volunteer program.
Level: Intermediate
Session 3: 2:45-4:15
Session Title: Turning Your Volunteers into Fundraisers
Presenter: Andrea Berry, Director of Partnerships and Learning at Idealware
Description: Recruiting volunteers, staff, and committed supporters to fundraise on your behalf can help your nonprofit tap into new sources of passion, contacts and of course, funding! Learn the tools and best practices to bring together your all-star team of volunteer fundraisers and get them started raising money for your organization.
Level: all/of general interest
Session Title: Engaging Skilled/Pro-Bono Volunteers
Presenter: Anne Schink, Consultant in Volunteer Management at ABS Consulting
Description: Is professional-level talent slipping through your fingers? Have you felt stymied by how to use their skills? This workshop will help you assess your organization's readiness to engage these volunteers and provide insights about how best to capture their interest and skills to benefit your organization.
Level: Advanced
Session Title: Making Staff and Volunteer Relationships Successful
Presenter: Patrick Adams, Manager of Community Programs at Maine Office of Elder Services
Description: Throw away the traditional concepts for supervising others. How we lead others, directly impacts their success. You'll learn strategies for improving volunteer satisfaction and productivity by reducing obstacles - namely you! You'll leave with implementable ideas for retaining successful volunteers and reducing the time you spend leading others.
Level: Intermediate
Session Title: Managing Maine Volunteers from a Legal and Risk Management Perspective
Presenter: Eileen Buzzello, AmeriCorps*VISTA at Maine Commission for Community Service
Description: Learn about Maine laws that apply to volunteers and charitable organizations, as well explore risk management as it applies to organizations that utilize volunteers. This workshop will be interactive with an opportunity to share both personal and organizational experiences, develop appropriate risk management strategies, and gain an understanding of how state and federal laws impact volunteer management.
Level: Intermediate
Session Title: Making Service-learning Count After-School
Presenter: Laura Rog, Director of Training and Technical Assistance at generationOn
Description: This presentation will highlight the benefits of service-learning and teach the steps and tools needed to create academic, personal and civic results. Attendees will learn why service-learning is a good fit for after-school and how their program can capitalize on community partners and parents to foster positive changes in youth and community.
Level: all/of general interest
Session Title: Is Your Nonprofit a Service Enterprise?
Presenter: Kaira Esgate, Executive Director of Reimagining Service
Description: Do you know a nonprofit that engages volunteers in a way that enables the organization to do more with the same financial resources and deliver significant positive results? Such nonprofits are service enterprises. Workshop attendees will review the key elements of the service enterprise model and leave with resources to transform their own nonprofits.
Level: Advanced
Session Title: Youth Adult Partnerships - Working Together on Community Problems
Presenter: Susan Jennings, Director of 4-H Youth Development in Oxford County at UMaine Cooperative Extension.
Description: Social Capital is the glue and the bridge for making communities thrive. How do youth and adult partners engage in community problem solving in ways that support adolescent brain development and make measurable gains in community capitals? This interactive seminar will build on your own answers to this question.
Level: all/of general interest
Sesson Title: Need-to-Know Basics of Volunteer Management
Presenter: Barbara Wentworth, Director of Community Impact at United Way of York County
Description: Are you new to the field? This workshop is a can't miss for you! In 90 minutes, we'll cover the need-to-know basics of volunteer management and take a look at what resources are available to you as a manager of volunteers in Maine. Jumpstart your professional development and get connected to ways to continue your training in the field.
Level: Novice
Session Title: Career Development and Networking Opportunities for Managers of Volunteers
Presenter: Karen McDonald, Board Member of AL!VE
Description: AL!VE is a national association for volunteer management professionals fostering collaboration and networking, promoting professional development, and providing advocacy for leaders in community engagement. This session will focus on setting career goals, building a professional network, and professional development opportunities. Come prepared to share your ideas and hear about the resources AL!VE offers.
Level: all/of general interest
Session Title: Get Your Interns/Volunteers Hired!
Presenter: Elizabeth Cole, Admissions Coordinator at The Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University
Description: Find out how helping market your volunteers can help recognize their hard work and keep them volunteering with your organization long after their job search is done. Recent years have seen an increase in individuals who use volunteering or interning with your organization to gain valuable skills and build their resumes. They'll turn to you for letters of recommendation and advice during their job search. By being prepared, you'll appeal to this new generation of volunteers, recognize their hard work and reduce the time you spend on individual letters of recommendation. This hands-on session will explore: * The importance of project-based volunteer opportunities * Creating and maintaining a volunteer portfolio to document specific accomplishments * Writing a persuasive letter of recommendation
Level: Intermediate
