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By Pete Phair

I have a couple of good friends who spend many weekends every year maintaining their respective sections of the Appalachian Trail. Another just received a coveted Volunteer of the Year Award from an organization she has done some fantastic work for. My friend Bo drives for hours to manage ski races all over the Northeast and my brother, God Bless him, travels all over the world as a volunteer for a group that accredits high schools. Just this past year alone, I volunteered for six different organizations between January and December. Look around you- you are surrounded by volunteers whether you realize it or not. And it seems that just about every one of them has a different reason for volunteering.

Part of my job requires that I try to figure out what compels people to volunteer. Why, for instance, would someone raising three young children, working forty plus hours each week and trying to maintain a semblance of a personal life want to give up a Saturday afternoon to stand behind a table for four hours? Why would someone offer their lunch hour two days a week to work on menial tasks that aren’t theirs to own? Why would a young woman trying to find employment in this current economy spend nearly an entire day each week as a volunteer in our office?

Some answers are straight forward- volunteering looks good on a resume`, it gets one out of the house and in some cases, volunteering helps to keep skill sets fresh. There are some volunteer scenarios that may result in personal perks while still others address intrinsic rewards we all need to feel good about ourselves. I suspect however, that there are a lot of underlying reasons that are not as obvious. Knowing those reasons should be able to help me with my recruiting efforts. But to find relevant answers to these questions, it seems I had to first ask – what are the reasons I volunteer?

Here’s what I came up with…
• Generally, I believe in the cause- passionately. Enough to drive me to action.
• Ultimately, the things I volunteer to do, better the lives of someone some way.
• Because it’s fun. Period.
• Volunteering helps me to feel less self-involved.
• I feel like I’m giving back to something.
• It involves me in a greater community.
• I get to meet new people.
• I want my daughter to see that volunteering is part of who we are as a family.
• It gives me a sense of accomplishment.
• I am part of a team working toward a common goal.
• I get to share my skills when I volunteer but just as important, sometimes I get to just do what I am told and not have to troubleshoot or make any decisions!

Let’s not forget that the reasons why people do not volunteer should be considered in our thinking too. Transportation, childcare and availability all play into the equation but so does philosophical alignment. A lot of our volunteers initially approach me to volunteer for WinterKids because they love to ski. That’s great but we do not necessarily need volunteers who ski. We need folks who want kids to get outside and be active in the winter time. Conversely, people who do not ski, or who are not active in the wintery outdoors, feel they have nothing to offer WinterKids. Au contraire! That’s why perception is another element in whether a program successfully recruits volunteers or not. Although your needs may be obvious to you and your co-workers, it may not always seem that way to potential volunteers
I suppose it all boils down to good matches. What would Abbott have been without Costello? Lewis without Clark? Sonny without Cher? Who can really say? But knowing how your organization’s volunteer needs match up with the audience you draw from is crucial to sustaining a successful program.
Thankfully, 110 people felt aligned enough with WinterKids to provide over 900 hours of volunteer service since last June. Without them, we would not have been able to do the work we do and whatever their reasons are for helping us, I am thankful and proud that they choose WinterKids as a volunteer opportunity. In a word, they are the Milli to our Vanilli…

Pete Phair is Outreach Coordinator at WinterKids and a featured blogger.

By Penny Kern

I’m still cleaning out drawers. After almost twenty years in the volunteer manager business, I don’t think this chore is going to end any time soon.

Anyway, I found a packet from a workshop I did in 1992. It was on leadership and on the very first page there was a quote from John Foster Dulles, Secty of State under Eisenhower. He said, ” The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it’s the same problem you had last year.”

That makes me stop and think! Do you continue to have the same problems, complaints or concerns year after year? Maybe it’s time to take a deeper look at yourself and how you do things.

Have any suggestions for how someone can get off this treadmill?

Let us know!

Penny Kern is a retired manager of volunteers and is a featured blogger.

by Alec Hartman

Digital cameras make photography easy these days, and many, many people take good pictures. So, what makes a photograph really interesting and lifts it above the level of others?

Personally, I don’t think it’s the number of pixels your camera has or how many lenses you use. Someone with a point-and-shoot camera can take a remarkable photo. I believe it’s in the eye of the photographer. You need to see the world from a different perspective. You need to look at the world as if you’re looking through the frame of a camera.

Many everyday slices of life come alive when you focus on them. Sometimes it’s seeing something small that most people miss, sometimes it’s catching the drama of a split-second, sometimes it’s seeing the humor in something right there in front of you.

How do you develop that split-second skill, that ability to see drama or humor? First, take lots and lots of photos. You’re using a digital camera, right? There’s no cost in snapping the shutter. For anyone over 30, this goes against how they’ve always used cameras. When you have to pay for film and then pay for each and every picture you develop, you approach photography differently. Many people say to me, “You must be incredibly patient to get photos like this! Do you wait for hours to catch just the right image?” This is the old way of taking pictures. When I see something that interests me, I take picture after picture of the same scene. It’s not unusual for me to take hundreds of photos of the same thing, one right after the other, changing the angle, the shutter speed, the color balance, and the light exposure. After you’ve taken thousands of photos in this way, you learn which speeds, angles, light levels, etc. work in which way, and give which effects.

Also, this experience sharpens your eye and shows you how things look to the camera. As you develop this skill, you develop the ability to look at the world and see it in snapshots.

Click below to see examples of Alec’s work:

Angel and Spider
Dancing Bear
Asleep

If you are creative, you’ve got an advantage over other people, but even if you don’t consider yourself naturally creative, you can develop your creativity by using your camera often and in many different places.

So keep your camera handy and work it hard! You’ll be surprised what you can capture.

Alec Hartman of Alec Hartman Photography is a guest blogger.

Editor’s Note: Try out some of Alec’s suggestions and submit your photo in the “Volunteers in Action” Photo Contest! We invite you to submit any photo depicting volunteers serving the community. Entries are due by March 17, 2010. Winning entries and honorable mentions will be displayed at the State House during the Governor’s Volunteer Service Awards on April 22, 2010. For contest rules and information on how to enter, click here.

By Patricia Kimball

According to Wikipedia (“the free encyclopedia”), sustainability is the capacity to endure. While most commonly associated with environmental concerns, we hear it often in the nonprofit world, as well.

The last question on most grant applications asks the applicant organization to explain how they will sustain their project once the funding for which they are applying ends. Let’s be honest, for many of us, this section of the grant application often receives less than its share of our attention. It is energizing to talk about how we are going to get a project off the ground, how we are going to bring our great initiative into being…but how we are going to create a project that has the capacity to endure? Ouch, that is tricky.
Ultimately, many people answer that question by referring to future fundraising efforts, including ongoing grant writing. We say, in short, that in order to sustain our project after grant funds end, we are going to find more grant funds. But this is a bit like begging the question, isn’t it?

I challenge you to think about sustainability a bit differently.
In the fall of 2008, I was fortunate to work with a group of people to host a conference entitled “The Mystery of Sustainability”. The genesis of this conference was our realization as non-profit leaders that in order to be truly effective in creating solutions to our most pressing problems, we need to think differently – more broadly – about how to sustain the impact of the projects we are launching versus simply sustaining project themselves. Sustainability, we said, is not only about enduring programs, it is about enduring change.

To begin to explore this question – how do we sustain social impact — I offer a few different strategies for you to think about:
1) Social Marketing. The goal of social marketing – in essence – is to change behavior to impact the social good. If you raise awareness among the broader community regarding the issue your project is intended to address and people collectively change their behavior in support of this issue, the social impact of your program has been sustained, regardless of whether your project continues to exist or not.
2) Advocacy. If you are running an after-school program, one way to continue that service indefinitely is to continue to find more grant funds. A non-renewable resource, yes? But, what if you challenge existing local, state or federal systems and ultimately through your advocacy you get money built into local or state budgets for after-school projects? Then, your service is around indefinitely. Not only have you raised capital to continue a service, you have created advocates for your service by raising awareness of its importance. It seems a lofty goal, but take even a small piece of this and ponder the possibilities….
3) Capacity Development. Education is the ultimate sustainability strategy, isn’t it? If you enhance the capacity of individuals or communities to address their challenges through training, support, technical assistance, leadership development, mobilizing….you create communities with the capacity to endure. True sustainability.

These are three examples and certainly there are many more.
Thinking about sustainability as it relates to your specific program gets easier when we step really far back from the program for which we are seeking funding. Really far back. Once you are so far away from your program you can only see it by squinting, ask yourself a few important questions:
What is the potential social impact of your program? What truly needs to be sustained in order for the social impact of your program to endure? What systems, laws, resource allocation, behaviors, individuals need to change? What is the root of the problem you are trying to solve? When will you know you have solved it? What will the world look like when this problem is gone? Who – ultimately – are the best torch bearers for your program?

See what you come up with for answers. Through the process of asking these questions, I think you will find the answer to developing projects that create social impact with the capacity to endure.
In the end, we owe sustaining the impact of our projects as much enthusiasm as we put forth in creating the projects in the first place.

Patricia Kimball is the founder of Ideactive Solutions.

By Emily Brackett

If your organization relies heavily on volunteers, make sure there is a system for easily maintaining your brand standards. Your brand is an extremely valuable asset, and you want to ensure that your volunteers value, maintain and promote your brand identity correctly.

If you’re lucky enough to attract volunteers, you should feel confident that your mission and organization means something to the volunteers. So, you already have a group of “brand evangelists” ready to work for you. But without the right tools, it is difficult for your volunteers to help you without also creating problems of brand dilution.

One of the risks with using volunteers is that there are generally lots of people, many of whom are undertrained. So you need to make it easy on yourself and your volunteers to adhere to branding standards.

Letter writing
If you have volunteers sending letters or emails, provide templates for them. Templates should be created in Word (or the software of your choice) and should have the identity items already in place. That will ensure the correct organization name, colors, and layout is maintained. Additionally, you may want to provide some writing examples so that a consistent and professional tone of voice is maintained. You need to be consistent so the recipient feels confident they are coming from a trusted source. Especially, no one wants to give money if they think there is something unreliable or maybe even downright forged about an appeal letter. While you should encourage volunteers to add a personal note to recipients they know, make sure there is a uniform look to the paper, the graphics, typography and the text, and then leave an area for personalization.

Identify your volunteers
If you have volunteers out in the field at a special event, make them easy to find. T-shirts are the easiest way to quickly identify volunteers and spread the brand identity at your event. But hats, visors, arm bands or lanyards are other possibilities. Make them easily recognizable to build brand identity and attractive enough for volunteers to wear afterward to further promote the event.

Give volunteers key information
It’s easy for your patrons to get frustrated if your volunteers are not helpful. A great idea is to create a “cheat sheet” that is on the back of a lanyard-hanging name tag. The whole card can be branded with your look and feel, and the “cheat sheet” can have FAQ type of information for the volunteer. For example, it should state the mission of the organization, how someone can get involved, who the key organizers are, the web site address, etc. Although your volunteers may be committed enough to spend some time with you, they may not have the whole picture of how your organization works.

Create great signage
I’m always amazed how little signage there are at events such as charity walks, fun runs and fundraisers. Great signage brands an event and helps the volunteers. Signage can build a robust brand identity for your event and organization. You probably already have a logo and key graphics in place, but seeing how this rolls out to signage adds visual appeal and is helpful. Pointing people directly to registration, starting lines, refreshments, and bathrooms allows you to focus on other details that need your attention.

It’s worthwhile to create systems for your volunteers so that design and branding standards can be maintained. Your brand is partly about identity (logo, colors, graphics) and partly about the reputation and personality your organization maintains. Because volunteers often are jumping into a situation with little or no training, providing easy-to-use templates, communicating key information and using your brand standards to build useful things like signs and shirts will help them put your organization’s best foot forward.

Emily Brackett is president of Visible Logic, Inc., a boutique graphic design firm that works across all media, and a guest blogger.

by Matt Robinson

To help youth learn valuable lessons is a privilege. To be able to help one’s community is also a privilege. To be able to do both, and to know that the return to all will be compounded—that is service-learning.

For those unfamiliar with the term, service-learning is a teaching strategy through which students are challenged to identify, research, and address real community problems and needs, using knowledge and skills learned in the classroom.

What does that look like in real life?

I was recently talking with a fifth grade teacher who transformed a student’s outrage into a service-learning project and in so doing experienced these compounded benefits firsthand.

It started with an opportunity that could have been merely a disappointment or even a disruption. One of her students returned from his classroom job of emptying the paper-recycling box into the receptacle in the custodians’ closet very upset. The student had seen the custodian empty the receptacle into a large trash bag, and had asked, “Hey, where does that go?” The custodian replied, “I throw it into the Dumpster. The guy who used to pick it up stopped. I think he moved.” The student reported this to the rest of the class. This upset them all. They wanted to do something.

The teacher resisted her first impulse to start solving the problem herself. She had recently been inspired to kindle her students’ civic skills, and she saw this as an opportunity. “What can we do to recycle the paper here?” she asked. After a short but lively discussion they had many more questions than answers. The entire class committed to learning more.

The next week the teacher read the class The Lorax as part of a reading lesson. That made them even more committed to solving the problem. Then the town’s Recycling and Solid Waste Director visited them. She told them all about the costs and benefits of the town’s recycling program. “The State Planning Office,” she told them, “has a lot of information on this topic on their website.” She also said she was unaware that the school’s waste paper was no longer being recycled and that she was upset about it, too. “Will you help me to do more recycling here?” The class was even more committed to finding a solution to this problem.

Over the next few weeks the students gathered information about waste, recycling, their school and their community. They collected the school’s waste paper for a week and weighed it. They also collected cafeteria waste, donned rubber aprons and gloves, and separated recyclable material from the food waste and weighed each. Through this investigation, they confirmed their belief that waste paper was a problem, but the data led them to wonder if other waste, like food scraps, was an even bigger problem.

As part of a math lesson the fifth-graders used the figures the Recycling and Solid Waste Director gave them to determine how much the paper, plastic, glass, and metal that could be recycled was worth. Then they calculated the cost to the town to put all that material into a landfill, where it would not be of any use to anyone.

A representative from the University of Maine Cooperative Extension visited the class to help them think about setting up a composting program for the school’s food scraps. The science behind composting was hard but fascinating! Who knew that food scraps could be so useful? Some of the students said that they now understood why their parents were so picky about their compost pile at home. The food waste generated at the school, they decided, could be composted and used in the town’s community garden plots.

“All this stuff we are just throwing away. We have to do more.” The class was excited to do all the work, but their teacher helped them realize that they needed help. Informing other people and helping them to understand was a big job. They looked for ways to reach their community, especially their elected officials.

The annual science fair exhibit assignment took on a new purpose. The class was divided into task force teams to create presentations to inform others in town of the opportunities to make good use of all kinds of waste. The students created colorful graphs depicting the tons of waste coming from the school that could be recycled. They built a model composter to show how the cafeteria’s food scraps could become compost. The students even included a plan to collect and transport the compost.

The members of the town’s select board and school board were invited to the science fair. At the event, the teams outlined why action was necessary and what was needed from the town officials to support the solutions. The adults were astonished and moved to action.

I left out some of the finer points to this story, but essentially, with their teacher’s help, these students used their developing knowledge and skills to improve their community. That is service-learning.

Click below to learn about other service-learning projects:
K-12 service-learning resources and project ideas
The National Service-Learning Clearinghouse
For higher education service-learning examples

Have an idea for a project that you would like to talk about? Email me!

Matt Robinson is an Education Consultant with KIDS Consortium and is a guest blogger.

by Vicki Schmidt

Some of my best friends are Chief Officers in urban, fulltime “round-the-clock” staffed Fire Departments. Another coalition of friends are career firefighters in fully staffed shift-scheduled union Departments. And then there are my firefighter friends and fire instructor colleagues who, like me, rarely see the inside of a fire department crisp with professional uniforms. Our time is spent serving the always on call fire departments that make up over 85% of the fire departments in Maine. Those that are home to the ever on guard; volunteer firefighter.

Quality training for all firefighters, no matter how the Department is defined, is critical. And instructing in a rural volunteer department is especially challenging. Training props and equipment needed to ensure skills based on National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) training standards and certified curriculum objectives are often hard to locate or construct. While some departments have their own in-house instructor; essential skills that ensure continued professional development, full scale Firefighter I & II program management, and the ability to strategically plan for long term department training needs, often escape the ability or means of many volunteer instructors as well as their Departments.

Volunteer departments in every corner of Maine are often served by part time instructors from Maine Fire Training & Education, (MFTE) an educational branch of Southern Maine Community College, (SMCC). MFTE and SMCC also maintain, and upon request and with support from MFTE’s Logistics Division, distribute any of sixteen specialized fire training support trailers to rural regions of Maine. In fact, during the last three months of 2009 and January of this year, MFTE field instructors provided over 15,000 NFPA certified training hours to 593 firefighters in 63 volunteer departments. Many of these classes allowed rural firefighters to obtain their national Firefighter I & II Certification, as well as credit hours towards a Fire Science degree from SMCC and Maine’s Community College System.*

While termed a band of gypsies by some, Maine’s dedicated group of mobile instructors and the equipment they can deliver is vital to many of Maine’s rural and volunteer fire departments. As our States fire training agencies plan for our future fire services training needs, we are wise to look to the lessons learned in States that currently depend on large scale training facilities. Neighboring New Hampshire and a new state-of-the-art facility in Omaha, Nebraska are currently in the process of buying mobile fire training trailers. Maine’s gypsy trailers, and their band of gypsy instructors, might just be the future. And once again, as Maine goes, goes the Nation.

* MFTE FY10 Advisory Delivery Report EMCC Bangor ME

Vicki Schmidt is a State Fire Instructor II, Maine Fire Protection Services Commission, Maine State Federation of Firefighters, Volunteer Firefighters. She is a guest blogger.

by Ann Swain

In all parts of our world, there are many people with the greatest desire to offer their expertise in a volunteer capacity. In preparing for retirement, I often ask the prospective retiree, ‘do you have a plan?’ If they don’t indicate a plan for their retirement, I will always suggest volunteering. However, there is a population in our world who may not have expertise in any particular area, but they truly have heart. They want to give back, but they don’t even know what to give back or how.

Our expectations of the ‘ideal volunteer’ may need to be rewritten. Our expectations may in fact, not be reality. It all depends on where we are in the world. The day a prospective volunteer walks in your door with the desire to ‘give back’, even if they don’t know what that really means, they may end up being one of the best volunteers you have ever had. They may not be able to read beyond a sixth grade level, or at all for that matter. But they have heart and desire to give to their community. It may have taken all their inner strength to walk through your door and offer themselves beyond what is comfortable. Look beyond your expectations and see.

Expectations and reality don’t always match, and that’s not a bad thing.

Ann Swain is a featured blogger and the Director of the University of Maine Cooperative Extension Senior Companion Program.

by Jen Lobley, M.ED, CVA

Having been with UMaine Cooperative Extension for almost 10 years working in the area of 4-H Youth Development, I now find myself with a new challenge. I have recently been named Statewide Extension Educator for Volunteer Development.

Cooperative Extension provides research-based information from the Land-Grant University through a variety of educational programs to local people. Cooperative Extension volunteers play a unique role among volunteer agency programs in that they can extend the reach of Cooperative Extension into every Maine community and help provide a link between the Land Grant University and the people seeking out information. Did you know that 7,987 Extension volunteers devoted more than 151,428 hours to their communities last year? These volunteers are working in a variety of areas including: youth development, horticulture, coastal and freshwater water quality monitoring, environmental work, nutrition education, senior companion programs, sustainable coastal community programs, and parenting education.

I am excited about the challenges this new position will bring as I begin to work to create a volunteer delivery system which will increase our organizational capacity to engage more volunteers. This in turn will help provide long-term program sustainability and expand Extension’s economic, social, and environmental impact on the state of Maine. In the process of getting this work underway, I have set three goals for myself:

1. Make training and resources available for Extension staff members that enable them to gain skills and confidence in building volunteer capacity. Helping staff understand the foundational components of a volunteer system and then helping them create volunteer programs that are reflective of current trends in volunteerism will make up a large part of my work. Trends such as episodic volunteerism, virtual volunteerism and catering to the Boomer generation are all areas to be aware of and consider as we design volunteer opportunities.

2. Utilize research to build effective training opportunities and educational programs in which volunteers will be educated and empowered to assume or accept service or leadership roles. I believe volunteers are the heart of Cooperative Extension. They have played a critical role in the 95 year history of Extension here in Maine and will continue to actively do so in the future. However, the volunteer of today is different than the volunteer of yesterday and this will impact how we work with them.

3. In the near future, Extension will be viewed by other organizations around Maine as a place to find research-based volunteer development trainings, opportunities, and resources that they can access and adjust to fit their individual needs. I envision Extension collaborating with the Maine Commission for Community Service and other groups to help build new partnerships and tap new community resources to expand volunteerism. Just think of the endless opportunities!

So that’s a lot to accomplish, huh? You might be wondering where on earth would she start? The real work will begin internally within Extension. Although I have a general sense of the various programs we offer, I will need to spend time learning about current volunteer engagement within our various program areas and spend time on needs assessment. I am also forming an advisory group. By having an advisory committee to provide input into determining priorities,long-range goals, policy and procedure, I believe a better volunteer system will emerge than if I were to try implementing something alone.

I know demands on our staff in terms of time are tight. As I develop training opportunities I will need to keep this in mind. I will work to develop and provide easily digestible “chunks” of information including monthly Volunteer Management Minute trainings (narrated video clips lasting five minutes or less with a few PowerPoint slides), a series of volunteer management tips that will be emailed out on a regular basis, and create an internal web page for staff members that will host a variety of or resources. (I must note that I am very fortunate to have a VISTA volunteer helping me get these projects started!)

I am proud to work for an organization that supports having a position that is focused completely on volunteer development. Our administration truly understands the value of volunteers. I will make every effort to communicate the importance of volunteers both within and outside the organization- not just to our volunteers, but to paid staff, executive committees, funders, local officials and administration. This truly is an exciting time to be working in the volunteer development profession and I look forward to the work ahead!

Jen Lobley is the Extension Educator for Volunteer Development at the University of Maine Cooperative Extension and is a guest blogger.

By Trudy Hamilton

I’ve been trying to think of a top-notch, really exciting and inspiring topic to blog about this week. I’ve been left with “Blog Blank”, or perhaps “Blog Blahs”.

I’ve also been reading Brokaw’s “The Greatest Generation”, and recently had the opportunity to visit Washington, DC. So, here we go…the book often speaks of the civic life led by veterans after World War II. These outstanding men and women who became civic leaders in their communities, whether it was to counsel other veterans, start Little Leagues in their towns, join the Rotary, serve on school boards, lobby for hospital funding. This generation is often thought of as the “builders” of volunteer infrastructure as we now know it, the doer’s, if you will, developing voluntarism to a higher degree in society. They did so many wonderful things, that it is easy to forget what was there before them.

In Washington, DC, pre-World War II reminders surround you. The American Red Cross dates back to 1881, The Salvation Army in America 1879. Girls Scouts of America, The Audubon Society, Daughters of the American Revolution. The Civil War left an unprecedented number of volunteers, who moved west and volunteered their time, the efforts, in creating an expanded territory, new states, and budding infrastructure.

The difference, from what I can see, is how so much was accomplished by these two very different generations. The post-WW II generation seemed to focus on long-standing efforts at the local level, making their communities more pleasant. Sometimes this involved joining with a national organization, other times beginning their own grassroots programs. The pre-WW II group seemed to be more focused on efforts at a national level, often rigidly organized, often with such frenzied energy needed to sustain a national effort in the days before telecommuting, telephone, and telegraph.
Fast forward to the 1980’s, and the creation of so many volunteer-dependent social service non-profits created to fight the ills of society. Often without even a budget for staff members, these non-profits have made great strides in community healthcare awareness, fighting poverty and hunger, protecting the vulnerable, conserving the wild lands. What I note with this generation is a true passion for what they want to volunteer to be involved with. Not that prior generations didn’t have that passion, but it seems quieter, more reserved.

The latest group, current college student age, are also volunteering in ways that fit their lifestyles, about things they are passionate about, and building a whole new model. Think about the service learning opportunities now encouraged, or the FeelGood movement (one cheese sandwich at a time to end world hunger). This generation has the access to all the traditional methods of volunteering, and is also creating new ways for their peers to get involved when it fits their schedule.

When you look at all the changes over time, the different pieces each group has added, how well what they have done has worked, as a building block for the next group, it is truly stunning. It also makes me wonder what we’ll see from today’s kindergartners, 30 years from now. If history repeats itself, it should be something to marvel over! Any ideas?

Trudy Hamilton is the Manager of Volunteer Resources for SeniorsPlus in Lewiston and a featured blogger.