And It’s Off to the Races We Go…
15
by Margaret Puckett
National Volunteer Week is less than two weeks away, and for those of us who hold our annual volunteer recognition event during that week, the big push is on to get everything done. The late arrival of National Volunteer Week meant we had some extra time to get everything done this year – but where did the time go?
Time– or more appropriately the lack thereof — is the perpetual cycle of the volunteer manager. When I first started working at St. Joseph Hospital, I had a PLAN. I figured the first year I would spend trying to figure out what needed to be done and learning how to get it done. The second year I would concentrate on defining the annual cycles of tasks and events. By the third year I would have gained enough experience to develop action plans for all my functions and events. Year four was for revising and fine tuning systems. By year five every function and event would be clearly defined and organized. Tasks would be easily spread out throughout the year to avoid any need for crisis management. Feeling overwhelmed by it all would be a distant memory.
It’s been almost six years now. The sense of always needing to explain to people that “this is a busy time of year for me,” seems to have settled into a year round pattern — a perpetual state of being that has never gone away. I’ve come to the conclusion that the “busy time of year” for a volunteer manager is really all year. Perpetual commotion, it would appear, is an occupational hazard.
The truth of the matter is, the more you get accomplished, the more you want to accomplish. But high energy jobs like ours can take their toll on us and our programs. Get more done! Do everything faster, better, and for less! Be innovative and try new things! The horses on the merry-go-round start going faster and faster — and we face the very real possibility that the whole kit and caboodle will begin to spin out of control.
So how do we get back in control and, hopefully, regain not only our energy but possibly our sanity as well? First, we need to accept the fact that as much as we would like to, we can’t do everything. I’m not saying abandon all those great plans, I’m just saying that sometimes we have be able to give ourselves permission to let some things go. Just doing these two simple things can make an enormous difference in our effectiveness as volunteer managers and in the effectiveness of our volunteer programs.
So what’s next you ask? Ah… Summer — with those wonderfully lazy days– is fast approaching … along with our annual summer Junior Volunteer Programs. And it’s off to the races we go …again.
Margaret Puckett is Volunteer Services Coordinator at Saint Joseph Hospital in Bangor, Maine.