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by Jodi Freedman

My husband once worked for a company where every new employee had to spend a week in every department (he loved driving the forklift!) in order to truly understand the company. I think that this approach really makes sense. How could I really tell volunteers about the positions I was asking them to fill if I had never done the job? Of course, in order for me to go in after hours, that meant that my kids got to come along for the ride! At the time, my sons were aged 8 and 6 and my daughter was 3.

This was their first introduction into formal volunteering and I am not sure who enjoyed it more: the residents of the nursing home, my children or me! It is so amazing to watch your kids turn into little angels and think about other people! Don’t get me wrong; there was definitely some complaining on the way to and from volunteering! It wasn’t like the movies, where lovely music plays and everyone eagerly jumps at the chance to go play Bingo or serve meals or do art with the “old people”. (My kids’ words, not mine. Please don’t take offense!) As time went by, even my normally shy 8 year old was comfortably cutting up food for people and the younger two were pushing people to activities in their wheelchairs! It was a truly wonderful experience for all of us and an important lesson about the importance of getting people involved at a young age.

An article in Compassionate Kids states that this gives children an opportunity to learn about giving back and the importance of doing so. That was how I felt about the experience and what it did for my children. It showed my children some of my values and how volunteering supports these values. I also think that children who volunteer will be more likely to become adults who volunteer.

Obviously, not all organizations are able to accomodate children. I wouldn’t want to call a helpline and have the volunteer telling me to hang on while she helps her kids out! However, I urge all of you to look for ways to incorporate families into the volunteer opportunities at your organization. It is a truly amazing experience. And for all of you who volunteer yourselves, consider bringing your children along when it is appropriate. They just may shock you!

For other info. on volunteering with children, I enjoyed this article.

Jodi Freedman is a Major Gifts Specialist at the Maine Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association.

Guest Post by Michael Wilson

There’s a movement for civic engagement in higher education. University presidents, deans, and professors are committing to more responsive relationships between their campuses and surrounding communities. These leaders aim to mobilize their colleges and universities to serve outside of their walls and, in serving, to deepen and ground the learning of their students and the quality of their scholarship. Given this climate, you’re likely to find a warm response to interest in partnership. And it’s worth it. Let me tell you briefly what your organization stands to gain from partnering with higher education, and how you might get started if you’re interested. Note—to learn more about the movement for civic engagement in higher education, see Campus Compact or the National Service-Learning Clearinghouse.

When you partner with higher education you gain disproportionately good access to twenty-somethings. Those of you working with youth know that teens look up to folks in their twenties naturally, because of the proximity between their respective energies, interests, and experience. Twenty-somethings are powerful voices, then, in youths’ direction in life, including their college aspirations. However, these folks are famously hard to access. As you may know, 17.7 percent of people in their early twenties volunteer, in contrast to the 30.3 percent who volunteer among 35 to 54 year olds (Bureau of Labor Statistics, Volunteering in the United States, 2007, United States Department of Labor, January 23, 2008). If Maine reflects national statistics, then chances are you’re hard pressed to recruit people my age as volunteers in any places other than college campuses, which are actively creating structures for mobilizing their students to engage meaningfully with the towns and cities around them.

College students will often come to you associated with a course that can offer something unique to your organization, as well. For example, Ed Laine of Bowdoin College led his Geology 267 students in original research on behalf of the Friends of Casco Bay. The students analyzed a 12-year data set using a technical graphing program; their work served as a pilot project for new research by the FOCB. Here at USM, English Professor Lorraine Carrol teaches literacy theory by placing her students as language tutors with organizations around Greater Portland. The students learn theory; the first- and second- generation refugees or immigrants they tutor learn the language from people with fresh insight on how to teach it. This pedagogy, called service-learning, is a cornerstone the movement for civic engagement in higher education.

Additional doors open when your organization collaborates with a college or university’s students and faculty. Faculty members sometimes locate their scholarship in community. David Scobey, an American Historian and professor at Bates College, writes on the social history of Lewiston’s mills—how did cabaret singer Maurice Chevalier come to croon for a city’s mill worker’s, after all? His research doesn’t hover lonely in the ivory tower, but contributes to the exhibits at the local community history museum, Museum L-A, instead. Grants are also available from select institutions in the state. Official affiliation is always an option, too, with the potential to lend credibility to your work.

To initiate partnership with higher education, your first step is to find a college or university you might like to work with. For a complete list of institutions in Maine (and their websites), click here, and for a map, click here. Narrow down the list geographically, first, and then by relevance: tease out an institution’s scope according to its mission statement and list of programs offered (available online).

Next, imagine where collaboration might take you. Consider your organization’s mission and how it resonates with each institution you have in mind. Identify concrete ways in which your organization might benefit from partnership, from student volunteers to research assistance, as above. Take the institution’s perspective, too: consider how students might learn and grow serving at your organization, whether affiliated with a course or not. Also consider what it might mean for the institution to be affiliated with your organization. And also, get specific. Consider what level of commitment you need from students and what support you expect them to receive from their college or university; and consider what support you will offer students in turn. Our office uses a worksheet to tease out these questions, attached. Finally, before you call, be sure to ask around at your organization for old relationships with the college or university. It’s useful to know about previous contacts and potential political pitfalls.

Unless you have a very good previous contact, I recommend you begin your inquiry with the campus’s hub for civic engagement. Doing so, you shouldn’t have to worry about political pitfalls: such hubs are typically responsible for matching campus programs with community partners, so that you don’t have to learn the whole institution. For a directory of civic engagement contacts, call Maine Campus Compact at (207) 786-8217. Note that the scope of these hubs varies widely between institutions. Some administrations dedicate comprehensive centers to civic engagement; others staff an office; and others assign the responsibility to an interested faculty or staff member.

Michael Wilson is an AmeriCorps VISTA member at the University of Southern Maine’s Office of Community Service and Civic Engagement.

by Chris Wolff

Working with many rural communities in Maine, I am always in awe of the level of civic engagement within these communities. Many small towns are governed by volunteers who serve as selectmen and school board members. Some small towns are lucky to have a local library and historical society. If these do exist, they are only open and organized because of volunteers dedicated to having these services available or preserving artifacts for future generations.

Matinicus Island, the Historical Society places all of their artifacts in the home of a local volunteer, since a designated building or room does not exist. If this person was not willing to store these objects, they may become damaged and unavailable for future generations. On Swan’s Island, the Librarian position is a very part-time, paid position. The Library then relies on community volunteers to open the library and provide programming. If a community has a recreation center or after school programming for youth, the success of these programs almost always relies on a volunteer effort.

Many of the volunteers in these small, rural communities don numerous volunteer hats. When your community consists of less than 100 individuals, there is an expectation to participate in the sustainability of the community, whether it’s volunteering with the school, participating in a subcommittee of the town’s comprehensive plan, helping out with the local solid waste efforts, or alternative energy research. Without this volunteer effort, these communities would not function. But, on the flip side of it, these same volunteers experience a high level of burnout. They attend meetings almost every night of the week. They have families and full-time jobs. For some of these volunteers, they have a strong desire to volunteer and help out with community efforts, but may be lacking the necessary skills to further the mission of the organization or planning effort.

For instance, the small Community Center on Long Island has requested an AmeriCorps member to help with sustainability initiatives. They would like to have help with researching grants, and finding support for programming and infrastructure/building rehabilitation. The current staff and volunteers either do not have the time or the skills to move their projects forward. On North Haven, the North Haven Historical Society has recently completed the construction of a new building, with a state-of-the-art climate-controlled archival storage room. The Historical Society is run by community volunteers, and they would like to have an AmeriCorps member help out with digital archiving and creating community programs. The volunteers do not have the technical skills and time to move their mission forward.

Though AmeriCorps members fill a great niche in providing much-needed support for community initiatives on a 1-2 year full-time basis, some communities have specific needs requiring expert skills. The Island Institute is getting more and more requests from older citizens who will be retiring to Maine and who want to volunteer their time with the Island Institute and the communities we serve. These individuals have been CEOs and consultants with corporations. They have been leaders of large non-profits. They’ve been teachers and superintendents. They possess a breadth of experience and expertise and could be a great resource for the small communities that rely on volunteers to get things done. Their volunteer effort could help enliven volunteerism in these small communities.

In a preliminary survey conducted in January, Casco Bay islanders were asked to report on their volunteer needs. Speaking with a number of representatives in the Casco Bay island communities, a number of potential volunteer needs were identified:

• Grant Writing Advice & Support
• Business Plan Development
• Brush Removal & Beach Cleaning-Ups (Arms & Legs)
• Legal advice regarding affordable housing: buy-back options, land leases, land trust models, eligibility language, etc.
• GIS mapping and data management
• Town ordinance language and planning and development
• Small business development- marketing, website development, etc.

These volunteer-led organizations need help coordinating activities, furthering their mission, and completing many projects. Volunteers can help catalyze projects and create energy and excitement for the work. By creating public interest around projects, outside volunteers can provide opportunities for further local volunteer participation.

It will take a little work to help train the island volunteers in volunteer management. And, in turn, it will also take some work to bring potential volunteers up to speed on island culture and the projects. But, even if the Island Institute is successful in having 2% of its membership volunteer with our communities, that is an additional 40-50 people who will be able to provide much-needed assistance to a group of dedicated volunteers and hopefully prevent volunteer burnout.

Chris Wolff is Community Development Director at the Island Institute.

Guest Post by Carla Ganiel

The baby boomer demographic is the hot topic in volunteer management these days, but we are missing an opportunity of equal proportions if we fail to consider the impact of millennials, those young adults born after 1980, in the volunteer sector.

The business magazine Fast Company offers an image that puts multi-generational demographics into perspective: picture an hourglass. The boomers are at the top, and the millennials are at the bottom. The skinny middle? That’s Generation X, my often overlooked generation, which has much in common with the millennials but has lacked the demographic clout of our younger counterparts.

Millennials may be the most civically engaged generation to come along since World War II, according to Ryan Healy whose Employee Evolution blog focuses on millennials in the workplace. Says Ryan, “Millennials are next in line to follow in the footsteps of the GI or ‘The Greatest’ generation, and become the next great civic-minded group that will quietly demand and create change for the better.” This is a group that has much to contribute to our community-based organizations.

According to career blogger Penelope Trunk, Fortune 500 companies and consulting firms like Deloitte have been researching millennials in order to figure out how to integrate them into the workplace, but volunteer managers can learn from this research as well. In fact, Deloitte’s recommendations for managing millennials are strikingly similar to Penny Kern’s advice on managing retired volunteers. For example, Deloitte suggests that managers “provide a rationale for the work you’ve asked [millennial employees] to do and the value it adds.”

Deloitte offers retention advice as well: “Provide engaging experiences that develop transferable skills. By making [millennial employees] employable, we actually increase the odds that they will stay.” Sound familiar?

It turns out that millennials want the same things boomer retirees want: personal growth, work-life balance, and the chance to make a difference. In the workplace, millennials differ from their boomer predecessors in that they prefer to avoid “paying their dues” at entry level. Instead, they seek responsibility, access to top management, and regular feedback on performance. If their job doesn’t provide these things, they will probably quit; the average length of time a millennial stays in one position is 18 months. However, millennials are also an entrepreneurial bunch, just as likely to start their own businesses on the side, or to seek out volunteer positions that allow them to develop skills that they can transfer back to the workplace in order to advance more quickly through the ranks.

In addition to their energy, civic-mindedness, and eagerness to contribute, millennials offer organizations a wealth of knowledge and experience relative to technology. Millennials are also the quintessential team players—they have been working in teams since elementary school—and they are learning how to be effective community organizers through online social media. An added bonus, the flexible schedules that millennials demand in order to maintain work-life balance ensure that they have enough free time to volunteer.

Yes, the boomers are coming, but so are the millennials. In our haste to recruit the recently retired, let’s not forget the importance of attracting the recently employed to our volunteer ranks.

Carla Ganiel is a nonprofit management consultant from Tremont, Maine.

by Penny Kern

My life has changed over the last few months so I was very glad when I was asked to be a blogger. I worked for 17 years as a volunteer and program manager for the Girl Scouts and I retired Oct. 1, 2007. I went from being very involved in every community in Aroostook County and many across the state to having to check my calendar to remember what day it was. It is so different on this side of things - trying to be a volunteer and not having much success at it. I thought it might be helpful to you if I shared some of my trials and tribulations.

First, there is a plan for life after 60+. Drifting through the rest of life without any direction or goal just isn’t me. Because of that, the organization and the positions I’d be interested in have to match my plan. To recruit me, a volunteer coordinator would need to know the mission and vision of their organization, why the position I’m asking for is important to that mission and how, using my skills and experience, I can make a difference.

Oh, I just found the best publication. It’s called, “Recasting Retirement. New perspectives on Aging and Civic Engagement.” It highlights the findings from research co-sponsored by Civic Ventures and Temple University Center for Intergenerational Learning with funding provided through a generous grant from the Helen Andrus Benedict Foundations. It has validated all my thoughts on retiring and trying to become involved in the community as a volunteer.

“I love the time I have to myself, but I still have lots of ideas and there’s no one to tell.”

Volunteers want to be part of the “bigger picture”, especially retired mature adults who are used to being included in the decision making process. We want to be part of the “team.” A quote from the report suggests this - “I’d like to apply the skills and knowledge I’ve acquired over a lifetime and use them to help someone.”

Second, as you can probably tell from the information above, I do not want to answer phones, open mail and take on the tasks staff people think are important but not important enough to hire someone or to include in someone’s job description. I don’t want to take a paying position away from someone who needs work - I want something for ME that will help the community, meet a need, and make me feel like my time and efforts are worth it.

I have a couple more ideas for recruiting someone like me:

I’m on a fixed income so driving to meetings, training and other opportunities is difficult. Computer and conference calls work best. Also, the reason I retired was to spend more time with my growing grandchildren so I don’t want to waste time driving too far away from home.

I like organizing and establishing programs, systems, and opportunities for others. I’m terrible at maintaining these things but I love being part of the “beginning.” Oh, yes, and I do not like being told what to do so I’m a much better team player who’s in on the ground floor. That’s an important trait to find out about people of any age. There are those of us who like to build and those who like to make sure it stays built. If you know which volunteers do the best job at just that one aspect of volunteering for your organization - you have a huge advantage.

And, I’ll repeat again - the mission. I want to work to accomplish (or help accomplish) the mission of the organization. I don’t want public recognition (although, for some that’s important) but I want to feel that what I do helps meet the need of the community that the mission was written to do. For instance, I have been a Red Cross volunteer since 1976. I have taught First Aid and CPR - that has been my one and only responsibility and have loved it - still do. One of my goals for my next life is to help my community become better prepared for disasters so I recently joined the Red Cross disaster team. I have no desire to be a disaster volunteer - my plan is pulling me in the direction of providing training to those who want to become disaster volunteers. My satisfaction for doing this - when there is a disaster, I know that my efforts helped those disaster volunteers be the best that they could be for those in need.

I’d be interested in your thoughts on how to recruit and retain people over 60. We are a growing population and we are different, how can you get us involved in your organization?

Penny Kern is a recently retired volunteer manager from Aroostook County.

Guest Post by Noble Smith

The answer is currently no for both questions!

Why? You will, hopefully, understand and agree in a moment.

There are over 78 million baby boomers about to descend on non-profits. As reported in the September 10th issue of TIME, this new crop of retirees are younger, healthier, better educated, more demanding, living longer and for us non-profit leaders and volunteer managers, are seeking more active roles with us. They are demanding different opportunities from the generations that proceeded them and they will run circles around us before we can catch their tails, unless…

On top of this “boomer buster”, in a survey undertaken by AARP in June 2007, it is estimated that over 50% of our country’s citizens will want to volunteer when they retire. Are we ready for them and the “boomers”? No, unless….

Many of these new and forthcoming retirees are steeped in business-like structures and methodologies for solving challenging problems or just running an operation. They are strategic plan oriented; they are gurus at benchmark assessments and they expect those individuals and organizations with which they associate to be constantly three steps ahead of even their fast pace. A little exaggerated, but not by much!

This emerging cadre of workers wants to insure from the outset that their involvement will have real value and have a significant impact on the core values, vision and mission of the non-profit.

No longer will the volunteers just lick stamps, wash dishes or pick up trash. That doesn’t mean that these tasks are not important for the well being of the non-profit and that some volunteers will undertake these tasks. But, we, the leaders of non-profit management, must launch a more exacting matching skills initiative. We are not going to assign the retired CEO of the nation’s largest gas and chemical company to wash test tubes, unless we want him to be one of the 32.9% of Maine’s volunteer task force that “retire” after the first year of volunteerism.

This coming influx should be a positive force for non-profits since it will force all of us to initiate the necessary retooling of our operations. It compels us to insure that our non-profits have renewed strategic planning exercises. And, it encourages our organizations to view ourselves as a business, a successful, profit-driven group of fully committed employees.

This seeming indictment of our short comings (for some, but not all) needs to be taken without shame or embarrassment. We are about to receive a largess that will set the tone of our organizations and volunteerism for generations to come. However, if we set new standards of operation, higher levels of planning, increased degrees of business awareness and mandatory commitments of benchmark assessments together with a hard-nosed process of skill matching initiatives, we will reduce that level of attrition substantially and the value-additives for both the volunteer and the institution will be seeds for future germination.

It does not matter whether the non-profit is small or large, rural or urban, on the coast or in the backwoods. All of us need to step back several paces and with our Board of Directors answer the questions – are we really ready, what do we need to undertake to sharpen our operations, have we reexamined our vision, mission and core vales recently, and, very specifically, are our volunteer procedures, operations, communications and task assignments sound, timely and attuned to today’s and tomorrow’s volunteer?

I am a strong advocate of a continuing planning process, particularly for the construction (and renewal) of strategic planning. It is this process that involves Board, staff and volunteers who, collectively, sweep away the cobwebs, sharpen the pencils, clear the fund raising decks and strengthen the glue that holds the organization firmly together.

Unless we undertake this business-like exercise that keeps us all trim and matching in cadence…..

Unless we listen intently to the vibes and orchestrations of and from our potential new volunteers……….

Unless we erase the adage that we non-profits are just charities…………..

Unless the “boomers”, in the end, congratulate us on a job well done, we cannot answer yes to the two questions “are we ready” and “will they accept us.”

Of courses, I am probably just preaching to the non-profit choirs for all of you have probably eliminated the word “unless” from your lexicon and can already answer, yes. Maybe it is only some of those neo-Pleistocene non-profits that are tainting our records. I don’t think so!

Noble Smith is President of Noble Smith Associates in Harpswell.