Posts Tagged by volunteers
Another Reason to Thank Your Volunteers: Study Finds Service Worth Billions
| August 30, 2011 | Posted by M. P. under Federal Government, Management, Research |
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Have you thanked your volunteers lately? Volunteer appreciation is a year-round practice, not just something to be indulged in at an annual “Thank You” breakfast or luncheon. The value of volunteers is extraordinary according to research released this month by the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) which indicates volunteers offer a huge economic and social benefit to their communities. In 2010, 62.8 million adults in the United States volunteered 8.1 billion hours of service, valued at approximately $173 billion dollars. I think that kind of value deserves an impromptu post on your nonprofit’s Facebook page, don’t you?
Some points of interest from the Volunteering in America data:
- Overall, the national volunteer rate decreased from 26.8 percent in 2009 to 26.3 percent in 2010, yet the overall number of hours served remained steady at 8.1 billion hours.
- More than one-quarter of volunteers (26.5 percent) engaged in some kind of fundraising for an organization. The second most popular form of volunteerism involved food collection or distribution (23.5 percent).
- The rates of teenagers performing volunteer services have remained higher from 2002 to 2010 than they were in 1989.
A Look at Pennsylvania Data
From 2008 to 2010, Pennsylvania had 2.7 million volunteers contributing approximately 352.6 million hours of service valued at 7.5 billion dollars. Over 27 percent of the state’s residents volunteer, giving Pennsylvania a ranking of 28 out of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Of the state’s major cities, Philadelphia had the largest number of volunteers (over 1 million) and total volunteer hours (approximately 130 million) in 2010. However, between 2008 – 2010 Pittsburgh had a higher percentage of intensive volunteers (serving 100 hours or more) with 31.8 percent compared to Philadelphia’s 29.5 percent and data indicate a higher volunteer rate in urban areas in Pittsburgh than in Philadelphia (22.5 percent versus 12.4 percent). Additional data on volunteerism in Pennsylvania (and all other states) is available at the Volunteering in America website.
Leading (and Following) with Optimism
| August 1, 2011 | Posted by M. P. under Management |
Do you practice optimism?
Admittedly, I am not an exceedingly optimistic person and (based on a few family anecdotes about my smaller self) that may be by nature rather than choice. However, I recall a period of my adult life when I was disconcertingly pessimistic in nearly every way. While that perspective may have made me feel secure in my abject readiness for the next shoe to drop or piece of the sky to fall, it certainly did not make the people around me feel confident or comfortable.
Luckily, time, experience and many discussions with people who have more of both those things than I, encouraged me to begin cultivating a kind of purposeful optimism. I accepted the reality that bad things would happen, that mistakes would be made and injustices would occur regardless of our attempts to do everything right. Over the next few years plenty of shoes hit the ground impacting people and places I cared about, but in most cases, with time, everyone survived or even better – thrived.
Dan Rockwell at the Leadership Freak Blog posts about a conversation with a colleague who was challenged by his professor (management consultant extraordinaire) Peter Drucker, for a seeming lack of optimism toward client organizations. A couple of decades later that very colleague, Dr. Justin Menkes, wrote a book about realistic optimism, or the kind of grounded, reflective, authentic optimism a leader should practice.
That post had me thinking all weekend about optimism and authenticity, both in our leaders and as leaders ourselves. In leadership, even in dire circumstances, there has to be some recognition of what is going right. This means being able to find a sliver of what your staff and volunteers are doing best even in the proverbial worst-case scenario. A wake-up-call meeting around the newest red numbers in the face of the latest funding cuts does not need to leave those around the table demeaned or disengaged. Focusing only on the negative, or next ten negatives lurking around the corner, makes staff (or client agencies) tense, fearful, defensive and even angry – none of which are going to help motivate them for the hard work that will be required to face the bad news head on and come out better for it.
What do you think about realistic optimism? What kind of optimism do you (or others) actively model in your organization?
What Have Those “Likes” Done for Your Nonprofit Lately?
| May 20, 2011 | Posted by M. P. under Management, Philanthropy, Technology |
Do you have hundreds of “Likes” on your nonprofit’s Facebook page but still struggle to secure volunteers? Even worse, and a lament I recently heard, more “Likes” than the number of annual campaign donations received to date? Do people “Like” your message enough to click on a tick box or “LIKE” it enough to write a letter to legislators when your funding is threatened by budget cuts? Come to think of it, how many of your “Likes” have you met in person at an agency or community event?
Amy Sample Ward encourages nonprofits to take their social media engagement strategies to the next level in the post, Slacktivism: Turning a “Like” into Lasting Change at her blog Amy Sample’s Ward’s Version of NPTECH. Nonprofits can (and should) move from story sharing and counting “Likes” to motivating their supporters into action by giving them the opportunity to do something more substantial than a mouse click.
I know, you have just exhaled after achieving a solid, fairly active presence on Twitter and Facebook and now the goalposts are being moved – no, not really. Look at a “Like” as a nod of the head or a high-five in favor of your message. These are the people who you want to team up with to make *insert your nonprofit’s goal here* happen. If you aren’t inviting them to partner with you to make this change (or any change), then those “Likes” mean very little.
You can turn these virtual thumbs-ups to your organization’s mission into tangible actions that will benefit your cause, your clients and the larger community. To help you along the way, check out Amy’s post for a set of initial steps and a treasure trove of links to resources to help you plan (and measure – always measure) how to take a “Like” and make it into something much more.
What Makes a Leader a GREAT Leader?
| April 13, 2011 | Posted by M. P. under Management, News, Research |
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In a recent study of traits linked to leadership potential, PsychTests.com (a provider of psychological assessment products and services) identified several skill sets where persons rated as great leaders outperformed peers who were rated as poor leaders. Through analysis and comparison of the assessments, the researchers found that individuals rated as excellent leaders scored higher than their counterparts overall and by the largest margins in the areas of goal setting, motivating others, coaching and problem solving. The high-rated leaders also outperformed the lower-rated group in measurements of extroversion and open-mindedness.
What skills do you consider to be most critical in an “excellent” leader? Should nonprofit organizations use these kind of leadership tests to help identify and develop potential in employees and volunteers?
Charitable Giving – It’s All in the Family
| April 6, 2011 | Posted by M. P. under Philanthropy, Research |
The actions of parents are a strong indicator of the future philanthropic behavior of their children according a national study of 2,000 respondents. The study, entitled Heart of the Donor, conducted by Grey Matter Research & Consulting for the Russ Reid Company, examined how adults engage with nonprofits as well as their recollection of their parents’ level of philanthropy. The study concluded that adults who often saw their parents financially support a church or nonprofit engaged in the same behavior, while a much smaller proportion of the people who reported little or no charitable giving by their parents were donors themselves. The study also looked at the impact of parental behavior on volunteer activity and the role of such behavior in predicting the values and practices of children as they mature.
A summary of this study is available at the Grey Matter Research website.
Social Media Isn’t Just for External Communication
| March 22, 2011 | Posted by M. P. under Management, Technology |
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How do employees communicate your agency’s mission to their professional contacts? Do they forward the details of your next fundraising event to members of their social network? Is the sharing of news and project updates with coworkers at other locations encouraged? Not sure? It may be time to take a hard look at your internal communications plan.
The post Deploying Volunteer Marketing Armies with Internal Social Media by Jay Baer and Amber Naslund, at the Brian Solis blog, explains how a simple but well designed internal social media system can help you tap into the rich resource of employee ideas, inform and shape messaging and – perhaps the most enticing benefit – cut down on internal emails.
How would an internal social media system benefit your nonprofit organization?
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