>> Welcome everybody. Today we are going to be in a Tele-Workshop on Volunteer Retention Programs. We have Boris Frank here today. Boris Frank has his own consulting business called Boris Frank Associates. He’s worked with groups all over the Mid-West and a lot of groups across the country on Volunteer Retention, Capital Campaign, Strategic Planning. He’s taught a lot of “not-for-profit” organizational workshops. All in all, he’s a fantastic teacher and we are honored to have him here. He just talked about [INDISTINCT] and you did receive a number of documents with registration process, has you’ve gone through your policies, volunteer handbooks and successful “not-for-profit” management. And if you need those, after the call, please let us know if you, if some of you do not have them. Thank you for joining us, Mr. Frank.

>> Thank you very much and good morning or good afternoon, as the case may be. And it’s the most unusual day in Duluth because it’s warm and sunny, so I don’t know what’s wrong but it’s really nice up here. We have a number of things to cover and I’ll give you a few chances as we go through for some questions as we move through this. 

But, the challenges are enormous these days in terms of recruiting and retaining volunteers and I know that the number of organizations out there are proliferating. In Dane County in Madison, Wisconsin where I come from, we have over 3,500 registered, philanthropic, “not-for-profit” organizations and those are the ones that are just registered. That means that each one of them has a Board of Directors. They’ve got volunteers that they were recruiting. Just on the Board of the Directors besides the point that if you figure about the average of 10 Board members per each, its 35,000 individuals that have participated on Boards alone. And then, you multiply that, of course, by the number of volunteers today, it’s just huge and, the organizations continue to proliferate. We’re getting more and more of them from around the country. It’s quite a challenge in that respect. 

Also, the profile of volunteers has change significantly in recent years. We have two-income families now. It used to be that the guy would go off to work years ago and then, many of the women would be the volunteers. Well, that isn’t the case anymore. It’s an equal situation in many, many families and, if there are people staying at home it’s for child care, stay-at-home parents, that type of thing so it’s a different situation. Probably, the biggest single concern at this time, the time constraints on the part of people. 

I want to talk a bit about that because I think there are some approaches and techniques that we can implement that may help us with that. It’s just that there’s a huge competition in terms of the draw on time. If you take a look at your handout, the one that says Recruiting and Retaining Volunteers March 19, the numbers there, I told the guy there are some figures from several studies that have been done on a fairly regular basis over time, so these are the most current that I have. This was done by a Lutheran organization. Yes, a Lutheran organization. I think they’re probably fairly accurate. Over half of all people do volunteer in some way in this country. A pretty good country in that respect. You can see the education, does quite well succeed 80% of college grads, it goes down from there. The more education, the more tendency there is to volunteer. Religious affiliations are very important. Generally speaking, people who have some type of formal religious connection or affiliation are very good volunteers. Income is also a factor. Seventy-five thousand and up, they would have a tendency in some cases, to have more time on their hands. They may not be out there in the workforce in the same way as people with lower incomes. Forty seven percent do it to gain new experience and to have new experiences, 39%, to meet people, 50% because they think it’s more beneficial than donating money that’s an interesting point. 

In this economy right now, I think it’s very, very important to take that into account because there are going to be people who are going to be squeezed. I’m starting to hear it all over the place. We were talking yesterday, at an Association of Fundraising Professionals meeting in Madison, having our monthly meeting, and I’m hearing from just about everybody there, and Madison is relatively immune to some of the peaks and valleys of fundraising, but they are hearing more and more, that people are saying, “Let’s wait and see. I don’t know if I can contribute financially the way I did in the past.”  We’re going to see more time volunteers and I think we’re also going to see more in-kind contributions as opposed to cash contributions. So, those are just some of the numbers. 

Now, in terms of volunteer practices, several points that I want to deal with on that page. Everything that we do in an organization should be emanating from the Mission Statement, the Vision of the organization and the Strategic Plan of the organization. Inevitably, when I’m doing class, I’ll ask a class, how many of you have a formal, written, strategic plan in place that is current and that is driving the goals and objectives of your organization?  And sad to say, I usually see about one quarter of the people in the room raising their hand. If you were to have any kind of a strong program including a strong volunteer program, having a solid, strategic plan that’s up-to-date and that is really driving the organization. All the goals are very important. If somebody signs on as a volunteer, they want to know what’s the mission, where are we headed, where are we going, what role am I going to be playing in this in terms of helping to achieve the overall goals and objectives of the organization?  So, if you haven’t got that, it’s very important. 

Now, the last time when I did a workshop, I offered to send some things that were not necessarily handed out prior to that workshop, do it again. If you would like to see a sample of an accelerated planning model, it doesn’t have to go on ad nauseum. If you would like to see a sample of a plan that comes out of a process like that, a couple of pages that would be useful to you. You have my email address on the front of the handout. Email me; I should help you, I’d be happy to do that. And, it goes beyond that too, if you have any questions, any issues you want to discuss in the future, you’ve got my phone number, email address there. Get in touch with me. I’d be happy to get in touch back. 

Volunteers are really stacked with several important basic concepts. They, in some cases, fulfill the role of staff. Example, we started a Capital K9 Unit in Madison, a K9 unit to support the Madison Police Department. We have no employees of any kind. We have a Board of Directors. They, in effect, are the employees of the organization and they do everything. It keeps our overhead very low. We’re very efficient. Our cost ratio of fundraising to the amount that we spend on programs is very, very favorable. It puts us in a great position. We have no staff in the traditional sense. We have a president who serves as a CEO. We have a secretary who serves as an Administrative Assistant for the organization. We have a treasurer who does all the bookkeeping. So, it really is a staff, unpaid, but very, very efficient. A suggestion to you, track the hours of all your volunteers. Keep track of those. Those of you who are raising money, and I know many of you are representing organizations, you are not necessarily Byways today, you’re also serving a lot of other Boards and involved in your communities as well. Track those hours and put a financial dollar value on those hours if you had to go out and purchase those surfaces, what would it cost?  That can then be used for match. It’s an in-kind match that can be very important. I have years of experience with Wisconsin Public Radio, I was the administrator there for 18 years, and we kept track of those. So, when we submitted our proposal for funds to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, National Public TV, we used that figure as a match and it made a huge difference in terms of not only the cash we received but also in terms of the image that we projected in terms of our efficiency as an organization. Provide adequate time, financial resources, training and screening appropriately. It’s becoming more and more important. We have become a very litigious society. 

A lot of issues out there, where we have to protect confidentiality, we had a fair of potential issues regarding relationships among people. I was on the Board of Big Brothers Big Sisters there for a number of years. It was extremely important for us to do a screening. Not only of people in terms of any criminal background and check, but the Department of Motor Vehicles. If you’re going to be using volunteers to do anything with their own vehicle in your behalf, you want to be sure you have gone through motor vehicles and check their driving records and any other screening that you need to do. It’s become much easier these days to screen because you can go through, you can Google people nowadays, and do things that we never use to be able to do before. But, if you have to go through a formal screening for some reason, because individuals are going to be in sensitive positions, you may need to budget for that because there could be some costs involve. 

Treating volunteers with the respect, well, that’s just kind of basic but I’ve seen cases where volunteers are pooh-poohed. They’re sort of shoved off, “Oh, boy, here comes some volunteers and that’s just more trouble.” rather than involving them in a systemic way and really respecting their role in an organization. They should receive as much respect as anybody else who’s working with you. Many will say that the most effective volunteer programs involve professional supervision and not necessarily supervision by other volunteers. Again, I know that’s not always possible. Larger organizations, say the Red Cross and United Way, those types of organizations, traditionally, will have a professional supervision component where there is a director of volunteers or supervisor of volunteers who is paid to do that. But, that can be done and in fact is in your budget. Generally speaking, we have found that it is probably more effective than having other volunteers supervise volunteers at the highest level. In subordinate positions, of course, it happens all the time where there are volunteer leaders that run teams or supervise other volunteers. But, if you can afford it, try to do it. 

Regularly evaluate or review, I think sometimes volunteers get very frustrated. They don’t have feedback. They don’t hear from the organization, “How am I doing?”  They may also have opinions, ideas, suggestions, that can make the organization more efficient. It should be a formal review process. I’ll go through it a little bit little later in the volunteer policies in the handbook when we take a look at that. But, think about the possibility of advancement for volunteers. Are they stuck?  Are they dead-ended in a position of some kind?  Is there some form of re-assignment if they start burning out in a particular position?  Or, if they’re unhappy with it, or if they run into any kind of conflicts with other individuals, other people, they’re personality issues that arise. Think about the ways in which you can provide people both vertical and lateral involvement. And, the lateral differentiation or re-assignment of some kind, so if they have the opportunity to stay fresh and not become embroiled in one job, you know, the way it goes. “So and so, would you help run this event this year?”  “Oh, yeah” you know, enthusiasm is great to start that new event. And year two, “Would you take it on again?  Because, you know, you did a really good job last year. Boy, that was great. It’s dynamite then.”  And, “Okay. Yeah, I’ll take it a second year.”  Year three, “Would you do it again?”  “Oh, boy, you know, maybe I get a little tired.”  “Oh, come on, please. It really...”  And then by year four, what happens?  “You know you’re the only one who knows how to run these things, so why don’t you continue to doing?”  You become sort of entrenched in one position. Think about the possibility of differentiation. 

Big Brother Big Sisters, we have a bowl-a-thon, a bowl for kids’ sake every year. It rates about $120 to $130,000. It’s a pretty successful event. It runs for a week in the Madison Area for 7 days. All the bowling centers there are involved. We had a policy, as far as I know they’re still doing it, that if you were in a volunteer position, you were there no longer than 3 years. One year or two, you sort of become acclimated. Year two, you become involved in leadership position. Year three, very possibly being the Chair of that particular component or the major leader. Then you have to change jobs. You have to take a different job and move on to something else. I know there are some people who like to stay with the same thing on and on. But, in effect, we made it a policy that you were expected to take on something new. It kind of kept everybody fresh. Personnel Policies and Procedures.

Take a look at those two [INDISTINCT] that, in with the volunteer policies and volunteer handbooks. These were developed where the grant from the Northwood Foundation up hear in Duluth. They’re available to anybody around the country who wants to use them at no cost. That was the, those were the conditions of the grant that developed these. So, you are welcome to take these policies and procedures, adapt them in any way that you see fit. Now, I can sort it in here, America’s Byways, but these are not official [INDISTINCT] of America’s Byways at this point, but they could serve in that role. If the Board ever decided that they wanted to adapt it, you can adapt them in any way you see fit locally. Take a look at Policies document. In there, you will see that this is really an internal document. It leads the way, guides the way in which we utilize volunteers within an organization. It talks about Recruitment on page 4 and some of the issues there, Page 5, Internal Relationships, General Management Policies and Procedures, the kind of reference that you might want to keep, Training Orientation on 6, Page 7 talks about Evaluation, Grievances, Termination, that’s always one of the tough ones. Firing a volunteer is a very, very tough situation and one of toughest is firing a Board member. There is a document that’s called, “How to Fire a Board Member and Live to Tell About It.”  I have a copy of that if you’re interested and I’ll be happy to send it. It’s very interesting. 

We had to fire a member of the Board of Directors of the friends of WHA-TV in Madison some years ago. It was traumatic, but we could only do it because we have some certain policies and procedures in place and it was for the best of the organization. Some of the appendices in here might be of interest to you. Page 8, there’s a request form when you’re requesting a volunteer, what’s involved. I think a job description is very, very important for all volunteers when they come on board. What’s the title, what’s the job description?  This is just the cover page for that. Page 10 is a short form of an application. The Damiano Center here in Duluth, the organization that we prepared these policies and procedures for initially with the grant, they have two different levels of volunteers. They have a meal program, and they get people to volunteer for that who don’t have to put down a lot of information about themselves. They don’t have to go through any kind of background check. They’re there for the day and it really doesn’t call for an extended, very detailed application. Page 11 is the longer form. If you do need to go into a background check, for instance, or you have additional information that you need that’s useful. Page 13, it deals also with consent for volunteers under 18 years of age. 

I’m a great believer in getting youth involved. We see more and more of that at schools, where schools are requiring a certain amount of volunteer time for graduation. We have a high school in Madison, a Catholic School that requires 300 hours of volunteer time over the four-year high school experience as a requirement to, of graduation. So, having a release form on that is important. The middle piece there, the confidentiality agreement, is becoming much more important. A confidentiality policy, if you don’t have one, I’d be happy to send one to you. I have an example of that, Publicity, consent, utilizing them in some way that is also on there. Page 14, is what I mentioned before, some kind of feedback or evaluation. My suggestion is that, this be done on a regular basis, at least, annual with regular volunteers but also on termination, or if it’s a periodic type of volunteer activity. Get their feedback and hear from them. What did they like?  What did they not like about any comments, suggestions that they can make. And in page 16, is the staff evaluation of their supervisor of the volunteer. So you can do a comparison and then any recommendations, actions that could be taken. You can see, you can go all the way from re-assignment, termination, what kind of recognition is involved and so on. There are some recognition ideas on page 18 as well. I’ll get to those a little bit later. And then there is an intake checklist. I want to talk about recognition a little later independently of this discussion. Then finally, going back to the other handout, to the original handout, page 2, providing for any special needs. 

We have a very interesting situation in the last couple of days with a blind Afro-American becoming the governor of the state of New York. And when I heard that 71% of all blind people are not employed, I mean, it’s just incredible. I’ve worked with several organizations that are serving the blind and there’s just no need for them, no excuse for that in our society, given the ways in which we can have people with special needs volunteering. It can be some of the strongest. I’ll stop there for a moment. Any questions on any of that before we go ahead?  

Pushing ahead, page 3, recruiting a volunteer is 50% asking. Look for a reason the more I [INDISTINCT] is ask. Take a single reason people don’t volunteer. They weren’t asked. And you can add a word to that, they were not asked appropriately by the right persons, for the right reasons, whatever they might be. That same situation applies to fundraising. Most people don’t give simply because they were not asked or not asked appropriately. But those who were asked, 63%, according to that study I mentioned earlier, do volunteer. They just need to be given the opportunity. Now, what are some of the sources?  

Probably, your strongest source will be people who’ve had a good experience within the organization already. Any kind of internal reference; word of mouth, people who’ve already volunteered with you or are working with any partner organizations that you were involved with. Were they, will refer it to you and will suggest to friends, relatives, that it might be a solid experience that probably is one of the strongest ways to get volunteers. Retirees, we’re in aging society. We have a very interesting situation related to seniors in society right now. I worked on a number of senior centers and senior organizations. We’re seeing three levels of seniors. We’re seeing the younger seniors, in a 55 to 70, 75 range. Many of them still employed. Many of them are sort of volunteers. If they have retired to 75 to 85, 90 range, many of them are using the facilities of senior centers and senior services. Some of them volunteers and then you have the older “olders.”  You got the range in the 85, 90 and up, and all of those are growing. The best volunteers are coming from the younger “olders” we’re finding. And, these are--I was at a senior center yesterday, it was Monday and they were having a St. Patrick’s Day lunch and all of the older and sort of upper range of the middle, older seniors were being served by the younger seniors. And I talked to several, I was talking to several. I said, “Do you regularly volunteer?”  “Oh, yeah, I volunteer.”   “Do you use the services of the senior center?”  “Well, no, no. No, I don’t know. I don’t know, you don’t, I don’t because, frankly, I don’t really like to associate with all those old people.”   

So, it’s kind of, it’s been an interesting dynamic that you’re getting here. I’m in that younger older group now and I’m moving into the middle older group. So, it’s kind of interesting to just look in the mirror and see where I stand. I’m 76 now. I’ve got seven great grandchildren. One of them is 17 now. It’s scary. It’s very scary to see all of that but I’m not stopping anything I’m doing. I’m going to go on as long as I can and I’m having so much fun doing what I’m doing. And there are a lot of folks like me out there who are really super-volunteers. I’d probably volunteered currently for about eight or nine different organizations where I do, I deliver Meals on Wheels. I serve on four Boards of Directors myself. There are a lot of us around who are still very active. So, look at that group. The other group, I’m very concerned about in involving our youth, I don’t think we do a very good job sometimes of recruiting youth to be volunteers. There’s some really, really bright high school kids out there. Boy, some of the energy that they bring to an organization that I think they just tremendously. I am sort of an awe per say. I’d like to see more high school students recruited to Boards of Director as volunteers. My suggestion is, consider the possibility of recruiting a junior and a senior in a high school. What I’d like to do is go to the principal of the school and find out, “Who are your people, who are your students who really could make the contribution that has great potential?”  Recruit a junior and a senior. That way there are two and it’s not a token situation because sometimes, one alone can feel sort of isolated. Senior moves on then you recruit another junior and the junior stays on as the senior so you always have some rotation and you have some sustainability of that position. 

But, I really think that we have a responsibility in non-profit organizations to train the next generation of leaders in our community and I’m not we do it at the Board level. I served on a YMCA Board in Madison. The average age of members there were deceased, they were old folks and I don’t know, if we had anybody under the age of 45 or 50 on that Board and that’s ridiculous. The first word in the name, Young, and we didn’t have young people involved so we try to change that. Families, a lot of potential with that one. For about 15 years now I’ve been involved with United Cerebral Palsy in Madison. I served on the Board there, and while I was on the Board, I was recruited to run a drink booth, a soft drink booth, a Taste of Madison, which is an annual event. It drew about a hundred thousand people down on the square in Madison and raised quite a bit of money for “not-for-profit” organization. The United Cerebral Palsy takes on all of the booths. What I did was I recruited my family. So, I got my kids, my grandchildren, my great grandchildren, they all participate in that. We have a wonderful, a four-hour shift and we--the kids love it and we parcel out responsibilities. Some of them are digging for drinks in the tubs, others are taking the money. I’m just sort of sitting there in the chair, the big guru and supervising everything. I’ve got to that point in life and we then go out afterwards. We go swimming at a pool. We go out for dinner afterwards. It becomes a real family event and it promotes volunteerism among the family members and a, have a real appreciation of what we’re doing, but it’s fun. It’s enjoyable and very important, it’s a finite task. It’s a one-time a year thing. I’m not immersing them in this. We’re bringing them on for one time. Now, hopefully, they’ll do other volunteer activities as a result of this. But we’re finding more and more people are willing to take on a single task, a one-time thing because of the time factor and the time constraints. Those kids, believe me, does other activities each [INDISTINCT]. Well, they’ve got music and they’ve got all these other things that they do. This involves them in a family activity including, it helps bring us all together. Corporations and businesses, many of them have volunteer activity. A good example of that is Oscar Mayer. They have, not only an internal group of employees who volunteered but they have a retirement association that volunteers. In Madison, Oscar Mayer Retired Volunteers take on Meals on Wheels two days a week for independent living and it’s a tremendous resource for--American Family Insurance headquarters has the same thing. In your own communities, take a look and see what corporations have internal volunteer programs where they need to be able to work as a group. It can be an excellent source of people. 

Don’t forget service costs. I joined Rotary many, many years ago. One of the smartest things I ever did because it put me in close connection with people who are volunteers in their community and there’s a lot of volunteer work in our club. It’s about the sixth largest in the world. We have about 520 members, it’s huge and we’re volunteering out there all the time. If you have not done it already, joining a service club because it does connect you with people who might be sources of volunteers, or at the very least, identify people who are members of the club where you could go in and speak, make a presentation, recruit people at the service club level and then, of course, the churches. We saw it earlier that people who are church goers are among the strongest for the volunteers. Seventy-two percent attend weekly religious services. It a natural source of volunteers for you and being able to join there. Anybody else have any other sources of volunteers that you have found useful or appropriate?  Anybody?

>> What we do here in Florida is to set up tables at public events such as a Farmer’s Market. We talk to people as they are shopping for their various fruits and vegetables. And, it gives us an opportunity to talk with them and to talk up friends and go hey, and we average about three people an hour to sign on to our email list which is the database that we use to promote the activities that we conduct.

>> That’s a great one. We do that as something similar to that in our Farmer’s Market around the square on Madison so, I know what you’re saying. Yeah. An excellent idea. Any others?

>> This is Peggy. One of the markets, I think, that we might have to look at in our area is the ethnic volunteers. We have a strong influx of the Spanish and Mexicans and these families may be are looking for something to do too and especially if it is an ethnic festival.

>> And it helps to deal with some of the language issues as well, in terms of bilingual, language issues there that you would not be able to deal with otherwise. That’s a very good one. Yes. An interesting one in that respect, Big Brothers Big Sisters, some years ago, we were having trouble recruiting Black Afro-Americans as Big Brothers and we just were not getting them. So, we went to some people in the Black community and we asked, how might we be able to touch people who would consider doing a—they made a very interesting suggestion that we did. He said, “Go to the barber shop where they have their haircut and just sit.”  And sit there for the whole day and talked to people as they come in, while they’re having their haircut. We did that, and we got about a half a dozen volunteers out of that just by sitting in the barbershop. It was such an interesting idea. I never would have thought of that. I think somebody from the Urban League recommended that to us. It was down on Park Street, Madison. It was a very interesting idea. So, sometimes it’s really outside the box. I worked with a non-organization and they have a clan pattern. Their clans are very, very important to them and family involvement plus there are a number of issues for the long families in terms of the children being integrated into American society. It’s a different world for the elders and we’ve tried to come up with ways for that. That’s a good point. Any others?

>> This is Janet from New York.

>> Okay.

>> What we’ve been doing is making presentations at the various, different service organizations like the Rotary and stuff, and we have found that there’s two things:  One is, the Rotarians who go to those Wednesday lunches. Many of them are approaching retiring and they’re starting to panic that they’re not going to have a useful life and so, they’re interested in coming on Boards or running projects or something. And then, the other spectrum of that audience are the businesses that likes to put their young executives on Board. You know, so they get that sort of engagement in the community so—

>> They long executive concept.

>> Yeah, right. So, both, we set our, our touching two age groups in that audience.

>> That’s a good one. United Ways has that around the country. The long executive programs and they found that very, very successful and especially the younger executives coming in, say to a bank where they want to expose them to the community as almost a training tool—

>> Exactly. That’s where we found. It’s been the banks that have had those junior executives.

>> Right, and there are others like that. Good one. Anybody else?

>> Another one. I’m not sure your reference but not necessarily volunteer but we use community service folks that have to put in so many hours for some criminal offense—

>> Yes.

>> And, they’re actually looking for projects so that might be something to consider.\

>> Absolutely. And those are interesting, because you’re dealing with the Court system and there are obvious pluses and minuses with that. You have to go into it very carefully and you usually have to have a written agreement of some type between yourself and the Court. There has to be very careful supervision. It becomes pretty technical and sometimes fairly bureaucratic. You’ll see that that is dealt within the handbook.

>> I was fairly simple, basically adding an adult supervisor. They were turned over to us. We checked off their hours. If they didn’t do anything, they didn’t get their hours off and they actually gave us grant funds to help feed them and, or do our projects.

>> Great. Uh-hmm. Good one. Yup. Okay. I’m sure some of you will have other ideas. Put them on the line. Put them on the web and suggest them to other folks. Some of the techniques, you’ve touched on a few there, on page 3. I’ve mentioned before, internal is where many of them happen. The volunteer affairs that type of thing can also be good. 

The University of Wisconsin, for instance, they have a volunteer affair every year and we can set up tables there and we recruit University students. There are other volunteer affairs that are often held in the, in your communities. Check those out. The corporate, we’ve mentioned the Oscar Mayer concept, the Meals on Wheels, check with those or the long executive. The media, they can be useful to you. Newspapers, don’t forget the shoppers, they, especially are useful in the more rural areas, smaller towns, smaller communities, radio, television, any of the media outlets. The ethnic media, we have a newspaper in Madison called the Madison Times. It focuses primarily on the Afro-American community and it connects us with them. Schools, mentioned before, high schools, interns, another possibility especially at the University level, see if their interns who are looking for experience, who want to put it on the resume. Sometimes there is a small stipend involved. If you can give people a payment of some kind as an intern so it’s not totally a volunteer situation but it could be a mix of the two. Then, if you have a Retired Senior Volunteer Program, RSVP, in a community, good source, or a VAC, Voluntary Action Center, often, they are steered through the United Way or some other agency in the community, some kind of volunteer placement organization. A couple I don’t have down on there but you should think about, if you have a website, a good source of potential volunteers, get people to set up a link for volunteering. 

Don’t forget your donors either. And no matter what their level, one thing you might want to consider is sending out a little card with, the next time you acknowledge a gift, with a return envelope and offering people volunteer opportunities within the organization. Earlier we said that about 50% of all people feel that donating time is more important than money. Well, there are a lot of people who do both and consider that as a return piece. As you hear about it, page 4, some of the things we have touched on but, asked by someone, another volunteer, you see that break down from that study again as to where they heard about it, family or friend and so on. Notice, responding to an advertisement, very low on the list, last, it’s verbal, it’s some type of personal contact. It’s a word of mouth situation. That’s how most volunteering is done, not by some written ad. 

Now, here is why people say no. And, see what that number one, is time, it’s the big factor. “I do love to but I don’t have enough time.”  Well, we need to think of more ways in which we can give people opportunities to volunteer. Rather than ask them to fit our mold, let’s come up with methods, ways in which they can become involved. We talked about the finite task that--the drink and that’s it. You may have other relatively limited term possibilities that they can do short term, avoiding immersion. That’s usually the way, “Oh, boy, a volunteer. Grab him.”  It’s a warm body and you can get them involved and they are taking [INDISTINCT], they seemed to be okay and we’ll get them, we’ll immerse them in the organization that can be scary. Maybe you need to do a try out first. Give people an opportunity to ease in to a situation but think about the finite task approach. Other reasons why people give, as to not being involved, physical issues, they don’t want to, they’re not available when needed and so on. 

Now, why do people lose interest?  That’s kind of important. Unfulfilled expectations. They come in and they really were not repaired. There was not a clear job description and there were not clear performance standards of what would be expected. A guy can send out some samples if you’re interested in that. The ability to try something rather than being just thrown in to the volunteer position, test it, try it out. As we’re recruiting additional people for drink booths for United Cerebral Palsy, A Taste of Madison, I’ve had people who are considering volunteering, assigned to my booth because I’ve been there, involved for about 15 years. So, they’re trying it out with me to see if they would enjoy it. Then, if they feel it’s something they want to pursue, they can go on and have their own booth eventually, so it’s a try out situation. I’m making a difference, rewarding, I mean, it’s got to be something that, hopefully they feel they’re making a difference. That’s why I keep going back to the mission, to the vision of the organization, to the goals, the objectives, the strategic plan. What are we trying to achieve?  They need to be brought in on that basis, too routine, no variety, a wonderful experience. 

We were sitting at a conference at Wisconsin Public Television a number of years ago and we were stuffing envelopes for the annual appeal, year end stuff. There were about 10 of us around the table,  stuffing, and you know, we start talking, the guy sitting next to me, a very distinguished gentleman and he’s stuffing envelopes and, I guess, he was in his, maybe late 60’s, early 70’s at the most. And, we were talking and his accent told me that he did not come from Madison, Wisconsin. And having grown up in New York myself I said, “Are you from New York or New Jersey?”  He said, “Oh, yeah. How could you tell?”, “Well, pretty easily. I worked in New Jersey for many, many…“  “Oh, really, what were you then?” “Oh, I was in the dairy business,” “You don’t look like a farmer to me.” “What did you do?” “Well, I had an executive position.” “Oh, with whom?” “With the Borden milk company.” “Oh, I see. And what was your job?” “I was the Executive Vice President of Borden International.” “Why are you stuffing envelopes here?”  He said, “I volunteered for Channel 13 in New York and when I came out here to be with my kids that lived here. I called up the station and I said, I want to volunteer for you. Do you have anything I can do?  And they said, well, we’re going to have an envelope stuffing time here. Would you come in?”  He said, “I can, and if that’s what you need, I can--,” I said, “What did you do for Channel 13?” “I ran the Corporate Underwriting Program as a volunteer.”  I grabbed him by the arm and I said, “Come with me.”  You know, and he started a, he just was not appropriately recruited and we didn’t know what he could do and, he would have gladly gone along if that’s what we needed but obviously we had much more potential in terms of what he did. It’s a great example for him. 

Lack of support, advancement growth is there, that vertical movement so that they can move up into other positions. Giving them additional responsibilities of some kind, involved in planning, problem solving, these are people who know your organization. They can get very involved, you know, that there are times when there’s tension among the co-workers, volunteer to volunteer but, very often it happens to volunteer staff. They are, our staff who say, “Oh, boy. Volunteers are just a pain in the neck. Quite frankly, it’s much easier for me to do it myself. And, I shouldn’t have to work with volunteers.”  Well, that’s unfortunate. Setting up a team approach and really having a team so, I think it can be important. 

No recognition. I’d say 90-95% of all people like to be stroked. They like recognition. Some form of recognition, whatever that might be, I don’t know but some don’t. For the auction at Wisconsin Public Broadcasting, for probably 20 years of that auction, we had a state attorney, an attorney in the state of Wisconsin, who took her vacation to run the pick up and pay responsibilities of our auction and that’s all she did. And, she took off three weeks and that was her recreation. She really enjoyed it. She had a team of people that she trained. She had succession built into it if anything happened to her but she made it very clear to us that, she said, “The day you recognized me, the day you tried to recognize me in some way in front of any other people, or you put a story about me in the paper or whatever it is, I’m out of here.”  She did not want that. She just wanted a non-recognition situation. So, different folks have different approaches. Take a look at page 18 in the volunteer policies and there are some recognition ideas in there that, some are fairly obvious honoring “The Volunteer of the Month”, if you have a bulletin board putting up in there. The third one is kind of interesting, a volunteer ID card that offers discounts at local stores. What about the possibility of going to a local store?  We have so many of the big boxes now. Any of the local stores are looking for ways to retain customers. What if you went to restaurants or small stores, family-owned stores and said, would you do a 10% off if people volunteer for Byways or any other organization you’re involved with and issue that ID card so that there’s a tangible quid pro quo, a tangible benefit to the volunteer. Not just a “thank you” but something a little more specific. A parking help, if you’re in a city, free parking or some type of parking assistance. Handwritten cards, anything you can do in the handwritten area as opposed to just the form letter. “Much Appreciated”, I just hear that over and over, but we’ve lost good manners to a certain extent in this country. I was taught very early that if you go to somebody’s home for dinner, you do something, if somebody does something, immediately sit down and send them a “Thank You” note, and a handwritten note, it’s very important, so, I don’t think we’re doing enough of that. 

Information technology is wonderful, isn’t it?  We’re using technology today. It’s good if it’s used appropriately but we’re losing some of the personal touch. Yesterday, I was getting around the line, you know, about the problems we can write into something. Digital photographs, you can’t buy a phone these days without a camera in the darn thing and taking photographs and people and putting them up, posting them, putting on the webpage, biographical material, that can be very helpful. Appoint especially skilled volunteers as trainers that laded that vertical movement, giving them additional responsibilities. We do an event for United Cerebral Palsy every year. The Celebrity Waiters Event and we put the number of years the celebrity has been serving as a waiter on the badge. Another way of recognition, special articles, bumper stickers, some of us hate those, some of us like them--up to you. It’s, try this one, introducing a volunteer at your Board meetings. Bring out a Board member, having them sit there, participate in the meeting so that it’s not just disconnected from the organization. I’m sure that there are other ideas that we could get into and--we do have a few minutes but I want to wrap this up and then we’ll double back to that or any other questions that you have. 

In going back on page 4 of the original handout, personal needs not being met, that is a function of how you bring them into the organization. What needs do they have?  What do they want out of it?  So, it’s communication, it’s being a good listener. If you have any needs in terms of any backup, additional material I can send you, I would be happy to do that. Get in touch with me. Let’s back up for a minute to why, what kind of recognition you do?  Are there any other thoughts that you have about types of recognition that some of you do that you can share?

>> Well, in Florida where—

>> I figured you were going to be the first one, Florida over there.

>> In the last year we planned a Volunteer Recognition Picnic at the local county pier which, of course, I have to tell you, is on the Atlantic Ocean and unfortunately, because of the rainy situation we had to cancel it. But, we’re going to do that again this year and we will invite anybody who has put in as little as one hour during the year to that picnic and we’ll have music and hotdogs and hamburgers and that stuff.

>> Great.

>> And we plan on giving out pins for volunteers who has helped in.

>> Okay.

>> We’ll have 200-300 people there this year and we think that that is, at least, on a limited budget, what we can do.

>> We’ve had some good luck with that type of thing for underwriting by some corporations in our area and also food donated but we have Oscar Myer in town so, Oscar donates the hotdogs and all that. It’s on the Oscar Mobile or whatever that is.

>> The Weenie Mobile.

>> The Weenie Mobile. Yup, we give away little Weenie whistles and all that stuff. That works well. Yes. Another one that’s similar to that, and I know that sometimes you can run into food issues with it but some type of a potluck approach, so that people bring dishes for recognition. A group of 300 is probably not as workable and you may run into tomaine poisoning so you have to watch out for that. But, if you have a smaller group, sometimes the potluck is a good way. Everybody brings their best dish and you do that and, well--that’s a good one. Any others?  Any other questions of any kind, this subject or related issues? Hearing none, I’d turn it over to—

>> Well, actually I have a question for you. I was intrigued by your concept of Youth On Board, and actually my question is, the participants on line, I wrote it down, just a little thing I find in, when I go to workshops and that’s one that I thought, “Ha!  I never had thought of that before.”  Perhaps I’m the only one but has anybody else that’s on the line in the Byway community engaged, you know, high school-aged students in the Byway or even doing just service projects along the Byway?

>> This is Sandy from [INDISTINCT] in Washington. We haven’t done that on our Byway and I don’t know why I didn’t think about it for the byway because there are so many different kinds of things that youth could help with and with having the requirement in school for graduation, like you said, that’s a perfect fit. In a previous organization we used that on a school Board group and we found that having a junior and senior on that Board helped to have a friend there to have someone, to train someone and keep that position going and it was very valuable on that Board. And, since we have several school districts and different schools right on the Byway here, I think that would be a really good thing to get going again. So, I will take note of that. I’m glad you reminded me of it.
>> And, in keeping with that, I want to urge any of you considering doing that to fully empower the youth. I see times when they are brought on in sort of an advisory capacity or not fully empowered as a Board member. They can vote. They can do everything. They may not be able to sign documents. They may not be able to serve as the Chief Executive Officer of the organization but certainly, there’s no reason why they cannot be fully empowered in every other aspect of it.

>> Anybody else [INDISTINCT] there?  I wonder if [INDISTINCT] seemed to be something that might be having a [INDISTINCT]. Is that happening to you folks?

>> Well, I haven’t used youth on the [INDISTINCT] we’ve talked about it. I have had experience, I used to be on the Farm Bureau and we had youth, you know, on the Farm Bureau Board and it really didn’t work very well as a Board member because they’re kids and when you we’re dealing with policy issues and stuff, it just, it really bugged down the Board process. But, they were valuable when it came to events or doing a special project especially when there’s something, like if you need a database set up or some sort of computer thing or a graphic skill or something, that then they can, you know, maybe do through, you know, advisers or a program at school or something. So, that works well but I haven’t experienced good luck at the Board level because they do become marginalized because other Board members just don’t have the time to give them the worldliness you need in a fully functional Board.

>> I think your point is very well taken and I have experienced that myself where I’ve had good luck, it’s going through the leadership of the school, the principal or the counselors or those who know the students who have some of the leadership skills and the maturity to be able to handle that. I think your point is extremely well taken and it really has to be done very carefully or it can fail.

>> Yeah, it depends on the situation. But like I said, if you want them for a project or an event, they can be great because then you can bring them in with their friends. You know, do it with something that they get class credit or something like that and that works really well. But, as far as leadership, it has, I would think it would have to be a really special situation.

>> Are there any other comments especially [INDISTINCT] for us?  Well, we do have a discussion forum set up on Byways Online. Yesterday there was robust discussion from the 5123 Tele-Workshop today, I was impressed with some of the concepts that everybody put out there. Please utilize the discussion form over try to have access. I know the last Tele-Workshops you did, he freely answered questions afterwards which we greatly appreciate so please take advantage of asking Boris questions as well. You’ve got his email address and you can post those on the discussion forum if you’d like to have the answers benefit everybody else. And thank you everyone for participating in today’s call.