A new take on job displacement/replacement?

This posting is based on a post entitled A new take on job displacement/replacement that Rob Jackson made to the UKVPM forum. I'll start with Rob's thoughts.

“Hi all. I came across a situation recently that I'd welcome your thoughts on. An organisation currently delivers a service to its clients through freelancers. These self-employed people are engaged by the organisation to deliver a specific, time limited service direct to their clients. Due to changes in funding etc. the organisation is looking to deliver the same service through volunteers in future, rather than freelancers.

Now, if they people were currently employees and not freelancers I guess some people would raise concerns about job replacement.However, because they are self-employed freelancers engaged for a specific task would you have the same concerns?”

Rob raises a great question. I have come to believe that the sector looks at this issue with both conviction and intense polarity. We all know of examples where volunteers are restricted from doing the work otherwise done by a unionized employee. In some cases this restriction can exist in the absence of a union as well. On the other hand, I have come across many postings looking for volunteers to build a nonprofit’s website. In doing so, the organization is taking away the opportunity for an independent contractor or small business to earn revenue. Why do we look at these two so differently? I think Rob’s posting provides some direction to the answer to this while asking the question, should it be this way.

Would you reduce someone to part time because you found a volunteer who could make a long term commitment to take on a portion of a staff member’s job? Would you stop using an outside accounting service because you found a volunteer who could make a long term commitment to fill the role? If yes, would that change if you knew that the decision meant that someone at the accounting firm you were using would have to reduce someone to part time?

If you would not reduce a staffer to part time but would switch to the volunteer accountant, why? A good accountant could, like a staff member, become part of the team that helped make the organization strong.

If you would not switch to the volunteer accountant, would that decision be supported by your organization’s mission statement in that you are giving up the opportunity to use the saved funds to apply directly to the achievement of your mission? Is an organization’s moral obligation to fulfill its mission to the best of its ability or to provide employment? Certainly in most cases employees are required for an organization to fill its mission but in many cases there are particular roles that go either way. In those cases what should guide an organization, providing incremental employment or accomplishing more of what was created to do?

What are your thoughts?

Crowdsourcing conference program selection

I love it when a few unrelated things happen close enough together that they get to have an unexpected synergetic result. The most recent occurrence of this for me happened over the course of the past week but I only put it together while out running yesterday. The three things at play were:

1. I read Beth Kanter's and Allison Fine's new book, The Networked Nonprofit, on my flights to and around Australia (I highly recommend the book even if you think your organization is already working well with social media)
2. Three presentations were cancelled at the last minute at the Volunteering Australia conference.
3. I was asked about helping organize a conference and that got me thinking about what I thought worked well an not so well at the VA conference

1. The Networked Nonprofit has a variety of examples of organizations that have recognized the benefits of giving up a little control to stakeholders and in doing so end up better addressing their mission. These organizations have also found that this type of engagement can help raise the participation level of it's stakeholders.

2. Cary Pedicini (CEO at Volunteering Australia) told me that they were so overwhelmed with offers to fill the cancelled sessions that they could not consider them all and were as a result just going to leave sessions as cancelled. (They were after all in the middle of running a conference.) Far too late for it to be of value to the conference I had the idea that we could have used Twitter to crowd source a selection from the numerous people that offered to fill the slots. (V.A. did a great job of incorporating Twitter into the conference for the benefit of onsite and offsite participation.)

3. Although some of the sessions were quite interesting, I felt that some of the workshops missed the mark in delivering content of real interest and value to leaders of volunteers. In his closing remarks Cary acknowledged this had been some of the feedback that they had received and reminded us that where this happened it was not for a lack of trying on the part of the V.A. team. ( I am not being particularly critical of the V.A. conference here. I imagine this to be a challenge of the selection committee of any conference.) That they tried hard to make the program as good as it could be is a important point though. If trying hard is not the only requirement for success, what else could help?

So as a variety of thoughts bounced around in my head while running, when the three above happen to collide, this what came to mind...

Why not let the people who are planning to attend a conference (or even the one hoping to but awaiting approval) be the ones to select the majority of the conference program? There are a few reasons why I suspect that the conference committee should still have the capacity to add ones they see as particularly relevant to the the conference theme or anything else. But even this idea might end up getting challenged in time as conferences experiment with this concept.

Session proposals could be entered online and then those who plan on coming to the conference could register their intention to do so, even if still awaiting approval, and then vote on the sessions they would like to attend. Session proposals could include a field indicating the minimum number of participants required for the proposer. Although I have not yet thought through all of the logistics yet, I can easily envision cases where even though a presentation is only of interest to a few people that the presentation could still go on, even if over a coffee in a cafe rather than in a traditional meeting room. Give that most of this is distributed data entry (proposers rather than conference committee) that could be used on the real conference registration form as well, and also given that the conference participants rather than the conference committee make the program selection, this would reduce the amount of work required by a conference committee while potentially creating a conference program more in line with what the conference participants seek. This does put another task on managers of volunteers who are already busy but it's an optional one and it does give people a real voice in the conference agenda.

Please offer your comments on other possible challenges and/or on what you like about it. Given the nature of participant involvement that is at the root of this, your feedback on this concept would be greatly appreciated.

"Coopetitioning" for Volunteers

I have long been interested in how nonprofits, like companies can achieve more through strategic alliances, even if those alliances are with the 'competition'.

Thanks to @johnhaydon on Twitter, I read a great article (Nonprofit Collaboration: Doesn’t It Make the Pie Bigger? by Debra Askanase) on the topic that I want to recommend. You can read it at http://bit.ly/cwUdEd. It inspired me to think about how it applies differently between the for-profit and nonprofit sectors and then (further down) how the concept can be directly applied to improve volunteer programs.

I have often found it unfortunate how some in the nonprofit sector have been more reluctant than the business sector to embrace coopetition. In the business sector coopetition must lead to a bigger pie being shared positively by ALL parties to call it a real cooptetition success. In the nonprofit sector however, coopetition ought to be considered a success if the pie gets larger even if some players lose some of the pie they had.

Consider the differences in following two basic scenarios.

1. Through coopetion the number of clients in a business sector went up. As a result, the number of clients at Business A went up by 75% but at Business B it went down by 10%. Business B is not likely going to call this a success.

2. Through coopetion the number of clients that were able to be served at foodbanks in a city went up. As a result of working together though, Foodbank A's clientele went up by 75% but Foodbank B's clientele went down by 10%. Foodbank B should still call this a success given that their mission is that "fewer people go hungry" and not that "fewer people go hungry because we fed them".

The point is that for nonprofits with a mission that is truly anchored on the greater good, the risk of coopetition is even less than it is the corporate world where it already embraced by a large number of successful organizations.

How can you apply this to your volunteer program?

How would you feel if a volunteer at your organization also volunteered at a competitive organization? Hopefully you would love it because they will acquire new experiences that can benefit your organization. Maybe you could even get in touch with a 'competitive' volunteer program and establish a volunteer exchange for that very purpose. Yes, you might lose volunteers to the other organization permanently but you might also gain some permanently. In the ends it sounds like a better alignment volunteer-organization and therefore a happier volunteer. A happier volunteer is usually a better performing volunteer and a volunteer willing to offer more hours.

A bigger pie is a tastier one too!

Facial Recognition Software and What Every Volunteer Manager Should Know About It

Computing power has reached the point where it can recognize faces in photographs. This means that you can now quickly and easily catalog the hundreds or thousands of pictures you have of your volunteers in action. It also means that you need to ensure you are taking the right steps to protect the privacy of your volunteers.

Last week I began organizing the hundreds of pictures my wife and I took on a recent vacation and I used the opportunities to try out some new digital photo album software. In the process I discovered a facial recognition feature that saved me hours of work and also got me wondering about privacy issues online. I tagged my wife in one photo (associated her name to it) and the software tagged her to other photos she is in. Although it did not recognize her face 100% of the time, I was thoroughly impressed. I love it when software saves me time and/or makes something new possible. When I added the group picture above from the IAVE conference last week, Picasa automatically scanned the faces in it and based on the another picture of me, it recognized that I was in the picture and tagged my name to it. (Everyone in the photograph was aware this picture would get posted publicly.)

With a quick bit of research online, I found that a number of software products such as iPhoto (for Macs) and Picasa along with photo album websites such as Flickr (http://www.Flickr.com) have added the ability to recognize facial similarities in photos.

As with many new technologies, I couldn’t help but recognize that this one could have a potential negative impact on society as well. It is not going to be long before anyone will be able to upload a picture of someone into a facial recognition search engine and then wait to see if there are any photos of that person posted publicly anywhere on the internet. There are already two programs that can accomplish this within the publicly viewable pages of Facebook (Polar Rose and Face.com).

There can be many reasons for someone to prefer to keep their whereabouts private or their involvement with your organization private. A picture of someone involved in volunteering for your organization that is posted online can threaten either of those privacies. In addition to thinking about how you use photos of volunteers, many organizations are going to need to revisit their volunteer forms. A quick scan in Google suggests that thousands of organizations combine their mandatory waiver of liability with a statement allowing the use of the volunteer’s image in a photo. So in other words, to volunteer with these organizations, you must allow the public use of your image. While this has not been much of a deterrent for volunteers in the past, I wonder if the ability to Google a person’s face as easily as we do something like “volunteer management conference”, will change how volunteers feel about it.

Check out how this great technology can help you organize your photos of volunteers and be sure to review your current policies regarding the use photos of volunteers. This technology is here now and my guess is that it’s going to surface in ways that have not yet even been imagined.

How to get more out of your volunteers and make them happier at the same time

Research is clear that there are many benefits to cross-training employees and volunteers are no different. Benefits include:

• a better understanding of the broader processes.
• a better understanding the efforts and restrictions of their fellow volunteers
• an ability to fill in temporarily for other volunteers more easily.
• greater satisfaction as a volunteer.

Consider the following:

1. Imagine that you, as a manager of volunteers for a social service agency are hiring an administrative assistant. The list has been narrowed down to two. They are really equal candidates except for a couple of things. Both have fifteen years of work experience. One has fifteen years of experience as an administrative assistant. The other has ten years as an administrative assistant, another two as direct mail manager for a nonprofit’s fundraising department and three as a full time cook in a soup kitchen. Which would you choose?

2. Imagine for a moment that you’re a manager of volunteers at a hospital and you need to fill a single position for a volunteer to help families deal with the grief of losing a loved one. Two new volunteers have applied for the position. They are basically equal except for a couple of things. One has 10 years experience as a volunteer in a hospital gift shop. The other has 5 years in a hospital gift shop, 3 years at a hospital information booth and 2 years in an affiliated children’s hospital. Which would you choose?

3. In some organizations volunteers are un-severable from the position. “Sue is an E.R. volunteer and Jackie is a gift shop volunteer.” If Jackie the Gift Shop volunteer had prior work experience or training in the Intensive Care Unit , would she be able to better fulfill her role of helping family members choose a gift for a loved one in intensive care?

4. In some businesses jobs are clearly defined. You are the manger of volunteers and perhaps someone else is the manger of fundraising (or any other department) and each of you has your own isolated jobs to do. Do you ever feel that others on staff don’t know what you do for the organization? Do you feel that it would be beneficial for you and your organization if your boss or other senior managers had experience in your job?

So what patterns do you seen in your answers above? Did you pick the administrative assistant with experience in three areas in question 1 and the volunteer with the varied experience in question 2? It’s hard not to recognize how a gift shop volunteer with experience in other areas of the hospital can offer better guidance. At almost every conference I go to I hear at least one person lament about how their job is not understood by the people with whom they work.

There are two points here. One is that sometimes there is little difference between the management of paid people and volunteers. There is plenty of evidence that cross training benefits employees and companies. I think for cross training purposes we can learn from the experiences of the employment side of people management.

The second and far more important point to this article is that volunteers who are cross-trained in other positions can work in their primary position much better if they are trained in other positions in your organization. The difference is not between nonprofits and for-profits. It is one difference between a good volunteer program and a great one.

Risk Management Made Simple

Last week I heard a story from a event that went something like this. There was a gated entrance where a volunteer was assigned to ensure no one but event volunteers came through. A number of late-teens approached the gate to get through and when told they could not, asked if they could watch the fireworks from there. “No problem.” Shortly after that a couple of beers came out. The teens looked at the volunteer and asked, “Is this a problem?”. “I’m not your mother,” replied the volunteer. Shortly thereafter a joint came out. “Is this a problem?” “I’m not your mother.” When the teens left after the fireworks one was heard saying, “This event rocks. We’ve got tell everybody about it.” Somehow I could not help thinking of the risk management issues involved and with that, I couldn’t help but to think of Linda Graff. Here is a link to a worthwhile article if you have not yet begun to think about risk management in earnest. Thanks Linda. http://www.volunteer2.com/articles/RiskManagementMadeSimpleArticle.pdf

Calculating the ROI (Return on Investment) of your volunteer program

I was a participant at the Australasian Retreat for Advanced Volunteer Management in Australia last month. As the name suggests, the topics covered were not the type covered in workshops for those just beginning their career in volunteer management. A number of goals of the entire group were determined at the end of the retreat and I volunteered to work on one of them, developing a tool for measuring the success of a volunteer program.

Given that this resource was developed with those with extensive experience in mind, the implementation of the ideas presented in this month’s article might not be not for every leader of volunteers. However, even if you feel you would not have the time to address this sort of reporting, the article is still worth a read just to get a different perspective on valuing the contributions of volunteers and on determining relative levels of success from one year to another.

This is especially of value in economically tough times. With an economic downturn there is always the risk of program cuts. Good executive management looks at what can be cut with a minimum of impact. Crucial to dealing with the economic downturn related to your volunteer program then is that your executive management understands the real impact of your volunteer program. While reports of the number of volunteers,volunteer hours and in some cases, the wage replacement value of their hours may have sufficed in the past, it is too easy for a cutback in your department to be viewed as 'only' affecting volunteers and not the impact of the work that volunteers do.

Some insightful, new thoughts have emerged more recently that focus on the value of the results of the efforts of volunteers. Linda Graff describes this concept well in A Note on Assessing Value, http://www.energizeinc.com/art/abeso.html). To that discussion I would like to add a mechanism with which you can make some solid comparisons of the performance of your volunteer program from year to year. If you would like to measure your year to year successes as a volunteer program manager:

• for your own use in making improvements to your program, or
• to make a case for your professional position and your program’s budget within your organization, or
• to advance your career,

click Calculating the ROI (Return on Investment) of your volunteer program for a pfd copy of this month's article. (The tables in the article required the use of pdf separate from this blog page.)

The Difference between Managing Paid Staff and Volunteers

I believe that the management of people-based resources is at its core, the same regardless of whether the people involved are paid or unpaid. I know that many will disagree adamantly with me on this point but please read on to consider the experience I just had that supported this view. Later this month I’ll delve into the negative results of not recognizing this important aspect of the management of volunteers. I was at the AMVR conference in Binghamton N.Y. last week and in one of the sessions, participants were asked what attributes they associated with an effective manager of volunteer resources. The following is the compilation of the responses. · Able to assess the needs of the organization (what needs to get done) · Time management skills · Matching skills (person to task) · Good listener · Good communicator · Multitasker · Educator · Diplomatic · Technical skills (ability to make use of current software) · Trainer and delegator · Able to meet organizational goals · Able to pull together a variety of resource · Work in concert with the organizations mission · Motivator · Team player · Open minded · Flexible · Positive · Approachable · Confident in the organization’s mission · Confident in one’s self · Creative · Relationship builder · Recognize trends · Empathetic · Inclusive · Critical thinker · Able to keep volunteers satisfied Nobody can be great at all of the attributes listed above but does the list describe what you think would make an effective manager volunteer resources? In considering the list while we began to discuss it I couldn’t help but wonder, “If a group of people walked into the seminar room right now and looked at the list without knowing what conference was going on, would they be able to figure out that we were discussing volunteer management? Or, would they conclude that we are discussing people management in general? Or to put it another way, would they conclude that we are discussing the management of paid staff?” With the exception of the specific mention of volunteers in the last bullet I doubt anyone would conclude that the list pertained exclusively to managers of volunteer recourses, or unpaid staff. Think of the position of your boss, not your boss specifically but your boss’s position. Would the list above not just as easily have been developed if the exercise was to list the attributes of an effective nonprofit CEO or executive director, or the attributes you would like to see in your next boss? Every organization and every sector has its own culture, from which stems various styles of people management. When you think of sector here, think entertainment vs. health care for example rather than volunteer vs. corporate. How would you group the following together into two pairs if you are trying to group those that are most similar in workplace culture? 1. A hospice where volunteers visit people in their homes 2. A not-for-profit group of volunteers that builds websites for other not-for-profits for free 3. A software company that builds video games. 4. The nursing department (paid) in a hospital It is not volunteer vs. corporate that should define differences in management style. It is the mission. The culture of working in technology is not the same culture as working in health care. These different cultures generally attract different volunteers for different reasons and the maximum effectiveness in each area will be derived with different management approaches. The bigger differences are not based on not-for-profit vs. corporate but rather they are based on the types of products and services provided by the organization. Many of you might be thinking that the management of volunteers is far different than the management of paid staff because paid staff have to show up. “It is their job and if they don’t show up, they won’t get paid. MVRs don’t have the luxury of money to motivate people.” Ask the manager of any restaurant, a school principal, a retail store manager or a call center manager etc. if payday is the only tool a manager needs to keep things running smooth. At the conference last week , Martin Cowling told the story of while crossing the border into the United States, the border guard had trouble believing his explanation that he was on his way to speak at a conference for managers of volunteer resources. The guard’s comments went something like “They have conference for volunteer management? Why do they need that? You call the volunteers and they show up.” It’s not like that for volunteers and it’s not that easy in a paid staff environment either. Do you know of someone who used a sick day when they felt fine? Apparently not even paid staff just “show up” every time. I own a small company and manage a small salaried staff. Like everyone else I am not strong in every attribute listed above but I can assure you they are all very import elements that contribute to whether or not I am an effective manager. Motivating my staff helps them bring out the best in themselves. I have to be open minded to their ideas. I can make similar comments about each item in the list. The only change required from the list above compiled by MVRs about MVR is the substitution of ‘paid staff’ for ‘volunteer’ in the last bullet. The similarities of management styles related to paid and unpaid people are becoming even more important as our volunteers, like our staff, are coming (or are hopefully coming but that’s another topic all together) from a younger generation. Younger generations want a greater sense of community and self fulfillment out of their work, paid and unpaid. I think that when MVRs don’t recognize their role as staff managers in general, the MVR him/herself, the volunteer sector, the organization and the volunteers themselves all suffer. Check back in the middle of the month and we’ll look at the consequences of thinking that the management of volunteers is nothing like managing paid staff.

What Do City Websites and City Volunteer Programs Have in Common?

Ten years ago I was involved with a project to create a unified web presence for the City of Burlington. In the two years prior, various departments had proactively taken on the initiative to launch a departmental website themselves. Some departments had contracted professional firms, some were done by department staff who like to tinker with computers and some had a friend/nephew/sister who was just getting into the business and offered their service for free for exposure. Needless to say, with such a diverse group of suppliers and each with their own approach, the websites were completely different from each other. They were different in look, strategic objectives, navigation, content policy, etc. Site visitors from one department’s website needed to completely reacclimatize themselves when they went to a different department’s website. Things have changed a great deal since then, at least in terms of websites. Almost all city websites today have a uniform approach to the use of the internet. There is a common theme that permeates through the website but each department has their own content space and unique components to make the site beneficial for the staff and citizen clients of that department. Ten years ago, the shift from complete departmental autonomy into a partially centralized website was challenged by a perceived need that without complete autonomy, a department’s needs in a website would not be met. “Our department is different.” Today the benefits of a shared infrastructure, greater technical flexibility and higher standards of acceptability have eased the concerns of almost everyone. I doubt any city today would launch a new website strategy that abandoned the notion of centralization completely. So what does all of this have to do with city volunteer programs? I cannot help but to see the parallel courses of city websites and city volunteer programs. Volunteer programs are currently run in most cities without cross departmental planning and/or without any cross departmental infrastructure. There are, however, leading municipalities that have begun to raise the bar. A staff person who is responsible for volunteer management across the entire municipality can provide tremendous support to those who coordinate volunteer efforts in their own department. This is especially the case where some departments do not have someone managing volunteers in a full time capacity. The nature and scope of this support will depend on local factors but could include any of the following:

• Creation of standards for volunteer applications
• Creation of city-wide policies related to the management of volunteers from recruitment through recognition
• Better use of data through the standardization of data collection
• Greater knowledge among the existing and potential volunteers related to the volunteer opportunities within the city.
• Better alignment between volunteers and the positions they fill
• Sharing of best practices in volunteer management and coaching departmental volunteer coordinators who only work with volunteers a small portion of the time or are volunteers for the city themselves
• Sharing of infrastructure to provide a higher level of service at a lower cost

As others see how this approach can minimize liabilities, maximize the impact of volunteers and make the volunteer experience a consistently good one, more and more municipalities are certain to get on board. A few departments will still likely cling to the adage of “but our department is different”, but the overall the benefits are too large to ignore. It’s a decade behind city websites, but thankfully, city volunteerism is making the same strides forward.

What Defines an Organization's Mission

What ultimately defines the mission of an organization? Is it the carefully crafted set of words that are printed on the annual report and displayed with pride on the website? Or is the culmination of the actions and inactions of the organization?

When there is disparity between the intended and the actual, the leaders of the organization , whether they be staff, volunteers or directors, need to work with all concerned to ensure that efforts are tweaked to get back in line with the intended mission of the organization. It is not a failing of an organization to discover a drift of focus has occurred. The environment in which we work introduces new elements to our situation frequently and with these new elements come opportunities to refocus with greater precision and effectiveness on the core mission, or to lose some focus through the addition of an ever growing set of parameters to deal with.

That a sailboat drifts off its intended course is not necessarily in trouble if the course is corrected in time. Real trouble comes when the captain fails to recognize the drift either by not paying attention or by being so set in his beliefs that he ignores the signals around him.

A very simple test can help add clarity to the decision making process. Ask yourself, “Will this action (or inaction) contribute to the success of our mission as it is stated?” If the answer is yes, it is worth further exploration. If the answer is no, the process of consideration should come to a halt. If the answer is yes, a second question to be considered is "Are we the most efficient and effective providers of this action?"

If not, outsourcing to a dedicated provider is the likely the best way to achieve the organization's mission. Take a good look at your mission statement. It likely speaks to the destination, not the mechanics of getting there.

Every undertaking of your organization must have a positive effect toward the success of its mission, as all others are most certainly detracting from it in their consumption of resources that could and should be applied elsewhere.

Does your organization follow its mission? Never forget what your mother told you. Your actions speak louder than words.

Social Service Organizations – And The Closing of Their Doors

For the sake of this article I will pose the following fictitious scenario. Any description of what appears to a particular company, person or non-profit is purely coincidental. It just makes it easier to spin the yarn and perhaps make my point.

Let’s suppose that the sole owner of a major real estate development company did particularly well for herself over the years and having more money than she could ever use herself, decided it was time to do something with it for the benefit of others. Further, let’s suppose that having lived her entire life in one community, that she wanted to make a difference in her home town. Further yet, while she is slowing her pace at work a little, she is excited about the prospect of making a difference and decides that she would rather engage in her own project rather than donate the money somewhere. Having commissioned some brilliant researchers, she discovers that if she takes the vast pool of money she has set aside in her enlightened philanthropic state and invests it in low-cost and supportive housing, that she will eliminate all cases of homelessness in her community. (I know this is simplistic to a fault but just go along with me for now.)

Now suppose you are on the local board of an organization whose sole purpose is to build housing for the homeless. Would you (a) throw your arms up in glee because you can now shut down or (b) throw your arms up in the air in frustration over someone coming in to do the job that your organization has invested itself into?

When I bring up this story up at speaking engagements or group meetings there is typically about a 50-50 split on the answer and some interesting dialog between people on opposite sides. As hypothetical in the extreme as this scenario is though, I hope you picked throwing your arms up in glee. If you did, your organization (or at least your approach to it) exists to satisfy the mission and written or not, the mission includes solving a problem… completely. Even in the most desperate of environments, I believe that social service organizations need to include a conscious effort to toward a goal of eventually closing their doors. If the goal is not set you will certainly never get there.

Consider the real-life organizations, programs and departments that will close once polio is eradicated from the planet, which will likely happen within a couple of years. When the current campaign against polio started, it was a local project with a focus on stemming the tide of local cases. Thankfully, it grew to encompass a mission that included fixing the problem completely and hopefully very soon, we will all get to celebrate the fact that they will close their doors.