If that’s you, then you might think about investing in your volunteer program as one way to help meet those community needs.

Volunteers aren’t free and they never will be.  It takes a tremendous amount of time, energy, and expertise to run a successful volunteer program.  But I don’t need to tell you that.

What I can tell you, simply, is how we may be able to help.  Are you looking to start a new volunteer program and need someone to come in and set up the structures?  Is your volunteer program struggling and in need of someone to update and re-energize things?  If so, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Each year we partner with about 30 different organizations to help them with their volunteer programs.  It takes energy on all sides and it’s no easy feat.  We provide intensive training to the Volunteer Maryland Coordinators and make training available to the staff at our partner organizations.  We work to conduct needs assessments, develop program structures, recruit volunteers, and evaluate everyone’s efforts.  Sometimes we’re helping to start up a brand-new volunteer program.  Other times we’re coming in to grease the wheels.

It takes a real investment from all parties but we know that it works when that investment is solid.  It’s an investment of time, commitment, and money.  An organization commits one – three hours a week to working directly with a Volunteer Maryland Coordinator, plus attends mandatory trainings three times over the year and optional online trainings every other month.  Add in a cash match ranging from $4,750 – $9,750, and you have a full-time person working on your volunteer program.  Commit to an ongoing investment in their success and you can have a sustainable volunteer program – one that meets your increasing community needs – for years to come.

Marie is the Volunteer Maryland Coordinator at Digital Harbor High School

If you’re interested in thinking more about how we can help you with your volunteer program in the upcoming year, there are a few ways to learn more.

ONLINE!

Want to learn more about what we do? Register for one of these!

• Thursday, February 9, 11:00 am – 12:00 pm. Register here.
• Thursday, March 8, 11:00 am – 12:00 pm. Register here.

Want to know how to submit a successful application? That’s right here!

• Thursday, February 16, 11:00 am – 12:00 pm. Register here.
• Tuesday, March 13, 11:00 am – 12:00 pm. Register here.

For the application and other supporting documents about the application process, check out our web site. 

IN-PERSON!

When: Monday, February 6, 10:00 am – 11:30 am

Where: Community Foundation of the Eastern Shore

1324 Belmont Avenue, Suite 401 – Salisbury, MD  21804

• Register here.

When: Tuesday, February 7, 10:30 am – 12:00 noon

Where: Prince George’s County Public Library – Hyattsville

Conference Room

6530 Adelphi Road – Hyattsville, MD  20782

• Register here.

When: Wednesday, February 8, 10:00 am – 11:30 am

Where: Maryland Nonprofits – Silver Spring Office

8720 Georgia Avenue, Suite 303 – Silver Spring, MD  20910

• Register here.

When: Thursday, February 9, 1:30 pm – 3:00 pm

Where: Queen Anne’s County Public Library – Kent Island Branch

200 Library Circle – Stevensville, MD  21666

• Register here.

PHONE AND EMAIL!

Finally, never hesitate to get in touch! Here’s our contact information.

My work with the CVC is not solo.  I am partnering with Chesapeake Helps and  an AmeriCorps*VISTA member, who is with the MD-DC Campus Compact program!  It is always exciting and motivating to work with fellow AmeriCorps members, especially if we are affiliated with separate programs.  This is another reason why Volunteer Maryland partners with so many institutions.   Each of us brings something unique and valuable to the table; a special salsa if you will.  Some organizations are tomatoes of environmental stewardship. Others are bell peppers for quality education, jalapenos for economic opportunity, cilantro for disaster services, or onions for healthy futures.  Blended together, we produce a “service salsa” that  our communities can dip into.   I personally love salsa and practically eat it every other day…but I digress.

The specific mission statements for Volunteer Maryland, Maryland nonprofits, government agencies, and schools differ from one another, but our ultimate goal of bettering our communities is the same.   We’re always looking for new “ingredients” to add so visit our website to learn more about  how you can become involved.  I don’t want to force you to join our salsa mix, but man, you’re missing out.  For those of you already in the mix ¡Disfruta de su salsa (enjoy your salsa)!

Here are just three of the “take aways” I left with:

1)  “The Big Pic”  I am sure you are familiar with the adage, “A picture speaks a thousand words.”  Heather recommends brushing up on those “point and shoot” skills.  She suggests a webpage  have big, rotating pictures at the top, with a one sentence caption in large font.  The digital age we live in inundates us with information.  Good pictures cut through the “noise” while capturing our attention.  I am including this  link because after I watched it I thought, “OK, even I could probably make a video.” Kodachrome We do live in the digital age.

2)  “Quality over Quantity”  Heather painted a realistic picture of the time demands of managing social media.  She pointed out one of the biggest fallacies is that CEOs, managers, executive boards,  etc. frequently have the impression that these tools are free.  In fact, while many do not require much investment of money, to be done well, most require large investments of time.  Heather provided us with judicious guidelines to use to choose where to put our focus.  She recommends, for example, writing great blogs posts rather than having mediocre newsletters, webpages, and Facebook pages.

3)  “Go Mobile” More than 80 percent of us use cell phones.  This use cuts across the socio-economic lines other technologies don’t cross.  And, according to a recent survey by the PEW Research Center, approximately 35 percent of adults use smart phones.  Within the next three years, the number of us  viewing webpages on mobile devices will surpass those using  desk tops.  Heather recommends we start thinking now about mobile design.  Smaller viewing screens mean less room for text.

What social media tools do you use?  How about the “M” word. . .metrics. . .do you measure engagement?  I’ll save that for another time.

And though we lost in the end, we know we’ll be back fighting again next year.  We know we’ll don our purple and share high fives and touchdown dances.  We will support our team; that’s just what we do.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what drives this kind of commitment.  We see it in different forms throughout our lives.  Some people are so proud of their colleges that they wear their rings for the rest of time.  Other people take pride in their hometowns; even if they move across the country, everyone will know where they are from and they will never try to cover up their accents.  What is it that drives this attachment?  What makes us paint our faces and wear fan-staches?

It’s people.  One way or another, it’s all about relationships.  I started watching football not for a love (or even an interest) in the game, but because Baltimore is such a Ravens town.  By learning about the game, I could participate more with friends, neighbors, and colleagues.  And, over time, I’ve grown to enjoy the game for itself and take pride in the Ravens.

But if no one had wanted to watch the games, if no one had invited me to football parties, I would have had little incentive to turn on the television on a Sunday.  (Full disclosure, in case it wasn’t clear: I am about the furthest thing from a jock that one could imagine.  I actually chose my college, in part, because it didn’t have a football team.)  Fortunately, people did want to watch and they were kind enough to invite me to join them.

It’s the same for volunteer programs.  Maybe there’s a potential volunteer who isn’t particularly interested in volunteering with your organization.  She’s just not into planting trees or tutoring children or visiting the homebound.  But maybe she is interested in making friends, learning something new, and/or being involved in “something bigger.”

People volunteer for all different kinds of reasons; everyone has a different motivation.  Some are passionate about the mission of the organization or the client population.  Others are looking to develop new skills.  Some people volunteer out of a sense of duty, while others volunteer because they think it will be fun.  No matter the reason, we want them to volunteer – just like the Ravens want everyone to be their fans, no matter what drew them to the game in the first place.

Last week I mused a bit on the value of relationships.  It’s worth coming back to regularly.  How do you drive commitment?  Relationships.  Want a sustainable volunteer program?  Build relationships.  If you do, then your volunteers will keep coming back.  Just like Ravens’ fans.

Students, educators, and community members arrived bright and early to march from the Caroline County Courthouse to the Parks and Recreation center. The purpose of this event was to remember what Martin Luther King, Jr. (and many others) started in the mid 1950s for global and domestic civil rights, and to also educate younger generations about this important part of American history.  Although I could not feel my toes, I enjoyed holding the hand of an eight year old girl and answering her questions about who Martin Luther King, Jr. was and why we were marching…specifically in the cold.  Nevertheless, we made it to the community center for the second part of the event.

At the community center, volunteers had set up a dozen stations for participants to visit.  Since I have a background in Black studies, I was placed in the “Reflections” room, that contained many photos of Dr. King, Rosa Parks, and history of Black voting rights (and prohibitions).  I am a history buff, which is why I jumped at the chance to volunteer for this event.  I was like a little kid in candy store!  Another reason I love service, you get to work within your interests and share them with others.

What did you do for MLK Day?

The MLK Day of Service is both invitation and  celebration.  The invitation is to serve, ongoing, not just for one Monday in January.  It is a celebration of all the calls to action that are answered, every day.  Find a place to serve in your community today.  You can start with the YMCA, your spiritual community or  volunteer center.  Next, invite a friend or family member to join you like Martin Luther King, Jr. did.  You could host a Sunday Supper.    Greater DC Cares and WPGC teamed up to work on this project:  video-mlk-day-of-service.  Your legacy of service can extend beyond your lifetime just as Martin Luther King, Jr.’s has.

One of the great things about Joint Training Days is the ability to spend a full day working on the volunteer program.  I definitely understand how challenging it can be to get out of one’s office or the day-to-day operations!  It’s far too uncommon to spend a day planning and evaluating progress when you’re already stretched thin.  So, we try to make sure that the Joint Training Days are useful – that it is worth the time and energy it takes away from the day-to-day.

So, last week, we focused on two big areas: evaluation and fundraising.  At VM, we spend a significant amount of time on program evaluation.  We know that asking good questions can help us to get at programmatic effectiveness and, ideally, help us make decisions and take actions to make our program better.  On this Joint Training Day, each VMC and Site Supervisor were able to spend a couple of hours really looking at the development of their volunteer programs, which should lead to good planning and prioritizing for the remainder of the AmeriCorps service year.  It’s these kinds of efforts that we hope help make the volunteer programs strong and sustainable.

Another thing we know we need, particularly when looking at program sustainability, is money.  That’s where our second workshop of the day came in.  For me, this was really interesting.  We had a great guest trainer join us.  Jan Kary facilitated a workshop that explained some basics of fund raising and helped us to see some of the overlap between coordinating volunteers and raising funds.

Now, as AmeriCorps members, Volunteer Maryland Coordinators are not involved in fund raising, though many of the Site Supervisors are heavily involved in development in all its forms.  One of Jan’s points was for everyone to “keep up their antennae,” to be aware of some of the linkages between volunteers and donors.  In a case study that a small group of us were assigned, we were to explore what we would do if we received a call from a large company looking to participate in a day of volunteering.  How would we approach the conversation?  Were there avenues for a longer-term relationship?  With whom in our own organizations would we talk to about donations that may come with or after the volunteer day?

One big take-away from the day at large was the value of relationships.  We have to evaluate the satisfaction of our volunteers so we can keep them engaged and serving.  We have to nurture relationships to engage volunteers and donors.  We want to think about our messaging with our community rather than to the clients we serve.

So much of our work is about relationships and this training day really reinforced that.   It’s really hard to provide training for a group of people who are doing such different things and have such varying levels of interests and experiences, but my hope is that everyone can learn a little something new each time we meet.  We can all benefit by thinking about our relationships, whether focusing on developing programs or recruiting volunteers or raising funds.

I recommend you spend a bit of time thinking about the relationships that you nurture (or need to nurture!).  How are you ensuring that your volunteers are satisfied?  How are you keeping donors engaged in meeting your mission beyond writing checks?  What relationships are you building to better serve your clients?

Volunteer,  that’s what!  Even if you can dedicate two hours one weekend, take advantage of the opportunity to concentrate on others.  Performing direct service is reciprocal in that you give your time and return you develop whether you mean to or not.  I can speak from experience that when you start concentrating on others, you find your motivation.  It’s never too late to start a service journey.  If you’re looking for volunteer opportunities, check out the Corporation for National and Community Service.  On their website you can learn more about volunteerism and search opportunities that interest you.  Monday is Martin Luther King, Jr. day, so why not serve for a few hours on your day off.  What do you have to lose?

I was introduced to storytelling as a tool, i.e. Andy Goodman and Kivi Leroux Miller, last year during pre-service training for Volunteer Maryland Coordinators. Other leaders in the story-telling arena include Michael Margolis and Seth Godin. Telling an engaging, evolving story is a technique invaluable to nonprofits and volunteer coordinators. Seth points to TOMS Shoes as an exemplary nonprofit that gets ambassadors to spread the word by telling a compelling story. Is your story an invitation to join the cause and spread the word?

I was so inspired by the biographical stories on Michael’s blog and website that I experimented with writing my resume as a story last spring. Recently I registered for his webinar, How to Tell Your Story with a Better Bio. I definitely need some guidance. My attempts during the holidays to practice the story crafting techniques Patrice taught us to were less than successful. And, the Maryland Nonprofits’ 19th Annual Conference is coming up in March. Michael Margolis is the keynote speaker! His story: “I’m left-handed, color-blind, and eat more chocolate than the average human.” I am still working on mine. . .

On a recent trip out to Washington County I had the opportunity to meet Bernadette Wagner with Volunteer Washington County. With a user friendly web site, and office space at the American Red Cross Offices in Hagerstown, it is getting easier to not only find volunteers, but for volunteers to find meaningful service.

Realizing that there was a need, Bernadette, and co-founder Roxanne Ober, got to work getting community and business leaders on board to go from idea to reality. Getting started is hard. We can pretty much all attest to that; think about the simplest act of getting out of bed in the morning when the covers feel so comfy, to the seeming insurmountable feat of making your community a better place. That is what Bernadette and Roxanne have started: a way for great need and great people to come together and make Washington County a better place to live, work, and play.

But they need our help. Great ideas need community input to grow, so if you live in and around Washington County go to their web site and use their services. It’s free! That’s right, they offer you the opportunity to change the world and it will not cost you a cent. Tell your neighbors, friends, family about this great resource, and if you are a nonprofit in Washington County, post your volunteer opportunities on their web site. Tell the story of how your organization found volunteers through Volunteer Washington County and the impact they are making. This is really a no-brainer. Our communities are facing difficult challenges, and with a few clicks, one person can begin to make a difference. Thank you Bernadette and Roxanne and let’s get going, Washington County!