Image of Volunteering
Getting the Attention You Want from the Media
Through several years of working in public relations (PR) and journalism, I've heard many publicity officers of social and sporting clubs and PR officers of non-profit organisations complain they are not getting 'enough exposure': 'I sent a release to The Times last week, and they didn't publish it' or 'I e-mailed a three-page letter on the annual general meeting two days ago, and the radio station didn't put a word of it to air'.
Having studied both public relations and journalism, I know that newspapers and the radio/television media, especially outside of capital cities, are always on the lookout for good local items of interest. I also know that there are rules that the media themselves must follow, in order to meet their own time lines.
If we learn to submit a press release using the right procedure, and if we do it right, it will go to air or be put into print. That is the basis of this article.
A 1960 Look at 'The Citizen Volunteer'
You can tell the age of the book, The Citizen Volunteer , by the pronoun in its subtitle: His Responsibility, Role and Opportunity in Modern Society. The really ironic part is that the book was copyrighted in 1960 by the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW)!
NCJW produced the book as part of the celebration of its 65th anniversary. They signed on Nathan E. Cohen, the Dean of the School of Applied Social Sciences at Case Western Reserve University as editor and he, in turn, asked seventeen different writers to contribute chapters. In this article, we examine what these social observers were thinking about volunteering just before the turmoil of the '60s decade - and how right or wrong they were in the last section of the book entitled "Looking Ahead."
Thinking the Unthinkable: Are We Using the Wrong Model for Volunteer Work?
Right now in volunteer management we are facing a rising tide: the increasing preference among potential volunteers for short-term, episodic volunteering. By all guesses, in practically all countries, the number of volunteers preferring a shorter term commitment is rising and there isn’t much on the futures forecast to give one hope for any reversal in this trend. We need to step back and take a concerted look at what we are asking volunteers to do and how we are asking them to do it.
Volunteering as a Reflection of Life, or Wanted: Volunteer Toad Callers
One of the most fascinating things about volunteerism throughout history is that it represents the basic human response to "can you help?" It also reflects the culture, values and state of the times in which it occurs. What kinds of things are people willing to do to meet needs outside of their own? What does this tell us about our values? Our worries? Our hopes and fears?
In this issue we will share some of the original ways in which people both ask for volunteers as well as volunteer. We will also invite readers to share their own examples of wild and wonderful volunteer opportunities around the globe!
Earning Power and Respect for Volunteer Services: A Dozen Action Steps
The Internal Battle
by Steve McCurley
Niccolo Machiavelli is famous for writing a book entitled The Prince, which is about gaining and exercising Power. "Power" is something that you don't hear discussed much among volunteer managers, since most of them don't have it. In fact, the closest the typical volunteer manager gets to studying "Power" is if they encounter the works of David McClelland and learn about "affiliators," "achievers," and the "power-oriented," and then make use of that knowledge in interviewing and matching volunteers to positions....
The External Battle
by Susan J. Ellis
There are two reasons to take the search for power outside your agency's walls:
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It allows you to join forces with colleagues and collective action always carries more clout.
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If you gain the respect of others, your own organization is forced to view you differently, too.
Again, as a profession, we tend to resist making waves. The trouble is that often we won't even get into the water! There are as many consequences to doing nothing as to doing something. The question is which consequences are more painful? .....
Volunteer Management: An Overlooked Strategy in Improving the Elections Process
The fiasco of the United States Presidential Election 2000 in Florida made a mockery of a democracy's fundamental activity: voting. Mountains of paperwork analyzing what went wrong with election technology or election laws have accumulated in election offices, legislatures and courtrooms around the nation. "Hanging chads" and "recounts" became household expressions - and justly so. Some elections districts had error rates as high as 5 percent, far greater than President George W. Bush's margin of victory. Technological and legal issues clearly needed attention to revive Americans' flagging confidence in the elections system after the controversy, as post-election polls showed.
What most of the analysis by government task forces, academics and pundits largely has overlooked, however, has been the role poor poll worker management played in causing problems on Election Day. The evidence, which ranged from the comic to the shocking, was everywhere. In one case, a poll worker accidentally took a bag of ballots home after mistaking it for his laundry. Poll workers in other Florida voting districts improperly turned away voters from the polls, mishandled machinery that led to vote-calculation errors, or weren't able to instruct voters on how to properly operate voting machines. Incidents like these indicate that, in addition to modernizing election equipment and updating old laws, governments should take a cue from the business community in recognizing "people problems" in their organizations. "Senior executives are beginning to devote the necessary attention to understand the links between human activities and desired business outcomes," Jessica Korn of the Gallup Organization said:
In terms of elections, the "business outcomes" are reducing the number of errors made during elections and making voting as painless as possible for voters. And while the business world can help point out the malady, the volunteer community can shed light on actionable solutions. The nature of poll workers' jobs makes volunteer-management principles in four areas - attitude and motivation, recruitment, training, and evaluation - especially apropos for improving the election process.
After dispensing with some helpful definitions, this paper will describe common election routines and how to apply volunteer-management best practices. The goal isn't to lambaste elections administrators - many of whom have made admirable innovations in election management or face significant barriers to reform - but to suggest ways they might better meet the needs and expectations of the public.
Volunteering as a Lifestyle Choice: Negotiating Self-Identities in Japan
Directors of volunteer programs tend to view volunteering from a management perspective, mainly because they're responsible for effectively managing people and resources. Volunteering, however, can be viewed from the perspective of other disciplines as well and this article is a useful reminder that looking at something from all directions is more enlightening than simply examining one.
Ethnology (the discipline, not the magazine of that name) is "the science which treats of races and people, and of their relations to one another, their distinctive physical and other characteristics." It is practiced by sociologists and anthropologists and you've probably been exposed to at least some of it through the works of people such as Margaret Mead. Ethnology tends to examine the relationships among individuals and their culture, with some emphasis on how people fit into that culture. One of the tenets of ethnology is that cultures tend to develop models of appropriate roles for its members, with some classic examples being the shaman, the warrior, the clan mother, etc.
Lynne Nakano's article examines volunteering in a residential neighborhood outside of Yokohama, Japan.
The Sydney Olympic and Paralympic Games Volunteer Program
David Brettell was the Manager of Venue Staffing and Volunteers for the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games ('SOCOG"). This article includes excerpts from keynote speeches David Brettell gave at three volunteerism conferences in July and August 2001, in Singapore and in Adelaide and Fremantle in Australia.
Excerpts from Speech:
You have, I'm sure, heard the expression "from dreams come realities." Sydney has just been through the dream and the experience of its life, as have all the citizens of my country. A slightly cynical Australia went "soft" in September 2000 and embraced the Olympics and Paralympics with exactly what they needed: PASSION. We were genuinely "touched" by the Games and what they represent. Our CEO says it much better than I. He says that Sydney and Australia "brushed the sky" for that short period in September last year.
Volunteers from all round Australia and some from overseas as well were amazingly supportive of the Games. The Sydney Games saw the largest gathering of volunteers at one time, in one place, in Australia's post-war history: 62,000 volunteers (47,000 for the Olympics and 15,000 for the Paralympics) gave their time, skills, enthusiasm, warmth, and never forgetting their passion, to make the Games a great success. They received lots of acknowledgment and recognition but nothing matched what was given to them at the Closing Ceremony of the Games. On the 1st of October, 2000, Mr. Samaranch (CEO) awarded them the ultimate recognition, calling them "the most dedicated and wonderful Games volunteers ever."