FEMA has released a publication called “Are You Ready?” that covers the basics of disaster planning. Their suggestion is to start by assessing the likelihood or risk of various types of catastrophe. The booklet even contains a worksheet that you can fill out to help you with this task. Much of the document is geared toward individual families but can easily be adapted for organizations. For instance, the section on maintaining family communication can easily be changed to maintaining organizational communication. One specific suggestion is to create cards with contact information for every member of the family, or, in this case, every member of the organization. Once again, the key is taking suggestions for civilians and reworking them to fit your organization.

Another great resource is The Points of Light Foundation’s publication “Ready to Respond.” The booklet serves as a guide for readying volunteer organizations to be responders in catastrophic situations. However, even if your agency is not a responder, the document still has some very useful information. For instance, there is an easy-to-use checklist to complete to assess an organization’s readiness. These are issues that any agency should be thinking about, just in case.

A sampling of the questions include:

• Is there a person and a backup assigned to be in charge when disaster strikes?
• Is there an evacuation plan in place?
• Do you have cooperation agreements with other volunteer agencies nearby?
• How will you function if power and/or lines of communication are down?
• Is there a plan for disseminating public information?
• Do you have a plan for involving volunteers in time of need?

Of course, if your organization is considering becoming part of your local community’s response plan, then the “Ready to Respond” document is a must-read. It will give you a good gauge on what your organization should do to be better prepared if your community faces extreme circumstances.

In closing, it’s important to remember the old proverb: “Adversity is a fact of life. It can’t be controlled. What we can control is how we react to it.”

For further reading:

• The Points of Lights Foundation’s “Ready to Respond” at Energize Inc’s website
• FEMA’s “Are You Ready?”

VolunteerHub is the latest version of a system first conceived in 1996 to facilitate volunteer registration for the University of Michigan’s campus chapter of Habitat for Humanity. Since its humble beginnings, the service has grown to offer a wide range of features for event registration and volunteer workforce management. Today VolunteerHub connects people and purposes for a variety of non-profit, educational, and commercial organizations. Visit VolunteerHub’s website at www.volunteerhub.com.

Author: Shawn Kendrick – VolunteerHub.com

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Effects of the economy are continuing to change how the world works on many levels. For nonprofits, one of these adjustments comes in the form of exploring alternative funding sources. As such, the idea of social entrepreneurship is beginning to take a firmer hold. J. Gregory Dees, founder of the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, explains this movement: “It combines the passion of a social mission with an image of business-like discipline, innovation, and determination commonly associated with, for instance, the high-tech pioneers of Silicon Valley.”

The buzzword is a somewhat recent development (within the last few decades), but the practice of social entrepreneurship is not new. According to brighthub.com, it can be traced back as early as the 18th century and includes legendary figures such as Florence Nightingale, who established the first nursing school; Maria Montessori, famous for her early education methods; and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, known for his initiatives to pull the United States out of the Great Depression.

A recent Courier Post Online article gives some examples of present-day social entrepreneurship successes:

• Established in 1963, Seattle’s Pioneer Human Services achieves its mission of helping those with mental health, substance abuse, or criminal histories with profits made from several endeavors. Business activities such as warehousing, food service, manufacturing, and distribution now fund a whopping 99 percent of the assistance program.
• A Zen Buddhist meditation group led by Bernard Tetsugen Glassman, a former aerospace engineer, started Greyston Bakery in 1982. The Yonkers, New York-based business takes the traditional bake sale concept of fund raising to a whole new level. Its website states, “We don’t hire people to bake brownies. We bake brownies to hire people.” Here, the sale of brownies funds such projects as affordable child care, health care for HIV patients, housing for homeless individuals, and technology education. The bakery provides desserts to top-notch New York City restaurants and also has become the sole-source for brownies used in Ben and Jerry’s ice cream.
• In 2009, Columbus, Ohio-area Lutheran Social Services invested $40,000 in its Freshbox Catering company. The program looked to the business world for leadership and hired an investment analyst to head up the program. The result was $130,000 in sales the first year. While the fact that the program is paying for itself is amazing, Freshbox is also achieving its greater mission of providing jobs and training for the homeless.

Various sectors are now getting involved with social entrepreneurship. Investment companies such as Prudential and Imprint Capital Advisors are taking notice and looking for opportunities to inject capital into companies with worthwhile agendas. Higher education has also taken note. For example, the Social Entrepreneur Corps, founded in 2005, provides college students and new graduates opportunities in developing countries and has instituted partnerships with schools such as University of Notre Dame, Duke University, and Columbia University. Media is shining a light on social entrepreneurship, too; Bloomberg Businessweek is bringing this approach to the forefront in its third-annual 2011 Social Entrepreneurs Roundup. As per its website:  “Here’s what we are looking for: entrepreneurs creating profitable, scalable companies to solve social problems. We want businesses with social missions baked into their operations, not tacked on as extras. We want companies that can demonstrate results, both in the marketplace and in their missions.”

As evidenced by Greyston Bakery and many other organizations, this blending of “marketplace… and missions” can be a recipe for success.

For further reading:

“Business Ventures Can Fund Charity Groups” – Courier Post Online

Seeking America’s Most Promising Social Entrepreneurs” – Bloomberg BusinessWeek

VolunteerHub is the latest version of a system first conceived in 1996 to facilitate volunteer registration for the University of Michigan’s campus chapter of Habitat for Humanity. Since its humble beginnings, the service has grown to offer a wide range of features for event, event registration, and volunteer workforce management. Today VolunteerHub connects people and purposes for a variety of non-profit, educational, and commercial organizations.

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PAUL HAWKEN’S COMMENCEMENT ADDRESS                                            

 Class of 2009, University of Portland, May 3rd, 2009

“Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.”   

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate, lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” Boy, no pressure there.

But let’s begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 2009: you are going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation – but not one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute that statement. Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem to have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water, soil, or air, and don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really good food – but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING. The earth couldn’t afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school. It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data. But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet Adrienne Rich wrote, “So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.” There could be no better description. Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses, companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day: climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger, conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers, children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns, artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students, incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets, doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the President of the United States of America, and as the writer David James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such a huge way.

There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform, rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. “One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice,” is Mary Oliver’s description of moving away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely unknown – Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood – and their goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty. But for the first time in history a group of people organized themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would never receive direct or indirect benefit.. And today tens of millions of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits, civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, and non-governmental organizations, of companies who place social and environmental justice at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this effort is unparalleled in history.

The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. What do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed regulators on how to save failed assets. Think about this: we are the only species on this planet without full employment. Brilliant. We have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in real time than to renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago, and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is to become two cells. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90 percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the universe – exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science would discover that each living creature was a “little universe, formed of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute and as numerous as the stars of heaven.”

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body? Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. Second question: who is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. What I want you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the stars come out every night, and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened, not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, challenging, stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic, not the dreamer. Hopefulness only makes sense when it is doesn’t make sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your life depends on it.

Related link:

Blessed Unrest, Paul Hawken

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Last November, when we reported on the results of our annual nonprofit economic survey, we warned, “Fasten Your Seatbelts: It’s Going to Be a Bumpy Giving Season.” As 2008 ended and 2009 began, we saw a deluge of news reports about the economy’s impact, including its effect on nonprofits. Given the severity of the downturn and the number of stories about organizations adversely affected by it, we decided to do a follow-up nonprofit economic survey.

We invited Newsletter subscribers associated with 501(c)(3) public charities and private foundations to participate in the survey. Readers representing 2,979 organizations took the survey on-line between March 2 and March 16, 2009. Here’s what they told us.

Bumpy Giving Season and New Year, Indeed

We asked, “Did total contributions to your organization increase, decrease, or stay about the same between October 2008 and February 2009, compared to the same period a year earlier?” Some 52 percent of organizations reported a decrease. That figure was significantly higher than the 35 percent who reported lower contributions for January-September 2008, which was nearly double the 19 percent who reported a decline for January-September 2007

Change in Contributions

Some 31 percent of organizations stated that contributions had dropped “modestly,” and 21 percent said that they had fallen “greatly.” An equal number-71 percent-of organizations for which contributions had dropped cited “Gifts from individuals were smaller” and “Fewer individuals gave” as causes of the decrease.

Grantmakers also felt the pinch. About a third (31 percent) said they gave less money in grants over the five-month period than during the same period a year earlier.

A total of 59 percent of organizations reported increased demand for their services between October 2008 and February 2009. Some 32 percent said demand had increased “modestly,” and 27 percent said it had grown “greatly.”

Eight percent of organizations reported that they were in imminent danger of folding because of financial reasons.

How Nonprofits Are Coping

In addition to learning what charities and foundations were experiencing, we wanted to find out how they were responding to the crisis. Only 35 percent of organizations had cut their 2009 budgets from 2008 levels. That more had not done so, however, reflected more of an increased need for their services than prospects for raising money to meet that demand.

Of the organizations that had cut their budgets, 57 percent had reduced services, 45 percent had frozen staff salaries, 37 percent had imposed hiring freezes, and 30 percent had resorted to layoffs. Other strategies included salary reduction (20 percent), reduction in employee benefits (20 percent), and reduction in operating hours (13 percent).

Although a majority (57 percent) of grantmakers reported that they had not altered their grantmaking practices or guidelines in response to the downturn, the remaining grantmaking organizations (less the 2 percent who did not know) reported that they had:

• Cut back on types of programs funded-17%
• Reduced amounts of payouts they had previously committed to-8%
• Stopped accepting grant applications-7%
• Only accepted applications from organizations they had funded before-5%
• Increased grantmaking specifically to help grantees cope with the economy-5%
• Did not make payouts they had previously committed to-1%

Read the survey report

More Follow-up This Year

Because of the severity of the current crisis, we will conduct another nonprofit economic survey next month. The results will be published in the August issue of the Newsletter. We’ll conduct our annual nonprofit economic survey in October. Those results will appear in our December issue.

Courtesy of GuideStar

Author:
Suzanne E. Coffman, May 2009
© 2009, GuideStar USA, Inc.

Suzanne Coffman is GuideStar’s director of communications and editor of the Newsletter. Chuck McLean, GuideStar’s vice president for research, and Carol Brouwer, research assistant, conducted, analyzed, and prepared the report on the March 2009 nonprofit economic survey.

Related Links:

The Quiet Crisis: The Impact of the Economic Downturn on the Nonprofit Sector

Volunteer Engagement and Coordination in Tough Times

Nonprofit Survival Course:  Lessons from the Recession

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• Use volunteer management software to streamline their operations
• Maximize their organization’s website by posting volunteer applications, newsletters, position descriptions, photos,  videos, and more
• Utilize social networking sites
• Post and update volunteer positions on online recruitment sites
• Take advantage of free online software and tools like wikis and Google docs
• Blog and Twitter
• Employ multiple methods to communicate with volunteers including text messaging, Skype, and list-serves.

If you don’t have the staff or skills to manage this brave new world, you can improve your chances of success by adding tech volunteers to your team.  And, these individuals don’t  have to live in your community to be helpful!

Before you go in search of help, be sure to download TechSoup’s free manual,  Working with Technical Volunteers: A Manual for NPOs. This recently updated guide includes the latest tech specs to use during volunteer interviews. The manual also includes comprehensive worksheets, sample applications, volunteer contracts, and questionnaires.

Once you’ve developed your plan and written your volunteer position descriptions, you”ll want to begin your search.

Here are a few suggestions for building your team and finding individuals with the right skills:

1. Contact your local volunteer center, RSVP, or national volunteer matching programs such as http://www.volunteermatch.com or http://www.techsoup.org.
2. Get permission to put a notice on an electronic bulletin board or get included in an in-house newsletter at local corporations and high-tech companies.
3. Check with instructors at area high schools, colleges or technical schools for qualified students who may want some actual experience designing web sites and working on similar projects.
4. Try contacting university departments and campus organizations related to technology such as engineering and computer science.
5. Ask  colleagues at other nonprofits in  your community where they go for technical volunteers.
6. Ask board members and volunteers if they know of someone or if they can tell you where to post a job description.
7. User groups or clubs meet either in person or online to discuss different types of hardware and software. Look for them in your local computer newspaper (if you have one) or on the Internet. Yahoo! and Google user groups, Craigslist.org, and Yahoo’s hardware user groups are good places to start.

Related articles:

“Engaging Techie Volunteers,”  Judicious Web, April 23, 2009

“Technology Acceleration: Grab Hold and Hang On,”  Susan Ellis, Energizeinc.com, June 2007

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• NYC Service had 30% more visitors in February 2009 than in February 2008.
• The Philadelphia Chapter of Big Brothers Big Sisters had a 25% increase in inquires about mentoring from February 2008.
• The Taproot Foundation, a San Francisco-based organization that places skilled professionals in volunteer positions, had more people sign up on one day earlier this year than in an entire month a year ago.

Benefits of volunteering:

• Volunteering gives people something to do while job hunting that allows them to feel good about themselves.
• Volunteering is a way to stay active and stay in touch.
• Volunteering fills a gap in one’s job history and answers the questions, “What have you been doing?”
• Volunteering can lead to new job opportunities.
• Hard economic times give people a renewed sense of compassion and a better understanding of how others are struggling.
• Volunteering relieves stress from constantly thinking about economic matters.
• Because of the current economic climate, teens have become more aware of the needs of others and are volunteering.

The impact of increased number of volunteers on nonprofit organizations

• Smaller organizations without volunteer coordinators are struggling to absorb the influx of volunteers many of whom are highly skilled.
• Funding cuts can make nonprofits less able to take advantage of volunteer support.

Courtesy of Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory.

Adapted from:

“From Ranks of Jobless, a Flood of Volunteers,” by Julie Bosman, in the New York Times, March 16, 2009

“Some US jobless find hope and solace as volunteers” by Andrew Stern in RUETERS, February 24, 2009.

Related links:

“How Will the Economic Crisis Affect Volunteering”   by Susan Ellis, energizeinc.com, November 2008.

“Turning Down Volunteers”  by MBA Publishing, volunteertoday.com, May 2009.

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As they move into roles in service and volunteering, older adults like these are discovering that what they know is just as important as how much time they can give. Their help couldn’t have come at a better time. With demand for nonprofit services skyrocketing, fundraising and revenues are way down. Some experts predict as many as 100,000 nonprofit organizations could run out of money for their programs completely.

The recession has spurred more interest in volunteering among older adults, particularly among boomers, says Jill Friedman Fixler, a nonprofit consultant and co-author of “Boomer Volunteer Engagement.”

“This is a group with abundant skills and profound circles of influence and they believe they can have an impact in their community right now,” she says.

That was the idea for Chesnut. After leaving his job as a retail sales executive with Procter & Gamble, Chesnut, 64, spent several years as a counselor for small business owners. When he moved to Denver a few years ago, he decided to focus on helping nonprofits. As he explored his options, Chesnut was struck by Denver’s homeless problem. Millions of dollars were being spent pulling families out of shelters, but programs that were trying to keep families out of them to begin with were underfunded. After organizing a coalition of local nonprofits, Chesnut began a research project that eventually led to a successful $600,000 grant.

“Coming from the corporate world and working with large retailers, you learn to look for common interest,” he says. “What I did was put numbers to the problem.”

Nancy Benyamin, a volunteer coordinator for Jewish Family Service who worked with Chesnut, says he’s an example of the increasing importance of skilled volunteers to nonprofits that want to expand their capacity in lean times.

“Mike really enabled us to apply for this large grant,” Benyamin says. “Without his assistance, the new funding just wouldn’t be happening.”

For Ross, 72, the serious needs she saw as a volunteer for SeniorsPlus in Lewiston, Maine, made her rethink the decision to step away from healthcare completely. After retiring as director of nursing for a state Medicare program, Ross signed up to help answer a referral phone line for SeniorsPlus, an agency that helps the local aging population get services and support. The organization was so impressed by her knowledge of medicine and healthcare benefits that they asked her to take on a new role as a counselor, and even get additional training. Seeing the healthcare system from the point of view of at-risk seniors has been an eye-opener, Ross says.

“[In my old job], I rarely was aware whether the patient was insured or not,” she says. “Now I’m on the other side of the fence saying, ‘Let’s get this person the coverage they need.’”

For Hall, a Hughes Aircraft retiree, volunteering for Family Assessment, Counseling & Education Services (F.A.C.E.S.) was a way to shield some families from the challenges his own family faced when his father, an alcoholic, left. After reviewing Hall’s background, Mary O’Connor, the executive director at the Southern California nonprofit, asked him to set up a new accounting system for the cash-strapped group. Five months later, the books are on the way to being balanced and Hall has become a strong F.A.C.E.S. supporter. He says his experience getting involved on a skilled basis, while frustrating at times, has been extraordinary.

“If my mother had access to this kind of thing, I can see how much better off we would have been,” he says with emotion. “But I had no idea that the kind of challenges this organization faces even existed.”

To find skilled volunteer opportunities, visit www.VolunteerMatch.org.

Courtesy of ARAcontent

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Many in the GI Generation were shaped by two world wars and a great depression, and so were their workplace values.  These are the values that have defined hospital volunteer programs for more than 50 years–serving on a regular-ongoing basis, performing repetitive, lower skilled, highly defined roles. An annual banquet and a pin for their service hours were standard and desirable forms of recognition.  A pink pinafore was a source of pride.  Now the youngest members of the GI Generation are 85 years of age.

What is your healthcare institution doing to create new systems and new opportunities for the next volunteer generation?

Your volunteer pool is dwindling and you are not alone.  But looking to younger volunteers to work in “old” systems won’t succeed.   This next generation says they prefer short-term commitments.  They want meaningful work and opportunities to use their professional skills.  They want autonomy, self-direction and lots of choice when volunteering.  They are time-poor and you are competing for their recreational time and time with friends and loved ones.  What they want in exchange is a valuable experience-reflective of their ideals, their skills, and their values!

By 2010, nearly 64 million Boomers will be poised to retire.  Because of the long-term effects of the current recession, many will have to work, but not all of them full time.  Research tells us almost two-thirds of Boomers plan to volunteer. Serving community becomes more important to them as they age.   They are willing to roll up their sleeves to solve society’s problems, but it may be between jobs or on a project basis.

What can you do to attract this next volunteer generation?   Consider…

• Hire a professional volunteer director–preferably one who has completed their Certified Administrator of Volunteer Services (CAVS) designation through the American Hospital Association.  Or support your existing director in getting certified.

• Give your volunteer director time and resources to create new volunteer management systems.

• Expand volunteer opportunities for highly skilled individuals.   Use words like pro bono consultant, team leader, virtual volunteer and entrepreneur words when marketing.

• Train employees to work with a more educated and professionally trained volunteer workforce.   Recognize and compensate them for doing so.

• Create a new range of incentives for a more diverse volunteer team.

Create a win-win for all

An AARP poll found that nearly 54% of volunteers and 48% of non-volunteers would give 15-hours a week if they were provided compensation such as reduced drug costs, gas, and small monthly stipends.   For individuals who have just lost a job and half of their retirement, a stipend (contract labor at below market wages) could create a win-win for all.  The poll also found that the 50+ volunteer workforce could be doubled through small inducements such as learning new things, making friends, and putting career skills to use.

Changing a half century-old volunteer management system requires time and strategic planning.  Current volunteers will need to be brought on board.  And, it will take time to find out what works, change what doesn’t, and make course corrections.

What are the benefits to you?

• Because they are “private citizens,” volunteers are free to advocate on your behalf.

• They extend the budget by providing time philanthropy, and, if managed effectively, can have a large impact on your ability to reach your mission.

• Volunteers have the luxury to concentrate their time and expertise on a particular issue, customer or service area.

• They are an abundant resource that can compliment your workforce.

• Volunteers are twice as likely to donate money as non-volunteers.

Healthcare volunteer programs have been making incremental changes for decades.  But shifting demographics and transformational changes now occurring in our country and healthcare institutions, have made it critical that hospitals make fundamental and meaningful changes in how volunteers are recruited, managed and supported.

Volunteers can improve your hospital’s effectiveness and services to both patients and your community.  Are you ready to succeed with this new talent pool?

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David-Wilson presented his ideas in a session at the 46th annual Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) international fundraising conference in New Orleans. Here’s how to turn your volunteers into development participants:

• Volunteer participation. Volunteers can be a great addition to your fundraising team. Just make sure if they are asking others for gifts, they make one of their own.
• Major gift donations. Try to tackle big gifts early. Use your own board’s participation as examples of campaign giving.
• Volunteer training. Ensure that your volunteer solicitors are properly trained before they ask for gifts. Team your professional fundraisers with volunteers for some role-playing in donation asks.
• Give information. Compile important donor information for your fundraising team. Set up a gift amount to ask for and what that gift amount would do for the campaign.
• Set up success. Everyone needs a boost of confidence. Arrange some telephone solicitations for your volunteers with donors most likely to give. That will put your volunteers on the right foot for in-person asks.
• Provide backup. Volunteers don’t normally ask donors for gifts – so they may lose their confidence at the meeting. Couple volunteers with a professional development staff member who can move in if the volunteer gets too nervous.
• Celebrate successes. Make volunteer solicitors excited about their hard work. Think about building some friendly competition among volunteers by tracking donor visits or the amount raised.

This Tip of the Week is reprinted with permission from The Nonprofit Times Weekly. Go to http://nptimes.com for more information.

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The first e-Postcard filings were due in 2008. For many organizations that missed this deadline, there are only two years left to start complying with the new rule. It is critical to note that organizations that do not file for three consecutive years will automatically lose their tax-exempt status. If you work with a nonprofit organization — especially a small one that never had to file with the IRS before — check with your leadership team to see if they are aware of this new form. And help spread the word about the e-Postcard to other small nonprofits in your town.

How to File
The e-Postcard can only be filled out and filed online, but you do not need any special software to do so. You just need access to a computer and the Internet. Visit www.irs.gov/charities and click on “Annual Electronic Filing Requirement for Small Exempt Organizations” to learn more about the e-Postcard and to access the form.

It requires a few pieces of identifying information about your organization and should only take a few minutes to fill out. But it is important to take the time to do so in order to protect your organization’s tax-exempt status.

Know Your Deadline
Unlike personal income taxes, the e-Postcard does not have a universal deadline. Instead, it depends on the closing date of each organization’s tax year, so your deadline may be different from another nonprofit in your town.

The rule is that the e-Postcard is due by the 15th day of the fifth month after the close of the organization’s tax year. For example, if your tax year closes on Dec. 31, the form is due by the following May 15.

More Information
For the latest information for tax-exempt organizations, sign up for the EO Update, a regular e-newsletter delivered directly to your inbox, at www.irs.gov/charities. To get more information about maintaining tax-exempt status, go to the IRS Web-based training program, www.stayexempt.org.

Courtesy of ARAcontent

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