Acronym

Thanks for that wonderful introduction, Lisa. I look forward to interacting with the other Acronym readers.

I'm excited to begin this foray into the association blogosphere and hope that my contributions to Acronym help articulate the value that young professionals (YPs) can bring to an association. However, I certainly can't speak on behalf of an entire generation so much of what I write will be based on issues relevant to the broader association community.

That being said, I do want to use this opportunity to discuss some considerations for engaging YPs within your association. Too often we categorize people by characteristics that they embody: age, skills, knowledge, or other demographics. And while these identifiers can play an important role in building camaraderie, they can also be harmful and lead to broad generalizations and prejudice.

Rather than resorting to sweeping statements (I cringe whenever I hear "Entitlement Generation"), it's important to treat YPs just like you would any other members. What does that mean? It means that associations have to demonstrate value and provide relevant benefits to YP members. More often than not, YPs want the same things that more seasoned professionals desire: access to expert content, advocacy, a gathering place for like-minded individuals, and the ability to make a difference. To successfully engage your associations' YPs, you need to show that you understand their needs, that their opinions matter, and that you value their support and contributions.

At the same time, YPs have an obligation to prove that our contributions can go beyond "knowledge of social media". We have to be able to express our feedback positively and respectfully. Believe it or not, YPs are capable of providing constructive criticism. But we won't be taken seriously if we don't approach situations with good intent, or if we don't step up to leadership roles when opportunities arise. If we assert ourselves and prove that we are willing to do the work to make valid contributions, we should trust that our associations will continue to provide benefits and services to meet our needs.

Each one of us has the ability to positively impact an organization. We should always remember that, despite generational or other differences, we're all on the same team and we all want to see our associations succeed.

If you're interested in more insight on engaging YPs, I recommend checking out the "Make Room for Us" article on page 36 of the January 2010 Associations Now supplement, The Volunteer Leadership Issue. In the interest of full disclosure I will tell you that I'm one of the YPs interviewed, but I think the questions raised by the editor and the answers given by YP volunteers offer some unique perspectives. And if your association is interested in ramping up your recruitment efforts of YP members, you should check out Avenue M Group's just-released benchmarking study, "Attracting Young Professionals to Your Organization," which can be downloaded from their Web site.

I generally loathe reality television, so I didn't watch "Undercover Boss" on CBS this past Sunday, but this week Steve Tobak at BNET's "The Corner Office" blog interviewed Larry O'Donnell, COO of Waste Management, who was the show's first subject.

The interview is generally interesting, but one comment caught my eye. O'Donnell says he was interested in participating in the show as a way to increase employee engagement at the company, which has 45,000 employees. He's a firm believer in employee engagement at all levels, and the company measures it regularly. In fact, he says:

"Not only is it a metric, it's actually in management's bonuses. Engagement is critical, and this is a whole new way to go about it." [emphasis added]

How do you like that? Tying employee engagement to compensation. Associations talk a lot about engagement, but are any of them tying it to staff compensation? If not, I think they could:

• Member engagement. If you've figured out a reasonable way to measure member engagement over time (volunteer applications, online discussion activity, knowledge contributions, net promoter score, however you want to track it), you can pin these numbers to bonuses for volunteer or membership directors and staff.
• Employee engagement. This might be even more abstract an intangible, but if you can gauge the mood of your staff in regard to engagment or loyalty over time, you can tie it to bonuses or compensation for the CEO, COO, or other senior staff. Waste Management does a yearly employee survey to measure employee engagement.

I've only been thinking about this as long as it's taken me to type up this post, so this is a fairly rough idea, but I wanted to make sure I passed it along, because I think it's worth considering. Engagement is a sign of a lot of other good practices, so it would be interesting to see it incentivized for staff and management at associations. And incentivizing anything with money works in two ways: it motivates people more directly (say what you will, but money talks), and it also shows your staff and membership that you're serious about engagement if you're willing put money at stake for it.

To everyone who has been sending press releases and e-mails about what their organization is doing to respond to the Haiti earthquake disaster, I send you a big thank-you! To avoid weighing down Acronym with the latest updates, all responses are being posted in the commentary section of my earlier blog posts down below. I encourage you to continue emailing me news at kclarke@asaecenter.org. Thanks again for all you are doing!

As part of our emphasis on governance, we're asking a few CEOs to talk about having critical conversations with their volunteers. Here's an insightful two minutes from Tanya Howe Johnson, president and CEO of Partnership for Philanthropic Planning, on how to introduce a difficult concept to the board of directors: (1) position it as board issue, not a personal agenda, and (2) find a champion.

The November/December 2009 issue of Miller-McCune magazine features a great article titled "Building a Better Citizen," which cites a slew of research showing that local governments that actively seek citizen involvement in the democratic process create healthier, happier communities. Essentially, the key to building a better citizen is get the citizen more involved in his or her local community and government.

This really isn't earth shattering, but I see a lot of parallels in this idea to volunteerism and member engagement at associations. The article (which isn't available online, sadly was posted online Nov. 2) highlights Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam's idea of "social capital":

Putnam coined the term "social capital," to describe the intangible, value-laden benefits of a strong network of community relationships. In short, he argued, things like trust and cooperation—the building blocks of democratic governance—are products of positive, sustained social interaction. [...]

Putnam's research revealed that communities where social capital is high are more likely to experience lower school dropout rates, less crime, fewer hospitalizations, and higher rates of economic growth ... .

This fits nicely with findings from Decision to Volunteer and the Economic Impact studies:

• The most common ways an association volunteer first learns of a volunteer opportunity:
• Through a local chapter or section;
• At a meeting, conference, or other event;
• By being asked by another volunteer. (DTV)
• The primary indicator of future attendance at a meeting or event is past attendance. (Econ.)

So, to recap: direct opportunities for involvement → initial involvement → social interaction → continued engagement → high "social capital," → a healthy, happy community (or association).

The most important message from the article, however, is that the onus is on governments to drive involvement. "... Americans seem ready to re-engage, but they also, somewhat paradoxically, expect government to pave the way. [...] In other words, Americans need cajoling."

Same goes for associations. It's your job to get the ball rolling. That first item in the arrow trail above is all on you as an association leader. Fall short, and none of the rest happens, but once members do get involved, they're significantly more likely to continue engaging. That's how you build a better member.

Again, this isn't a new idea, nor is it rocket science, but it's interesting to see the parallels between community/government involvement and association volunteerism and engagement. If you can get your hands on the print edition of Miller-McCune, that article is worth a read.

I have a big idea rolling around in my mind about the best catalyst for member involvement, but I'll save that for another post next week. (You're welcome to share your ideas, though, of course.)

Loads of associations and nonprofits are participating in Make a Difference Day this Sunday, showcasing just how responsive organizations and their members have been to President Obama’s National Call for Service and passage of the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act.
A look at the numbers shows that neighborhood engagement levels have risen sharply since 2007, with a 31 percent increase in the number of people who worked with neighbors to fix a community problem, according to the Corporation for National and Community Service. And Points of Light Foundation CEO Michelle Nunn isn’t alone in her viewpoint that the past year indicates a “change in the course of civic responsibility in our nation.”

As a result, though, high-quality volunteer management has never been more important. That means associations and nonprofits should be rethinking their longtime volunteer management processes, training, and communications to best leverage this influx of new talent and enthusiasm.

I’m thinking of my own volunteer and philanthropic experiences with certain nonprofits. They weren’t always pleasant, and I’d estimate that I only did one-off projects for about half of them because they just weren’t particularly memorable, fun, or fulfilling enough to warrant my loyalty, even if the overall mission of the organization was laudable. With so many great causes, why would I want to stick with a group that couldn’t get its act together to articulate why my efforts or knowledge would make a particular difference?

I like that I’m seeing more organizations turn to social media to build real-time communities of volunteers so they can share their experiences and ideas with others. Facebook “parties” celebrating a successful service day, for instance, are great fun to relish afterward. Tweeting to other volunteers at a similar event elsewhere can be a hoot when it gets competitive about who is picking up the most trash, stuffing the most food boxes, or collecting the most used clothing. And Flickr is a fun way to tell a feel-good story through images and brief captions.

I urge you, as more people than ever agree to come help you out with everything from service days to fundraising, to spend some time looking at your volunteer management programs with fresh eyes. Share what changes you’re making, please. Are you surveying volunteers more often? Offering more flexible service opportunities? Developing richer profiles of volunteers so you can better tap into free talent? Gathering evaluation data to track satisfaction and engagement levels? Boosting your training? Clarifying the value proposition both to the volunteer and to the recipient/beneficiary?

Make a Difference Day seems like a good time to ask yourself if you really are making as much of a difference as you and your volunteers could be.

It's time for your weekly round of quick clicks from the association blogging community and elsewhere. Enjoy!

- The Signature i blog has a great post describing four ways to think about the future, and advice to help you upgrade your futures thinking. Elsewhere, Kevin Holland has some predictions for the future of associations. (And so do several commenters on Brian Birch's recent Acronym post with his predictions for 2010.)

- Jamie Notter says that the future of organizations lies in being human.

- On the SocialFish blog, Lindy Dreyer writes about the power of clarity.

- Michael LoBue at Association Voices is deleting his Twitter account, but Eric Lenke at the Hourglass Blog speaks up for texting in church (and possibly at education events, as well).

- Bob Sutton shares his top 10 flawed management assumptions.

- The Vanguard Technology blog recently interviewed Greg Hill of the Kansas Dental Association on how his association has become a "multimedia powerhouse."

- KiKi L'Italien posts 10 things she learned at her association's recent conference, while Becky Hadley at the Drake & Company blog posts about attending her association's conference for the first time.

- Jeff Hurt has some research to share pointing to the benefits of virtual education. Ellen Behrens, meanwhile, writes about the differences between training and mentoring.

- Short but sweet: Peggy Hoffman posts the 12th post in her series of truths about volunteering.

As I sat in a recent board meeting, and we talked in circles about subjects we have already talked in circles about, I saw impatience and heard frustration. I even heard some bellyaching. Have you been there?

I have noticed over the course of my experience in committees and even staff meetings that sometimes you have to pound your head against a wall several times before you get somewhere. At the same time, our world and business culture drives us toward efficiency and speed—many measure the speed of the meeting these days, not the quality. In our association, our members are all business owners and managers, and they are used to delegating work in meetings, and less used to consensus building and constant evaluation of any given topic. I am here to say that some of the best ideas I’ve ever heard of for our association came when we deviated from the agenda--please don’t pelt me with rotten tomatoes.

Let me give another example. I recently started a task force concerning a topic that is pretty controversial in our industry. I hand-picked 8-10 individuals for the task force, and set the first meeting.

About half of the folks made it to that first call, and we had a meandering, big picture discussion. I then assigned some work and set the next meeting 1 month later. At that meeting, the other half of the folks showed up, but none from the first bunch! We had basically the same conversation, but came out of it with completely different ideas and action items.

Both groups were creative, and the repetition was pretty inefficient. However, the combined ideas are more powerful than either alone. I’d love to claim that this was all by design, but honestly they are a bunch of hard headed folks and I couldn’t get them to stay on track.

My questions to you are:

- What are some tips and tools to manage the balance between efficiency and creativity or efficiency and thoroughness?

- What are some tips for group dynamics without reading a book on it?

- How do we prepare for meetings and help engage and foster creative discussion, while avoiding repetition or off-topic discussion?

Please, don’t just answer having an agenda or applying good meeting management skills ... we all have those or we wouldn’t be here. I mean new, creative ideas that I know people are using out there.

I have been on a number of committees, councils, task forces, etc., etc., during my 14+ year career in associations. I have also served as staff liaison for a number of committees while working in a membership capacity for an association. I typically enjoy every minute of both of those roles, but I have recently become more away of an issue many associations are facing--the chair that has a different opinion from staff and other committee members yet a personality that does not allow them to see the perspective of other key players. I hope you can provide your insights into the situation I am about to spell out in detail.

In every volunteer structure, not every member of a committee can be the chair or vice chair. There need to be as many "worker bees" as there are "queen bees" or things get very confusing very fast. What I am wondering is, what does a staff member or a "worker bee" do when one of the hive leaders is not willing to listen to the rest of the bees and is only willing to see things their way? Should the staff interject? Should the "worker bees"? As an individual committee member, do you as a dedicated volunteer stand up against the "queen bee" and fight for what you believe is the smarter way of doing things?

Personally I see that all of these options have their pros and their cons. Unfortunately this is a common, yet complicated situation to have to deal with. As a staff member you do not want to discourage the "queen bee" but you also cannot discourage the entire rest of the committee by letting the chair make the decisions for everyone involved. In many ways I think the "worker bees" are more important, as they are typically the ones who do the most work and then will want to become leaders in the near future. I am not saying that all "worker bees" are great, but if the "queen" is part of the problem, shouldn’t we hope that one of the many "workers" will be able to get things moving in the right direction? I would love to hear your thoughts and advice.

While I was reading about the National Business Travel Association’s recent updates to the NBTA Corporate Social Responsibility Toolkit and its offsetting of carbon emissions of its August 2009 conference, I saw that Carbonfund.org—a popular nonprofit that arranges and advocates offsets for organizations—was advertising for “social media volunteers.” Rather than the usual request that members who use social media serve as viral marketers, volunteers were being invited to “help set the record straight about offsets,” because “there’s a lot of misinformation on offsets in social media.”

I like that whole concept of virtual volunteers with multiple purposes, and though it seems obvious to add this concept to an association’s array of volunteer opportunities, I haven’t seen many other organizations that do so. Okay, maybe they have easily downloadable widgets and logos, but an actual specific purpose like serving as a rapid-response team member for misinformation? Not really.

What other ways could social media volunteers be actively engaged? I'm talking about a real strategy, one integrating into your overall volunteer management strategy and practices. Are you offering enough options for volunteers to leverage these tools in ways that appeal to them, not just to address our needs? Have you thought about holding a tweetfest, for instance, on getting your message out? Do you have ideas on whether or how Facebook users could, as a group, be galvanized into a new type of volunteer corps? Who else is using social media volunteers who may have "lessons learned" and advice?

It’s safe to say that many (if not most) associations are struggling with two realities these days: attracting younger members and engaging members as volunteers. The old understandings about joining an association and serving in a committee or leadership structure aren’t foregone conclusions the way they once were. This is particularly true for younger workers who want flexibility, recognition, and interesting work from the get go, and may not instantly “get” the value proposition that a professional association brings.

We know that volunteers are more likely to renew, attend annual meetings, and engage more deeply with our organizations, so we have a vested interest in structuring successful volunteer programs. But what are we doing to respond to these new realities? Though many associations have made concerted efforts to attract younger, more diverse volunteers through outreach and marketing campaigns, the single thing that could make the biggest impact may be thinking differently about the volunteer opportunities we offer.

ASAE’s Decision to Volunteer describes typical barriers to volunteering, among them: inconvenient location, not offering short-term assignments, the volunteer opportunity costing the volunteer money (due to travel or other unreimbursed expenses), and not offering virtual opportunities.

Think about your own association’s typical volunteer roles, and answer the following questions:

• Are most of our volunteer opportunities within multiyear committee or officer structures?
• Do we require face-to-face travel or engagement for the majority of our roles?
• How many project-based or short-term assignments are available?
• Do we offer virtual, asynchronous ways to volunteer?

A solution that addresses many of these barriers may lie in your association’s social media strategy. There are numerous ways that short-term, virtual, convenient assignments can be crafted within the tools you’re already using to build community or communicate. Here are a few options that have worked well for us:

• Leading month-long book club discussions on our wiki or Ning
• Serving as organizational “docents” in Second Life
• Greeting new members of our Ning every few days for a month
• Short-term guest blogging
• Offering an informal “UStream” live event about a particular topic

All of these options allowed us to tap into our members’ expertise and provided opportunities that were exciting and rewarding. In some cases, these short-term assignments have been the gateway for a particular volunteer to serve in longer term volunteer assignments (such as a Special Interest Group officer or board committee member). In all cases, it brought the member closer to our organization, fulfilled an identified need, and diversified our volunteer pool.

What are some ways that you are creating opportunities that make it easy for your members to volunteer?

Good afternoon! Some reading material for your Friday:

Several association bloggers were inspired by the 40th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing. (Was I the only one who got choked up watching the footage from the first moonwalk on all of those 40th anniversary documentaries?) Jeff De Cagna asks if we've lost our ability to imagine impossible goals like putting a man on the moon. Kevin Holland responds with some thoughts on why the competitive spirit is so important to the creation (and accomplishment) of such goals. Mark Bledsoe at the Association Okie blog also has some thoughts on the moon mission and BHAGs.

In case you've missed it, Tony Rossell at the Membership Marketing blog has been doing a series of posts based on a benchmarking study he conducted on association membership marketing practices. You can access all of the posts so far here.

Peggy Hoffman at the Idea Center blog wants to know why we default toward creating formal structures for groups of volunteers, when they might be perfectly happy as a more informal group.

Cecilia Sepp reminds us that volunteering is a commitment to be taken seriously.

At the Mizz Information blog, Maggie McGary wonders if associations are prepared for the way advertising is changing and will continue to change.

Bruce Turkel at the Turkel Talks blog reminds us that learning is only useful if you actually use it.

At the Association Voices blog, Steve Drake has posted part three of his "Reinventing Associations" series.

Michele Martin at the Bamboo Project blog has some important questions your organization should be asking (and you should be asking yourself, too).

Eric Casey at the Association Unbound blog has a few pet peeves he wants to air out. (If you're enjoying the "classic association blunders" conversation here, I bet you'll enjoy Eric's post.)

Stephanie Vance shares some advocacy advice with an acronym. (Say that three times fast!)

Cynthia D'Amour advises team leaders (and chapter leaders) that you can't expect blind faith from others.

For those of you in the United States, have a great holiday weekend! Here's some reading material to take with you:

Jamie Notter challenges associations to try for truth.

Bruce Hammond shares his experience on "the other side"--as a volunteer--and the lessons he sees for associations.

Tony Rossell is hosting an interesting discussion on incentives and membership recruitment. Elsewhere, Ellen Behrens at the aLearning blog is also thinking about incentives and how to make them effective.

Ann Oliveri at the Zen of Associations blog has some ideas about how to better engage association employees.

Rebecca Rolfes at the LeaderConnect blog asks whether trade associations can be truly global.

NTEN's blog lists 10 disruptive technologies your organization should be thinking about.

Michele Martin has a helpful post on making social media and learning more accessible to people with disabilities.

Peggy Hoffman shares an interesting picture of how a for-profit company is interacting with and engaging its customer community.

Harvard Business's Conversation Starter blog has a recent post on three ways to make conferences better. It's interesting to see what someone outside the association field sees as radical suggestions to improve conferences and meetings.

Here's an idea you can easily apply in your work: the Signal vs. Noise blog suggests that changing your writing instrument might help you focus on the big picture.

You can’t open a newspaper these days without reading a major article about the popularity of volunteering, whether it’s how to use it to find a new job, where to go for opportunities, or what the true impact of volunteers is. Here are a few observations and resources:

- The nonprofit NeighborWorks America has activated thousands of volunteers for its week-long NeighborWorks Week of community service events in more than 300 U.S. urban and rural areas. The organization, a leading trainer of community development professionals, also has launched a social media tool called LeadersforCommunities.org to enable virtual networking, job hunting, and information exchange among emerging and established community development leaders and volunteers. The tool aims to address the “crisis in leadership across the nonprofit industry and a lack of diversity in the leadership of the field.”

This site gets personal fast with its ever-changing slideshow of images (you can load yours up as well), its list of relevant blogs, news, events, and more.

- The United Kingdom just wrapped up its 25-year anniversary celebration of Volunteers Week, which ran June 1-7 and sought to “raise the profile” of volunteers and encourage others to join in. I especially like that the Web site enables visitors to share “thank you” stories that detail what volunteers actually accomplished. Why don’t more organizations do that? And this is the first time I’ve seen this number: According to TimeBank, a volunteering nonprofit in the UK, “73% of employers would employ a candidate with volunteering experience over one without.” That ought to inspire some folks to get out and give back.

- And finally, buzz continues to grow for the world’s largest gathering of volunteer and service leaders-- the 2009 National Conference on Volunteering and Service in San Francisco June 22-24—which has the theme “Civic. Energy. Generation.” Co-hosted by Points of Light Institute and the Corporation for National and Community Service, the conference is running a steady stream of stories, news, retrospective videos, and insights on its Facebook page and Twitter.

Here’s a Times article relevant to associations that might be easy to miss as it’s buried in the local New York news section. It highlights how charities are seeing an influx of volunteers.

The idea this sparked in me was the need for associations to tailor a short-term volunteer package aimed at raising the profile of a jobless member while giving the organization a boost of knowledge for content.

This from Matt DeMarco from the American Farm Bureau Federation at his session on engaging volunteers:

When someone asks you to volunteer, "what's the politically correct way to say 'no'?"

Pause.

"I don't have time."

Love that line, by far my favorite of the conference.

And there was an idea attached to it—a really good one. You're getting the politically correct version of "no" because the ask isn't right. You need to engage the prospective volunteer in conversation, ascertain if they are most likely to volunteer because they want:

-to make a difference
-personal or professional development
-social opportunities

From there, tailor the ask to the desire.

See the handouts from the presentation for the next month.

The folks at the American Farm Bureau Federation had a problem. Their membership has grown and grown and grown—every year for 40-some years. Their problem obviously wasn’t about getting members, it was about volunteers at the local level not being engaged.

To combat the problem, as Matt DeMarco and Margaret Wolff from the federation explained in their Great Ideas learning lab, they developed a series of training sessions, with a board game (Make It Magnetic: How to Attract and Keep Unbeatable Volunteers) as both ice breaker and educational development. The board game is rigged, of course, and has cards with scenarios, but all the scenarios are bad and no one can make any progress. Here a few of my favorite scenario cards from the game:

When you show up to volunteer at the annual meeting, someone hands you a stack of envelopes to stuff and says, “You should be able to handle this. It’s a real no-brainer.” Go back to start.

Your shoes get ruined because at the last minute you are asked to give tours of the dairy barn instead of working in the refreshment stand. Lose a turn.

At your first meeting, one of the board members leans over to you and says, “Being a Farm Bureau volunteer is easy work. All you have to do is show up and sit through the meeting. Then you get free cookies and coffee.” Go back 1 space.

What a joke! Every year we talk about new ideas for the annual meeting. But when it comes time to plan, we do the same thing, right down to the green beans and chocolate cake. Go back 2 spaces.

No one talks during the board meetings. They wait until they get to the parking lot, then trash the president behind his back. Go back 2 spaces.

(Don't worry there's a different set of cards to play with for the end of the training. A sample: "Your child comes home from school with a Farm Facts booklet donated by the county Farm Bureau.")

A snapshot of the game:

There's an "unsession" on vibrant volunteerism in associations going on throughout Great Ideas (brought to us by the Component Relations Council). The session has included both face to face conversation in the unsession area and "virtual" discussion via flipchart. The flipcharts are set up around the area with questions at the top; attendees can leave their answers whenever they'd like.

Reading over the flipcharts, there's some interesting thoughts being shared. (For those of you who aren't here, leave a comment with answers of your own to these questions!)

In one word, list your favorite volunteer management tool.

- Telephone
- Email
- Twitter
- Conversation
- Trust/truth
- Listen
- Authentic appreciation and a hug [hey, that's not one word!]

Why do you volunteer?

- Fun
- Love
- Purpose
- Loyalty
- Improving my personal brand
- Network
- Give back

What's the most difficult volunteer skill to teach?

- Set priorities
- Delegation
- Group play
- Letting go
- Time management
- Conflict resoltion
- Culture of inquiry
- Innovation
- Doing rather than thinking
- Giving up ownership

A number of major nonprofits are reporting a large surge in new volunteers for community-based projects in an apparent response to President Barack Obama’s National Call for Service. The latest is Big Brothers Big Sisters of America, which credits Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama for an impressive 25% increase in volunteers during its annual Mentoring Month in January—a new record.

In January 2009, nearly 32,000 Americans inquired about becoming Big Brothers Big Sisters mentors compared to just over 25,000 last year. A recent national advertisement featured the president endorsing National Mentoring Month, while the First Lady had been encouraging Americans to “consider mentoring at-risk children for ongoing service.”

Great to see all the commentary and coverage of Jeff Howe's keynote on crowdsourcing during Tech.

What baffles me is the conceptual disconnect in not understanding crowdsourcing as being one and the same as the essence of what member associations are at their core. Lisa somewhat captures this in her "love" post, but still references crowdsourcing as something other. Which also reminds me of Douglas Rushkoff's lecture on how "people want to be geeks for the things they care about," a few Annuals ago.

Don't be fooled. While crowdsourcing is what those Web 2.0 whizkids call it, it's what good associations have been doing all along!

Three IGDA examples come to mind:

- Example1: Whitepaper Writing. To this day, I don't really know who they do it, but our Casual Games Special Interest Group writes an annual whitepaper with dozens of contributors from across the globe and they edit/publish it via our wiki. When converted to pdf format, it's usually over 100 pages long, and is considered a definitive resource for the industry. It is produced for free completely via volunteer labor, and it is made available for completely free.

A few years back, one board member thought it wise to package up the value in their paper and sell it (or at least put it behind the members-only fence). When discussed with the SIG, they were ready to mutiny. They purposefully contributed their knowledge freely on the assumption it would be shared as far and wide as possible, to help others as much as possible and done in the context of their love for their profession/industry. So ya, we dropped that idea fast and don't plan to charge for whitepapers or make them for members-only.

(As an aside, that whitepaper example is a perfect case of narrowly defined business models getting in the way..)

- Example2: Facebook. A handful of the IGDA's long time members felt it was important for us to leverage the rise of social networks, like Facebook, etc. So, they went ahead and started a Facebook group, which got up to a few thousand members and a ton of activity, before I or anyone on staff even knew about it. I found out when one member invited me to join the group! They've since handed over the "keys", but their passion for the org pushed them to bring it where they felt it was needed, and members just want about connecting and creating value for each other.

- Example3: Global Game Jam. This very weekend, nearly 2000 student, amateur and professional game developers with endure a 48-hour marathon to create quick-and-dirty experimental video games. And, it'll be done across 52 different sites in 23 countries. The effort is the collaboration of several chapters and SIGs, and the IGDA staff barely got involved (ok, well, we put up the cash to purchase the domain name, and help ship out some materials). We're not making a penny from the effort, but wow, those developers are going to have an experience of a lifetime!

I see my work and the work of the IGDA as a race to keep up with the crowd, to hand members water bottles from the side of the road and cheer them on as they head up the mountain stretch. Sadly, I see too many association putting up hurdles in the path, worrying about control and brand and revenue streams, getting caught up with fancy technical terms.

Be one with the crowd, or risk being trampled!

We’ve been talking a lot about the big picture of volunteer management. But it’s important to remember the details—and the individual volunteers—too.

We should take the time to sit down and map out all the people involved in running our associations. How long have they been around? Who have they recruited to join them in the leadership group? Are people starting to burn out because no one’s around to shoulder part of the load? Is leadership capacity slowly dwindling and dragging down the organization?

Someone just resigned—does the president know what to do or does she just start performing that function herself? A new member writes an email wanting to get involved—how do you answer?

So often, we focus so singlemindedly on our programs and technical issues that we forget what I call “people bookkeeping.” It’s a little more qualitative, but in the long run, no less important than keeping the finances in order. Taking time to think through what will make volunteers happy and productively engaged has a tremendous ROI, even if that means scaling back other programs or initiatives for a time.

In an earlier post, Peggy talked about how c-sixes are different from c-threes when it comes to the issue of volunteer management. C-threes are much more apt to have a thought-out process for volunteer management, and to discuss volunteer management explicitly among staff and leadership. C-sixes are less likely to have a plan, even though trade and professional groups are equally dependent on the work products of members donating their time. I’ve looked at a lot of leadership training programs in my tenure as a chapter relations person and the issue is generally in the background, left for people to infer.

This is a complicated issue: leaders don’t like to think about themselves as just “volunteers.” Although staff people see the value in this word as a term of art, people in most industries think it means something you do in a soup kitchen—not in a boardroom. So, for political reasons staff might beat around the bush as a shortcut for the education and persuasion they’d have to do otherwise.

You also have to sell volunteer leaders on the importance of leadership development. As leadership progresses through the ranks, they may forget their days when they were lower down on the totem pole. They forget to put themselves in the shoes of the newer leaders. A conscientious staff can help with this problem, but with limited success unless the volunteer leadership truly gets it.

Another problem is the audience. In a national or other parent organization’s efforts to develop its leaders, we’re training the trainer—training volunteers who will then train other volunteers at the component or local level. Sometimes when preparing leadership development programs, we forget that at headquarters we’re teaching our folks to go out and lead others, not necessarily how to do everything themselves. Staff, committees, leadership and so forth sometimes make a hash out of their chance to communicate with this group by coming at leaders with information that is clearly out of context for their interlocutors.

My take is that we should be explicitly talking about volunteer management to our leaders and future leaders. We should work through the challenges and figure out how to meet them and still get the job done. We should contextualize our training to help volunteer leaders help other volunteers. (Some principles can be found here in the seminal article by yours truly.)

How does your organization handle this? If you are a national organization, are you in a position to help volunteers help other volunteers? If so, how? Let me know in the comments, I’m interested …

In two previous posting Nick Senzee and I have asked questions about the volunteer dilemma facing associations. In response, Bruce Hammond in his posting on the Volunteer Experience observed that if we "made the effort to understand our volunteers' needs and desires, we can and will alleviate ourselves from having to deal with 'a volunteer problem.'"

Nick Senzee and a team of ASAE members who started a volunteerism wiki entry on Associapedia expressed a similar observation saying "as a staff person, putting yourself in your volunteers' shoes is essential to ensuring proper volunteer management practices . This should be done reflexively and at every step of this process."

I don't think many associations are doing this and it could be because we don't know how to effectively or because we just don't have the time. But yet I see first hand as the chapter administrator for several organizations, tasks being asked of chapter leaders that don't address needs and desires.

For example, asking volunteers to fill out lengthy reports or call delinquent members. (I know, before you cast the first stone, someone needs to call delinquent members but there are very few volunteers who relish this task and are much more likely to call new members.)

So the question is how do we effectively do this - systematically track volunteers' needs and desires? Is there a Net Promoter Score equivalent for volunteers?

All associations have policies and procedures as well as volunteers. In the ideal world, these two would work in tandem and complement each other. For example, policies and procedures would increase the volunteer’s enthusiasm because it helps them make their idea a reality. Unfortunately, this seldom is the case. Policies and procedures bog down the creative process, frustrate volunteers who only have a limited amount of time to devote to these details and cause tension between staff and volunteers.

What can be done? (A quick disclaimer – I have not implemented policy light, but this seems like a plausible approach.)

First, volunteers in their first 1-2 years should have little interaction with the policies and procedures, if possible. This approach provides them time to learn the organization and volunteer structure. If they begin a project that necessitates policy involvement, pair them with a higher-level volunteer. Second, once volunteers are more mature and ready for additional responsibility, they should be introduced to ‘policy light (pl).’ PL would include a high level summary of the policy as well as high-level bullets of action items. These easy-to-read documents would help the volunteers to turn to staff for full details and in turn, develop a positive working relationship with staff. Lastly, if the volunteer is ready for a higher level of commitment, send them the full policy and procedure manual, ask them to serve on the board of directors or hire them!

How does your association foster volunteer enthusiasm while enforcing policy?

Nick Senzee in his posting “Is there a volunteer problem?” intends to take the private, internal conversations we’re having in our individual association to a public conversation on how to change the volunteer model we in associations are saddled with at this time.

We know from the Decision To Volunteer (and if we’re honest from our own trends in volunteerism) that the model is indeed changing. It’s not that members don’t want to volunteer. The research underscored that volunteers are motivated to help associations accomplish change for the greater good and in doing so feed their own professional development. What is changing is how they volunteer and what they need to volunteer. That’s what’s behind the struggle for associations. We’re expecting volunteers to do the same jobs and carry the same loads with the same support and training that we’ve given them for the past 30 years. I think Decision to Volunteer is our version of the story of Emperor’s New Clothes.

You see, I would argue that the emperor (association) isn’t wearing any clothes in that the vast majority of associations don’t have established, formal volunteer management programs. We haven’t spent the time or focus as have our c3 cousins (charitable, service organizations) on assembling volunteer management programs that have robust recruitment, activation, training, evaluation and recognition programs. It may be because our c3 cousins recruit volunteers that become members while we’re focused on selling memberships and then suggesting members can get more from their membership by volunteering.

Also, did you notice that associations focus on just one small group of our volunteers: the leaders? These are the volunteers who form our committees and governance boards. For them we hold leadership conferences, listservs, webinars, conference calls and the like. But, they only represent about 18% of our national leaders and 23% of our local leaders according to Decision To Volunteer. Meanwhile, 60% of our volunteers are episodic and fall below the radar in many ways.

Before we complain about our volunteers, shouldn’t we first dress up the emperor? How can we reach out to all of our volunteers, not just volunteer leaders? What would a volunteer management system for episodic volunteers involve? How would it be different than what most associations do today? Who’s been to the tailor?

I get to go to a lot of board meetings of different chapters around the country. Some are great, some are a little frustrating, and some are out of control (you know, in a good way). But in all of them, I have to think there’s a better way for us, as headquarters staff, to support them and make the whole experience more usable for everyone.

So many issues we have in small organizations stem from lack of time. Sometimes I wonder if we’re seeing a sea-change among our chapter leaders. Life has gotten super busy. Headquarters organizations can’t afford to saddle volunteers with our own sloppy, "just-because" processes or workflow. I’m telling you, these people (just like me and probably most of you reading this) do not suffer busywork gladly. And why should they?

So many basic principles of volunteer management are ignored or just plain violated that folks can be forgiven for not filling out our forms on time. As with just about any professional society, our folks are likely to volunteer to improve their career options, because their friends are involved, to explore their strengths and to use their skills and experience in a different context.

We should really feed these needs a lot more than we do. But the issue gets really weird when you consider you have volunteers managing other volunteers. So then you get to teach the volunteer to manage other volunteers, who have to manage other volunteers. And it’s pretty common for people to volunteer for the wrong reasons. So you can see where the whole thing can be a bit unwieldy.

Back at the ranch, I’ve been working with ASAE’s component relations section council and we've been taking a serious look what makes chapters tick. We've gotten behind "the decision to volunteer." The curiosity stems in part from the proliferation of communities just about everywhere you look. (And the fact that mainstream folks in lots of fields explicitly talk about the benefits of community can take one aback.) But why oh why does it seem to take more and more work to get the same level of participation back at the ranch? How can we harness the power of community that Facebook and Twitter and so forth seem to have captured so effortlessly? Is that possible or have we missed the boat?

Anyway, we've decided that looking at the volunteer issue could clarify some of this. Is the definition of volunteering changing, do we need to adapt our model to the hectic, bottom-line-focused society we live in? Do we need to just build online communities and never have a conference? Or do we just need to focus on building nice, cozy in-person relationships and let the chips fall where they may?

We tried to make a start in our associapedia entry but we’d like to have a broader conversation and listen to what you folks have to say. Any thoughts?

The other day a coworker and I had a discussion on who the customers are for association professionals. We determined that ultimately, our customers are our members’ customers, since they benefit from the education and networking opportunities we provide to the association members.

This led us to the realization that, as component relations focused professionals, our approach of preparing volunteers for their specific roles as volunteer leaders and their specific positions in our volunteer structure may inhibit our ability to best meet our customers’ needs. At times we become too focused in the details and this hinders our message to the volunteers on their (and our) purpose – to train members to increase the level of service to their customers. In this case, those customers are the members of the chapter that volunteer leader represents.
What’s the difference between position and purpose driven support? Position driven support includes providing agenda templates, budgets creation and financial monitoring training and leadership development programming. The goal is to prepare volunteers for the operational and administrative functions that will allow them to be successful throughout the year. Examples of purpose driven support is recommendations on how to understand member needs and training on how to use current technology to create training to meet member needs (such as webinars). These prepare volunteers to provide opportunities for members to mature in their professional career.

At times, purpose and position driven support are the same thing, such as provided training on how to do strategic planning. Oftentimes, especially in the mid to late volunteer year, the two diverge and association professionals tend to focus on position driven support. After all, our day-to-day job is to manage volunteers; stepping back to provide purpose-driven programming requires additional effort. Both approaches are needed to be successful component relations professional.

What do you think the divide should be between position and purpose driven support? 50/50? Perhaps 80% position and 20% purpose at the beginning of the volunteer year and vice-versa in the latter half?

As always, I am proud to report that many associations have already sprung into action in response to the serious threat of Hurricane Gustav, now a Category 4 hurricane heading toward New Orleans, and the potential threat of Tropical Storm Hannah coming toward the Florida coast. Here are some of the actions associations are already taking:

· The Air Transit Association of America (ATA) has released a statement explaining evacuation processes for residents in the New Orleans area. You can read it here.

· The Humane Association, American Red Cross, Salvation Army, local and national food banks, and numerous faith-based community organizations have partnered in Nashville, Tennessee, to open shelters, distribute meals, and support evacuees from the hurricane.

· The American Red Cross is urging people in the potentially affected areas to register themselves its new Safe and Well Web site at www.redcross.org, or call a loved one and ask them to register you. This online tool helps families and individuals notify loved ones that they are safe during an emergency. You also can read and link to the organization’s advice to evacuating families by going here.

· The Texas Society of Certified Public Accountants is urging people in the affected areas to “financially prepare” for the hurricane, using its tip list, which includes the need for having plentiful cash on hand, documenting household goods and valuables, and gathering important documents.

· The National Association for Amateur Radio (ham radio folks) has developed guidelines for potential volunteers interested in responding to the hurricane emergency, warning them not to “self-deploy” and noting that the International Radio Emergency Support Coalition has been relaying reports online since Friday.

· The Texas Hotel & Lodging Association sent an alert to members last Thursday, repeating a local government estimate that 45,000 evacuees could arrive if Gustav hits Louisiana. Local restaurant associations and members have been stocking up as well.

· Social media also is coming into significant play in terms of sharing storm information, relaying community/government emergency operations, organizing nonprofit relief and assistance responses, checking on association members, monitoring local chapters/components, and rallying volunteers on standby.

· Bossier City Firefighters Association is working with the International Association of Fire Fighters to find housing for IAFF members evacuating the area. Like the response to Hurricane Katrina three years ago, many local associations have turned to their national associations and leaders for help—and emergency housing is just one such request. Others I’ve seen relate to transportation advice, pet care in the region, and reinforcing communication strategies.

· The National Business Aviation Association (NBAA) is actively tracking the storms on the Hurricane Preparedness section of its web site and has the latest NOAA and other weather updates, the status of various airports, an emergency preparedness checklist, and many more resources available to help members and the public stay abreast of rapidly changing weather conditions.

· Various electrical power associations are urging the public and businesses in the potential hurricane zones to review their virtual brochures on preparing for power outages and surges as a result of poor weather. Here’s one example from Coast Electric Power Association.

· A number of associations also are encouraging members to access the Federal Emergency Management Administration’s (FEMA) Hurricane Preparedness page, which contains emergency plans for businesses and families, emergency supply lists, and background on hurricanes in general.

Thanks, y’all, for once again stepping up to make a real difference in the lives of both your members and the larger public. Please know that ASAE & The Center stand ready to assist you in your efforts!

The latest installment of This Week in Associations completes the 3-part series on Decision to Volunteer with an interview of Bob Farrace from the National Association of Secondary School Principals. (See the previous segments.)

In this one, Bob talks about how NASSP hopes to use their participation in the study, and offers an interesting take on recognizing volunteers—offering the idea of copying a volunteer's supervisor on a letter expressing thanks for the valuable service.

Update: Due to a vendor's player change, the video cannot be embedded directly. To access the video in this post, please choose it from the playlist in the video player below.

For the kazillionth time in the past two months, I’ve run into questions or requests from associations and nonprofits interested in exploring or organizing a “Community Day of Service.” Here’s the short version of my answers:

Yes, loads of associations are now doing this—and many have been doing them for years.

Yes, some do not spend a whole day on the event. You can always start with a half-day of service or even, as one association does, an “hour of power” (members sign up to donate at least one hour per month of free phone counseling).

Yes, many days of service are scheduled next to annual meetings, conferences, or events. Attendees and local host cities do a wide range of volunteering on such days, everything from mentoring local students to improving public facilities to bagging food for the hungry. New Orleans, in particular, appears to be the focus of the most service days and legacy gifts from organizations meeting there.

Yes, examples abound. Here are a few:

- NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network, an organization of nonprofit technology professionals, organized a Day of Service in March 2008 that included free strategy consulting services for 27 nonprofits, as well as installing a wireless network at a community center. See how they set it up here.

- Volunteers of America’s Day of Service in June 2008 involved restoring a local high school and church with its 350 volunteers “to help rebuild parts of St. Bernard Parish that remain devastated by Hurricane Katrina.”

- Myriad state legal associations host community service days targeting everyone from immigrants to needy senior citizens to nonprofit organizations.

- Many athletic, health, and fitness associations have long histories of a Day of Service. For instance, this year, more than 2,500 people in the National Basketball Association united in June to build houses and playgrounds, and to clean up schools and neighborhoods in New Orleans. You’ll find more info and some cool videos here.

For advice on organizing and partnering for a Day of Service, visit http://www.nationalserviceresources.org/node/17140 and read past the Martin Luther King Day of Service sections to the bulleted lists of tips.

Yes, information is out there about ways to identify and reduce possible legal liabilities associated with “doing good.” Tyra Hilliard, CMP, an assistant professor in the Event and Meeting Management Program at The George Washington University, spoke at ASAE & The Center’s 2008 Springtime about this topic, as she has at several other association meetings. This good article summarizes her recent MPI presentation, including her plea not to back away from community service projects and her description of laws and measures that reduce potential legal risks associated with such activities.

Yes, an ever-growing list of corporations, from Wal-Mart to Marriott International, have conducted a Day of Service that involves thousands, even tens of thousands, of employees with great success and results. In the latest issue of the Journal of Association Leadership (summer 2008), which just mailed, I describe how three corporations—United Parcel Service (UPS), Green Mountain Coffee Roasters, and Motorola—use social responsibility as major drivers within their businesses. One element of that strategy? An international Day of Service for employees. Check it out, especially the one by UPS. Sorry, it’s not online yet, but it will be shortly, and I’ll include the link then for non-subscribers.

Here’s a quote from the second installment of “This Week in Associations,” which continues a look at the upcoming ASAE & The Center publication, Decision to Volunteer. This segment’s guest is former Acronym guest blogger Peter O’Neil, CAE, who talks about what his association, the American Industrial Hygiene Association, got out of its participation in the study.

“Governance structure is probably the biggest overlooked opportunity for most trade and professional societies. We did shift our volunteer structure, governance structure about four or five years ago and what we did was move our technical committees, which for us is the hallmark, the backbone, of what we do through what our volunteers do through that structure. We shifted them to work groups and off of these work groups there were various project teams. And, the project teams enabled individuals to come in and do some very discreet pieces of work, say write a chapter in a textbook and then leave.”

So the question I want to leave readers with is, what changes have you made to make volunteering for your organization easier?

Oh yes, and check out the video, too:

Update: Due to a vendor's player change, the video cannot be embedded directly. To access the video in this post, please choose it from the playlist in the video player below.

Compelling stories have emerged as potent tools in forwarding discussions about what values members gain when their associations are involved in socially responsible practices, programs, and goals. At both my morning and afternoon tables at the Global Summit on Social Responsibility, association professionals barely took a breath between sharing and commenting on each other’s stories, whether they had to do with an organization’s actions or an individual’s choices. Frankly, it’s a challenge to capture every anecdote for later thought or follow up, but one colleague told me that he had taken almost 25 pages of notes in less than six hours!

I’m feeling especially attuned to the power of storytelling today because I’m halfway through the excellent book Influencer: The Power to Change Anything, which I thought would be good prep for the summit. Also, co-author Joseph Grenny—whose last best-seller, Crucial Conversations, was referenced several times at my table today-- is speaking August 19 at ASAE & The Center’s Annual Meeting and Expo.

According to Influencer, “people will attempt to change their behavior if (1) they believe it will be worth it, and (2) they can do what is required.” Stories that guide people to those conclusions must contain both “a clear link between the current behaviors and existing (or possibly future) negative results” and “positive replacement behaviors that yield new and better results.”

Those of us at the summit today heard such “high-point stories” recounted on the stage, in the coffee line, and from attendees at some of the 14 connected sites across America. I liked the examples given by CEO Scott Steen of the American Ceramic Society. First, Scott described the rapid membership growth achieved by the National Association of Counties after it cleverly arranged a deal with a corporation that allowed the association to provide prescription discount cards to members for free distribution in every county in America.

Second, he cited the National Academy of Engineers’ inspiring work with members to identify 14 “grand challenges” such as making solar energy affordable and reverse-engineering the brain. The organization then spotlights research and grant money focused on those topics. “They’re saying to their members, ‘Here is where to go to make a difference as an engineer,” explained Scott, adding that the organization is using the initiative to “define their mission in the world and show how engineers and their industry are making huge differences.” I can’t wait to hear what comes out of Thursday’s “dream” process….

Are we associations and nonprofits so grateful for volunteers of almost any ilk that we don’t ask too many questions? Apparently. According to a new report by the National Center for Victims of Crime titled “Who's Lending a Hand? A National Survey of Nonprofit Volunteer Screening Practices,” one in three American nonprofit does no background checking of volunteers, while almost one in eight (12%) doesn’t screen volunteers for anything.

The center, a major advocacy organization for crime victims, was using the survey to identify characteristics of organizations that do “regularly screen volunteers, the screening methods used, and the role of these screening results in organizational decision making.” As of 2006, 61 million U.S. residents volunteer. It’s not surprising then that of the surveyed organizations that do screen, almost half reported that they had uncovered "inappropriate" volunteers through that process.

Reasons given for not screening volunteers included concerns about cost, usefulness, and potentially offending volunteers. Those issues should pale in the face of a recent audit of 3.7 million background screenings in the past five years that found “more than 189,000 individuals with at least one criminal conviction had tried to volunteer or work for a nonprofit organization. Of those, more than 2,700 were registered sex offenders.”

But your organization does screen, you say? Check that you’re not among these “troubling gaps” revealed by the national center survey:

- 22% of screening nonprofits don’t call references.
- 25% of screening organizations don’t conduct any type of background check.
- 66% of organizations that do background checks don’t check fingerprint databases, which the center says is “the most reliable form of criminal background check.”

Bottom line? Here are the center’s top four recommendations for associations and nonprofits:

1. “Consistently and comprehensively screen volunteers, particularly if they will work directly with clients or have access to sensitive client information.
2. “Include in-person interviews, personal and professional reference checks, and national criminal background checks of names and, if possible, fingerprints.
3. “Check state databases, such as child and adult protective services, in states where volunteers have lived.
4. “Decide which histories will disqualify volunteers, screen for such histories, and re-screen at regular intervals.”

There's some great thinking going on in the association blog community and elsewhere this week--plus some neat tools and ideas.

- Kevin Holland at Association Inc. proposes some new rules for association growth, and Tony Rossell at the Membership Marketing blog adds his thoughts.

- Jamie Notter of the Get Me Jamie Notter blog has some musings on the challenges of volunteer management, especially when some volunteers are more helpful than others.

- Lindy Dreyer at the Association Marketing Springboard blog talks about how associations can support members in transition.

- The Logic + Emotion blog shares some great examples of companies using social media to directly and imaginatively engage with their customers.

- Cindy Butts at the AE on the Verge blog has some great early results to share from a social media campaign her association is undertaking to promote home ownership in Maine.

- The Newseum's website has a cool tool: a map linked to the front pages of hundreds of newspapers from around the world.

It is a great honor to be the author of this month's cover story for Associations Now. In the print version of the magazine, the article is called, "Beyond Today," but you can find it online under its original title, "The Next Traditions of Association 3.0." I hope you will take the opportunity to read it, and share your ratings and reviews. (The rate and review area appears at the end the article on the website.)

This week, my hope is that we can engage in some dialogue around the article and the implications of the argument I make for your association. To get the conversation started, please take the oppportunity to reflect on the following questions:

+What role does tradition play in your association?

+How does/can your organization use tradition as a platform for innovation?

+Among the six "next traditions" discussed in the article, which of them does your association embrace? Which does your association find it difficult to embrace?

I look forward to our discussion. Please share your insights, as well as any questions, in the comment box below!

Association bloggers have been putting up great posts lately:

- Mike Mason of Communicatio has been busy for a while, but he's back with some great lessons learned at his annual meeting (note that the links go to two separate posts).

- Several association bloggers have read the new article "Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business", a preview of the upcoming book by Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail. (Based on what they have to say, I have to make time to read it myself.) Ann Oliveri reacts here, and Cindy Butts shares some notable points from the article as well.

- The Dear Association Leader blog shares some ideas for using good personnel management techniques to be a better volunteer manager.

Wells Jones, CEO of the much-lauded Guide Dog Foundation, is a great storyteller. That's not a label many nonprofit leaders work hard for, but Wells has found that stories can get you places that appeals letters and political allies cannot: into people's wallet, mind and heart.

I was interviewing him recently after our Key Philanthropic Organizations Committee (KPOC) meeting, having already talked to him once before about his foundation's successful revision of its governance practices. We had spent a good chunk of the KPOC meeting talking about leadership, organizational excellence and the differences and synergies between our Seven Measures of Success book and a new publication, Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits, by Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant.

We were all intrigued by the differences in data about leadership between these two books and even Good to Great's Jim Collins, who had been involved with both publications. One thing none of these books did, though, was explore in any real depth the types of communication techniques that great organizatonal leaders routinely find most effective: compelling storytelling.

So I asked Wells how he created the storytelling culture that is so apparent on his Web site and how his staff and volunteers collect and use those powerful anecdotes to show the real impact of the organization. You can read his responses in the profile department of ASAE & The Center's new philanthropic Web section, but in the meantime I wanted to share what he said was his favorite program-related story.

"This story relates to a Marine who lost both of his arms in Iraq above the elbow, so he wears two prosthetic arms," Wells said. "And he also has some balance issues. We trained one of our dogs to work with him to help provide balance, fetch items and do various tasks that the Marine needs to get done.

"So he’s outdoors with his dog one day, and they are having down time--he’s playing Frisbee with his dog--and when he throws the Frisbee, the dog brings it back, like all of our dogs do. But then one time when he throws the Frisbee, one of his arms goes with it. The dog goes over and looks at the Frisbee and then looks at the arm, looks at the Frisbee and looks at the arm. Finally, he makes up his mind and grabs the arm, which he takes back to the Marine. And the Marine is laughing really hard about this, thinking, 'What fun!' but then he realizes what the dog just did: The dog made a decision that his owner had to have the arm first before he could bring the Frisbee back. It’s a wonderful, wonderful story."

Now ask him to tell you the one about the two old-time war vets who have raised half a million bucks in just a few months....

Recently, Scott Briscoe wrote a thought-provoking membership article “Should you be serving or leading your members?” As we think about the future of associations, the wants and needs of membership deserve critical consideration. Hopefully some of our respected marketing and membership folks will weigh in, since they have important insights. Here are some thoughts which I hope will further discussion:

Thought 1: “The membership” is a myth. We can’t generalize about membership. If “the membership” means a homogenous, unified, like-minded body, then it doesn’t exist anymore than “the electorate” or “the consumer” exists. What exist are various member, electorate and consumer segments. Each segment has its own common or shared interests or aspirations. For example, there are association members whose primary interest is expanded knowledge. Among the electorate are red-dog Republicans. And there are consumers for whom “green” is more than a color. Point is, while these are important segments, they hardly represent the entire spectrum. Success in membership and marketing depends on identifying and understanding your markets and the voices of the customer. Membership success, like the success in any market, is seldom achieved by thinking and treating everyone like they are a size 6.

Thought 2: Volunteer vision frequently is a 12-month window. Our active volunteer members often see things in short term, annual perspectives, particularly if they have a one year leadership position. Governing boards, even with 3-year terms, often have difficulty focusing attention beyond one year at a time. The “project oriented” Millennials may have an even shorter attention span. So this leaves the staff to see and deal with the longer term strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats facing the association—if is to be done at all. Since volunteers often define success as 12 months of smooth sailing (no problems please), is it any wonder that the natural tendency is for volunteers to focus on (this year’s) wants rather than (longer term) needs? Beyond membership, how do you suppose the 12-month window influences successful strategy, operational execution over time and other cross-enterprise and intra-enterprise performance?

Thought 3: Traditional models may not match emerging membership challenge. My association model will hardly surprise long-time observers of associations. Many older associations, like mine, were founded for “higher purposes” (ASME was founded in 1880 for public safety, property protection and growth/access to the engineering body of knowledge). We tend to be about engineering, not engineers. Our thinking for 127 years has generally been that what is good for engineering is good for engineers and others with technology interests.

We have a culture where volunteers “mature” their leadership by volunteering for increasingly more responsible roles, over extended time periods. Our members self organize into common interest groups, often working together for many years, to build and share knowledge, community and advocacy. I regularly give out 15, 20 and 30 year pins to staff. We are a fine organization with great traditions.

As a global association, in a rapidly changing world, we are increasingly required to be an agile, innovative and performance-oriented enterprise. Here’s the emerging challenge: Members and volunteers who may: 1) be primarily motivated by their individual, personal interests; 2) have less disposable time, resources and patience for “leadership ladders” and extended, time-consuming volunteer commitments; and 3) identify with their peer interest group rather than the enterprise. Can the challenge be successfully resolved in the old, traditional membership models? What’s the definition of insanity: doing what you’ve always done, the way you always have, and thinking you’ll get new and different results?

Where are the new membership markets, voices and models? How do we reconcile wants and needs?

We have learned of many associations that have stepped up to offer expertise, volunteers, donations and even temporary housing to the hundreds of thousands of displaced wildlife victims in Southern California. As in past catastrophes, associations are finding creative ways to apply their skills, imagination and members to addressing this crisis. You’ll find a growing list of examples on the ASAE & The Center site, and we encourage you to let us know of others. Thank you all!

Let me mention two partnering associations in particular: the San Diego Education Association (SDEA) and California Teachers Association (CTA). Despite limited operations, SDEA staff and members has "overwhelmed" the group with offers of help when it called for volunteer tutors, donations, childcare and coordination help for families sheltering at Qualcomm Stadium and a local high school. The association also is housing numerous displaced educators at its offices, auditorium and meeting spaces.

CTA, meanwhile, is helping coordinate and is urging displaced members to tap into its “CTA Disaster Fund." Established years ago, the fund offers emergency grants of up to $1,500, with an additional $1,500 grant possible. Monies come from voluntary contributions by CTA members and periodic fundraising drives. The FACT Foundation provides administrative services.

For a model disaster assistance resource for members, visit CTA’s disaster resources page

In December 2006, Senators Chris Dodd and Arlen Specter launched a bipartisan caucus on Children, Work and Family in the US Senate. The purpose of the caucus is to look at the problems faced by working families - to revive a conversation last addressed deliberately in our legislature in 1983. In their words, “The mission of the caucus is to bring national attention to the ‘kitchen table’ issues that impact individuals, families and our economic security.” To put it mildly, I think that’s a swell idea.

Since I began thinking about how we are 'missing' a conversation about associations and social responsibility my family has relocated, expanded from two people to four, and I am now a telecommuter full-time, working for an association across the country in an odd schedule (5:30 AM to 1:30 PM local time), in part to accommodate the needs of my family and to try and balance them. When I log off in the afternoon, I help my husband put the kids down for a nap, grab a shower and try to catch up on reading or housework or occasionally, exercise. To use the inadequate language of the current debate, I am occupying a strange limbo between being a stay-at-home mother, and working mother.

I am extremely lucky. I have managed to continue working full time though I have two children under age three – they are in daycare twenty hours a week, which depending on your perspective is either very little time, or far too much.

My hunch is that if you’re thinking that’s very little time, you’re a working parent with a working spouse. If you think that’s far too much, you’re either in a family where one parent can stay home, or you expect to be in that situation if and when you do have children.

My husband also has a flexible schedule – he is employed full-time and then some, a professor teaching a full course load at his primary employer, and two distance-learning classes every term for the institution he left in Georgia. Half of his work is completed from home while the kids are sleeping, or while we watch a movie on the weekends.

You don’t come here to read personal blogging, however, but bear with me just a bit longer, because I do have a point in telling you how I balance work and family.

I hope I can make it clearly: For too long, families like mine have been juggling the demands of childrearing and work in relative isolation. A recent study from UC Hastings shows that when articles surface about women in the workforce, they don't tell the whole story, and they talk of personal ‘choice’ – as in, feminism was about women having the ‘choice’ to work or stay at home. That language has put us in a complicated place.

Since I became a mother, I’ve determined there is another conversation we are missing, and it’s related to my first conviction: associations have a role to play in finding peace in the so-called ‘mommy wars’, and it’s in our best interest to lead employers towards fixing this enormous social problem. In the coming months, and the coming posts, I’ll be exploring how we got here.

I'm at ASAE & the Center's annual meeting this week. I've been having lots of conversations with friends and colleagues around topics that could all generally be filed under the Web 2.0 banner (since it's such a mushy definition). The conversations and environment of the meeting have clarified something for me about the potential impact of empowering individuals and small groups to have much greater impact via the Web.

In short: people can now pursue the mission of an association, with or without them, by connecting, organizing and acting via the Web. The national association is no longer a pre-requisite for pursuit of the mission.

To highly web-savvy people this probably sounds like a bit of a non-sequitor but it creates a fundamental identity crisis for associations. What is the role of the association if your members can pursue your mission without you and do so just as effectively, if not more so, in some cases?

I do not believe this spells the end of associations. Too many people have been burned on predicting that one. :) But I do believe it provides new opportunities to facilitate the mission and purpose of your association in a much broader context than simply through the direct operations of the association.

Those of you who know me know that I started my career in the association mecca of the world: Alexandria, Virginia. I cut my teeth in a couple of international associations – one trade association, and one professional society. Like many association executives in the DC marketplace, I developed an inside the beltway bias about the face of the association industry. One of the ways this manifested itself was in my opinions about components. For me and many of my colleagues in the DC area, state affiliates, chapters or allied organizations were disrespectfully viewed as nuisances and distractions.

A little over three years ago, looking for a change of scenery and relief from the traffic, I left DC to work for a statewide association in Richmond, just 100 miles south of Alexandria. In the time that I’ve been here, this association has grown to be the biggest I’ve ever worked for both in terms of staff and budget. I’ve also gotten to know association executives at other state associations around the country and have been consistently impressed with their capabilities. Furthermore, I’ve come across some local associations with programs that absolutely knock my socks off.

My colleagues at national and international associations are always shocked when I tell them the size of our membership. Still, I’m continually asked by my peers when will I be moving back to DC, or when will I be getting back to a national or international association. No time in the immediate future, I tell them; I’m very happy where I am.

In the years since I left DC, I’ve noticed that the savviest association executives are the ones that treat their affiliates and chapters with the utmost respect. They acknowledge that they’re partners in some ways and competitors in others. But there’s a genuine modesty and conscientious decorum in their relationships with chapters and affiliates. Although we’re not connected in any official way, I’ve always been pleased by the way I’ve been treated by the national association with whom my employers is aligned. Because of this positive relationship, I’m happy to carry the national association’s message to our membership and prospects. The results of this respect are played out in other areas as well.

Truly respecting your components may require giving up some control over programs. Opening yourself up to competition from chapters in some program areas may be necessary, too. Completely turning some things over entirely to components might be a demonstration of good faith.

Do you respect your components? Or do you overtly block them in some areas? Would they be offended if they overheard your staff’s indiscriminate comments about them?

As someone who has worked on both sides of the fence, I have learned: The beltway bias is unfounded and counterproductive.

According to Hitwise, social networking site MySpace.com has laid claim to new bragging rights: Most Visited Site on the Web.

If you're not sure what MySpace is, read this.

Conventional wisdom states that the Internet is, among many other things, an outlet for anonymous communication, even though we all know that our every click and data transmission can be (and is) recorded by the computers that handle our data. Admit it: You’ve typed and sent things that you would never have said in conversation. Internet users want privacy, right?

That's why, on the surface, MySpace seems like such an anomaly. If the Internet is a place where users can be anonymous, then why are millions of people divulging personal, identifiable details about themselves to millions of other people? A plausible explanation is that there are some other factors at play, and this phenomenon cannot be attributed entirely to adolescent carelessness.

Is it possible that anonymity is not all it's cracked up to be? In previous posts to Acronym, on our blogs, and during a session at a recent conference, David Gammel and I have discussed the economics of attention, and how attention can be viewed as currency. If the attention of our peers and people in general is a form of currency, could it be that people are actually trying to attract attention, using blogs, podcasts and other social media outlets to get it? If this is true, what are the implications for associations?

Most associations recognize members in one form or another, bestowing attention on them. We have awards for star volunteers. A profile of a member with an interesting hobby in the magazine. Periodic lists of new members. But if members are truly eager for attention, is this enough?

How can associations give members the attention they crave? This is an interesting new dynamic of member relations that needs to be explored.

In my view, most associations seem to have abandoned the traditional volunteer selection process, commonly known as "the good ol' boys network." Formerly, in many associations, getting a board or committee appointment had been based more upon who you knew, rather than upon what you knew, or how well you performed. Thankfully, most associations have abandoned this adaptation of nepotism, which might be called the 'conventional wisdom' of volunteer selection.

If you read my blog, you know I'm the type to test assumptions and challenge the status quo. Over the past few years, the term 'conventional wisdom' has taken on a mostly negative connotation in my mind. But after hearing an NPR interview this morning with Marines deployed in Iraq to train that country's security forces, I had to challenge the 'unconventional wisdom' I've come to develop regarding volunteer leaders.

During the interview, the Marines talked about how the American soldiers were only interested in how Iraqis who were signing up for security positions performed in training or scored on aptitude tests. They were more concerned about what they knew. On the other hand, senior Iraqi security commanders were more concerned with what tribe the recruits came from and who their parents, friends and family members were. In other words, they wanted to discover who they knew. The Iraqi commanders felt they couldn't trust a recruit without knowing about their family and social ties, and if forced to choose between loyal and competent, they'd choose loyal.

Now, associations aren't in a life and death struggle every day, but I think there's a nugget of truth here for association executives. When selecting volunteers, how much weight do you place on abilities? How much do you place on how well you (or other trusted volunteers) know the member? Arguably, trust is the most powerful factor in most of our business dealings. Trust can't increase unless you get to know someone better.

The 'unconventional wisdom' says, select volunteers on merit. The 'conventional wisdom' says, select volunteers by who you know best. The challenge for us is to find the middle ground.

And isn't it interesting that as 'unconventional wisdom' unseats 'conventional wisdom,' it becomes the new 'conventional wisdom'? The roles are reversed. Does it cycle like this forever?