Volunteer Excellence: Elevate the Volunteer Experience

I attended a seminar led by Lowell Aplebuam, CAE on volunteerism.

While we all have our idea of what works for us, I took the following ideas to heart and can see where we might all be able to expand on his suggestions.

Make it personal.  Reshape the volunteer experience for your organization by allowing your volunteers to give back, receive recognition and gain credibility.

You should think of the following on how to involve young professionals?

  • Structures of inclusion (different levels)
  • Executive leadership, starting early
  • Empowering recruitment (peer to peer)
  • What do they want to learn
  • What can they contribute

Create a job description for the volunteer to set expectations:

  • Micro volunteering is a great way to get the younger generations involved in your program of work - use them as content specialists - write a blog, etc.
  • Create a quick volunteer role at an existing program - volunteer behind the registration desk, then recognize them and ask them to do more

Create micro opportunities to participate in your organization - what can they do?

  • For a program
  • For communications
  • For social media - post three pictures on Instagram
  • For outreach
  • Be a photographer

Skills Based Volunteering - pick volunteers based on their skill-set vs they have no experience but you find a way

  • Finance skill set could be your Treasurer
  • Fundraiser
  • Marketing expert
  • Event planning
  • Foodie can help with your events where F&B are involved

What is the appropriate balance for your board?  Are you keeping your retirees involved with your boards? They have the knowledge and expertise in the sector.  They also have:

  • Time
  • Talent
  • Treasure (money)

Do you have a retired member coordinator?  These folks have been your supporters over the years why kick them to the curb?

The Volunteer Precipice:  The End of the Volunteer Path - he ended with the following three areas to think about if you think about resetting the volunteer experience (path to the chair) that has been around our chambers for so many years.

What are we losing?

  • Organizational history
  • Strategic fluency
  • Key VIP connections
  • Models of passion and loyalty
  • Association operational mastery

What are the risks?

  • Strategic overstep
  • Burnout
  • Ego
  • Growth
  • Creating the space for models of respect

Build a bridge for journey extension after the normal volunteer engagement.

  • President's advisory council
  • Foundation Service
  • Volunteer first responders
  • Diamond in the rough mentors
  • New member orientation
  • Story tellers/evangelists
  • Thought leaders - research focus

At the end of the day, he left us with the idea of thinking about volunteering as a journey, not a position and make sure you recognize your volunteers on a regular basis!

Content Marketing

Some say that Joe Pulizzi is the father of content marketing.

Joe is the founder of Content Marketing Institute and for more information on CMI go HERE.

I recently attended a session of his and came away with the following observations.

Where did it begin?

  • Website = infinite storage.
  • Social Media
  • Corporate stuff and customer stuff (circles)
  • Content stuff and customer stuff (circles)
  • Corporate stuff/content stuff/customer stuff

You must be consistent with your content marketing (i.e., regular posts). Did you know that 85% of blogs have 5 or less posts.

The five elements of building a presence on the web.

1. Sales, Saving, Sunshine (create a why for each social media channel):

  • Sales - Copyblogger gives content to get sales
  • Saving - en.jyskebank created a TV station
  • Sunshine - John Deere created a magazine The Furrow - largest distributor of agricultural content - new customers

2. Create a content marketing mission statement:

  • Help X save time, answer questions - you fill in the blank.
  • Template - core target audience, what will be delivered, and the outcome for the audience
  • Create a mission statement
  • Define your audience
  • Deliver the goods
  • What is the outcome you want?

3. Don't build your content ship on rented land:

  • Facebook - pay to play - only 5% see your posts.
  • Joe is a big fan of LinkedIn
  • Focus on subscribers as a key metric (building an audience)
  • What's the difference between those who subscribe to my content and those that don't?

4. Leverage influencers, then build an audience:

  • OPC - other peoples content
  • 4:1:1 OPC, ebook, sales tweet
  • Slideshare owned by LinkedIn

5. Open up your wallet:

  • Build vs buy - you can build your own or buy it
  • Buy an influencer

Another great book I read on the subject matter is The Laptop Millionaire. The one thing that was repeated over and over is that subscribers are key to your success.  Get peoples emails - emails are the key.

Until next time!