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Nobleisms

September 2, 2007

I wanted to dedicate some time to talk about some of the things I’ve learned over these many years that seem to work in my life and others.

Pushing the rope…

I was a asked to serve on the board of the Hilltop YMCA, an organization that if have grown to respect more and more over many years of involvement. The professional staff of the South Hampton Roads YMCA is unmatched locally in the non-profit world. It is a privilege to help them touch more lives locally. Currently they are reaching 10% of our population daily. That to me is purely remarkable. I was involved in a group that was attempting to create another event to raise money for the We Build People Campaign. Years ago one of our board members served on the board of the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation. They were successful with a Corporate Challenge event where local corporations would put together teams to compete against one another in order to win the honor of becoming named as the most fit company in South Hampton Roads. It had been many years since this event had taken place and in my opinion it was time to rejuvenate this cool way of making money. It also seemed like a perfect fit for the YMCA. They had the staff and the equipment to pull of an event of this stature. We put together representatives of each of the Y’s locally and asked staff as well as volunteers to get involved. Early discussions went well and it seemed like we were on to something. The rubber hit the road when it was time to start putting teams together and raising money from major sponsors. It was just not “jellin.” I was having trouble seeing the forest from the trees. My ego was caught up in the fact that I had agreed to make this happen and I felt very committed since the Y was going all out to provide the resources to making it happen. I found it hard to get excited about the next meeting and I was struggling with the next crucial development of this event. I felt as if I were “pushing the rope” for this to happen. Every time I would try something new or introduce a new concept it seemed to fall flat in front of me. I was use to creating ideas that seemed to be a good ways to go and soon enough they took on a life of their own and it would feel like you were being almost pulled to take the next step whether you revisited or not. “the antithesis of “pushing a rope” The concept of either pushing or being pulled really resonated with me. It was something that I could explain to others in the non-profit world and they immediately “got it.” I informed the YMCA committee of my feelings and used my new concept to bring it to light. Everyone was feeling essentially the same way, so we cut our losses and work on other ways of raising money for We Build People.

The Fishing Pier

All day and all night every day of my life I think of ways to either raise money or help people in a fun unique way. I seem to be hard wired for it. Every great idea has its special time. The magic is knowing when it’s time has come. I needed to find a way to let go of one idea and go on to another. The fishing pier analogy makes that work for my head. Every time I come up with something new I essentially bait a new hook with that information and cast it out amongst the waves to see if anything will bite on it. I make sure the bait is fresh and viable prior to casting. When I know that I did my part in assuring the concept is valid, I then can wait for its time. I then think about the other baits I have caste out over time and whether or not the bait is still fresh or perhaps it needs to be changed or checked on. I keep as many rods in the water as I can remember similar to a large fishing pier with many different types of people. The fishing rods are large and small each going for different types of fish. Some are thrown back and some are kept. The fishermen are only called to action when they have a bite. It is then time to fight that particular fish, you may land it or it may jump off. What ever the scenario, you fight until it’s over and you see who wins. Lose or land, you always check your bait and recast for another fight, when its time!

What are you fishing for?

Can you spell Volunteer?

I have often thought that I was going to title a book with this topic. Early on as I was tapped to help out with other non-profit organizations I began to observe how these operations respected the fact that most of the people attending these board meetings are volunteers. Most non-profits depend heavily on volunteers to help them deliver the message or the service. Volunteers obviously don’t get compensated so the organization can sustain a much larger work force without funding them. Volunteers are a critical component and you better make sure you take care of that investment. I always felt the proper mindset of using volunteers was competition. What else would that volunteer be doing, if he was not spending time with my organization? What can I do to reward him for showing up? How can I inspire him to help us out for free? What will be the return on investment of his time? If all executive directors would start out their meeting/planning process with these questions to answer as they relate to volunteers it would help them out a great deal. So many times I have been in meetings that were poorly run or required a great deal of my time and money yet, I was not sold completely on the mission of the organization. When that situation rises, I simply ask the person running the meeting…excuse me, can you spell v o l u n t e e r ? That sometimes puts the meeting back on track.

No Beer No Volunteer

At the second meeting of the Robin Hoods and every meeting after that we have always charged a fee for dinner and a few beers. Basically the concept of don’t profiteer off of dinner; however make sure your cost are covered. In the beginning that was pretty easy, four or five pizzas and a couple of cases of beer and sodas. Currently we are now serving about eighty people and we are serving from a buffet line and quite a lot of beer and sodas for $20.00 a head. Still a deal! After a couple of years for whatever meeting or event that we were involved in we always had cold beer available. It dawned on me, if we didn’t have beer we most likely would not have volunteers. An idea for a t-shirt or hat! I didn’t just rush into it; however since it did represent a bit if a darker side of our group. What the hell! I met with our t-shirt printer and we came up with a logo for the front and back. The front would proclaim that We Volunteer For Beer and back would have a large mug of beer with a red circle around it with a red line through the middle proclaiming No Beer No Volunteer. We sold out the first night the shirt was introduced…imagine that!