Re: Volunteer TW Services

[Rahel Bailie <rbailie -at- CASTLETON -dot- COM>]

I have yet to find a charitable organization that wants volunteer TW
services. No kidding!

Volunteering to "plain language" an existing document has always been
appreciated, in my experience. The idea of promoting accessibility to an
organization or service is generally well-received. My experience has
been that the closer I am to the volunteers, the more likely I am to
succeed, i.e. if I'm a volunteer having trouble using the phone system,
I can point out the percentage of volunteers having the same problem and
offer to write up instructions on how to use the phone system, geared to
their volunteers. Or the computer system, or task flow, or canvassing
instructions.

*snip* the organization's president, who determined that the only
"valuable" services we could offer would be through fundraising--that
is, cold-calling people on the phone.

I've found it imperative to connect with a leader who has "vision." This
sounds like a president who lacks vision!

*snip* Essentially, they wanted to show people a professionally-trained
dog and fool them into believing that that's that they'd get in owning a
pet. Furthermore, they basically said if I didn't want to help
coordinate the dog demonstration, then they didn't want my services. *
snip* Instead what they really needed was to show people what animal
ownership involves: training, vet care, clean up, time, patience, money,
etc.

Non-profits who don't follow some sort of management model (Carver being
the most common, I think) often lack the process to determine their
objectives/needs/solutions. In the example above, the organization would
have had a hard time using an analysis tool (copy platform, needs
analysis, etc.) to prove how live demos of a professionally-trained dog
would encourage responsible pet ownership because as soon as you start
putting it down on paper, whatever logic they thought made sense doesn't
come through.

Rahel Bailie