On January 10 in Washington D.C. an event, “For Democracy’s Future: Education Reclaims Our Civic Mission,” kicked-off a national conversation on the importance of informed and engaged citizens. It was streamed on the White House website.

This is what it was not: a group of academics preaching to one another about how important civics is to our society.

This is what it was: a diverse group sharing research, historical perspectives and personal experiences of how engaging youth in solving community problems impacts the problems and develops the stewards we need to sustain our democracy.

Now, if you look at the list of the organizations that sponsored and participated in the event, you could think that it was an ivory tower-type event—30,000 feet off the ground with lots of lofty ideas about what schools should do. However, it was clear by the end of the event that although schools need to do more to reconnect with their original civic mission, civic education is not entirely up to schools.

Repeatedly the point was made that civic education requires students to actively apply concepts and principles. The Secretary of the Department of Education Arne Duncan spoke of the success he witnessed as a superintendent when his district added action to civic learning expectations. Action suggests partnerships with community organizations; the type of partnership we see in high quality service-learning experiences.

The event marked the release of the U.S. Department of Education’s own report, “Civic Learning and Engagement in Democracy: A Road Map and Call to Action.”

The event also coincided with the publication of “A Crucible Moment: College Learning & Democracy’s Future,” a report from the National Task Force on Civic Learning and Democratic Engagement. A Crucible Moment was prepared at the request of the U.S. Department of Education under the leadership of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and the Global Perspective Institute, Inc. (GPI).

I am looking forward to reading the reports (they were just released yesterday, and I had some other things to finish, but I’m going to get to them next) and comparing them to the Guardian of Democracy report released this fall. All this attention to civic learning is a positive thing!

Matt Robinson is a Featured Blogger and an education consultant with KIDS Consortium.

On December 10th, I and several other Maine VISTA Project members and State Planning Office staff had the privilege of volunteering for a few hours at the Good Shepherd Food Bank’s main warehouse in Auburn. GSFB is the largest nonprofit food distributor in Maine, serving over 600 organizations statewide with distribution centers in Brewer and Portland in addition to the Auburn facility. They receive volunteers nearly every day, but given the volume of foodstuffs they handle and the persistence of hunger in our state they are always in need of extra help. I thought this would be a good direct service activity to plan for around the holidays, since material need is usually felt most this time of year. As it turns out, I was right!

Arranging this activity was not difficult at all – it was merely a matter of contacting the Food Bank’s volunteer coordinator and telling them when we wanted to come in. During the week volunteers can show up unannounced, but Saturday dates must be arranged ahead of time. The number of participants was not even an issue; I was merely given some forms and safety information to distribute, and told that anyone who was able to come (except for young children) would be put to work. We arrived at 9AM on the 10th at the warehouse facility, where the coordinator and several other staff were waiting for us. After giving us a brief tour and orientation, they quickly put us to work.

The main group of volunteers was placed in a sort of assembly line, where bags of certain foods were filled for distribution to various charitable organizations. Another group of us was brought to another part of the warehouse, where large pallets of frozen foods were to be sorted and packed into smaller boxes. The staff member working with us was incredibly friendly, relaxed, and helpful throughout the morning, showing us how to identify and dispose of spoiled or damaged food and how to sort and pack the large quantities of ice cream, frozen meat, and various sides. By noontime we had gone through two pallets of ice cream and three pallets of assorted dinner goods– including more than a few holiday turkeys– and the other group had assembled around half a dozen pallets of food bags. All in all it was a very enjoyable morning. The time passed quickly in the good company, and the work was steady and never strenuous. Most importantly, it came with the satisfaction of knowing we were helping dozens of Maine families eat during the holiday season.

This brief but rewarding service experience with Good Shepherd was what I consider an ideal example of episodic volunteering. The preparation was extremely minimal and the work was easily done and yet highly productive, with visible and tangible results apparent after only three hours. We all went to lunch together afterwards and then disbursed, having plenty of time and energy left to devote to our weekends. I’d readily recommend Good Shepherd (or any similar organization) to anyone interested in a brief but highly rewarding episodic volunteer experience! For more information or to arrange a similar event, visit http://gsfb.org/get-involved/volunteer/. To view photos of our day,
click here.

Nathaniel “Van” Beckman is serving as an AmeriCorps*VISTA member with the Maine VISTA Project at Healthy Androscoggin in Lewiston and is a guest blogger.

The holiday season often kicks off significant service experiences for the year. As I posted last month, this is a time of year with great opportunities for personal and societal reflection. It is also an opportunity to take a closer look at some of our service practices. In this post I’d like to look more deeply at a common practice around the holidays and how we might expand a youth’s experience around service typically happening November through January: the collection drive.

Holiday collections are often a part of a school’s, youth center’s, or religious organization’s year end campaign. From clothing to coins to cans, the winter months are a great time of need for many people and a perfect opportunity for youth to help provide much needed support in their communities. But how can we bring depth to the service and make it a meaningful experience and source of growth for those donating items to the drive? There are three easy things you can do.

Meet a Genuine Community Need

The first place to begin is identifying what is a genuine need, as opposed to a need the service-providers have determined. This can be an incredibly simple process – just ask. Have the youth you are working with contact the place to which you are planning to donate materials and ask what they need. They can also ask the recipients if they are in contact with them directly. Oftentimes we assume we know what people need, and an organization ends up with a surplus of children’s mittens and no hats, or a plethora of canned goods rather than cash donations to purchase needed supplies.

Make a Connection to Learning

Even if you aren’t in a school setting, service should be a learning experience for all youth involved. Think specifically about what you want youth to gain from the experience. Is it skills associated with the collection such as tallying by 5’s; or perhaps elements of character like respect for all? Find ways to explicitly include these lessons as a part of the service experience. This can seem like a daunting task but there are a lot of great resources available, such as lesson plans available here at Learning to Give, generationOn’s curriculum division, or here at Youth Service America’s Go To Service Learning. Both sites offer ideas for how to make your service a meaningful experience and have ideas to integrate service and learning for youth ages 3-18.

Document Personal Growth

As I discussed in my December post, no service experience is complete without reflection. Reflection allows youth the time to process their experiences and gain critical awareness of the complex feelings surrounding civic engagement. It is especially important in collection drives as many of the youth bringing in items may not be able to directly connect with the places their items are going. Personal and group contemplation should be done before, during, and after the collection to keep youth connected to their actions and to foster a sense of empathy. Gathering these reflections throughout the service project is a great way for youth to document the important contributions they are making and see how their project has progressed. A great guide to collecting and documenting service can be found here.

Collection drives are often a fantastic way to get a large number of students involved in service within their communities during the winter months. They play a very important part in getting needed materials to organizations during times of high requests and low supply. They provide an opportunity for youth to assess their community’s needs, learn valuable skills, and document the personal changes they have been through. All three are extremely important components to take your collection drive that next step and make a lasting impression on the youth involved.

Laura Rog is the Director of Training and Technical Assistance with generationOn and a featured blogger.

AmeriCorps is not only a useful tool for building capacity in Maine’s volunteer sector, but also a valuable asset that can be used to keep young Mainers in the state and reverse the “brain drain” effect. A recent study conducted by the Maine Commission for Community Service (MCCS) shows that 80% of residents who serve their AmeriCorps terms in Maine are between the ages of 19-30. The study also shows that 72% of residents serving their AmeriCorps terms in Maine held some form of a degree at the time of their service. The study goes on to show that 66% of Mainers who served their AmeriCorps terms in Maine remained here after their term to continue their education, live, work, and raise their families.

So, why do so many members stay in Maine long after their service has finished? According to the Civic Life in America Report that is put out annually by the Corporation for National and Community Service, people who volunteer with an organization, such as AmeriCorps, are much more likely to participate in other forms of civic engagement such as keeping up on current events, staying socially connected, and being politically active.

The more civically involved that a citizen becomes, the deeper their roots into a community become. The MCCS study revealed that 59% of the AmeriCorps members that were residents also volunteered outside of their host site and within their communities in addition to their assigned tasks.

Residents are not the only group that gains ties to the communities in which they serve. 32% of non-residents who served their AmeriCorps terms in Maine decided to stay in Maine after their service was over. According to one member, “I have never felt more like a member of a community than I have while serving in AmeriCorps; and I’m not even from Maine.”

The value of AmeriCorps extends far beyond that of its direct services and savings. It is also valuable for the health and vitality that it provides to Maine’s communities. It provides an opportunities for Maine youth to stay here and to continue their education in addition to bringing a significant number of young, educated, and civically minded individuals to Maine who go on to live here and develop a personal stake in the future of Maine’s programs, state, and environment.

Whether service is through AmeriCorps, with your local church or grange hall, for a school project, or on your own, the concept of volunteering is one that is a core value for many people here in Maine. In fact, Maine regularly outpaces the national average for volunteer commitment and hours spent volunteering. It is a great way for us to get involved in our communities and make life-long friendships.

Krysta Lilly-Brown is the Planning and Research Associate with the Maine Commission for Community Service and a guest blogger.

When I landed my first job at a nonprofit in the early 80s I learned that communicating with our key stakeholders was a lot like selling retail—give customers what they need/want and they’ll continue to support the organization. I took a marketing course at New York University to help me understand the process and language of marketing and public relations.

The NYU model focused on creating carefully prepared outgoing messages designed to get people to do what you wanted them to do such as pledge money to support your cause, or become a dues-paying member. This style of marketing is called “outbound marketing” where the sender controls the message and directs who receives it. Typical outbound marketing includes telemarketing, direct mail, print ads, and TV/radio spots. The acceleration of internet access and the proliferation of mobile technology, however, have turned the outbound marketing model on its head.

Social Media—a term generally used to describe the use of web-based and mobile technologies turning communication into an interactive dialogue—has exploded over the last few years. In 2009 for example, Social Media overtook email as the preferred way to communicate via the internet.

Although most of us have been exposed to popular social media sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, nonprofit organizations have been slow to jump on the interactive bandwagon. There are many reasons for their reluctance, not the least of which is that many non profits fear losing “control” of their information.

The truth is that ignoring Social Media does not make it go away, and the only way to “control” your message is to embrace scrutiny and transparency. The 2011 Nonprofit Marketing Guide www.nonprofitmarketingguide.com/2011trends reports that almost 50% of nonprofits surveyed reported not having a written marketing and communication plan. This, unfortunately, does not surprise me.

For the last four years I’ve served on the Selection Committee for The Washington Post Award for Excellence in Nonprofit Management. Although the numbers are slowly improving, it’s interesting how many community-based organizations perceive a communication/marketing plan as a “best practice” rather than a sound management practice. I know that the difference may appear subtle but it really is much more than that.

Wikipedia defines best practice as “a method or technique that has consistently shown results superior to those achieved with other means, and that is used as a benchmark.” The key to this definition is “superior”, not “average” and certainly not “adequate”. A good exercise is critically reviewing all your communication sources and rating them either “standard” or “superior”. Where they are less than superior, create a short list of what needs to be done to raise it to a superior level. For nonprofits to really excel they must become innovative and engaging and communication must be compelling, interesting and multi-faceted.

Another important point is that although Social Media is the new kid on the block, it hasn’t completely usurped all of the traditional mainstays like face-to-face networking meetings, printed press releases and direct mail campaigns. The key is having a diversified communication plan that uses the appropriate vehicle for the “right” message.

No one knows exactly how Social Media will transform our communication and marketing networks, but based on what we’ve seen so far, we can assume it will be dramatic. So what do you do to position yourself best in this new digital world? In two words—build a communication plan.

Daniel Martinage, CAE is an executive coach and consultant specializing in nonprofits and associations. The former executive director of the International Coach Federation Dan also serves on the Selection Committee for The Washington Post Award for Excellence in Nonprofit Management. His website is www.associationcoach.com.

In previous posts I have referred to the book, The Charismatic Organization, written by Deb Jospin and Shirley Sagawa. Much of its richness stems from the principles that build social capital. A charismatic organization has a strong organizational core and a strong external network. The principles of building a strong external network include: compelling communications, active outreach, and meaningful involvement.

First among those principles is the requirement to develop compelling communications. As a manager of volunteers, communicating the values, successes, and stories of your volunteer program is a big piece of your responsibility. If you have a good system for collecting those great stories, then you also need a vehicle for sharing them.

Celebrate accomplishments and benchmarks.
Share with board members and other stakeholders information about the volunteer program. Make it a point to demonstrate the value that volunteers provide to your organization and your customers and clients. Data you collect from projects, programs, and departments can be collected into charts, graphs and documented ‘return on investment’ calculations. But individual stories capture the imagination of those you want to connect to the volunteer program.

Be creative about ways to recognize contributions made by volunteers. Gather pictures of people and activities. Have volunteers reached landmark anniversary dates? Five years? Ten years? Or more? Note that younger volunteers aren’t necessarily impressed with longevity data, but they will notice when you give them credit for a new idea or bringing along their friends as volunteers to your organization. Fun items with your logo on them are always appreciated.

Share the information widely. Make it a point to share your information with the leadership team and the Board of your organization. They may take for granted to work you do, or new members may not know the extent of the volunteer program. Take advantage of any bulletin board in common areas or in staff spaces to share the work of volunteers.

Create a volunteer newsletter. This can be a volunteer task! A volunteer with a knack for writing may welcome the opportunity to practice this skill. It can be an article in your regular newsletter for the organization or it could be an email communication with your team of volunteers. Use it as a way to make volunteers feel important and connected to the organization and one another.

Create a volunteer email/Google/Facebook group. Many organizations are now using social media as a way to create visibility for their organization and its programs. The volunteer program can do the same thing. These free tools are a quick and easy way to convey information, to create events, or to share outcomes. All of these tools assume that people have easy access to computers or other electronic communication devices such as iPhones, iPods or iPads. This may be second nature to younger volunteers, but can be stumbling blocks to older ones. Don’t rule out any tools because of these issues, but take them into consideration when developing a communications plan. Compelling communications attract attention and keep volunteers engaged.

Anne B. Schink is a volunteer management consultant and the author of the Nonprofit Readiness Toolkit.