The greatest frustration in the nonprofit sector is when an agency creates a new program when a similar, high-quality program is already offered by someone else. The act of partnering with another agency to share a program or expand its reach does not need to be a major undertaking. When agencies can identify their needs and then seek out partners to fill those needs with high-quality solutions, nonprofits become more efficient and more effective.
Connecting Coffees start by building a common or shared interest. After we introduce ourselves, I ask a question to get the conversation started. If there is a specific topic for the session, the question will be about that topic. Sometimes we start with a question like, “Who is doing great work in Philadelphia?” When I start with this question, very rarely is the answer “my agency,” so we spend some time dissecting that.
The common interest often expressed is frustration. Having a chance to vent is an important part of the process. Because it’s a moderated discussion, we don’t dwell on the frustration for long. Instead, we start talking about solutions. What would change the shared frustration? What is a resource that you need to make this better?
In the fall of 2011, Philadelphia VIP hosted a Connecting Coffee about volunteer management. Volunteer management is a topic that always gets a good cross-section of people at the table: executive directors, social workers, volunteer managers, development directors, etc. The greater the diversity of voices, the better the conversation.
At this session, the group talked about how volunteer management can be a challenge because people who don’t know how to manage volunteers, and who have job responsibilities outside of volunteer management, have to manage the work product and expectations of the volunteer and the person who is benefiting from the volunteer’s efforts. Although well-meaning, a volunteer doesn’t always understand the beneficiary’s situation and his or her volunteer experience can become frustrating.
For example, a lawyer who is helping a family through a legal problem may not understand why the family’s phone works one day and not the next. That family might be on a limited cell phone plan and have run out of minutes. They might have needed to make some hard decisions about how to spend their money that month: food or phone? The lawyer may only see that he or she is having a hard time doing the pro bono work that will resolve the situation. The lawyer, the family and the staff person are spending more time trying to manage the connection than they are helping the family. Nonprofit professionals could come up with dozens of these examples. I use the lawyer example because there were representatives from a number of agencies that work with lawyers in the room.
The conversation then turned to solutions. What would make situations like these easier? After some deliberation, the group started talking about trying to find a shared resource for cultural competency training. They wanted a program that would show volunteers some of the realities they will find when they try to help. They wanted something engaging and interactive, something that could be provided in one session because so many volunteers don’t have a lot of time to spend. The interactive training had to show the decisions that a family living in poverty needs to make. A short, persuasive video describing the life of a family living in poverty would be helpful and could be viewed anywhere.
The room was positively electric with the hope for a solution that would resolve this persistent and universal issue. I said I would do some research, and other people offered to reach out to organizations that they knew had well-developed volunteer training. For several months I talked to video production companies, looked for funding, talked to agencies that corral volunteers. And then I heard from the host of that day’s session, Susan Wysor Nguema of Philadelphia VIP.
