Pretty girl promoting lap top on the beach

Do you know who in your group or associated with your group is a honest to goodness promoter of your charity along with your group? How about your detractors? Are passives easy to identify?

This concept is very well presented in the business book by authors Fred Reichheld and Bob Markey, titled “The Ultimate Question 2.0, How Net Promoter Companies Thrive in a Customer-Driven World”. In the second of the book series on Net Promoter companies the authors continue and refine their ideas on how customers fall into one of three very distinct categories, promoter, passives, and detractors. They go into very good detail on how to use analysis and statistics to find each group and why it pays off to make this determination for various ROI  identifies or just in loyalty sales and future growth.

When you think of people who promote things, often what comes to mind is megaphones and loud speakers. But promoters are just people who manage to talk up your cause or your group in a positive way. They may wear hats or shirts with the name of the group as well. They are inspired and promotional of the groups message and image. They show passion for the cause.

These members identified as promoters and associated friends and family live the message of the cause and they are very strong advocates of the other members who are also promoters!

Promoters are the most likely to be in tune with the “voice of the customer”. This concept stems from the many management plans which promote quality and is the single biggest concept behind the empowered volunteer. For many of you in business or having taken business courses quality plans from the past included Total Quality Management, Six Sigma, Lean Manufacturing, and of course combinations of those labeled Lean/Six Sigma.

For a while during the 90′s even the U. S. Navy had Total Quality Leadership (TQL), with mainly the name as the only difference between TQM and TQL. Today the U. S. Navy has Six Sigma quality systems and reportedly embraces the concept of the empowered worker where it most certainly did not support lower rank empowerment before. This is because the sea going service was not mature enough to allow empowerment of it’s non-managerial members (read enlisted volunteer members) when TQL was instituted. From what I have read Six Sigma has made healthy contributions for today’s Navy!

In my past I have been trained in all of these and hold certifications in several continuous improvement training methods. They all have a concept that includes empowering the lowest worker with the most responsibility and accountability as well as listening to the customer, both internal and external customers. The empowered volunteer is simply another application of the empowered worker from Lean Manufacturing teaching.

All volunteer groups have the potential of supporting three types of customers, those from the cause they serve,  their group members and associated family, and the general public or businesses from which they develop relationships and derive much if not all of their resources.

So how do you identify promoter types for your group?

The authors of The Ultimate Question 2.0 suggest something so simple that it even applies outside industry and I am suggesting it would apply nicely to volunteer groups who want to add to their SWOT analysis. Survey your three customer groups and ask them one question, “Would you recommend this volunteer group to your friends?” On the survey have a range of responses from zero to ten, with ten being the best and zero the least. The authors say that a promoter is someone who responds with an eight or better.

Nothing brings in willing volunteers like proper passion for a worthy cause!

Knowing who your promoters are and being able to motivate them on the behalf of the group is worth more to the future success of your volunteer group than just about anything else you can do! If surveys are not in order another way to identify the promoters is through their passion observed over time!

I have written about passion in volunteer groups before, use the search feature on this blog to find some of those posts for further reading. 

Proper passion directed for worthy causes is one of the biggest draws for new members. When people enjoy themselves the volunteering becomes less work and more fun. People flock to fun things! Birds of a feather flock together and promoters like to be among other promoters and also to enrich or uplift passives into promoters! This is one feature of successful leadership which can’t be over emphasized. One really likable passionate promoter in a group can transform that group into a bunch of promoters over time. That is one huge way to ensure the future of the group will be a long and healthy one.

I will write in future posts about how to motivate and focus promoters as well as identifying and converting passives and detractors. The authors of The Ultimate Question 2.0 targeted their book towards business and the collection of data.  The subsequent data collection and analysis over time is much more trouble than the average volunteer group can justify. I will provide some ideas and suggestions for finding each group without all of the data search needed.

The empowered volunteer by the way would almost certainly be a labeled a promoter!

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The question I have been asked is do the volunteers of the many holiday parades incur the same health benefits as the volunteers who are engaged full time with groups supporting charities? The answer is that I have yet to find studies or evidence to support this idea.

There is no doubt that the many volunteers for the various parades for so many holidays around the world contribute tons of effort and time to their parade day event. Their passion for the event is intense from my research, so they are focused and driven, just as other main stream civic groups or fraternal groups for their charity.

These temporary volunteers also benefit from the networking aspects noted in earlier posts on this site!

The intense pressure to produce some floats or other group presentations gives people practice in leadership and group organizing as well. Each member for these parades to work needs to subvert their own individuality for the greater performance, just as in many sports. To sum it up, everyone can benefit from the experience, but does it also translate into the health benefits of the group charity supporting volunteers?

It remains to be studied I think whether the health benefits already documented for the charity supporting fraternal, civic, and veterans groups also translates to temporary volunteering opportunities.

American Legion

Memorial Day parades by veterans groups in America which many veteran groups participate in are supported by members such as the American Legion, with the symbol above. Often these members engage in activities all year long and only rise to the public view during the parades. These are the types of volunteers which the health producing benefits have been documented.

Shriners

St. Patrick Day parades are  common in the United States. Very often you find a cooperation between well known fraternal groups to put on the parade. I have personally participated in a few as a member of the Shrine, a subdivision of the Freemasons.

The Roman Catholic fraternal group, The Knights of Columbus in my case was the main sponsor for the parade in the Tidewater area of Virginia. This certainly qualifies its members for the health benefits since they are serving all year long but raising their public awareness on this one day for the documented health benefits of volunteering.

Parades during the American professional football bowl games have short but intense opportunities for volunteers to help with float assemblies, the flowers and other aspects which are so amazing to see on the day the events are held. Other holiday parades also offer opportunities for volunteering on a short term basis. Many parades around the world function much the same way, except many of those have religious overtones attached which are for the most part absent from American holiday parades.

The caption above is from Volterra, a festival parade in Italy associated with a cross bow championship. Brazil also has a famous parade, Carnival. Parades from around the world often function with the participation of volunteers in some way or fashion. Most parades would not be what they are if volunteers did not participate.

Many of these parades in America rely on already established volunteer groups to step in and help with the events.

Knights of Pyhthias

FOE

In the above caption, the Order of the Eastern Star, a group associated with Freemasonry which has both men and women members, the very Christian theme is emphasized.

Church groups, youth groups, and in some cases the fraternal, civic, and veterans groups also volunteer their services. It is natural that a call goes out for temporary volunteers to help with a quick infusion of labor though, and these temporary members are the subject of our question in this post. Do they, even on a temporary basis gain the health benefits associated with those already documented for the main stream groups who focus mainly on supporting charities?

My gut feeling is that it is likely. But until the subject is studied properly, we can only speculate.

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Stress moderation is at the top of the pillars of health care wisdom for the empowered volunteer. You can actually die from stress related effects.

When volunteers think of how to work their time around volunteer projects they don’t automatically think of stress. Their passion for the volunteer group or the charity supported by the group helps them prioritize their emotions and their time management. Simply put, they make it work no matter how much effort it takes to get the job done.

For the empowered volunteer, what is the incentive for someone who is not already involved in the represented group to join, pending their busy, busy, busy schedule? Obviously if they have a passion for the charity they might be persuaded. But what if they are not passionate for the charity? What then? They say that they are too stressed and that they don’t have any time! Then the empowered volunteer needs to refer to the pillars of health wisdom!

The empowered volunteer is all about helping people. That must be the first priority, above all other things.

If you put people first, the other things will find a way to resolve themselves, one way or another. Happy passionate people solve problems and they also brag about the experience. They also have better health, statistically speaking. First, let’s tackle the stress issue and then we will address the other health studies and how they affect our message.

Stress is manageable in our lives. But for those who find themselves under extreme stress they should explore the science discoveries from the power of positivity.

This topic was addressed by Barbara L. Fredrickson, Ph. D. in her book, nicely named Positivity! In it she presents credible and robust scientific evidence on how proper meditation helps humans deal with stress. Then she moves on to give concrete examples of how to meditate and other features in order to help drive your health benefits from lowering the effects from stress on your body. She has placed guided meditations and other simple tools on her website, which is very easy to use and worthy of a visit for anyone who would like to feel better in our stressful world. This kind of easy to do it yourself stress modification is why Dr. Fredrickson’s book and website are a pillar of wisdom for the empowered volunteer.

http://www.positivityratio.com/index.php

Once you go to the site, use the tools tab or the take the test tab and see how you are faring on an individual level. With over two decades of research on this subject along with tons of behavioral science supporting data going back several more decades it is worth checking it out and seeing if you can benefit. To be honest, everyone can benefit unless you just don’t want to let it help you. Meditation has been used by many civilizations for thousands of years, from Christians like St. Augustine to Chinese Kung Fu monks.

Never underestimate how you can improve your life with small changes that affect your health in a magnified way beyond the small time and effort you expend.

Decades of data from research into how social status affects your health are also available and helpful for the empowered volunteer to understand for their pillars of health wisdom. Scientists use the term social economic status (SES) for these kinds of studies and conversations about them. SES is in general terms an individual’s social level in society. Usually this is divided into three areas, low or working class, middle class and upper middle class or upper class status levels. Low class is the working people, usually living from pay check to pay check. Poverty level is below this group.

Middle class is the group who was lifted by many factors after WWII, but one of the most controversial was the GI Bill, which allowed many of those returning from the war to attend college and then better their lives with better paying jobs and more upward mobility. In this case, a veterans group was instrumental in helping pass this important piece of legislation, one which in looking back historians and economics agree was a huge success.

Harry W. Colmery, a former national commander of the American Legion and former Republican National Chairman, is credited with drawing up the first draft of the GI Bill.

Some people reading this will be surprised that a former Republican Party National Chairman could have been involved with promoting a middle class path towards education back in the days after WWII. Back then, only the very rich could afford college. But keep in mind, political parties change over time and their policies change over time too.

The GOP today is not your grandfather’s party! The current Republican Party thinking on education is reflective of some of those changes in mindset regarding middle class education at the high school level as well as for higher education and is thus beyond the scope of this post.

SES is very important to the empowered volunteer from the point of those who are least likely to be volunteering and which also can benefit the most from volunteering, health wise.

Upper middle class is more often defined as someone who has physical assets which generate enough income so that if that person suddenly stopped their regular employment they could still live off their passive income. This status level is worthy of achievement and is the focus of another pillar of wisdom, that of wealth which will be addressed in a forthcoming post. For our purposes here, the higher the status the better the likely hood of good health is expected.

Michael Marmot, in his ground breaking book 2004 book, The Status Syndrome, How Social Standing Affects Our Health and Longevity has reviewed and distilled the data results from over three decades of studies in order to write about how we can benefit from this knowledge.

One key to his book was that if someone has little autonomy over their lives, as most working class people find themselves, then they are more likely to have lower health.

This is true for many countries beyond the United States too. It goes further though, for those people reporting “the greater the degree of inequality of material deprivation and of income, the worse the health.” He found that low control over one’s life to be the big central factor that linked everything to health, happiness, etc.

In America’s past labor unions were often the only way for laborers to exert any form of control over their lives. Before the unions formed, safety and other factors we take for granted today were not common in many industries.

For those people then and even today in many industries, having some control over their life could determine their future health. Volunteering is one path towards restoring some form of control over one’s life if it is not found elsewhere. Each person can control how much they volunteer and where, and to what extent for each group they join.

This kind of life control opportunity can help them if they are in a job where they have little or no control over their lives. 

The main thing here is that no matter what your station in life, you can do things to help your health and your mental or emotional wellbeing. The positivity ratio is so simple once you start that you will wonder why you have not heard of it before. I would suggest starting with the guided meditation and then moving on where ever you are comfortable. This tool is absolutely awesome for its potential to help people with high stress jobs.

The health harming aspects attributed to many working class jobs should surprise no one. They have been apparent for generations of American workers. From swing shifts to heated environments too hot to stay in for very long to extended nursing hours for patient coverage. The potential ways to combat the negative effects seem to have escaped the general public’s notice, until now hopefully. Even middle class American’s can use this information to their advantage so that the stress from the job doesn’t inflict further harm to your health.

Knowing the health harming effects of low autonomy is important for the health of employees and management.

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College students wishful image of college experience

College students dream of their efforts at grades resulting in a work place in the real world where they are respected, wanted, and better treated than most find their college experience to be in real life. Unfortunately, a new poll from the Society of Human Resource Management reflects the perception in the hiring market that college students are NOT ready for work in the real world!

An article from the Kansas City Star and authored by Diane Stafford shows plenty of issues in the perception of the newly graduating college students. To be blunt, the numbers are really difficult and discouraging.

From the report we find English skills are not proficient in the eyes of the hiring managers. My first thought was are they talking in some sort of text lingo? The report did not go that deep, but no student should ever demonstrate their language skills in text talk around any business people who later may be in a position to network on their behalf.

“Forty-nine percent of human resource officials polled by the professional organization said this year’s college graduates lack basic English skills in grammar and spelling. Eighteen percent said the grads come up short in math and computation. Thirteen percent faulted the grads’ spoken English, and 10 percent cited a lack of reading comprehension.”

If that was not bad enough, the survey found that hiring professionals also expressed that their “biggest complaint by hirers was that the graduates lacked “professionalism” or “work ethic,” a deficiency listed by half of those surveyed. Nearly half detected a lack of “business acumen.” as well.

High School image of college experience

Further reading on the poll showed that 20% of hiring professionals see graduates as “under-qualified” for their job openings. This is really hard core real world data that should smack every college student and high school student thinking of college up the side of their heads!

College student on bike with backpack

College students often think they deal with real world reality when they hit campuses every year. The cost of a car may be too much, so a bike may be used to save on gas, if they even have a car for instance! Sitting on the grass singing camp fire songs is something that is rare too on real world campuses. College is competitive and it is a business, from both ends of the experience, the school end and the student end.

Students study in the library

Where is the average college student going to get the skills that the Society of Human Resource Management members see many of them lacking? Well, one place could be as an empowered volunteer if the student has positioned him or herself for that opportunity.

A student could conceivably pull off a spontaneous empowered volunteer crusade, particularly if their results were worthy and verifiable in their past. Usually this would require a past history of success. Hopefully your volunteer track record supports your requests for the opportunity!

The social skills needed to deliver on demand a set number of qualified candidates is something worthy of a resume note, particularly when accompanied with the data support for the effort and the return on investment you produced by taking on the project lead the new members were required for in the first place and seeing that project to a successful conclusion, all with proper data documentation.

The potential to take the summer (if you have it off from classes) to volunteer between your income supporting job requirements and perhaps run a committee with a special project that delivers measurable results would also be a great resume addition. For this kind of opportunity to work, most likely you would have to be already a member of the group and have previously proven to be able to lead the effort, as justified by past successes.

This means that being seen in volunteer circles as a person who can get things done is well worth cultivating. You can’t start too early in this regard, since emotional intelligence or social intelligence are characteristics which are very hard to demonstrate numerically.

Poll showed graduates are more likely to be “tech savvy” over older applicants.

From college applications to resumes, everything goes better with data on it. Data can be demonstrated in many ways, but failure to gather data is one potential deal killing detail that in the business world is unforgivable. Never fail to gather meaningful and pertinent data at every potential chance, you can always condense and edit the data later. Once the data is lost, it is usually not recoverable.

If you can show a trend in growth for building memberships, finishing projects, leading small groups or teams to completion of a special project, or take on a task that no one else wanted and succeed, then you can be one of the graduates who can demonstrate that you have business sense that they are looking according in this poll.

The key is to document things properly and to do so consistently early on in your student life. You can’t have too much data to draw on, and depending on how many different resumes you will have to produce, different data might be needed on different targeted resumes.

College student in lighter moment

A real life example of something the hiring managers might consider worthy would be taking your church group’s initiative to start a new youth camp at a new facility which previously had not existed, with no ready source of funding identified. You conceived the idea and sold the it to the church leaders, successfully promoted and funded it through your social capital sources built over your high school time as well as business sponsors you successfully pitched, and then implemented the structure for the camp to continue into the future, all on a budget. That is a very worthy project if your numbers reflect your story properly!

Business leaders positively favor those who can bring in a project on time which they had to seek donations to fund and then kept to a budget as well.

Make no mistake, leading volunteers is challenging for anyone, but for college students the challenges of leading others who are likely to be older than you are even greater. The social skills needed to stroke the right emotions on each and every member in order to get the desired results are vital to your success and they are very easily transferable to the real world when you interview with a hiring manager who wants demonstrated successes. They will want to know how you got your team motivated and how you kept them on track for an entire summer when most people have other things they would rather be doing.

Be ready to illustrate your success with good answers that reflect team building words, keeping the “I’s” to a minimum.

College student in suit on steps looking for a job

The same poll found that currently hiring managers described as “very difficult” jobs to fill were engineers, computer technicians, programmers, scientists, and skilled trades which are often more on the job training or technical school sourcing rather than requiring college.

STEM Majors 

If you are in a major which is not a STEM type (science, technology, engineering, or math) such as political science, humanities, languages, or perhaps philosophy and you find your resume short on business supporting data points reflected in this poll, consider using the empowered volunteer strategy for some resume muscle building.

Finding jobs today is better conducted when you have an active network that can support you. People who have already worked with you and found your work ethic worthy are much more likely to support your effort to find the underground network of unadvertised jobs too. Way too many of those who go into STEM majors find themselves without the ability to demonstrate their soft skill sets, their social intelligence, or their emotional intelligence data points too.

Everyone needs to improve their soft skills while properly recording and documenting their achievements which demonstrate these skills in abundance for the competitive job market graduates are finding themselves in today.

Empowered volunteers in college can be the cream that rises to the top if they plan accordingly for success by becoming an empowered volunteer, making themselves more ready for the real world.

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Man giving a rose to a lady, who accepts it gracefully

Men have given ladies gifts ever since couples have gathered into families, perhaps earlier! In the real world, ladies admire men who can set the gift giving bar high as well. Volunteering is giving of your time and expertise over money, something that is worthy for everyone to do, no matter what your social economic status or political leanings.

Donations are often thought of for charities, with fund raisers common for high profile charities that often as not are sponsored and have high status figures leading the fund raising. This helps the charity and the contributors often see benefits in the area of tax incentives.

At the time of this writing Warren Buffett is offering a free online course, “Giving with a Purpose” with the chance to help him decided how to spend over $100k of his sisters money! That kind of course is a first as far as I can tell.

Bill Gates

Volunteers without vast wealth are simply donating their time more than their money in the real world. They are often not able to donate their money in the sums that would make huge differences in the same way that Bill Gates does with his vast wealth, taking on diseases around the world. So time is traded instead of money. Giving your time instead of giving your money becomes the working class way of staying involved and still making a difference.

Bill Clinton, author of Giving, How each of us can change the world

In his best selling book, Giving, How Each of Us Can Change The World, former U. S. President Bill Clinton makes a very powerful case for how everyone in the world can help improve the world through giving or volunteering of their time or money or a combination of both, regardless of their social economic status.

He talks about the Make-A-Wish foundation volunteers who will “leave you feeling good about yourself”. On the next page of this book he relates about how volunteers built houses to turn over to residents in need for another charity group. The giving can come in many different forms and result in many different methods of helping those in need.

As a high status individual Bill Clinton has certainly provided leadership for giving that is way beyond what the normal man or women could do! He has social capital that most of us could only dream about.

In the real world, we have examples of political rivals who have set aside their differences to work together. Former U. S. President Bush Senior and former President Clinton have set a very high bar for such unified efforts, among them the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund.

Former U.S. President Carter has for years led programs of volunteers for very worthy efforts, with very high public praise for his achievements. He has certainly led by example when it comes to volunteering to make a difference in the real world.

The first U.S. President of the Bush family, George H.W. Bush had his faith based initiatives which resulted in the Points of Light group, a group still operating and helping others. Today he is visiting the White House where President Obama recognized the 5,000th Daily Point of Light Award, which went to a retired farm couple from Iowa.

Giving and volunteering seem to abound in the top levels of American Politics, intersecting with the real world in a very profound way that has resulted in enormous benefits to mankind.

Campaign button for President Ford in 1976

American Presidents have a long tradition of enjoying volunteer groups, with 15 known members taking the first degree and 14 completing the required 3d degree to become Master Masons, the last one being Gerald Ford. Abe Lincoln petitioned but did not go through with the Freemason initiation and Bill Clinton was a member of the youth group of Masons, called the DeMolay named after a historical figure who was burned at the stake by the Inquisition.

Past U. S. Presidents who were involved in other volunteer groups which still operate today were Warren G. Harding, FDR, and Harry Truman who all belonged to the Masons as well as the Elks, the Moose, and the Odd Fellows!

That is a bunch of volunteering over time. It is worthy to note that these groups all share some common values, and they were at one time known to also have some initiation similarities. Today they mostly share a common membership belief in a Supreme Being along with what today we would call family values in various forms.

Teddy Roosevelt in Yellowstone

Teddy Roosevelt, our 26th U.S. President had a love of volunteering it seems, with his many accomplishments including the founding of the NCAA, his support for various conservation efforts which helped establish our National Parks, his many public service posts, and of course his most famous volunteer effort historically was his inclusion in the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry, a portion of which he later led and was nick named, the “Rough Riders”. It’s hard to be more into giving of time or money than this individual, considering his impact on the future of our National Parks particularly.

Rough Riders photo

Of course, Teddy Roosevelt volunteered to be President so frequently that he was later the focus of legislation to limit the terms a person can serve for the U. S. Presidency! You can perhaps give a bit too much it seems.

Former President Bill Clinton wrote a whole book on giving as we noted above, with over 200 pages of examples and information on how individuals and groups can make a difference in today’s world. This post is not for book reviewing, but I would say that the book is a worthy start for those wanting to become an empowered volunteer or to rebuild America while seeking their potential for giving in today’s real world, no matter if you are unknown or famous.

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Every citizen neighbor of every country is constantly doing calculations of risk versus rewards for a stream of decisions every day of their lives. That is the nature of living here on earth.

High Risk

The empowered volunteer also faces the risk versus reward scenario’s, but for the most part they are not life or death when it comes to inviting a prospect to join a neighborhood charity volunteer group. The risks are less of a threat, but the rewards can often be much more far reaching and in some scenario’s much more dramatic.

If the risk for the empowered volunteer is low then, what is the potential reward? Glad you asked! The reward for gaining the skills and knowledge in how to get people to join a group for their own benefit as well as the groups benefit is huge and can be applied to the local community where you live as an example.

Communities survive and thrive on risk management transferred through individual levels of reciprocity between members. It’s just that simple.

If the local community members are known to each other and have previously established a level of trust then in situations of outside stress they can rely on each other and support each other. This was the basis of the American community for our early years.

In cities or in the rural areas neighbors helped neighbors all over the world 50 years ago. Today, in many areas neighbors don’t know each other more than to wave when they are outside shoveling snow or cutting the grass. They more often than not are unaware of the other’s name. Even in the cities where being from the “neighborhood” meant something years ago, today it is much less meaningful in many places, unfortunately.

If the empowered volunteer finds him or herself learning their neighbors names and other associated information they are in a much better position to engage in reciprocity and networking.

This is social capital in action, as reported on in the book, Bowling Alone, by Robert Putnam, a Harvard scientist. He identified the issue that initially generated my convictions on helping solve the membership decline in American volunteer groups. But the issue extended to neighborhoods too. So my solution to this should extend to neighborhoods as well, in my mind at least.

When you help someone, even if it is only to show an interest in them and establish a bond or some level of trust, you help both parties involved. See previous posts on the many health and other benefits gained by both parties in these type of events.

They don’t have to join to become a bit more interested in the neighborhood, they could simply take an interest in another neighbor and being more friendly to someone else, extending the idea in a domino effect.

American farmer stories abound with someone getting hurt and his neighbor drives the tractor over, plows the field or plants it or even harvests it, and never even stops to say much. They do the work, and return to do their own. In my youth they may have shouted out on the CB radio a hi or bye, but that’s about it. Everyone stood by each other, without fan fare or any fuss.

Neighborhoods in the city often operate in similar fashion. Believe it or not, this is not an American institution, it can be observed in many countries. People locally are much more likely to help their neighbor than someone they don’t know in these cases.

Neighborhood risk management is fundamental to American citizenship and to the American lifestyle.

We are constantly pulled towards big government for some things and to local government for other things. This can make for a stressful political atmosphere, where one candidate can claim that 47% of the other group is not worthy of his votes even.  This kind of division is really sad.

For the empowered volunteer anything and everything that can happen will impact the local community. Thus, if you are to hedge your bets on how to react to any one event or even a large event such as a power grid-down scenario you are much better off if you have already established yourself in your community as a worthy person who is known and respected.

There is no need for politics here, indeed I would counsel against it. Politics divide and in this type of thinking you want inclusiveness rather than division. You want to know each and every person within walking distance at the very least if you can. Know them by name if possible, but know them by face at the very least.

It is empowering to just be one of the people who knows everyone in the neighborhood by name, or even a first name basis!

In my youth block parties were common. They are still used in some parts of the country but I think they are used less and less. This is a shame.

For any disaster that you can think of, citizens are impacted and react according to how well they know their neighbors. For economic stresses, neighbors that care are better than strangers. For major natural disasters like hurricanes, earthquakes, wild firers, or even mudslides knowing your neighbors as you are standing behind the police tape is better than suddenly introducing yourselves to each other.

People that know others and can ask for help with a better than average likelihood of success are valuable, but to be in that position you must be known and have a network already created.

The empowered volunteer is in a unique position for influencing the risks of his or her neighborhood. They will find success helping their group over time and that learning process will be one that can transfer to other team building groups forever. All groups, churches, volunteer groups that are less organized than the formal ones I have mentioned before, perhaps a start up group to construct local neighborhood needs, any sort of needs can be better met with a group of like minded citizens.

I would encourage all empowered volunteers to actively solicit in their neighborhood for their group, if appropriate. This is a great excuse to exercise your techniques, meet the neighbors and embrace them wither or not they join the group, to fully extend your network beyond your work or charity related associates, raise awareness for your cause or charity and ensure a positive messages is transmitted in your immediate area, and to learn how to make friends and influence people of all kinds. These skills may just come in handy some day if you ever have a situation where you face a risk versus reward that is wide spread in nature.

The risks for meeting your neighbors is small and the rewards may just be life saving some day. Embrace your neighbors, you will be better off for it.

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                         Checking out the fishing action roadside from the motor home.

After a successful career and then retirement, is there another ladder to climb for volunteering?

The answer is, only if you want to climb that ladder. Volunteering at any age is worthy and even brings health benefits. See my other posts on the subject of health, positivity, connectivity, and ways to broaden one’s mind, using meditation. However, health aside volunteering has many other benefits for both sides of the volunteer equation which in these days of declining services and opportunities are more in need than every before.

AARP, the largest and probably the most recognized of the retirement age advocacy groups in the United States also provides several paths and steps for those who want to volunteer. This group is well organized and very focused on the welfare of the retired membership.

http://www.aarp.org/giving-back/

Freemasons, the largest and oldest fraternal organization in the world are another group where men of all ages are welcome to join and where volunteering is highly encouraged. Freemasons only accept men who believe in a supreme being, are of legal age, free of criminal past, well respected in the community, and who are willing to pass through the three degrees of initiation. Most men who join the Masons have been volunteers for many years in their churches or other well known groups. Masons have a ladder of success in the form of the progression for the governing of the lodge as well, though many members never care to engage in that part of the Masonic experience.

http://askafreemason.org/

Another group who allow both men and women and is associated with Freemasonry would be the Eastern Star. This group’s purpose is to provide membership association as well as charitable work for its focus. They operate independently from the Freemasons, with the only requirement that a belief in a supreme being and a focus on Christianity through the story of the  star of Bethlehem.

http://www.easternstar.org/

Another group of Freemasonry related members are the Shriners. One group is men only and one group is ladies only. Today the requirement to join the Shiriners is for the men to be a Mason in good standing. For the ladies, being related to a Mason in good standing is required, along with the usual belief for both groups that you believe in a supreme being and be of good character. Both groups volunteer extensively for charities as well as provide funds for their respective area Shriner’s Crippled and Burn Hospitals. Many retirement age ladies and men have been in these two groups for years but with retirement they fully engage their time and effort for the good causes these groups support, volunteering in ways too numerous to cover.

http://www.shrinersinternational.org/Shriners.aspx

http://www.shrinersinternational.org/en/Shriners/Organization/NewFirstLady.aspx

Habitat for Humanity is another group with many opportunities for retired volunteers. They are faith based but help those in need regardless of their religious affiliation or other characteristics. The help ranges from pure labor to organizational type positions and everything in between for most of the local groups, along with fund raising or donation solicitations.

http://www.habitat.org/where-we-build

                                                        USO, December 1941

Another group with opportunities for retired volunteers is the many veterans groups, not all of which require prior service to become involved. The USO is one of these groups that doesn’t require prior service for volunteering.

http://www.uso.org/ways-to-volunteer.aspx

For prior service members, the American Legion and the Veterans of Foreign Wars offer many outstanding opportunities for volunteering wither retired or not.

http://www.legion.org/volunteers

http://www.vfw.org/Community/Get-Involved/

One more is the Disabled American Veterans, which runs collection centers where the proceeds go to helping disabled veterans.

http://www.dav.org/volunteers/Opportunities.aspx?gclid=CJPdg5y_-LcCFVMV7AodDUsAlQ

A different focus for helping children is the Senior Corps. This aligns people 55 and older with youth in need of mentoring and other services.

http://www.nationalservice.gov/programs/senior-corps

Many local opportunities for youth engagement can be found at schools too, with after school programs for tutoring or coaching opportunities.

The American Red Cross is another group that has well thought out programs aimed at those over 50 who can focus specialties on disaster relief when needed. Go to their website for the details.

http://www.crossculturalsolutions.org/retired-volunteer-abroad-programs?siteID=Google_Grants_retired_volunteer&gclid=CLS8pPjA-LcCFQho7Aodm0EAbQ

This short and very incomplete list of volunteer friendly groups for older citizens is reflective of not only the need for elderly involvement but the abundant benefits gained by both the volunteers and those on the receiving end.

Life’s steps as we age provides many ladders for us to climb and then move onto another portion of our life experience, one where retirement age eventually makes all of us cross the age of elibibility for AARP, which is technically 50 but most of the groups providing services for AARP don’t activate their participation until 55. 

The opportunities to volunteer through faith based groups abounds, secular groups who don’t specialize in spreading the mostly Christian message but simply help whoever, where ever the needs is found, and even those who are very focused on helping one select group in need such as Special Olympics.

http://www.specialolympics.org/volunteers.aspx

Many of the posts I have provided here on this site already detail the health benefits of networking, social connectivity, positivity, and how face-to-face interactions rather than internet networking can provide enormous life prolonging human benefits to the volunteer.

These attributes associated with volunteering should be included in the retirement planning of every able bodied retired volunteer who wants to enrich their life. 

With the potential for many soon to retire Americans seeing their wealth reduced in the last few years this is one area where a fixed income volunteer can still reap the rewards of a vital life without impacting their monthly budget.

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Empowered volunteers are by nature caring and empathetic.

For this reason they will find themselves as they hand out business cards and encountering people who are not happy, they need to fall back on the empowered volunteer wisdom. They may have many of life’s hard issues on their plate and they may be emotionally dragging. They won’t feel that they have any good reason to even consider your offer of joining your group. When they tell you why they won’t or can’t join, the negativity of their emotional state radiates and drowns your positive nature.

This is where many would simply take “no” for an answer and move on. That is a choice. I am now going to suggest that another potential path is available, one that must fit the individual empowered volunteer well enough to even try to employ the empowered volunteer wisdom approach.

After reading this short post if an empowered volunteer feels that this idea has potential they should check out the website where the author of this book and many of the supporting studies can show a more well rounded presentation of methods to become more emotionally positive.

http://www.positivityratio.com/index.php

For people in emotional distress there are things that they can do to help themselves that are at no cost and are backed by decades of studies that show their positive impact and effectiveness. Barbara L. Fredrickson, in her book Positivity writes about the positivity ratio, the balance between negative things in your life and positive ones.

This ratio is totally in the control of each of us and it can mean the difference between languishing and flourishing! It is that powerful, according to the author.

Studies show that positive emotions don’t directly improve or impact the human heart, but they can undo the influence of the negativity! In other words, they can minimize the negative influence or damage. Positive emotions also helps the body to rebound from the negative effects faster than if they were not involved.

There are two types of positivity identified by the author, serenity and amusement. She sees both as equally good at improving recovery time from negative emotional stress. In the book and to some extent on the website she explains how each works. Serenity is something that is a great tool for those in the funeral business to use to keep their empathy from being drained away. Amusement is open and accessible to everyone.

A high percentage of empowered volunteers will be of the “resilient personality” that the author identified.

People who are of this type worry less and are able to rebound from negative life influences quicker than those who hold a more pessimistic life view. Studies on the behavior type resilient personalities have decades of research as well, and the results show that positivity and openness work together with resilience to dissolve negativity and enable people to make stronger comebacks in their lives.

If you find yourself as an empowered volunteer and you are not one of the resilient personalities, good news you can build this characteristic into your nature! It is a resource you can develop.

Empowered volunteers that encounter emotionally distraught people who seem to be generally positive but are at that point when they are encountered by an empowered volunteer in a negative rut can use this pattern to engage and perhaps set that person onto a better path. Down the road they just may take that business card and give you a call.

Negative emotions narrow the persons emotional state and their point of view.

They don’t see the forest for the trees in many cases. Many people in such states emotionally cut themselves off from the positive aspects of the community too, such as charities and volunteer groups. Do you see where this is going? They need the groups but they won’t see it.

The empowered volunteer wisdom secrete involves resilience to go beyond ones individual amount of positivity and embrace it from others in the community! In other words, the people who will without even contemplating your offer of volunteering reject it are the ones most in need of the a community embracing. Their negative emotions won’t let them even see the potential due to their narrowed focus, with the forest being the community full of positive types who can support those in need.

The author further explains that their are two responses to hardship, despair or hope. Despair multiplies the effects of negativity until it drowns out all forms of positivity! Beware of this great sucking sound of emotional drainage. Hope is the opposite of despair and it is like a shield that holds off negative emotions from the outside world in most instances. Resilience is another result from positive emotions using hope as one of the supports.

Summing things up, positivity broadens your mind, helps you build your best future, and fuels your resilience. Using the three to one ratio of positive emotional experiences to negative ones people can then see how positivity and negativity work together to “tip” their lives toward flourishing.

The nuts and bolts of how to find positive life emotions and view points from a broadened mind are available on the website. So is a test to determine the current state of the persons emotions. Tools to change that states if it needs changing are also listed in the book and on the site.

The empowered volunteer simply needs to be familiar with the wisdom and then when the presentation is rejected this is potentially the very best message that an empathetic person could offer to another who is emotionally down. Positivity and the surrounding message has decades of studies on it’s validity for the prospect who is data driven, it has strong empathy for the prospect who is more into touch and contact type informational learning and it just plain has absolutely no drawbacks that involve either monetary cost or resource costs. What could be better than FREE?

When you encounter an emotionally distraught person who rejects your message despite your passion and your knowledge that they need it, this is the one thing that you can offer them. Have the web address on you, take your card and write it on the back of your card for them. They still have to take action on their own, but they may just call you down the road and tell you they want to join your group that has so much to offer, just like the passionate presentation you offered him or her when they needed it most.

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The report shows a list of the 50 worst charities.

Some of these charities seem little more than scams from the audit reports on how the contributions distributed to those in need were unearthed. Many have names which are easily confused with legitimate charities. This type of issue hurts everyone who is trying to help others while running a proper organization with good operating numbers for efficiency.

See the Tamp Bay Times article below for some of the issues.

http://www.tampabay.com/topics/specials/worst-charities.page

Many of the charities on the list investigated for fraud by the paper could be ones supported by volunteer groups who were duped into supporting them. If this happens and you find out that the charity is not functioning up to the standards you expect, you have the right to take the issue before your group for review and if necessary, termination.

Several volunteer groups have been in the news lately for various issues other than this article by the paper. I don’t want to review all of those issues, but one, the Boy Scouts of America has just taken a huge step away from its previous position of not supporting gay leaders or scouts. If I understand correctly, the lift right now is only allowing gay scouts, not scout leaders. In any event, this is a dramatic change of policy which is very likely to influence the future in many ways for them.

For the Boy Scouts, many of the sponsors are Christian Churches who contribute building space, time, money or equipment and often members from their own flock. Many Christian Churches are not in tune with the gay agenda, either for the scouts or for the scout leaders. No matter how this issue sorts itself out, the Boy Scouts of America will be viewed much differently in the future. Whither this change is good or negative will be for history to reflect.

The Susan B. Komen group supporting cancer research has been in the news for its struggle to maintain its famous 3 day walks for a cure in cities where they have historically been successful. This doesn’t make it a bad charity just because it has to refine the process soliciting contributions! Unfortunately this group has recently had political issues where it did not want to support Planned Parenthood with the contributions it had raised, a huge change in policy from the past.

That really unfortunate stand was not viewed by the public as positive and it may still be hurting fund raising. Very strong feelings on both sides of this issue make it volatile and I would encourage the empowered volunteer to say away from commenting on it as he or she attempts to find members for their group. Sometimes groups have to change to stay viable in the public eye.

The point here is that while all legitimate charities are worthy, unfortunately there are way too many in the United States operating under questionable financial arrangements or even fraudulent ones, and you are not obligated to continue servicing them if they are found out to be this way. When too much of the public contributions are not funneled to those in need, it can raise doubt on the validity of the entire group.

Sometimes even the worthy ones end up changing their methods, or their values even when social pressures become too great to bear. 

Groups like the Moose and the Elks have changed their ways to be more in tune with society over the years. They changed for good reasons and maintained their worthiness of purpose.

Sometimes a group must change or become less appealing to the public. One group used to proudly claim that over one million dollars of charitable contributions per day were donated to by it’s members. Dwindling memberships have since narrowed that focused amount to a far smaller one.

Years ago the Freemasons in America endured a huge drop in membership when an event now called the “Morgan Affair” hit the news. Freemasons were accused of abducting and silencing a man who had claimed he was going to reveal their secretes to the public. Unfortunately this silly event was believed by the public and for decades hurt Freemason membership.

                                               ’Worcester Masonic Temple – 7

Every Freemason knows that while the organization as it is today was organized in 1717 it was in 1723 that a book was published revealing all of the so called secretes. Funny, to this day not one of the “secretes” has been in any way modified or refined. So much for secretes that Freemasons would “kill” for, wouldn’t you agree? Today such nonsense from questionable sources would never be able to make the public believe such a lie, but in the early 1800′s things were far harder to communicate and folks believed the worst.

You won’t find a Freemason who believes that the “secretes” make him a mason. He will reply that he was first made a mason in his heart and then in a proper lodge. The secretes are only a focus by ill informed public who want to create tension, usually for their own purposes.

Always do everything you can to be above reproach in your dealings surrounding your group and the charity your group supports. If you do that, everything will work out for the best.

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Freemasons, who started out building Christian churches

The purpose of this site is to arm individuals with the knowledge and strategy for success in volunteering and rebuilding various groups who support charities, thus in the process as more  and more people do this we will collectively rebuild America! Just as the Freemasons are the inheritors of a past in building the great Christian churches we now take for granted, so too are America’s great volunteer groups showing signs of being taken for granted. The Empowered Volunteers can be the builders for these great American assets before we lose something too big for words when you consider all the contributions they have made over our history.

Lofty purpose, tons of work by a huge number of people needed to pull it off. Every person counts, even if you don’t want to become an empowered volunteer. Join for selfish reasons and then as time goes on you’re likely to become much more open to the real values of the group and the charity you are supporting. When you combine passion with networking with face to face interactions with other humans you can’t help but see health improvements, according to many studies over many years.

Harvard professor Robert D. Putnam, in his book “Bowling Alone” published in 2000 showed on page 303 a Social Capital Index which provided data reflecting that kids watch less TV in high social capital states. As adults and parents, all of us should want to set a better example for our kids. Data analysis like this shows convincingly that there is a link between the way children are raised in different parts of the country and how they act as adults.

This book by Putnam is one of the big factors that encouraged me to start figuring out the empowered volunteer criteria and methodology. If we lose these groups which Putnam says are part of what made America great over our history, we really lose something of our American soul. We don’t have to let these groups die off.

Putnam provided concrete data to show the need for what I had been using as a life strategy most of my life. America’s many civic and fraternal groups are dying in what he claimed left American’s bowling alone, thus the name for his book.

Group with the Optimist Creed

To illustrate the huge issue, I will use numbers from one civic group, but rest assured that the book I wrote in 2006 had population data from many groups which also have seen a decline in memberships just like this one.

Optimists International in 2006 had 123,865 members according to the website at the time. Today the site shows 87,000 members in 2013. That is a huge drop off in members over 7 years, but the cause and need for help has not declined I assure you. Another data point is that in 2006 the number of Optimist Clubs was 3,918, today their site shows 2,900 clubs. This is nearly a drop of a thousand clubs! This group has the famous Optimist Creed, which is well worth a visit to their web site to copy and print out. I recite this creed out loud on a frequent basis as a motivational tool.

Another well known group, Moose International, a fraternal and service group had in 2006 1.5 million members, today their site reflects 800,000 members. In 2006 they had 2,000 lodges and today their site reflects 1,800 lodges. They are still doing a mountain of good work, but with the steady decline of members the amount of help they can provide is a bit harder than when they had 700,000 more people!

These two examples of groups with a history in the last 7 years of declining memberships is the normal rather than the exception when it comes to membership decline. Very few groups have shown an increase. Most show a sharp decline as outlined in Putnam’s book.

As I post more and more about groups and their needs I will reflect each groups past numbers and needs when known as well as current numbers when they are available. I will post about how to become engaged and involved, all while helping your own future and your individual health in the process! So you can be civic and yet benefit in several ways too.

New motivated volunteers are needed desperately in all areas of the volunteer network. That is what prompted me to write my book in 2006, with the help of a hugely successful and very professional writing coach near Philadelphia, PA. Unfortunately, my old coach has now published many of his own books while I could not get any publisher interested in my idea to rebuild America. Thus I am taking my cause to the people and I will cut out the middle man, or publisher if you will who did not see the potential of rebuilding America. It was not the fault of the writing coach or the publishers that my book did not see the light of day, it was my fault for not finding a way. Now I have found that way, this site. I may or may not compile new data on population declines and new information for a follow up book with current information, that is yet to be decided.

To construct my book back in 2006 I simply took some of my business graduate studies from Troy State University, combined that with my experience in several volunteer groups along with my training in Lean Manufacturing techniques, particularly the empowered worker concepts so that the result was the “Empowered Volunteer Rebuilds America, One Fraternal, Civic, and Veterans Group at a Time”. I will in future posts detail exactly how, step by step, a motivated individual should start to take back America, one fraternal, civic, and veterans group at at time. I hope to self-publish this book in both print as well as e-book format in the future.

To illustrate the incredible power of the data collected in Putnam’s book, particularly a concept called the Social Capital Index, I will quote a bit from “Bowling Alone”.

“States that score high on the Social Capital Index – that is, states whose residents trust other people, join organizations, volunteer, vote, and socialize with friends – are the same states where children flourish: where babies are born healthy and where teenagers tend not to become parents, drop out of school, get involved in violent crime, or die prematurely due to suicide or homicide. 

Statistically, the correlation between high social capital and positive child development is as close to perfect as social scientists ever find in data analysis of this sort. States like North Dakota, Vermont, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Iowa have healthy civic adults and healthy well adjusted kids; other states, primarily those in the South, face immense challenges in both the adult and youth populations.”

Social capital by itself is not a cause for healthy kids or any other issue. It is a very big contributor but by itself it is only one factor. When combined with other factors the data suggests that when you do things to increase your social capital, you will incur increased health benefits.

How much for each individual and how soon all are individual characteristics that are very hard to determine without mounds of data from before you started and then followup data after you are fully engaged in the program. For our purposes we will rely on the various studies that show the benefits to those who have done similar programs. Basically, if it works for others over the years, we will strive to get the same results all while helping people in need and collectively helping our country.

By the way, there is no reason this pattern I will submit for the American citizens could not be used all over the world. The World Bank has encouraged many countries to engage in increasing the social capital of the citizens in the area involved. The concept is powerful and it has had success in many areas beyond helping American volunteer groups. In time if there is a demand I will study other countries and their issues and tailor this program for their needs. This program certainly can help others, but the massive data analysis from “Bowling Alone” helped justify the various techniques I have tailored for my Rebuilding of America program. Other countries might have different needs due to different conditions and populations.

To summarize, Empowered Volunteers are individuals who have a purpose, to increase the membership of their worthy cause or charity. In the process of helping their cause, they will contribute to the overall rebuilding of American volunteer groups, including civic groups, fraternal groups, and veteran groups. There are also many other worthy groups for empowered volunteers to help, youth groups, trade groups, garden clubs, church groups, and many others. No mater what worthy group you choose, you can be sure that when you hook up someone with a group that they feel passionate about you will be one step closer to rebuilding America’s volunteer infrastructure. You will be the next Empowered Volunteer who helps rebuild America, one volunteer at at time.

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