01 May 2012 at 12:00AM
President's Message - May, 2012
Your Chapter just held its Volunteer Recognition event at the Botanical Gardens. If you haven’t been there since you were a kid, I suggest you take a drive out – it’s really an incredible place with a rich history. Anyway, we recognized the 96 people who perform 136 jobs for the Chapter.
What struck me were two things. First, 96 people are volunteering to help the Chapter. That’s incredible. That’s about 15% of our membership in a time where most Chapters only have 10% of the membership volunteering. So I should be thankful that so many people are volunteering (and I am!). But the other thing that struck me is that 96 people are filling 136 different roles.
That means that many of our volunteers are doing double-duty. That may be okay if the volunteer roles are seasonal and they don’t overlap, but that’s not always the case. We have one volunteer that does five different jobs!
We need volunteers. Not just to take some of the burden off of our current volunteers, but because we actually have more than 136 volunteer jobs. Those 136 jobs are just the jobs the volunteers are currently performing. There are also about 20 other open positions that will allow us to expand our programs and operational services. We have openings in Professional Development, in Outreach, in Finance, in Membership, in Communications, and in Technology & Business Services. We could take it easy and not try to improve the Chapter, and be happy with what we are doing, but we’ve never been a Chapter like that. We are always looking for improve what we do, and to be the best Chapter we can for our members. We think that you expect us to add more value to your membership, and to be more efficient with your membership dollars, and that’s we try to do. But our programs take volunteers to execute. We could really use your help filling some of these openings. Some of the jobs that we have take just an hour a month. If you want that feeling that comes with helping out or if you are just in it for the PDUs, if you have any time at all (even if it’s just at a certain time of the year), please contact Lynn Maher and let her know your availability and area of interest. She’ll find an opening that is perfect for you. Next year, I’d love to honor 150 volunteers performing 150 different jobs.
We just completed the Agile Certification Review class and coming up, the June Toolbelt classes. The Board will be starting to work on plans for next year and traveling to our regional meeting to hear what other chapters are doing.
As always, if you have any suggestions, comments, or questions, feel free to contact me. Enjoy your summer!
