The dreaded meeting

Meetings are often the lifeblood of a volunteer organization. It allows management to disseminate information to the general membership in the quickest, most effective manner. It ensures that the information is discussed and understood and it allows for the management to motivate the volunteer to "buy in".

The problems with meetings is that they are frequently the cholesterol in the lifeblood of a volunteer organization. Many times they are unnecessary gatherings that are poorly attended, poorly defined, or poorly run which means that more meetings are usually scheduled to try again to achieve the original goal of the meeting.

There are several ways to avoid this:

1) The most important question the leadership can ask prior to a meeting is, "Do we really have anything to talk about?" It is vital, however, that the leadership ask this "out-loud" because there may be a burning interest that some of the members need to bring before the collective body and that should not be overlooked. There are many times though that the leadership may find that the answer from everybody is a resounding NO and they can either not schedule a meeting or cancel an already scheduled meeting. This would make everyone happy and probably make for more productive, better attended meetings in the future.

2) Once the need for a meeting is established, the next thing to ask is, "What do we need to talk about?" The answer to this provides an agenda. To make meetings most effective, the planned agenda should be distributed to all members in advance to allow for additions to avoid surprises that will cause disruption. This allows everyone to be "on the same page" when they arrive for the meeting. It gives the leadership a general idea of how much time to allot to each subject and will help keep the meeting moving along.

3) The agenda should become the outline for the meeting which should ideally be wrapped up in an hour. Any issue that deserves more discussion than can be completed in an hour should be considered for a special meeting to allow for discussion on that topic alone. The leader of the meeting is responsible for keeping the discussion on topic and not allowing for wide-ranging discussions of topics, viewpoints, and opinions that have nothing to do with the original agenda item. In addition, the leader is responsible for the "parliamentary procedure" of the meeting. It would be advisable for anyone running a meeting to aquaint themselves with some sort of parliamentary procedure. My suggestion is The Standard Code of Parliamentary Procedure by Alice Sturgis. It is much simpler to use than Robert's Rules of Order and allows for much quicker meetings without extended parliamentary tricks.

These three steps can easily make an organizations meetings become more effective and better attended. People are anxious to stay informed and involved, but they will stop being interested if the monthly meeting is just a practice in spending an hour discussing gossip and achieving nothing.

Don't waste my time

As stated yesterday, there are literally millions of people who are willing to volunteer. They are motivated enough and interested enough to go through whatever training may be required of them, as long as they feel the reward is sufficient. The problem comes when the volunteer activity becomes a greater burden than the required training.

Having been a EMS volunteer for several different agencies over the past 25 years, I can attest to the feeling that "it's not worth it". Rarely will you hear someone voice the opinion that maintaining the EMT certification is not worth it. Most people who get into that field, do so out of a genuine interest in pre-hospital emergency care. What they don't count on is the hours of mind-numbing meetings and time-consuming requirements that really have nothing to do with actually being an EMT.

Some of this can be alleviated by expanding the scope of the recruiting drive to enlist the assistance of others to help. For example, one agency spent hours and hours involved in fund-raising activities such as stuffing envelopes for fund drives and frying any type of food available for fund-raising dinners. All of this became "required" of all members because it was vital to the agency's existence. The problem was, it was more than the EMT's signed up for. It was work that could have been done by people who enjoyed assisting the agency but who had no EMT training. This is the type of non-focus activity that burns out volunteers.

Another big time-robber is the meeting. I was a member of another organization for years and saw the difference between leaders in running a meeting. We had monthly meetings that were "required" for all members. One leader, a specialist in minutae, would allow discussion on the smallest item without limit and his meetings would last, literally, 3 hours. Another leader, same organization, same members, would hand out a tight, meaningful agenda and keep all discussion focussed on only the necessary business resulting in more things accomplished in 45 minute meetings. This makes a HUGE difference to the volunteer membership.

Remember, volunteers do want to be a part of your organization, but they don't want to make it the only thing in their life. You must be respectful in your use of their time.