The SOS Center - Finding the Sustainability to Continue to Touch Lives

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  Today I am sharing with you the story of one of my clients, the SOS Center, a non-profit that has worked in the community of Milwaukee for 30 years.  

The SOS Center of Milwaukee 

For nearly 30 years, SOS Center has been empowering children and adults to overcome poverty through their education programs. 

Thirty percent of households in the surrounding area earn less than $15,000 a year.  Neighborhood students are part of the MPS school district, where overall proficiency/advanced rates reach only 62% in reading at the 8^th grade level and only 50% in Math in 8^th grade.

Through its GED Preparation Classes, After School Homework Program, Adult Basic Education, Youth Summer Camp, English as a Second Language and Sewing Classes, the SOS Center touches the lives of each child and adult they connect with and support. 

Just ask Darlene, who dropped out of school in the 10^th grade and by the age of 16 was pregnant and married. After raising two children as well as grandchildren and working as a housekeeper for over 20 years, she signed up for free GED classes at the SOS Center at the age of 52.  Though she felt at times she felt like giving up, she completed her GED, and scored a rare perfect 800 on her Reading Test, where only a score of 410 was required to pass.

But as with any non-profit organization, the key to continuing to touch the lives of people like Darlene is financial sustainability.  With this understanding, Jodi Kessel Lyon, the Executive Director of the SOS Center, signed up for Deb Lukovich’s alinea seminar, “Learn the Secret to Sustainability.” After attending, Jodi learned that the key to financial sustainability was relationship fundraising and that her board members needed to adopt this new mindset. She knew her board and staff needed to find a better way of telling the story of SOS Center’s hard and dedicated work.

“While we knew we were doing good work, we were stuck on how to share our story,” Jodi said. “We would meet someone and be so focused on ‘we need money.’ We needed to build relationships, but struggled with the conversations we needed to have. We didn’t know how to get there.”

After selling this idea to her board, alinea was hired to work with SOS Center on strategic relationship cultivation as well as to create a compelling professional case statement to use to inspire people with their story. As soon as the case statement was created and presented to the board, Jodi already saw a renewed sense of engagement among them. 

“I think they’re getting it.  In August, one of the board members immediately contacted an old family friend and brought her in as a new board member. One of our committed board members felt uncomfortable asking for anything.  After she learned how to talk about SOS Center, she was able to get donations and now feels very comfortable talking about the Center.  Her husband became involved and after he learned how to tell our story, solicited a number of auction items for our fundraiser,” continued Jodi.

Jodi saw by September that board members were more engaged in identifying relationships and positive where they hadn’t ever been before.  “Shemagne from alinea kept us on task and truly got to know us. We even found the process fun.  Everyone came up with contacts they had, thinking outside the box.  The more they talked the more excited they got. One idea led to another. Being this engaged in the positive at a board meeting hadn’t happened in a year,” Jodi exclaimed. “This was exciting!”

With a renewed passion from her board and a new approach of telling stories, Jodi feels excited and knows that SOS Center is on the right track.  While SOS will always be fundraising, in the future Jodi plans to find more sustainable fundraising to get beyond a critical point to allow SOS to concentrate more on programming. In 2012, SOS Center would like to expand the Adult Basic Education Program, recruit more board members and volunteers as well as secure resources for ongoing capital improvements.

“After working with alinea, we learned that we need the knowledge, and the commitment. We need the tools and skills,” Jodi said.  “And we need to keep a relationship with alinea because this is just a tip of the iceberg of what we are capable of!”

How to Attract and Keep AWESOME Volunteers!

Are You Treating Your Volunteers Like MAJOR DONORS?

You should be!  A little inspiration and genuine relationship building goes a long way!

Does any of the following sound familiar to you?

 “After I learned about a XYZ organization, I called right away to find out how I could volunteer.  I left a voicemail for someone, but I never got a call back.”

“While I was at an event, I met someone who worked for XYZ organization.  I was really impressed, but when I asked how I could help, the person wasn’t sure.” 

“I was really excited about volunteering for XYZ organization, but I thought I would get to do more than stuff envelopes.”

How about these comments?

“We don’t have enough volunteers.”

“We have lots of volunteers, but they don’t want to do what we need them to do.”

“I can’t believe that when volunteers sign up to do something that they show up late or not at all.”

If this is what’s happening in your organization, you are not seeing people as the potential gold mine they could be for your organization. 

If you’ve read my other blog postings, you will be familiar with my philosophy of long-term sustainability for nonprofits and schools being dependent on effective community engagement.  Sustainability is not just about dollars, but also about people, partnerships, materials, internships and other kinds of resources. 

That means the process of attracting and keeping volunteers is just like the process of attracting and building financial donations.  The formula for effective community engagement = Story + Direction + Relationships. 

Let’s apply this same formula to volunteers and see what it looks like.

Step #1 – Story – You need to be able to tell your story in a way that inspires people to want to help.

Step #2 – Direction – You need to be able to answer the question, “What are your top three priorities, what do you need to achieve them, and how can people help?”

Step #3 – Relationships – You need to build a genuine and mutually beneficial relationship with each individual volunteer.    

8 Steps to attracting and keeping awesome volunteers (Part I)

1. Get out of the office.  If you’re hoping to recruit the best volunteers from the comfort of your office, you’ve got it all wrong.  Begin to see that every moment of every day is an opportunity to share your organization’s story, make a connection and identify an opportunity to bring volunteer talent to your organization.  

For example, one day our client was paging through M Magazine when he came upon an article about a local TV reporter and her quote, “I love Jesus and laughing children.” 

Our client immediately felt a connection and wrote her a personal letter suggesting that they both had this in common.  This principal of a school asked the TV reporter in his letter if she would be willing to tour his school.  After coming on a tour and becoming inspired about what this school was doing for children, the TV reporter did a two-part TV story on its students and has been volunteering ever since. 

2. Imagine that every possible volunteer could make a donation of $10,000.  You just never know. 

One of my favorite people is Pat Molter!  She’s helped start two nonprofit organizations and is one of the best outreach people I’ve ever met because she treats volunteers like they are the most critical part of the organization.

In fact, my team member Shemagne met Pat while working out at a local Curves.  She immediately became genuinely interested in Shemagne’s life and what she did for a living.

Then she went on to inspire Shemagne with the stories of about three oganizations doing amazing things in Milwaukee.

Pat recently shared this story with me.  House of Love, her organization serving teen girls in foster care who need a group home environment, had just purchased a four apartment building that has now become a transition program for teen girls who become 18 and age out of the foster care system. 

After they purchased it, they found out that they needed to replace the roof in addition to making many, many repairs.  The apartment building had previously been inhabited by drug users as well as a hoarder.  “It was just disgusting,” Pat remarked. 

On this particular day, Pat was cleaning inside while an older group of  men volunteers were busy building shelves in the garage.  Pat is very adamant about always taking the time to meet with the volunteers to share the House of Love story and ensure they understand how important they are to the success of the organization.  Well, Pat was feeling pretty disgusted after cleaning the inside of the apartment building and just wanted to go home and shower.  But one of the organization’s staff people reminded her that she needed to go talk to the volunteers first. Pat went out to greet the group of volunteers, share the House of Love story and shared her appreciation for their contribution before returning home to shower.

Two weeks later, Pat got a call from one of the gentlemen.  He told her, “I haven’t been able to sleep for two weeks, until finally I received a message from God that I was to help House of Love.”  Pat got excited thinking, “Maybe this means a $1,000 donation,” which would be a major gift.  But to her surprise, her jaw dropped when he told her, “Pat, God has even given me an amount - $50,000.” 

As you can see, the House of Love story really resonated with this man and his wife, who had been abandoned themselves as children. 

  

3. Be genuinely interested in people (without an agenda).  People volunteer and make donations to organizations because it fills a need for them.  While some people feel they have been blessed and compelled to give back to the community, for others, a specific issues they have personally been impacted by are what resonate.  In addition, others are looking for an organization that currently needs their talents.  In order to attract the volunteer that is a match for your organization, you need to know a lot about the other person. 

When I was asked to run for president of The Park People, I immediately knew that they were a match for my talents, and that I would really blossom professionally through this experience.  However, I wasn't sure if they were ready for me.  Before I allowed them to vote me into this position, I laid out my philosophy, plans and my expectations of them in the process I was about to take them through.  Only after their agreement did I accept the challenge. 

In my position as President of the organization, I actively sought out new people to sit on the board.  I wasn’t as interested in their resume as I was in their desire to use specific skills and talents, and how they saw themselves contributing.  The first thing I did was ask them to talk about themselves.  Then I shared The Park People story, our plans for the future and how their specific talents, skills and desires fit into achieving our goals. 

If I thought they would have a meaningful experience AND would contribute toward achieving the organization’s goals, then I would recommend to the board that we consider voting them on as a board member. 

4. It’s not about asking . . . for anything.  It’s about being clear about your priorities, what is needed to achieve them and how people can help.  The purpose of sharing your story is to inspire people to want to help.  But if you stop there, the person doesn’t know how to help, so they may walk away and you lost an opportunity.  Your story needs to also lay out your organization’s top priorities, what needs to happen to achieve them and how they can help. 

Did you know that there are more people volunteering than ever right now?  Some people are looking for an opportunity to make a meaningful contribution.  Others are looking for ways to keep their skills fresh or learn new skills that could lead to a change in career.  And many college age students and young professionals are looking for a chance to develop their leadership skills.  If volunteers can clearly match their skills to your opportunities, the relationship will prove mutually beneficial.

Let me know how your organization recruits and retains volunteers, what you have found successful and if you have you tried any of the above steps. I always love hearing about different ways organizations work with volunteers to creatively engage their communities.