Friday, October 11, 2013

What is your plan B for volunteer management

Most government offices of emergency management have a plan for donation and volunteer management (the fact that they think those go together is another blog post).

Many of those plans are written with the considerations that everything else is okay and functioning normally. So what happens when you Plan A doesn't work, as it didn't recently in the attached article?

Lack of Volunteers Leads Wayne to Take the Reigns on Recovery

Remember the agencies you have identified in your plan, Red Cross, 211, Salvation Army, are made up of people in your community and they are affected too. So have a back up plan.

If 211 is down, is there another business in town (or outside town) that has multiple lines?

How can you tell people the # to call ? Flyers? Broadcast Radio? TV?

How do you organize the task, people and hours?

This is much easier to do before the disaster

Disaster_Dave

Monday, September 2, 2013

Donation Management & You

First off, I know this is a volunteer blog, but who do you suppose ends up running

donation management sites? Could it be that for years, FEMA packaged donation management and volunteer management into the same 2 day class? Could it be that people speak about donations and volunteers in the same breath? Using this search in Google volunteer & donation management I got 18,200,000 results. Now granted they will go down hill in their focus, but you get the idea.

Not to regurgitate basic donation management practices of which you can see by using the above search method. I thought instead I would post this well written article "Who Is Responsible for the “Second Disaster”?"

The article talks about some of the changes in donations and how to get them there. Do we really need peoples old clothes, or do we need to be more surgical and use our technology. Could we follow some examples and use Amazon Wish Lists

Some of the things this technology fixes right away:

No cash through the mail

Don't have to worry about where how to ship it (never saw a Big Brown Truck not deliver)

Target what you REALLY need

Getting items to people fast

This is not an endorsement for Amazon, just an endorsement for thinking outside the box and being strategic in our thinking so the picture to the right isn't the end of our next disaster. (breezyaftersandy.org)

So what can you do? Search out training in donation management and go introduce yourself to you local emergency manager and say "I'm here to help plan for donation management"- I bet they sigh with relief.

Disaster_dave

Sunday, August 18, 2013

What happens when the volunteers quit coming

I was in Moore Oklahoma in June and the amount of volunteer help there was staggering as was the need. But according to this article the volunteers have slowed. But why is this happening? The need is there, and people don't stop caring. I do not know, but it worries me that there is a need but not enough help. So lets look at a couple of things we could do to help ourselves.
We know volunteers want to know what they are doing, who they are helping. So if you are appealing for volunteers after a disaster make sure you are using SMART when advertising for volunteers to help.

Specific - What is the project (who will it help- put a face on it)
Measurable - What do you expect to be accomplished and how will it fill a need for the face in #1
Attainable - It has to be doable with an end point even if it is something several groups work on. Everyone wants to have a sense of accomplishment in the end
Relevant- This should be easy. We are doing recovery for those who most need it not corporations
Time Bound- Start and stop times

So what else can help? Just some suggestions:
Ask Groups- Churches, companies employee groups, Youth groups, etc. Why? They bring their own management structure which helps free you up to do other things.

Make it easy to volunteer! Do you have a gym and cots where they can crash for the 1-7 days they are there? Can you feed them? Can you send them the paperwork to fill out in advance?Did you tell them to bring tools, gloves, etc.
Remember they are volunteering, so the easier you can make it the more likely you can get groups in.

We can never depend on the Government to do everything (that's not a political statement). Recovery takes a long time and the long game needs some thought, finesse, planning.
Don't think its a long game? When was Joplin? Look at this STORY

Lets take some time to think about Recovery and how we will get help from volunteer groups now, while its calm

Disaster_Dave

Friday, July 19, 2013

Never put Volunteers in "Maintenance Mode"

This article has been siting in my inbox for a bit, NEMA Reactivates Emergency Volunteer Corps To Handle Disasters
It was disturbing to me on a couple of levels, the first was the title. Why are they reactivating? Why were the deactivated? Volunteer organizations are not something that you build and forget. It takes work to build a solid high performing volunteer organization and in some respects takes more work to keep it at that level. I hear people who don't understand volunteers say things like "well we have enough, we should put that in maintenance mode". That is code for less work on that item. Sadly that is when programs start to fall apart, because no one is caring for the organization.

The second was a quote in the article " Otegbade who decried the poor participation of volunteers during emergencies, urged them to see themselves as major stakeholders in disaster management". Really? Have you heard "Praise in Public Counsel in Private"? Another one from my Military life "You are responsible for everything your troops do or fail to do"
Maybe Commodore Otegbade needs to look at the volunteers and think, if we are having to have this conversation, maybe its not them.
So just some finer points:

Volunteers join an organization to DO
You as the leader have the responsibility (to the volunteer and the community) to provide worthwhile training and practice to keep the volunteer sharp
You as the leader must walk the walk and never put your volunteers in "Maintenance mode"
Being a volunteer leader is sometimes an exhausting job, but you are making a difference!

Okay I am done now, go do great things!

@disaster_dave

Otegbade who decried the poor participation of volunteers during emergencies, urged them to see themselves as major stakeholders in disaster management. - See more at: http://leadership.ng/news/130713/nema-reactivates-emergency-volunteer-corps-handle-disasters#sthash.trD49POn.dpuf

NEMA Reactivates Emergency Volunteer Corps To Handle Disasters - See more at: http://leadership.ng/news/130713/nema-reactivates-emergency-volunteer-corps-handle-disasters#sthash.trD49POn.dpuf

NEMA Reactivates Emergency Volunteer Corps To Handle Disasters - See more at: http://leadership.ng/news/130713/nema-reactivates-emergency-volunteer-corps-handle-disasters#sthash.trD49POn.dpu

NEMA Reactivates Emergency Volunteer Corps To Handle Disasters

- See more at: http://leadership.ng/news/130713/nema-reactivates-emergency-volunteer-corps-handle-disasters#sthash.veNfNw4q.dpuf

Sunday, July 14, 2013

What do you do when they come

We like to look at our operations and think we have a plan and it will all go along nicely. But what do you do when they come. You know the individuals and groups you wrote into your plan. Because we all wrote the Israelis into our plans right? Or the biker group that takes over a disaster area and runs it with military efficiency they are in your plan too, right?

So what do we do? Turn down the help because its different? If you experience a catastrophic disaster, you will need the help. So the fix is to plan for the unexpected now.

Because the biggest disservice you can do for your community is to not be ready to accept help as in this excerpt (underline is mine) from the article here.
"At the time of the Hanshin earthquake, the concept of “disaster-relief volunteers” was not well known. When we set out to help, I first visited the Nagata Ward office and told an official that I wanted to volunteer. The official there told me to write my name on a sheet. That was it — he couldn’t explain anything about the volunteer situation."

Make your plan flexible enough that no matter where people come from you can assign them a task to accomplish.

@disaster_dave

Sunday, July 7, 2013

A New Better Volunteer Model

In time of disaster the volunteers will come, but as we move forward in planning it seems to me that we need to engage the none profit community. And then I saw this - SRC United Way Has New Role in Emergency Response.

And I thought yes that is the plan. So what are the benefits?

In a disaster the government will be busy and with falling budgets may have to divert human capital to run volunteer centers
As a non profit, they could do volunteer management for many organizations
As a central point for the community move volunteer to where they are most needed
A central point to collect ALL volunteer hours helps the municipality meet its share of the Disaster recovery cost
Other non profits may be more comfortable working with other non profits
And finally As the United Way is community focused they make a great partner for preparedness before the disaster

Negatives? I don't really see any, anytime we can involve a non governmental partner in the planning before a disaster is a plus.

So who is running volunteer management in your community?

Disaster Dave

Sunday, June 2, 2013

Volunteer Management in Disaster- you are behind when you start

Last week I attended a a Volunteer Reception Center exercise by one of my contemporaries who is the EM coordinator for ESCA (a consortium of smaller cities who have come together to hire an Emergency Management group across two counties). A tip of the hat to Dan Good who wrote the plan and conducted the drill.
Our conversation got me thinking about this question:

As we have seen in the last few disasters the Volunteer Reception Centers are set up days after the impact. So what do you do to get all the spontaneous volunteers who are already running shelters, cleaning up and many other important task signed up?

Why bother you might say? Just a couple of good reasons:

The first is command and control! Not doing things twice; knowing the volunteer is who they say they are.
The Second reason is that if this disaster becomes a presidential declared disaster you will have a chance for reimbursement from the Federal Government and State. Typically you (or your county or state)have a percentage of that to share. Usually 75% Feds + 25% at the state level, and the state often splits the 25% with the municipality. Guess what? Those volunteer hours can help pay down your city/counties portion. But you have to track them.

Did that help get your attention?

So now you have your Volunteer center up and are smoothly signing people in and dispatching them to leaders who will use them. So now to scoop up the un-registered volunteer; you can do several things and these are just suggestions:

send a team out in the field to register and brief people where they are (big groups). take water and snacks to show support and give them a reason to stop working.
Put the word out to the leaders of operations at the next meeting that all volunteers must pass through the registration station and you will get them back ASAP.
Set up the sign up team at a common point- chow hall/shower area/sleeping area

Other reasons to get the unregistered logged in:

Making sure everyone is working off the same page
Liability protection
Proper numbers for feeding- nothing like a tired hungry volunteer when you tell him not enough food
Proper numbers for sleeping places- Except a tired dirty volunteer with no place to sleep
Enough shower & bathrooms
Enough medical folks to care for booboo's

disaster_dave