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

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Ahhh my nightmare is true!

If I have one thing that wakes me in the middle of the night it is having 100’s, no thousands of spontaneous volunteers showing up after a catastrophic event! But that would never happen, right? Read this then come back, lets talk!

In April there was an earthquake near Longmen Township China that killed 160 and injured over 1,600. But that is not the story I want to highlight here. What we want to consider is what happened after.

Consider the words of Luo Ming the team leader with the Sichuan Emergency Response Volunteer Group “The volunteers have created a certain kind of disaster themselves,” he says, speaking with the rapid speech of someone who has not slept in 48 hours. “It seems like there are more volunteers than there are earthquake victims. They have no place to sleep, and nothing to eat, and most of them have no experience or training.”

There were so many people streaming into the area that the government had to block the area off and restrict access.

While I believe there are places for spontaneous volunteers; the ones who are there when it happens and pitch in the save their neighbors and secure the area. But having people just show up with no training and no support is just adding to the problem.

One of the things that a catastrophic disaster has is lack of everything, food, water, bathrooms, places to sleep; why would someone insert himself or herself into that? Because they don’t understand the problem!

First we need to know who you are?

What skills do you have?

Are you committed or just a disaster tourist?

What support do you have (or do we as an organization provide)?

Can we utilize your skills (or lack of) outside the disaster area in support?

Your local emergency manager is going to busy trying to help the community; lets not give them another thing to worry about. So please pick one:

1. If you really desire to be part of the solution, please go register for an organized group:

http://www.redcross.org/support/volunteer

https://www.medicalreservecorps.gov/HomePage

http://www.fema.gov/community-emergency-response-teams

http://www.volunteermatch.org/

2. Or stay home

PS: I vote you pick # 1, you'll be proud of yourself

Disaster_Dave

Sunday, April 14, 2013

A higher level of professionalism for volunteers

As we require a higher level of training for our volunteers we end up with more training time. This is a double edged sword.

First it means more of a commitment from our volunteers - I have spent the last year becoming qualified as a volunteer Response Team Member for Shelterbox. During that time I have spent hundreds of dollars, flown to Texas (on my own dime) lived outdoors in 100 degree heat and traveled again to England where I lived outdoors in cold wet weather just to become qualified as a VOLUNTEER. So why did I spend time and money to volunteer? Because the mission of the organization speaks to me.

During all that time flying I began to think about the process I was in and the process for the volunteer program I manage and I came up with a few things to think about.

What is the goal of your program? How can you make it approachable, but not make it too easy? You have to keep the standards so that your volunteers feel well trained when they go into their first event.
The training shouldn't stop once they get their badge - consider mentors. Even after all I noted about my training, I am still considered a "trainee" until my first deployment; nothing test you like the real thing.
Your training better be awesome! If your newly found volunteers give up their evenings or weekends for training don't waste their time. Make the training topical and interesting.
Make them part of the organization by asking some questions:

Did this training meet your expectations?
Do you feel prepared for _______?
What would they change?

While volunteers work for free, they are not cheap, you have to spend the time and effort to make them fully trained and integrated.

disaster_dave

Sunday, February 10, 2013

Technology for Volunteer Programs

I think we can all agree that one of the things all volunteer programs do not have in abundance is money for systems. Luckily there are lots of online tools to use to speak with, sign up and move your volunteers. Today I want to take a few minutes to point out a few that I use in my program. There are many web-based tools out there, if I missed one please let me know. I only have two requirements:

It must be EASY to use - Dummy proof you might say
It must be my favorite price- FREE

Here are a few I like:

Zoomerang for Surveys & Polls they have combined Survey Monkey and Zoomerang. Cant get any easier than this. This is what I use to do my annual surveys of volunteers. Works great, exports to EXCEL and makes nice Graphs.

Doodle for finding the right dates for a meeting

Sign up Genius This is my new favorite online tool. We need to schedule shifts in a shelter, or a event. The cool thing is it won't let you over-staff, always a hassle to call volunteers back and say "we have too many". The other cool thing is the volunteer can see who they will serve with.

DropBox I use this to share Powerpoints that are too big to mail. Its free, but if you send someone a document with this and they sign up to use it (So they can see the document) you get added free storage space. A great tool!

Form Builder - Can be used to build online forms. Pretty cool, but can't stay with free for long if you use it alot.

Free Quiz Maker I see some pretty cool uses for this, you could design your own tests on YOUR procedures. I will have to spend some time with it

Poll Everywhere - Saw this used at a conference, while the individual might get charges for SMS, it makes for a pretty slick presentation

While I am not advocating using either Bing or Google for serious translation, they are good for a quick peek at what someone is saying; but if its important get a real translator.

Bing Translate
Google Translate

And just a couple of cool websites thrown in for fun (cause I'm a fun guy)

HayStack - this is a real cool website to test your passwords on- interesting

Wordle- Beautiful words - You can paste any document (CEMP, Volunteer Policies, anything) and it will make a beautiful picture of the words.

Disaster Dave