Are you ready for volunteers?

Last time we checked in on the Institute for Excellence in Volunteer Management (i.e. our two day volunteer management extravaganza in September) people were asking, "What do we do with all of this great information now?" ... Well you didn't think we were going to leave them high and dry, did you?!

Part of the mastery of the institute's design included continued support for the participating organizations to help them clearly focus on the identified topics where they felt as though outside help was needed. University of Texas graduate students from the School of Social Work, LBJ Public Affairs, and the College of Communications are working together collaboratively with these 15 organizations:

Any Baby Can

American YouthWorks

The Austin Academy

Austin Area Interreligious Ministries (AAIM) 
Austin Free-Net

Austin Learning Academy

Communities in Schools
Caritas

El Buen Samaritano

English at Work

The Financial Literacy Coalition of Central Texas

GoodWill Central Texas

Lifeworks

Manos de Cristo
Ventanilla de Salud

It is amazing to see what is being accomplished with in the groups!  The student consultants are working together in the following focus areas:

Focus Areas: Volunteer/Staff Relations and Buy in

• Staff attitudes towards volunteers
• Levels of training (volunteer management)
• Position descriptions and roles (staff and volunteer)
• Language related to volunteers (ex. mission, website, literature)
• Expectations
• Conflict mediation procedures
• Volunteer and staff recognition

  
Focus Area: Evaluation of Volunteer Program, Staff & Volunteers

• Establishing evaluation needs
• What needs to be evaluated (volunteer program, volunteers, staff, etc) 
• Purpose of evaluation (efficacy, satisfaction, or both)
• Forms of evaluation that best aligns with organization’s needs
• Providing research, evaluation tools, applications, and useful examples 

Focus Areas: Supervision & Support

• Provide an overview of the supervision process
• Guidelines for supervising volunteers
• Effective follow up with volunteers
• Methods to provide support to your volunteers. 

Focus Areas: Policies, Procedures & Organizational Strategies

• Assess & evaluate existing policies and procedures
• Identify problem areas that could be addressed to strengthen policies and procedures
• Identify resources related to strengthening policies and procedures
• Develop hands on strategies and tools (including technology/data management) to successfully integrate policies and procedures into organizational culture

As the end of the semester is rolling around, the students are doing a great job at getting these consulting projects completed.  The next big thing will be providing the organizations with the valuable information that they've worked so hard on all semester!  Stay tuned to hear about more progress!

Celebrating Our 10th Anniversary!

In celebration of the Literacy Coalition of Central Texas turning 10, check out just how far we've come by looking at our organizational timeline!

(The more you 'zoom out' by viewing less years at a time, them more details you can see about each of our entries. Scroll to the beginning and start from there!)

Literacy Coalition Celebrates 10th Anniversary! on Dipity.

Also, visit our website to find out more information about how YOU can win a gift!
(Hint: All you have to do is follow this blog, follow our Twitter account, and become a fan of our Facebook page and tell us about it!)

I read it and all, but I don’t know what I read

October is Health Literacy Month—and even though it is nearly over, there’s still time to think about what health literacy is and why it’s important, and maybe even take some action! A quick definition: health literacy is the ability to read, understand, and act on health information. Sounds simple, right? Health literacy includes not only fundamental literacy (reading, writing, speaking and numeracy) but also scientific civic and cultural literacy. (Zarcadoolas, Pleasant, and Greer).

On one end of the spectrum, think for a minute about the challenge for someone who has limited math and reading skills having to figure out how to give the right dose of over- the-counter pain medication to her child. On the other end of the spectrum, think about someone having to make decisions about cancer treatments—and how those other literacies—scientific, civic, and cultural— come into play.

Another way to think about health literacy is to think of the difference between senders and receivers of health information. The senders are experts of various kinds—medical experts like doctors, nurses and public health professionals, or employees of pharmaceutical companies, men and women with scientific knowledge, who tend to use that knowledge frequently. Receivers, the patients, are very often infrequent, non-scientific users of medical information, though they may have many other kinds of expertise. It’s pretty clear that simply handing over the information from sender to receiver isn’t very effective. The work of health literacy is to find ways to create a framework for communication between them.

How does health literacy affect us? It’s nearly Halloween, so some scary stories are in order. Think of an elderly person with impaired eyesight and perhaps diminished cognitive skills taking medications—maybe six or seven, with multiple dosing instructions, including several different times of day and warnings for taking with or without food. Or think of the young woman who said the following:

I got pregnant with my second child trying to take the [birth control] pill. I don’t think I took them right at all. A month after I started taking them I found out I was pregnant. I had to read the instructions over and over and I still took them wrong.

Or this woman, about taking her prescription correctly: When I got this pamphlet it was a lot of words-- it is a lot. I read read here and there but I didn’t understand it. Because it uses a medical language. Much of the time, I don’t understand it. And when I read it, I read it and all, but I don’t know what I read. (translated from Spanish)

The Literacy Coalition of Central Texas stepped up to address health literacy directly through its Health Literacy Initiative. Working with both “senders” and “receivers,” LCCT has developed trainings for literacy groups offering literacy programs resources and workshops to learn how to include health literacy in their curricula. Additionally, it recently partnered up with Sage Words to distribute informational flyers for health literacy month across its network of literacy providers. Along with People’s Community Clinic it has launched a health literacy action group to collaboratively address low health literacy in Central Texas. The Literacy Coalition also offers trainings for healthcare providers on health literacy and effective patient-provider communication. To learn more about the how you can get involved with health literacy or to register for an upcoming workshop, please contact Nichole Lopez-Riley at nlopez@willread.org.

By guest contributor Kath Anderson from Sage Words

events, events, events

As you all may know, the Literacy Coalition hosts an awesomely fun early springtime event called Austin's Great Grown-Up Spelling Bee for Literacy.  If you don't know anything about this event, really - you are missing out!  A uniquely Austin event, the Bee supports the important cause of literacy while also providing an uproariously fun time to all of those involved.  Businesses enter teams of 3 spelling adults who compete against other corporate teams on the main stage at Austin Music Hall, all while wearing funny and amazingly creative costumes.  You'd be surprised how some of these teams manage to spell ridiculously difficult words!  If you haven't heard of it, you should definitely check it out on our website.

I've gone off on a tangent, so back to my original reason for this post: events.  When I started this gig, we only had our hallmark big spelling bee, three satellite spelling bees, and our key advocacy event Literacy Day at the Capitol held every other year during legislative sessions.  All of our events happened between February and April.  Since I've come on board, though, we've been adding some events.  We host a 'getting to know us' event (sometimes more than once a month), are starting up Happy Hour Spelling Bees once a month (more information about those to come!), are hosting another fall fundraising event focused on individual donors, and thinking about adding more...  And let me tell you, it's a lot of work  Don't get me wrong, I LOVE events.  Really, I love them.  However, I do think there is such a thing as being overstretched.

On that note, I've gathered some words of wisdom and tips for non-profit events. Here are just a few things you should think about before you decide to take on a new event:


1. What is my goal?  Do we want to raise a lot of money? Or do we want to just increase our visibility in the community?  Be sure and make a goal!  This will help the events coordinator and events committee stay on track.


2. What will this cost the organization?  Does your organization have policies about what makes an event "worth it"?  Some organizations don't hold an event unless it's completely underwritten by donations and sponsorships, so that the org can yield 100% profit.  Are there things that could be donated to help reduce the cost to the organization?  Ultimately, with your organization's money and staff time, this will help you evaluate whether or not your event idea is really worth it.

3. How will you promote the event?  For some events, promotion is everything.  If you don't promote your event effectively, you might have just wasted a lot of time and money on something that will not benefit the organization in the end.  Before you start heavily planning, evaluate your organization's connections for promotions.  Do you have the money to print invitations or flyers?  How will people learn about the event?  Would a logical partnership make promotions a lot easier?  (For example, does your cause align with a local sorority or fraternity's philanthropy goals?  If so, get them involved to bring in the college crowd!  This could be a useful partnership to get volunteers, too.)


Here are some helpful websites that give great tips and things to think about:

http://www.gaebler.com/Fundraising-Through-Special-Events.htm

http://www.fundraiserhelp.com/planning-a-fundraiser.htm

http://nonprofit.about.com/od/fundraising/a/specialevents.htm

And, the internet can be your best friend... if your organization has an idea for a unique event, Google the idea and:

1. Make sure another organization isn't already doing that 'unique' event in your area
2. Look into what other cities are doing and learn from their mistakes and successes
3. Learn as much as you can about other general tips for non-profit events!

Institute for Excellence in Volunteer Management

For a day and a half, the Literacy Coalition offered an institute to assist our partner organizations with the task of learning more about how to effectively manage volunteers. We were able to develop and host this amazing training thanks to the Renewing Our Communities grant from the OneStar Foundation.  A partnership with Dr. Sarah Jane Rehnborg of the RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service ensured that we had the best of the best educating our partner agencies. We would also like to thank St. David's Episcopal Church in Austin for providing us with such wonderful accommodations and being so attentive to the needs of our guests attending the event.

After learning a wealth of knowledge about effectively managing volunteers, all institute participants are now receiving free consulting from graduate students at the University of Texas who assisted with the institute and helped our partner organizations identify things that they wanted to work on to strengthen their volunteer programs.  Students are focusing on five key areas: Volunteer & Staff Relations, Supervision & Support, Policies & Organizational Strategies, Roles for Volunteers, and Evaluation. 

Check out some pictures from our two day event below:

everyone at the institute! what a great crowd!

the marvelous Dr. Sarah Jane Renhborg

group brainstorming

great shared learning experiences!

Stay tuned for updates about the student and organization progress! 

What's your favorite book?

Gabriel García Márquez, winner of the 1982 Nobel Prize for literature.

If I was illiterate, I couldn't have enjoyed 100 Years of Solitude.  I would never experience the extraordinary events of one family's history, never enter their world to think and dream, and never learn the lessons my favorite book taught to me.  And whatever my life would be like, I know something magnificent would be missing. 

Imagine life without literacy, much less literature: when reading for pleasure is beyond your grasp because you have trouble just reading for survival.

Collaboration Sucks

As a young, idealistic, emerging professional I made a decision to enter a unique niche in the social services sector-- leading system level community change.  Collaboration has become a buzz word, not only in academia, but on the ground in the non-profit and government human services arena.  But really, why collaborate?  It's HARD.  I worked for several years with a team of other professionals who were trying to figure out this treacherous field of community change - coalition building, partnership development, and collaborative change movements.  Our motto was 'Collaboration Sucks.'  Bringing together diverse organizations to affect the common good can bring with it an array of surprising, complex, and seemingly insurmountable challenges.  We're all competing for limited resources, so why should we tell each other our programmatic weaknesses and challenges?  We are all struggling to address complex needs of very vulnerable families, so why should we take the time to talk about big-picture, community level issues and policies?  We have very different approaches to solve problems, and very different organizational cultures, so why should we try to pool our resources and advocate with one voice?  Why?  Because sometimes that is where we can make the biggest impact.  Coalitions get stuff done.  Sharing the burden of advocacy, public awareness, professional development, resource development- it makes sense.  Sometimes the rising tide really does float all boats.  However, it comes at a cost.  Hundreds of hours of staff time can be sucked away as staff attend meetings, always somewhat unclear about their role in the meetings, how to represent their agency, and confused about where conversations might be heading.  Different perspectives and values collide in very real and sometimes very emotionally challenging ways when different organizations are asked to think in different ways, and even sacrifice resources or ideas to which they have clung for decades.   My perspective on the issue is simple.  Don't collaborate unless it REALLY makes sense.  Don't just throw your hat in the ring if your agency doesn't have a clear gain from being at the table.  Don't allocate staff resources if your program will not benefit.  Collaboration is challenging and time-consuming.  So don't do it if it doesn't further your mission.  But when a chance at a powerful collaboration comes your way, engage fully, openly and passionately. Magic can happen. I've seen magic happen hundreds of times.  That's why I stick with it. -MP