MinneTESOL was last Friday and Saturday.  Overall I’m glad I went, but I wasn’t quite blown away.

To my mind, the conference’s highlight was when Kao Kalia Yang, author of The Latehomecomer spoke on Friday evening.  It was poetic and moving and beautiful.

The rest of the conference was a let-down except when I went to presentations by Hamline University faculty.  And no, Hamline did not pay me to say that.  The fact is that their presentations were exactly what they sounded like, were well-thought out and easily within their expertise, included hands-on practice of what we were learning, engaged and engaging presentation style, and successfully distributed useful materials that I’ll be able to use and/or alter at the learning center.

There was actually one other worthwhile presentation about a research project in neurolinguistics.  It was just a talk with a PowerPoint but the speaker’s energy and focus on actually communicating with the audience made it work wonderfully.  My colleague also pointed out that the scope was perfect for a short presentation.

The other presentations committed the following (what I consider to be) sins:

• the keynote was plain lecture with a busy, dense PowerPoint for an hour straight.  Also, they didn’t know that PowerPoint has several pointer features and that they didn’t have to point to parts of their graphs with their shadows.
• one woman actually just read her paper to us without pause while her busy PowerPoint went on behind her.  I’m sorry, but I didn’t get up at 6:45AM on a Saturday for your airport voice.  Thank goodness she only wasted 20 minutes of my life.
• the following 20-minute session was at least an attempt to communicate with the audience, but he had not only made too few hand-outs but misplaced some of them and didn’t freely pass his card around for us to contact him later.
• the special interest brainstorm session on Adult Education had potential, but I ended up in a small group that was taken over by a group of three women griping about terrible cooperation between ESL/ABE and the MN State Colleges and Universities.  I wish we could have moved past that phase of the discussion.
• I went to another 20-minute presentation in which the speaker concluded that adopting technology in the classroom was easier than people think and they just need more time.  Clearly he hadn’t seen the keynote in which they thought they knew PowerPoint.

I feel the conference as a whole could have done a better job with:

• making sure there were on-site photocopying resources
• facilitating electronic communication of presentation hand-outs in lieu of paper hand-outs (i.e. a Conference Resources page on their website, or an email directory of the presenters)
• laying down some standards of presentation style

Several people I talked to agreed with me but remarked that these are perennial issues with conferences.  Which begs the question… why?  These are very fixable problems!

Well, I didn’t fill my office with balloons, but I did snag the last 20 minutes of each level of class to write happy things.

In My Craft or Sullen Art by chrisjohnbeckett on Flickr

I wrote a note to each teacher explaining the assignment and my motivation for it, and I included suggestions on how to explain it to their level of student. I asked them to introduce the activity to their class… and then have everyone get up and walk over to the big classroom to do the actual writing.

We had some music in the background and students sat at random tables. They wrote on colorful slips of paper about what makes them smile, what they’re proud of, etc. When they finished a piece, they brought it to the front and taped it onto a poster.  They were encouraged to do multiple pieces, and the teachers enjoyed participating too.

At the end we had a colorful patchwork of student (and teacher) writing at all levels. More importantly, everyone left with a huge smile on their face.  Success!

Epilogue: One of the librarians offered to run it through their giant laminator for us, and our now very shiny poster is on display between our classrooms and the circulation desk.  I’ve seen students and general library patrons reading it, and several students who were absent on writing poster day have come to me hoping they’ll be around for the next one and suggesting future writing prompts.  I’m very pleased and plan to do this again soon!

I’ve been getting the sense that a lot of people are running ragged these days.

Based on my extremely informal interviews (i.e. normal conversations), it’s not just me, and it’s definitely not just people in my organization. Maybe it’s a St. Paul, Minnesota thing. Or maybe it has to do with the job market, changes in unemployment benefits, or the health care debate.

same balloons, different day by massdistraction on Flickr

I don’t know what it is, but I’ve about had it.  I want to fill my office with balloons this week, or have a joke share, or collect favorite moments of the day and post them in the office.  Why has it been so hard to see the million alternatives to just trudging along?

How are you doing this autumn?

What do you do to battle the doldrums when they settle over your little section of the world?

We coordinators are awesome.

We know a ton of people: clients, volunteers, teachers, coworkers, other program staff, support staff, community partners, and the list continues.

We’re also never bored.  Ever.

Odds are good that:

• you know one of us.
• at some point you’ll want one of us to do something for you.
• we will not be just idling around hoping you’ll give us a task to accomplish.

We love to help.  But before you ask, consider: are you working with us, or are you harvesting?  Working with us will lead to healthy, happy, long-term working relationships.  Harvesting our output will not.

Loaded Basket by meganpru on Flickr

Characteristics of harvesting:

1. short turn-around time
2. little done (by you) lately to add value to the programs we coordinate
3. the only two types of conversations we really have are “Hi, how are you?” and “Can you do this for me?”
4. It often has a sense of just passing through, or of quickly collecting something.

Maputo Handshake by ElektraCute on Flickr

Characteristics of working with us:

1. lead time
2. help us out, especially if we ask  (but nobody’s keeping exact score)
3. tell us about your bigger picture… and ask us about ours
4. It usually has a sense of mutual respect and feels like a human interaction.

Now, let’s practice:

Based on the above descriptions, evaluate the following paraphrased emails.  Are they working with the coordinator, or are they harvesting?

A) Hi.  I volunteered with you six months ago.  Things sure have been crazy.  Could you write me a recommendation?  I need it tomorrow.  Thanks.

B) Great to see you the other day!  I’m glad you that blog post about the neuroscience of learning answered your question.  Say, I’m starting to put together a presentation.  If you have any student writing I could use for examples, could you send it over sometime in the next couple of months?  Thanks.

When in doubt, it all comes down to time-frame.

A short time-frame leaves very little room to maneuver.  Without flexibility, it’s much more difficult to maintain a high quality of work for your task and the others I already have.  Set us both up for success and give some lead time.

What would you add?

Thanks to Ben at Island94.org for getting me to read Dan Pallotta at Harvard Business.

Memory Fragments by lovefibre on Flickr

Pallotta argues here that since our problems (i.e. hunger) are massive and systemic, the only way for nonprofits to stand a chance of winning against them is to consolidate efforts into one unified effort to eradicate the problem within a stated time frame.  He advocates setting an audacious, specific goal and restructuring our sector around it so that it’s not about the little nonprofit’s mission, but about all of us reaching the goal.  Only this larger vision will shift us away from the “fragmentation and redundancy” we’re currently facing.

I see what he means.

However, I’m coming from a bias against his argument because I don’t like or trust large organizations.  I wrote about it here about a year ago.  To me, they turn humans into numbers and the momentum they build up for the sake of efficiency is actually slow to change with the times.  That being said, when a billion people are starving in a world with plenty of food, maybe it’s ok to focus on efficiency at the expense of personability and adaptability.

Ok, so let’s say Pallotta convinced me that bigger is better and that the process of consolidating wouldn’t completely derail our work for decades.  I still have a couple major questions about how this would play out, and I’m actually quite interested in the answers.

1) How would the consolidated nonprofit system relate to current systems?

Would we be creating a giant system for the sake of efficiency to clean up after the other system? That does not seem efficient to me.

Or will this second giant system fundamentally change the first one?  How will that not turn into a political mire?  And what if it does succeed?  How could something that big phase itself out or radically change itself to pursue a different goal?  Are there any precedents for that actually happening?

2) How is this different?

How would this plan produce an organization whose impact is different from the United Nations and the World Health Organization – benevolent organizations that provide some leadership to their fragmented membership?

What about the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund – organizations that arguably crippled many countries’ development when they tried to make large-scale change for the better?

And from a national standpoint, how would it differ from the USA’s failed War on Drugs?

I’m not convinced from this one article that Pallotta has hit upon The Answer, but it was a great read that’s provided a ton of food for thought.

My question of the month: how can I continually strive for improvement but not drive myself crazy with ever-tougher expectations?

As a corollary, how can I balance constantly recognizing that I’m not perfect with forgiving myself for not being perfect?

Oops, I Did It Again! by ucumari on Flickr

I thought I should probably acknowledge the fact that I just randomly didn’t post for something like two weeks.

The short answer is that everything’s fine. The slightly longer answer is that my job and my personal life were both particularly engrossing during that time and there wasn’t room to blog too.

I seriously considered whether to keep the blog at all. For now, my answer is yes. It’s my little space to write regularly and think out loud. I enjoy it and I think it’s good for me. So it stays.

However, I’m going to move to two posts per week: Mondays and Wednesdays. I hope to move back up to three at some point in the future.

That’s it for now. Enjoy the rest of the week!

This is part four of a series called The Disgruntled Donor.  I’ll be addressing four questions I wish nonprofit fundraising campaigns would ask me as a potential donor.  Here’s a link to the series intro.

White Check Mark on Blue by Kylemac on Flickr

I wish that fundraisers would ask me what I care about. I’m not looking to write them essays, but perhaps a few well-chosen check boxes could help them (and me) see if there’s any likelihood of my being a donor.  I further wish they would act upon this knowledge by either telling me how their organization is something I care about or by removing me from their list of people to pester frequently.

At this point in my life I’m most interested in supporting small, local initiatives that are focused on sustained improvement in quality of life.  Check, check and check.  Done.  Was that so difficult?

I realize I run the risk of sounding petulant and self-centered when I ask organizations working hard to assuage the world’s problems to focus on me.

My response is that I’m not raking in the dough in an unrelated endeavor and then carefully considering how I can philanthropically skim off and donate 3% of my accrued annual interest to reach as many less-advantaged people as possible.  That’s just not how I do things.

I believe in small projects that treat people like people, and as such I work for one and try to donate to a couple of others.  And if you’re not obviously that kind of project, you’re wasting my time and your money by half-heartedly flinging large mailings at me as a potential donor.

Please, actually engage or leave me alone.

This is part three of a series called The Disgruntled Donor.  I’ll be addressing four questions I wish nonprofit fundraising campaigns would ask me as a potential donor.  Here’s a link to the series intro.

I think it’s a common phenomenon for a given organization to be absolutely convinced that it’s the most important one out there. From that standpoint, it’s understandable that information is often given out with gusto.

I can just see the meetings at some of the huge nonprodits that ask for gifts: “Why send a 1 oz mailing when you could send 5 oz?!”. “Why send a short email newsletter when you could send a enormously long one?!”

If they’d ask, I’d tell them:

The less stuff you send me, the more likely I am to read it.

Less. Please.

This is part two of a series called The Disgruntled Donor.  I’ll be addressing four questions I wish nonprofit fundraising campaigns would ask me as a potential donor.  Here are links to the series intro and the first question.

How many requests are too many?

"The heaping pile o' mail again" by Charles Williams on Flickr

I think that sometimes, super-dedicated, highly-motivated nonprofit development staff can get carried away with just how often they and their teams ask for contributions.

A couple years ago, my father’s cousin’s wife passed away.  In lieu of flowers, she asked that donations be made to a certain international nonprofit.  I prefer to focus on local efforts for my regular giving, but I gladly gave to them in her memory.  This organization has been clogging my snail mail at least monthly ever since, despite not ever hearing from me again.  They have not made it simple for me to switch to a different option, such as a quarterly email or an annual snail mail, and I’m neither impressed nor inspired.

My friend (the other Disgruntled Donor) told me that a few holiday seasons ago, her father’s alma mater contacted him by phone six days in a row asking for money.  Just sit on that one a moment and wonder how anyone could have possibly thought that was a good use of time or a respectful way to treat an alumnus.

I get that during tough times and toward the end of the budget year, sometimes pushes are necessary.  At some point the repetitive asking grates. It usually comes across to me as either incompetence or an arrogant assumption that the only reasonable way to spend my money is to funnel it to the pestering organization.  Neither impression inspires me (or anyone else I can think of) to give.

Organizations can avoid crossing that line by asking individuals what kind of volume of contacts they care to receive. They can ask this on a simple survey that also asks how they’d like to be contacted.  Quarterly or biannual requests work best for me, except for one or two organizations that are very close to my heart.  I’m happy to tell this to any organization who will both listen and make that communication process simple and efficient.

Where do you draw the line between what’s a reasonable request rate and what’s pestering?

Have a great weekend, and see you Monday for the third question I wish nonprofit fundraisers would ask me.