To Volunteer or Not To Volunteer
Feb. 15th, 2014 06:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
huntersglennPosting this mini-rant here, because there's less of a chance of someone involved with this to see this post here. I'm involved with a genealogical/historical society that has the issue of plenty of members, but not enough volunteers to be officers/run the thing. We had a new person take over as newsletter editor last September, but she didn't think that it was necessary to keep including obituaries in the newsletter.
Most of our members do not live in the area, so the obituaries are ways for them to find out if the relatives of people they grew up with have died, or if classmates have died, that sort of thing. So, I stupidly said I'd gather them. It's not hard, it's just time-consuming. I have to search through the obituaries of our local newspaper, and then the funeral homes that cover this particular county, then copy and paste, put them in order and send them to the newsletter editor. I was Vice President of the Society, and our President decided in July to quit, even though we hold our elections in October - so I was stuck as President for those few months. I was very happy as VP. My main duty with that was to arrange for speakers, and lead the meetings if the President wasn't there. And even after she quit, she only missed attending one meeting. Luckily, I had the rest of our speakers lined up, and was working for speakers for this year.
The woman who was newsletter editor ended up heading the committee to get a slate of officers for October. Our Treasurer was old, and having vision problems, and couldn't continue as she was scared she'd make mistakes (she also gave up driving due to her vision problems). Our Secretary works for a farm that decided to grow more crops, and she's their only office worker, so she was working more on weekends - at that point, we had a deal with her where she was Secretary, but if she wasn't at a meeting, someone else would take the minutes, so she wouldn't have to worry about things. The newsletter editor and I worked out a deal - if nobody else volunteered to run for President, she'd run for VP and I'd run for President. And that's what we ended up doing. Our Secretary stayed on, and we did get someone to volunteer to be Treasurer (which is now an entirely different problem, as she's ill, but we also elected her son to be Assistant Treasurer, so all is covered on that front). So, as President, I provide a letter or message for the newsletter. I was doing the obituaries for the newsletter. And for January, I provided the meeting announcement, since the new VP wouldn't take over until our January meeting. Which didn't happen because she was ill. And then she let me know that she had to step down as VP, because she couldn't do both positions.
This pissed me off. While I understand that real life has to take precedence, I felt that I'd been tricked into running for President. With her stepping down, that meant I had to continue doing the VP duties until and unless a new VP could be found. At that point, she'd done nothing as VP. I've got speakers lined up through April. As for the newsletter - all she had to do was re-format the obituaries, the message, the announcement, and then add whatever she wished to add. In short, most of the work was being done for her. I can't do VP, President AND the obituaries. I also have a job, even though I'm self-employed and don't have a boss breathing down my neck, so that extra time it took to collect those was time I really don't have.
So, today, I find out from her that she's giving up being newsletter editor because it's too time consuming. Her mother died last year and her elderly father is living on his own, and she has to check up on him in person a couple of times a week. Her work is picking up, and her boss is in more often (it's a real estate office that mostly handles rentals). I don't know when her mother died, but it was at least a few months before she volunteered to be newsletter editor. And again, I understand that real life has to take precedence, but she knew back in September how much work this was going to be - and it's not all that much, since she's mostly copying and pasting. Most of the newsletters go out by e-mail, the rest by mail, so there is printing to do, and a visit to the post office to put them in the mail. I think she just didn't want to handle collecting the obituaries, and even though I backed down on insisting that they not be included, leaving it up to her, she doesn't want to take the time to do them. It's not like they can't be collected on a weekly or daily basis, instead of trying to grab them all at one time.
Granted, this is a position that can be done by members who don't live anywhere near here. But I doubt if any of them are going to volunteer. It makes me afraid that the Society will fail, not because of a lack of members, but because of the antipathy of its members. Those members who live in the area are older, and many of them have already spent years volunteering - either for our Society or one for the next county over. They're tired, and rightly so.
But, I still feel aggravated toward this woman, because hey, she can find plenty of time to post to Facebook during her work day, and I think that as long as her volunteer work didn't actually require her to do anything, she was fine with it. It pisses me off that the 'work load' of the two positions are too much for her to handle when she never did the one job in the first place, and someone else provides most of the stuff for her to use in the newsletter.
Yeah, it's easy to do a job when someone else is actually doing all the work for you. It would have been far better for her to not have volunteered to do either position last year, so we could have started out this year with people who were willing and able to do the work. Or else have put it to the members in October that they either volunteered or the Society came to an end.
Most of our members do not live in the area, so the obituaries are ways for them to find out if the relatives of people they grew up with have died, or if classmates have died, that sort of thing. So, I stupidly said I'd gather them. It's not hard, it's just time-consuming. I have to search through the obituaries of our local newspaper, and then the funeral homes that cover this particular county, then copy and paste, put them in order and send them to the newsletter editor. I was Vice President of the Society, and our President decided in July to quit, even though we hold our elections in October - so I was stuck as President for those few months. I was very happy as VP. My main duty with that was to arrange for speakers, and lead the meetings if the President wasn't there. And even after she quit, she only missed attending one meeting. Luckily, I had the rest of our speakers lined up, and was working for speakers for this year.
The woman who was newsletter editor ended up heading the committee to get a slate of officers for October. Our Treasurer was old, and having vision problems, and couldn't continue as she was scared she'd make mistakes (she also gave up driving due to her vision problems). Our Secretary works for a farm that decided to grow more crops, and she's their only office worker, so she was working more on weekends - at that point, we had a deal with her where she was Secretary, but if she wasn't at a meeting, someone else would take the minutes, so she wouldn't have to worry about things. The newsletter editor and I worked out a deal - if nobody else volunteered to run for President, she'd run for VP and I'd run for President. And that's what we ended up doing. Our Secretary stayed on, and we did get someone to volunteer to be Treasurer (which is now an entirely different problem, as she's ill, but we also elected her son to be Assistant Treasurer, so all is covered on that front). So, as President, I provide a letter or message for the newsletter. I was doing the obituaries for the newsletter. And for January, I provided the meeting announcement, since the new VP wouldn't take over until our January meeting. Which didn't happen because she was ill. And then she let me know that she had to step down as VP, because she couldn't do both positions.
This pissed me off. While I understand that real life has to take precedence, I felt that I'd been tricked into running for President. With her stepping down, that meant I had to continue doing the VP duties until and unless a new VP could be found. At that point, she'd done nothing as VP. I've got speakers lined up through April. As for the newsletter - all she had to do was re-format the obituaries, the message, the announcement, and then add whatever she wished to add. In short, most of the work was being done for her. I can't do VP, President AND the obituaries. I also have a job, even though I'm self-employed and don't have a boss breathing down my neck, so that extra time it took to collect those was time I really don't have.
So, today, I find out from her that she's giving up being newsletter editor because it's too time consuming. Her mother died last year and her elderly father is living on his own, and she has to check up on him in person a couple of times a week. Her work is picking up, and her boss is in more often (it's a real estate office that mostly handles rentals). I don't know when her mother died, but it was at least a few months before she volunteered to be newsletter editor. And again, I understand that real life has to take precedence, but she knew back in September how much work this was going to be - and it's not all that much, since she's mostly copying and pasting. Most of the newsletters go out by e-mail, the rest by mail, so there is printing to do, and a visit to the post office to put them in the mail. I think she just didn't want to handle collecting the obituaries, and even though I backed down on insisting that they not be included, leaving it up to her, she doesn't want to take the time to do them. It's not like they can't be collected on a weekly or daily basis, instead of trying to grab them all at one time.
Granted, this is a position that can be done by members who don't live anywhere near here. But I doubt if any of them are going to volunteer. It makes me afraid that the Society will fail, not because of a lack of members, but because of the antipathy of its members. Those members who live in the area are older, and many of them have already spent years volunteering - either for our Society or one for the next county over. They're tired, and rightly so.
But, I still feel aggravated toward this woman, because hey, she can find plenty of time to post to Facebook during her work day, and I think that as long as her volunteer work didn't actually require her to do anything, she was fine with it. It pisses me off that the 'work load' of the two positions are too much for her to handle when she never did the one job in the first place, and someone else provides most of the stuff for her to use in the newsletter.
Yeah, it's easy to do a job when someone else is actually doing all the work for you. It would have been far better for her to not have volunteered to do either position last year, so we could have started out this year with people who were willing and able to do the work. Or else have put it to the members in October that they either volunteered or the Society came to an end.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-17 02:47 am (UTC)See my reply to Farad about my opinion on going to quarterly or bi-monthly meetings. The mother group slowly died after doing that (they also moved their meetings from Sundays to mid-week, at 2:30 in the afternoon and then wondered why nobody came...)
All of those would be good ideas, but just not workable in this particular situation. I'd hoped that when the mother group faced disbanding, that they'd opt instead to join with us - most of our members overlap. But they chose instead to fold. There is a larger group not that far away, and they'd love to take over, but they're also having the same issues with volunteers and getting people to fill their positions.
I think that lack of interest is probably coming out of people turning more and more to the internet to pursue their genealogy, and a lot of people just don't care too much about the historical side of things.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-17 03:07 am (UTC)Go from a genealogy society, to a historical preservation society.
no subject
Date: 2014-02-17 05:13 am (UTC)We have a journal that is published twice a year and we're cutting it down to once a year because people don't contribute anything for it (and I'm guilty of that, too, as I have things I could write up for it). The woman who types it up, gets it printed and mailed, has to find different things for it each time. The members all say they want these things (newsletter and journals and the society in general), but when it's time to prove it by contributing, they all go silent.
I knew all that before I ever became a member, as it's that way with every group. It's more that now, after 5 years in the group, I have less patience and tolerance for it.