I couldn't resist publishing this article by Jane Collins in her Get Out and Give Back newsletter. It brought a smile of recognition. She's got me nailed. I do want everyone around me to work as hard as I do but PLEASE don't let this stop you from volunteering with Living Legends or whatever else touches your heart and imagination. Nina (703-625-2330)
This article was reposted in its entirety with permission from Jane Hess Collins. The original post can be found at
http://getoutandgiveback.com
Chairman of the Board
Someone told me 20 years ago that if you want something done, ask a busy person. No one, I’ve decided, is busier than a nonprofit executive director, and this posting is a shout-out to them by way of my whining about how much work they have asked me to do.
While I have been working with nonprofits for over two years now, this is my first experience in working for them. Believe me, it has been an eye-opener.
My featured nonprofit director is Nina Tisara, Executive Director of
Living Legends of Alexandria. Nina is featured because I’ve known her for almost 10 years, she asked me to serve on her board last year and she has limitless energy (translation: She expects me to have the same energy that she has).
Serving on the Living Legends of Alexandria board was my first-ever board appointment and I was flattered that Nina asked me to join her team. I had always been secretly envious of people who were asked to be on boards, and now I was one of them! My bio and photo were posted and shared across Facebook and newspaper columns as Living Legends’ newest board member. For a day or two I felt like the prom queen.
And, just like gleaning corn or tutoring kids or ushering at the local theater, board work is volunteer work in its best sense. It brings people together to create good for the community. It requires teamwork, vision and commitment.
Like any other type of volunteer work, you either like doing it or you don’t. If you like doing it, keep doing it. If you don’t like it, do something else.
Here’s the fine print-board work and committee work is hard. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. I am part of a marketing committee and a development committee for two separate nonprofits as well as the Living Legends work and it takes a real commitment of time and effort to do it right.
It reminds me of college where each professor doles out the homework like her class is the only you are enrolled in.
The last three weeks have been an immersion class into nonprofit operations, as I have been involved in projects that take extraordinary effort. It’s the magic that makes nonprofit work get done.
As an example, Living Legend’s “Meet the Legends,” their annual March event to introduce and honor 12 Alexandria citizens who have served our community in extraordinary ways, is scheduled for March 22 (you can buy tickets by clicking
here). Held in the U.S. Patent and Trade Office, the event last year was a lovely reception and sampling of Alexandria’s best restaurants.
Nina needed volunteers. I love to eat. Might as well volunteer to ask restaurants to participate, I thought. It sounded easy enough. How hard can it be to email a few restaurants?
Suddenly I was in a vortex of phone calls, spreadsheets, forms and updating. It was clearly a calling for someone who is organized, methodical and focused.
I am none of these.
Add to the mix a fundraising project (something I will never be good at), a promise to deliver Valentine cookies from the community foundation and another huge volunteer role for a city-wide community service event, and my spare time has dwindled to almost nothing.
Nonprofits are always on the lookout for a good board or committee member. While a board membership sometimes comes with a financial donation to the nonprofit, committee work does not. There are advantages of belonging to both, and I can’t tell you the number of people who have told me that they found satisfaction or even a new job (either with the nonprofit or elsewhere) through belonging to a board or committee
.
Do I like working on boards and committees? Yes. So far so good. What have I learned? I’ve learned that just as with any volunteer project, you have to learn to say “no” and know when enough is enough. What I’m doing now, I thought, was enough.
Then just today I was asked to be part of a giving circle advisory board. I said yes.
I must like it more than I think.
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