Are you exhausted? I am. This " Getting ready to make a plan to have a meeting to do something about a plan soon" seems to be a common thread in the information distributed by our school board and other government-like agencies. I have very little time to catch up on all of the newsletters sent home from school, from church and from the city. They don't seem to understand that we couldn't care less about all of the planning they are doing to begin to plan. Save the printing costs. Don't tell me anything until you actually have something to say!
Our school not only sends home weekly newsletters but they're riddled with typos, grammatical errors and run-on sentences. I expect more from a school. If the articles are submitted by others, someone should take the responsibility to make sure they are actually saying something and are spelling it correctly.
Our school district sent out an expensive newsletter filled with drivel about all of the meetings they are having to come up with plans for what they should "strategize" about next year. Did you catch that? They would be better off skipping the newsletters, saving the money and hiring someone who can write or work on getting committee members that actually want to accomplish something.
There seems to be a large group of volunteers that just want to fill the day and don't seem to have a clue how to actually execute anything efficiently or timely. Why? What are their motives for volunteering? My experience with volunteers is that they generally come in two sizes - those who want to make a difference and will work fast and furious to do it and those who are filling up a hole in their lives. I admit that when I started Binky Patrol I was a bit of both. Both is acceptable, but make sure you get it done. It doesn't do any good to have a committee of volunteers whose main focus is to hash things over for months, think about it, change it, never complete it. What was the point of the project again?
As someone who owns my own business, runs a national non-profit and volunteers for school, preschool, church and other organizations, my time is precious. It's also limited because before that volunteer time starts I want to have enough time to listen to my children recap the day, read to them and perhaps work on a project with them and be a fun and thoughtful wife. That leaves me with 1 - 2 hours a day if I stay up late to volunteer. That time has to be maxed out. I don't have time for indecisive folks who have hours in a day to rehash minutia. Tim Timmons once talked about, "Majoring in the Minors." I think it's epidemic. We spend so much time micromanaging details that we forget about the big goals and many times miss them altogether causing others misery, frustration and exasperation along the way.
Do your part. If you step up to help an organization, treat it like a deadline at work. Your job depends on it. You don't help an org just by saying you want to volunteer. Do something - on time. They are counting on you. If you can't manage that, don't volunteer or choose something without a specific date, deadline or schedule.
http://www.binkypatrol.org is the organization I created to cover all bases - those who like planning events, organizing teams AND those who don't have a schedule and not a lot of time-motivated energy but lots of heart and love.
Bless everyone with the heart to volunteer, but evaluate your motives, the organizations needs and what you are willing to execute.
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