The weekend of September 24th was the Eat Real Festival in Oakland, which my sister Marcy ran. We met my parents there on Sunday and had an awesome time. The festival was in Jack London Square, entrance was free, and the food was all under $5 (mostly). Corinne loved seeing the people and baby piggies and bock bock chickens. Raelene was finally able to try out the vegan falafel truck she’d heard so much about. I got to drink beer out of a commemorative mason jar, what a hipster!

Sunday night I went to a concert, the first concert I’ve attended in over a decade. I got there early, grabbed a spot on the front barricade, and throughly enjoyed the show. It’ll probably be another 10 years or so before I go to another concert, but that’s fine. Music has always been and will continue to be an important part of my life, but I’m getting too old to attend shows regularly.

Last Friday I ran a Trail of Cthulhu game for my normal gaming group. We try to get together once a month to play, usually on a Friday evening. I ran a cold war horror adventure set aboard an aircraft carrier. The players managed to save the world, or at least they thought they did. I managed to work in a cliffhanger ending that I think everyone liked. Everyone seemed to have fun, which is always a good sign.

Okay, I have a post written. Let’s see if we can turn that into momentum…

Things have been reasonably slow in our lives, which is good. Corinne took a 3 week swim class at the newly restored Point Richmond Natatorium. She loved it, and hopefully we can get her signed up for another class here soon.

Raelene and I are both trying to get healthier, and so we’re both walking for exercise and measuring our steps using a Fitbit. It’s really amazing how many steps you get (or don’t get) during a day, and I’m convinced that measuring and monitoring yourself is the key to getting healthy. I’m also finding that sharing your progress socially is important, too. It’s like having a buddy to go to the gym with; you’re much more motivated to go if you know someone is there waiting for you. If you’re interested in following my progress, create a Fitbit account and I will give you access to all my numbers.

On Saturday we went to a birthday party for one of Corinne’s friends. It was a lot of fun, even if it was a little bit claustrophobic inside the house.

On Sunday we visited Raelene’s brother and sister-in-law and met their new two week old baby. I’d forgotten what it was like to hold a baby, and I don’t think I’ve ever held a baby that light. Baby Athena was absolutely adorable, and we’re both really happy for Raelene’s brother and his family.

This idea has come up independently in two conversations now, and like Kiva, DonorsChoose and Kickstarter I think it’s going to resonate with people. I want to build a website that will help an individual organize a 1 or 10 or whatever person event for an cause he or she supports. In the same way, I want to help small organisations put on their own charity event. And because the world is social, I want to help people find charity events to participate in. I want to truly empower the power of one. You shouldn’t have to wait for someone else, you should be able to create Race for the Cure or Aids Walk/Run and have it succeed. You should be able to participate in charity events that are 100% free of corporate sponsorship. Your passion belongs to you,  and should not be associated with pink buckets of chicken, soft drink power votes, or branded marketing of any kind unless you want it to.

There’s a lot of stuff I need to do before I start writing website code, of course, so don’t expect to see something immediately. I also have no intention of quitting my day job any time soon, so the going is going to be slow. But I think there is something exciting here, something that no one else is doing. I’m excited by it. If this excites you too, please let me know.

For those that missed the mess on Facebook, I have decided to end my involvement with the Mickaboo Companion Bird Rescue. I still support their mission, to help birds in need, but I no longer wish to be part of the organization. I do not speak for Raelene, she’s still tentatively a volunteer although I think she’s near her threshold as well.

Marketing Gone Mad

Micakboo incurs thousands of dollars in vet bills every month. It’s a largish organization, but not large enough to catch the attention of the big foundations that could fund their activities. So they do what every non-profit does, they fundraise. Unfortunately, over the past year or so these fundraisers have increasingly targeted their volunteer base. After all, it’s easier to hit your supporters for money than to rally outside the organization.

Recently this has been in the form of “votes” for Mickaboo on a major soft drink’s website. Each person can vote on the website once per day, but you have to create an account (including giving up demographic information) on the soft drink’s website to vote. This is part of a huge summer marketing campaign for the soft drink manufacturer to increase mindshare and sales, and as part of it they’re promising donations to the non-profits who do the best job promoting their products. The whole thing is designed to refocus attention from the non-profits and aim it at the soft drink manufacturer, but Mickaboo decided it was worth it to jump in the deep and become a quasi-viral soft drink marketing engine.

To this end, volunteers have been getting dozens of soft drink marketing messages daily from the folks who run Mickaboo. These are in the form of “reminders to vote”, and while you can only vote up to three different ways once a day, the Mickaboo fundraisers are sending out reminders at a much higher rate. Not only is the amount of marketing Mickaboo is doing for this soft drink manufacturer insane, but as the manufacturer intended it’s detracting from Mickaboo’s overall message.

The Tipping Point

The tipping point came when Raelene vented about the marketing on Facebook, and several other Mickaboo volunteers attacked her for complaining. Their point was they were ignoring the marketing, and that she should either use Facebook and email less or ignore it just like they do. No matter what she did, though, they were not okay with her publicly complaining. These volunteers were fairly aggressive about it, too, and someone from the core Mickaboo leadership jumped in as well. Wow. I got involved in the debate too, and it got a bit ugly with the volunteers.

At the same time, though, I also started getting emails and Facebook messages of support. That’s when I realized just how big of a powder keg the issue was. People hated the marketing, and were getting pissed off at the folks who were doing it. Even those that supported the fundraiser behind the marketing were suggesting that folks ignore those spreading the messages. It’s like being at a family reunion where “Uncle Jim” is drunk and loud and abusive, and half the people there saying just ignore him while the other half are wanting to call him a cab and send him home. Everyone is on edge, no one is having fun, and the only point of agreement is the hope that Uncle Jim passes out soon.

This soft drink marketing onslaught inside a bird rescue is fraying everyone’s nerves. The marketing is affecting people in ways they don’t fully realize, and is causing friends to turn on each other. This is dangerous, and I believe destructive to the organization.

To compound the problem, Mickaboo has no formal mechanism for complaining about these things. People keep telling me I should have complained earlier, but there’s no way I could have. There is no volunteer advocacy among the administrators or to the board. No one is keeping track of volunteer morale. The lack of ability to voice a concern is what send Raelene to Facebook, where others essentially told her to shut the fuck up. No one at Micakboo is listening, it is broadcast only from the top and volunteers are expected to take it or leave. I hope for their sake they fix that soon.

And that is, in a nutshell, why I left.

Monday Morning Quarterback

It’s easy to say what should have been done after the fact, but I doubt that will be useful.  Instead, here is some general advice to other non-profits to help avoid damaging your organization.

Volunteers are an invaluable resource for any non-profit. They are probably your most valuable resource. Volunteers are sources of labor, donations, new volunteers, etc. Treat them well. Survey them regularly for satisfaction, and keep a close eye on morale. Monitor volunteer donations levels, organization growth and churn, and the ability to get someone to step up and do some volunteer work. If you’re having problems, it’s probably because people are no longer listening to you.

Be careful with general calls to action. It’s fine to continuously ask for specific help, but be deliberate about anything that requires a large percentage of the organization. Your volunteers are just that, volunteers. They have busy lives with lots of distractions. They probably are not as devoted to the cause as you are, nor do they have as much spare time. The fact they want to use their time to help your organization is a gift, use that gift wisely and do not demand more. No action a volunteer takes is trivial or small, it is a gift they are giving you when they could be doing something else.

Give volunteers a way to anonymously give you feedback. You will be surprised at what they tell you. Also, give volunteers the option to identify themselves when they do provide feedback, because many people want to open up a dialog about why they feel this way. Don’t ignore these people. If someone contacts you, no matter what their tone or how vicious the email, it is because they cared enough about your organization to do so. Don’t just broadcast to your volunteers, listen to them as well.

Provide your volunteers with an advocate. Even small companies have HR departments, because employees need someone they can talk to. If you have more than a few dozen volunteers, you need someone whose job it is to listen to their concerns and bring them up with the folks in charge. It’s not enough to assume that anyone with a problem can email someone in charge about it. Not only do you lose the ability to centrally collect and correlate feedback that way, but not everyone is comfortable approaching someone who may or may not care about their issue. Make sure your volunteers know you care, and give that care a face.

Let numbers, not gut feelings and egos, decide your actions. Measure everything, and be willing to look at the results even if it’s hard. You might know in your heart that something is worth it, but if the numbers disagree then you have to change course. Make sure all your volunteers are placing your organizations goals, and not their egos, first.

Lastly, be wary of destructive forces within your organization. From business management 101, if you are an organization of any size you will have individuals with passion and drive who left unchecked will destroy it. They might be great people with the best possible intentions, but if they are destroying the morale of every around, if they are making it easy for your volunteers not to volunteer, they are a liability to your organization. It might be with a little help they can be refocused, but if not you have to ask them to leave. No single volunteer should be allowed to hurt your organization.

What’s Next

To be honest I’m not sure. I still love birds, and I’m sure there are other ways I can help them that don’t involve Mickaboo. Volunteer work can, and should, be very rewarding, so I probably wont stay idle for long.

There were some very big announcements which I will try to summarize here. First was Android@home, Google’s push to put their Android operating system in everything electronic in your home. With everything running the same operating system, and everything talking to everything else over wireless connections, the “Home of the Future” is just around the corner. I’m skeptical, but if they can keep the costs of the devices down it could be really cool.

Another big announcement was Google Music Beta. Google Music is a new cloud based music service with lots of promise, but at the moment it’s not a good match for me. You can read more at The Sufficiently Advanced Dad. For now I will continue to use Amazon’s Cloud Player.

The last really big announcement was the impending commercial availability of laptops using Google’s Chrome OS. They’re gong to be cheap and portable, and and really all you need if the only thing you use a computer for is email, sharing photos with friends, surfing the web, and playing simple games (like solitaire). If it lives up to it’s promise, a desktop version could be the perfect computer for my parents. Supposedly Google will be shipping me one in the next month or so, we’ll see how it stacks up then.

Overall I really enjoyed the show, and I plan on going again next year if I can.

I am one of three judges in the GM Throwdown this weekend, and I’m really looking forward to it. The two contestants are given three themes, and they compete to see who can run the best 4-hour game using those three themes. I wasn’t there the first time they ran this, so I don’t know for sure what to expect, but I’m sure I will have a blast. It is also quite the honor to be chosen as a judge.

Corinne is doing well in school, and more or less going to sleep okay and sleeping through the night. I think the bad sleep years are over, but who knows what the future may hold. These days she’s mostly just stubborn and distracted, but then she’s also three so that is to be expected.

On Saturday we had our Seder. We were also babysitting Corinne’s BFF, and with a 2nd 3 year old in the house we went through the ceremony a little quickly. Corinne’s loved dipping her finger in the grape juice for the plagues, and loved dipping everything in the saltwater tears. Oy vey. The girls also ran around and played hard all evening, and had a lot of fun.

On Sunday the Easter Bunny stopped by and left Corinne a basket full of activity books, stickers, and a single lollipop. No sugar overload at our house Easter morning. The rest of the day was fairly low key. We went for a walk, we had a nice dinner, we played and had fun. Overall it was a very nice weekend.

The birthday part was for Corinne’s BFF, and was held at a park just two blocks from where we live. Talk about convenient! There were a handful of kids from Corinne’s preschool there, along with some friends from the neighborhood. It was a lot of fun, and I will try to get a video up soon.

Speaking of videos, did you notice I added a video of Corinne playing on the slide? I’m quite proud of myself for getting that off the camera, up to YouTube, and then onto the blog. It’s not a great video, I know, but given I can’t get anything off the old video camera I’m happy.

The Solano Playlot Spring Festival was a lot of fun. Corinne participated in her first easter egg hunt, and I think she found four candy filled plastic eggs. She also took two swings at a pinata, and then used her third to go after the guy running things (who kept letting big kids go before her). There was also a simple obstacle course, and at one point the kids were told to hide behind some big rocks. Corinne  was soooo serious while hiding behind her rock, peeking out to see what was going on. It was very cute

Next weekend we’re celebrating Passover on Saturday and Easter on Sunday. We also have another birthday party to attend, but this time it’s for Corinne’s BFF’s Mom. With everything else going on I’m not sure if we’ll make it, but we will try so that Corinne and her BFF can play.

We’ve started planning a weekend getaway for our anniversary, you can probably guess the details.

I’m also scheduled to play in a game in early June, and I am very, very excited about that. It’s a somewhat sequel to the Godlike campaign I was in a year or so ago, inspired by one of the flashbacks I wrote as part of that game. Instead of soldiers in WW2, we will be playing Nazi hunters during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

And that’s about it! Happy Wednesday!