One Street News

November/December 2010

Vol. 3, Issue 10

1. A Big Start to 2011
2. Resources – TEDx Bicycle Helmet Presentation
3. Hot Topics – Volunteer Responsibility: How Much is Too Much?
4. Supporter Spotlight – Write Now Design Joomla Websites

A Big Start to 2011

January will be full of activities with our Social Bike Business partners. Our Executive Director, Sue Knaup, will spend nearly three weeks in Uganda helping the leaders at Ride 4 a Woman build their bicycle workshop and start their bicycle job training program. Meanwhile, our Social Bike Business Program Coordinator, Michael Dummeyer, will be here in Prescott working closely with our next group of local partners around the U.S. eager to start their own Social Bike Business program. He’s also capturing all the best practices for the program in our new how-to manual—16 chapters in the outline so far! 

As spring buds appear, we’ll be focusing much of our work locally and in Europe. Sue will once again be teaching the university spring semester course The Bicycle: Vehicle for Social Change at Prescott College. And this year we will enjoy a special connection between this university course and our annual trip through Europe to connect with our partners there. Encouraged by our partners at the European Cyclists’ Federation (ECF), Sue has added an optional field trip to the course for her students to visit Amsterdam and then attend ECF’s Velo-city 2011 conference March 23-25 in Sevilla, Spain. Read more about the field trip here.

All of these activities will feed our on-going connections with bicycle organizations around the world. Call or email anytime if you think we can help with your organization management or bicycle campaign needs. And of course we’ll continue to add great resources to our Resources Library. Be sure to peruse it for inspirations and resources for your important work increasing bicycling in the communities you serve. And if you have any favorite resources you’d like us to add to the library, please send them to sue{at}onestreet.org. 

Resources – TEDx Bicycle Helmet Presentation

Stopping the dangerization of cycling through helmet promotions is particularly difficult because the hysteria surrounding bicycle helmets is based on emotional (mostly fear) messaging. On our side, we’ve got data, facts, researchers, experts and all the wonks you can shake a stick at. That’s great, but in this age when media and politicians shun facts for drama, we’re at a disadvantage until we can shape our message into something that sticks.  

At least that was the case until a few weeks ago when Mikael Colville-Andersen nailed it at a TEDx conference in Copenhagen. Watch the video for some of the stickiest messaging of our side of this issue we’ve heard; sound bites that will stay with you. Nice job Mikael!

You can find more great bicycle messages from Mikael on his popular websites: www.copenhagenize.com and www.copenhagencyclechic.com .  

Hot Topics – Volunteer Responsibility: How Much is Too Much?

 ~ The volunteer with the keys to the event venue never showed up. ~ Five months waiting for a volunteer to complete a website that never happened. ~ Clients and funders given harmful information by a volunteer. ~ The volunteer who disappeared with the bank deposit. 

These are just some of the volunteer horror stories we’ve had to respond to through our On-call Support program over the years.

We know that most new organizations must be led by volunteers. But such leaders of healthy organizations build the capacity of their organization towards a point when they and their staff will be paid a market salary, thus ensuring the long-term success of their organization. And most (emphasis on most) board members are also capable of high-level responsibility for their organization because they’ve made a commitment to this governance role. These sorts of volunteers are not what inspired this month’s Hot Topic. 

Lately at One Street, we’ve been answering too many coaching calls after troubles occurred from volunteers not following through on commitments. These calls are very difficult to respond to, not only because the harm has already been done, but because the source of the problem is usually not the volunteer. The organization leaders who ask us for help are often fixated on how to reprimand or even get rid of the volunteer who dropped the ball.

Instead, we usually find that the volunteer system and expectations the organization has been operating under are flawed. Yes, these ambitious volunteers often prompt the failure by enthusiastically promising to take on important projects. But without a clear understanding of appropriate roles, overworked organization leaders are vulnerable to accepting these unrealistic promises instead of gently guiding them towards a more appropriate task. 

Here’s an easy rule to help you avoid giving your volunteers too much responsibility while still keeping them engaged and excited to help: Ask yourself if your organization depends on the task you are about to give to a volunteer. If the answer is yes, don’t assign it to a volunteer!

Generally any task with these characteristics should not be given to volunteers:

• An event cannot move ahead until the task is completed.
• Your organization’s communications are dependant on it.
• The task requires a deep understanding of your organization’s principles.
• The task includes responsibility for funding or valuables.
• If the task is not carried out, your organization will suffer significant harm.

And don’t worry. There are always plenty of other fun tasks for volunteers to take care of. Just because you give the keys to a staff or board member doesn’t mean your volunteers can’t dig into all the fun and creative ways to help your event succeed.  

By understanding roles and the appropriate levels of responsibility for each, you will be setting your volunteers up for years of enjoyable success with your organization. This is the least you can do for them for all the help they’ve given to your organization.

Supporter Spotlight – Write Now Design Joomla Websites

By: Sue Knaup, Executive Director

Since One Street’s site was created with Joomla software, I know how easy it is to update without relying on a web designer. So I recommended Joomla to our partners at Ride 4 a Woman (R4W) for their new website so they will have the ability to make their own updates. But I’d never created the framework of such a site. I put the call out for help and our old friend Pat Fortino at Write Now Design responded.  

Pat had helped us shift One Street’s website from a fully dependent, expensive-to-update html site to Joomla, saving us untold costs ever since. He got me the framework for the R4W site within days which enabled me to insert R4W’s initial content and build their pages. Take a look at this fun work in progress: www.ride4awoman.org