Where Are The Associations?
There are, in North America, at least 600-700 local or regional associations of people with a career or other serious interest in providing leadership for volunteers. As noted in last issue’s DOVIA Survey Report, local DOVIAs could use some help locating other professional associations in their own state or province. This, even though the nearest local volunteer coordinator’s association is typically no more than 30-50 miles away from your own DOVIA! (Although not in the great state of Alaska.)

There are at least five reasons for reaching out:

- For regional promotion or co-sponsorship of workshops and conferences (as Boulder and Denver DOVIAs are doing on October 5^th).

- For the interest provided by joint meetings and projects.

- To market your association’s products and services, and the same as a benefit to your individual members – their products and services – in your state, province, or region.

- So individual members who are moving or traveling can connect with the local association adjacent to their itinerary or destination.

- Simply to confront the loneliness an association as well as an individual can feel in our field.

Good news: we now have more than 300 DOVIA/Association addresses, the most ever, thanks to a great response from DOVIA Exchange readers (please keep it up) and some devoted work by Nancy David of the National DOVIA Network. The entire 50-state, 10-province directory will probably be published sometime in 1996. Meanwhile the National DOVIA Network is offering printouts state by state and province by province of all the addresses we currently have:

(1) $3 for the first state or province; $2 for each additional state or province up to a total of five states or provinces (for a total of $11). Fee includes mailing and handling. Please prepay with check or money order made out to Voluntas in US funds.

(2) The second part of the "fee" is to send in with your order all the DOVIA or association addresses you currently have.

Please clearly indicate the states or provinces you want covered.

Recognizing Worth
Cynics and disappointed idealists have characterized volunteer programs in agencies as "first downsized; last upsized; most capsized". To help make this wrong as often as possible, DOVIAs are more and more honoring their own outstanding volunteer program leaders. Directors of Volunteer Services (DOVS) of Broward County, FL recently recognized Rebecca Rountree as the Volunteer Administrator of the Year. At the other end of the US, DOVIA of King County, WA presented the Dufort Award to Pat Lanning as the year’s outstanding volunteer manager.

Also major morale builders are scholarships given to members by local associations; an awesome recent example is the $500 awarded by the Voluntary Action Network of Detroit, MI to help a member attend the national conference in Boston.

Finally, a little creative bragging – we need to do more of it – from the Broward County DOVS which touts its association not only on the number of its members (60) but also the total number of volunteers they represent (10,000).

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Ivan Scheier
Stillpoint
607 Marr
Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, 87901
Tel (505) 894-1340
Email: ivan@zianet.com

For comments and editing suggestions please contact Mary Lou McNatt mlmcnatt@indra.com