A Flight of DOVS Section I Beginning With the Basics By Ivan Scheier

This section is designed to tell you what a DOVIA-type association is, and why you might want to plan or strengthen one in your own community or region. Some basic background considerations for your planning are also provided here, based on a 1985 survey report, with some 1987 updating.

Introduction
In 1983, I surveyed approximately 250 professional associations composed of volunteer coordinators or directors and people in allied volunteer leadership roles. So far in 1984, an additional 75 survey forms have been collected on such associations, often called DOVIAS or DOVS, for Directors of Volunteer Services in Agencies.

The present profile combines results for the first 200 surveys in 1983, and the first 50 surveys in 1984. Since it is unlikely there are more than 500 or 600 such associations in all of North America, the present sample can be considered a substantial one for purposes of approximating the true situation overall.

Main characteristics are profiled in terms of rounded-off percentages. Some statistically infrequent responses are also presented because they could signal growing points in the evolution of these associations. In any case, they sometimes challenge the innovative imagination.

There is necessarily some subjectivity in categorizing and interpreting responses. Here my base of experience is working with l5-20 local associations a year, and membership in six of them scattered across the continent.

Definition, Identification
In the main, these groups call themselves "Associations" (40%), "DOVIAS" or "DOVS" (30%), "Councils (15%) or "Societies" (10%); the latter title is most likely with hospital associations. Among the scattered other titles used, "Network" is most frequent, but we also see "Committee," "Forum," "Assembly," "Alliance," "Brown Bag," "Cluster," and "Roundtable."

The associations refer to their members mainly as Directors of Volunteer Services (50%), but also as Administrators (20%-25%) or Coordinators (20%-25%) of volunteers. Mentioned only occasionally are such terms as managers, leaders, scholars, and (thank you, somebody) people. Not represented in our data are some other career titles that exist, e.g., Chief of Voluntary Services in the Veterans Administration, Community Resource Specialists or Developers (in Florida and the Northwest U.S.), Supervisors of Volunteer Services (in some social welfare systems), and occasionally, Facilitator of Volunteer Services.

Affiliation
Some people might wonder if DOVIAs have an identity of their own, beyond being a component of some other organization, such as a Volunteer Center. To be sure, some DOVIA-type associations are largely subsidiary to other organizations, but many are not; and even where there is substantial dependency, DOVIAs are usually looked to for performance of distinct and important functions.

About 25% of the associations are unaffiliated, 55% have only one affiliation, and 20% have more than one affiliation. Among all DOVIA affiliations, about 35-40% are with Volunteer Centers, about 20% with the American Society of Directors of Volunteer Services (ASDVS), and about 10% are with state or provincial volunteer offices. Slightly more than 5% of reported DOVIA affiliations are with the Association for Volunteer Administration (AVA) while less than 5% mention United Way. The remainder constitute a widely scattered assortment, including service delivery systems, colleges, and other national associations.

The 1983 survey questionnaire failed to ask directly about more informal "horizontal" affiliative relationships between one DOVIA and another. In the 1984 survey, however, this question was asked: "Other than formal affiliation, do you have significant relations with other DOVIA-type associations in your state or Province?" Of the 75 associations responding to this question, 40% said yes. But only about 10% said they ventured significantly beyond their state border to relate to other local associations. Network relations between local associations and the state DOVIA are a matter of some interest in states like Nebraska, Michigan, and North Carolina.

Coverage
DOVIAS are continental in scope. Association addresses exist in my files for all ten provinces of Canada, 47 states, several regions, a number of nation-wide associations, and the District of Columbia. The three missing states were either low population ones, places where my contacts are relatively sparse, or both.

DOVIAs covering only a single town or city are relatively rare (less than 10%). About a third cover an entire county, another third are multi-county or regional, and about one quarter include an entire state or province. Finally, I also have information on about a dozen national associations relevant to the field of volunteer leadership or some significant part of it.

Membership
About two-thirds of the associations involve members across a range of human services and other community concerns. The other third limit membership to volunteer directors in a single service area: for example, health care or hospitals, criminal justice, education, corporations, the military. Hospital DOVIAs dominate these specialty-oriented associations, comprising about three- quarters of them. But this probably overestimates the true proportion. The hospital society entries in my records are complete or nearly so. By contrast, a number of DOVIA-type associations in criminal justice and other specialty areas do exist; I know this, but was unable to locate them for my directory files.

Excepting national associations, the average association membership is about 70. But this figure by itself could be misleading. The vast majority of associations (85-90%) have 100 members or fewer. Indeed, about half of the DOVIAs have fewer than 30-35 members. The average is raised to 70 by a relatively small set of super-large DOVIAs (10-15%) averaging 200-250 members each. In any case, the range in local DOVIA size is huge, from six members to more than 500!

The reach of DOVIAS via their mailing lists averages about a third more than their membership, or about 100 per DOVIA. Again, the range is huge, from no mailing list reported to 1500 for a single association.

The nine national associations range from about 100 to 3000 members each, averaging 500-550, and totaling nearly 5,000 members. This membership overlaps among national organizations and between them and more local DOVIAS. The exact degree of overlap is unknown. My own experience suggests it is relatively small, except in specialty-oriented associations, where a person is more likely to belong both to the national and its local affiliate.

Legal Status
Only about one-quarter of the associations are incorporated; all describe themselves as "non-profit." The unincorporated three-quarters quite often stress their informality and say they want to keep it that way. Some other associations benefit from the corporate status of a sponsor or national affiliate, and a few, perhaps 10-15%, mention plans for incorporating.

Budget, Dues and Other Revenues (for all associations except national ones)
These are low-budget operations; they specialize in doing more with less. Revenues mainly come from dues, workshop fees, and occasional donations from agencies, businesses, government, or individuals. No DOVIA mentioned having a major grant or regular budget allocated to it from some sponsor organization. I know for sure of only one DOVIA which has seriously pursued a major grant application, though I suspect other DOVIAs have done so.

Miniscule budgets are made up for by a great deal of in-kind volunteer service from members and sometimes also from sponsoring organizations such as volunteer centers. A chronic difficulty is getting this kind of time from busy people and organizations.

The range in dues is spectacular, from zero to $100 a year (the latter in only one case, as a corporate membership). The average is between five and ten dollars a year. The approximate breakdown is no dues (25%), $1-$5 (25%), $6-$10 (25%), $11-$15 (12%), $20 (6%), $25 (5%), and $30 or more (2%).

About 15% of the associations have a membership fee scale, with different fees for students, agencies, etc. About 80% of the associations report significant revenues other than dues. For about half of these associations these other revenues derive from workshops and conferences, though fees are usually kept as low as possible and may only allow breaking even or a little better than that.

Other means of revenue mentioned are donations from corporations, individuals, etc.; portion of regular budget of parent organization; and special fund- raising events such as volunteer fair, small grants to help defray expenses of workshops or other special events, and sales of books or other materials.

Purposes
Strong common threads run through the purpose and goal statements of these associations.

--Virtually all of them include in their purposes:

1. Networking, information exchange, sharing, communication, linkage among their members. About 15% of DOVIAs added a "support group" variation on this theme.
2. Training and education to upgrade the knowledge and skills of volunteer directors.

--About half of the associations share these two goal-themes:

1. To promote professionalism. About 10% of responses also alluded to development of professional standards.
2. To promote volunteerism and volunteer programs generally; to upgrade the dignity and status of volunteers.

--About 30% of DOVIAs speak in one way or another of minimizing duplication, encouraging coordination and joint operations in areas such as volunteer recruitment, placement, training, recognition, and public relations.

--About 5% of the DOVIAs mention each of the following: resource development, problem solving, links to outside, legislative review and advocacy, and either establishing or being advisor to a Volunteer Center.

--Stated as DOVIA purpose only occasionally (less than 5%) were challenges such as job opportunities, creative programming, certification, keeping up with national trends, and recognition for Directors of Volunteer Services. My own experience is that while job opportunity information is not an official purpose of many DOVIAS, it is an important unofficial benefit.

Activities and Events.

Virtually every association:

1. has regular meetings. DOVIAs generally meet quite frequently. Forty percent meet monthly, though usually not in summer. Others meet every other month (30%); quarterly (20%); twice yearly (5%) or annually (5%). My impression is that a great deal of networking is expected to occur at these meetings, and usually does.

2. has workshops, conferences, educational meetings. Frequencies vary from once a year to monthly (usually in conjunction with the regular monthly meeting). The average number of workshops is about 3-4 per year, and the clear majority of trainers are DOVIA members or other local talent.

3. sponsors or co-sponsors volunteer recognition events during national volunteer week and/or at other times during the year.

About half of the associations publish their own newsletter as an information and networking vehicle. Frequency is monthly (25%,), every other month (30%), quarterly (30%), or only once or twice a year (15%D). 1 regularly receive about 15 of these newsletters and find them generally of excellent quality, often comparing favorably with national newsletters.

Some DOVIAs without their own newsletter, have news coverage in a column or section of an affiliated or sponsoring organization, e.g., the local volunteer center.

DOVIAs do very little other publishing beyond newsletters. There is occasional mention of organizational materials, such as brochures, flyers, meeting notices, and minutes. About 5% of the associations report publishing a membership directory. Another 5% publish a handbook or brochure describing volunteer opportunities.

The range and intensity of DOVIA activities becomes even more impressive when one realizes that these are in the main all-volunteer operations, kept going by people who are very busy elsewhere. Some DOVIAs do receive support services from the local Volunteer Center, United Way, or other affiliate, but even here, volunteers probably provide much of this support service. So far as I am aware, no associations (except national ones) directly employ any paid staff. Only a very few DOVIAs have even talked about this.

Past and Future

A number of associations are interested in learning from past trials and triumphs some have even written histories. Thus, the Houston Association of Volunteer Administrators (HAVA) has prepared a ten year history tracing growth from five founders to about 150 members today.

How long have DOVIAs been around? According to our records, the pioneers for local and regional associations are:

1956 -	The Volunteer Resources Council of the National Capital Area (Washington DC)
1958 -	The Quebec Association of Directors of Volunteer Services in Health Care
About 1964 -	The Los Angeles DOVIA
1967 -	The Western Association of Directors of Volunteer Services in Health Care

Any other candidates for the honor roll?

So much for the long term. Our shorter history is equally significant. Though DOVIAs have been around for as long as thirty years, growth appears to be accelerating rapidly. Based on 70 responses to the 1984 survey, almost 70% of DOVIAs were formed during the past ten years and 40% since 1980.

1987 UPDATES ON SURVEYS

The basic patterns reported in the 1983-84 surveys remain essentially similar in 1987, with these exceptions.

Names:
"DOVIA" or "DOV" appears now to be the single most frequent name for local associations of leaders of volunteers.

Affiliation:
The number of local associations affiliating nationally, has grown significantly. About 40 local associations are now affiliated with the Association for Volunteer Administration; about 120 associations are expected to join the National DOVIA Network for 1988. Many associations relate to both AVA and the DOVIA Network, assuming that these linkages serve distinctly different purposes.

Does this growing tendency to associations and coalition imply "standardization? Clearly, the DOVIA EXCHANGE didn't think so, in this excerpt:

THE MESSAGE ISN'T THE MEDIUM

"Those who hope to homogenize our field must wince at the stubborn plurality of local associations. One symptom of that is over 100 different name variations among 600 associations in North America. Some acronyms occur several too many times; for example: "DOVIA," "DOVS," "CVA,' "CVC." Other names repeat only once or twice; here we have "MAVA," "MAVD," "MAD-V," "RAVD" etc. Still other names are unique, such as a one-and-only "BAMVS" or "NAVCJ."

What looks to some like a cryptographer's nightmare speaks to us of, vigorous variety, of exploration not yet ended. Here there are many messages, among them:

"ARRIVA VIA VAN and WAVA WAVE
SERV LOVE and LIV
GIVL VOICE
VIVA! "

DUES AND OTHER REVENUES:
A recent DOVIA EXCHANGE had this to say about workshop fees for DOVIA members vs. non-members: "Now what about the average mark-up fees for DOVIA events for non-members? From files here, it looks like this ranges from 20% to 50%. Thus, if members pay $10 for a workshop, non-members pay $15, and what is $20 for members might be $25 or more for non-members. In most cases, just one or two non-member mark-ups like that makes it financially worth your while to join. I strongly suspect clever treasurers are aware of that."

GROWTH:
There's a fairly strong impression that the thrust of growth has shifted from increasing numbers of new associations to number of members in existing associations. Parallel with that, many DOVIAs appear to be entering a stage of greater stability, without the wide swings of organizational infancy, in which the group depends heavily on charismatic - or lucky - leadership.

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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