Quick—name a teambuilding activity that doesn't cost anything, provides near-instant results, and makes you feel good besides. Give up? It's volunteer work.
Associations have been organizing a lot of volunteer efforts lately, and it's not hard to see why. Anyone can write a check to a worthy cause, but doing so can't compare to the satisfaction derived from physical labor, participants say. Also, volunteerism is a strong part of our culture—surveys show that most American adults do some sort of community service already. Then there are the side benefits of these projects: networking, teambuilding, and reputation-building, among others. Here's a quick rundown of some of the latest permutations of community-service projects in the association world.
Count on Me
When the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants began looking into the subject of financial literacy in America, it found "a crisis," declares Cheryl Reynolds, a project manager at the New York City-based association. She reels off some startling statistics: The average American family carries anywhere from $8,500 to $11,000 in credit-card debt, while the typical college student graduates owing $2,700 on multiple pieces of plastic (that doesn't include the additional thousands in student loans). Even more disturbing, 43 percent of U.S. families outspend what they earn, consuming at least $1.22 for every dollar earned. No wonder 1.6 million Americans declared bankruptcy in 2003 alone.
Hence the AICPA, whose mission is to serve the public as well as its clients, launched "360 Degrees of Financial Literacy" last year. The program provides resources to AICPA's 340,000 members nationwide so that they can volunteer time in their communities educating their fellow citizens on personal finance and money management. Thus in Virginia, "Financial Fitness Day" saw accountants heading to local shopping centers and malls, where they provided free information on finances and administered quizzes for which participants could win prizes. In Montana, "Operation CPAs" sent the bean-counters to military reserve bases to educate soon-to-be-deployed reservists and their families on sensible financial planning during this difficult time.
Reynolds emphasizes that "360 Degrees" is strictly a volunteer effort and that participating accountants can't market their services. A byproduct of this program, she points out, is that the public gains a favorable impression of her association and of accountants in general. But the main mission truly is goodwill: "We hope to have an impact on the terrible financial statistics in America right now," she says. The AICPA seems to be off to a good start; in little more than a year, the program has already reached 145 million Americans, and recently received an award for excellence from the American Society of Association Executives.
It's Their Serve
When most fraternity members talk about serving people, they're often thinking of beer. But that's not the case with Alpha Phi Omega. Though it calls itself a fraternity, it has both male and female members—and no dorms. Founded 80 years ago by former Boy Scouts, Alpha Phi Omega is dedicated almost entirely to community service, and has over 360 chapters on college campuses nationwide.
Volunteer work is part of every Alpha Phi Omega meeting, notes its executive director, Robert London: "From our annual meeting to our local chapter meetings, there's always a service element, whether it's cleaning up a cemetery or making cards for a local children's hospital." But for National Service Week, held annually in November, the entire fraternity springs into action, as student chapters across the country organize and carry out service projects of their own devising.
Projects are based on a theme decided by the national office in Independence, MO, which also provides an instructional manual and other resources to individual chapters. Members post reports on their projects online where they describe what they did, including how many volunteers participated and the total number of hours served, so that the headquarters can keep track of efforts and other participants can glean ideas. For the most recent National Service Week last November, says London, the theme was "building strong bodies," and more than 5,000 members of Alpha Phi Omega did everything from collecting toothbrushes for the needy to organizing blood drives for the Red Cross to launching antismoking campaigns aimed at fellow students.
Participants aren't just carrying out Alpha Phi Omega's mission statement, London notes: "Learning to organize a project—motivating people, meeting deadlines, coordinating with other organizations, delegating—imparts real-world skills our students will use after they graduate." Another beneficial side effect is improved town-gown relations. The fact that students are giving back to the community, says London, often helps the relationship between a university and the city it's located in.
A similar effort from the Professional Convention Management Association will accrue comparable benefits to older attendees. The Chicago-based society already has two well-known charitable activities associated with its annual meeting: Party With a Purpose, a fundraiser, and Hospitality Helping Hands, a volunteer effort. Now PCMA hopes to expand the community-service concept into a full-day, nationwide venture with Service in Sync Day, launching this November.
"Our intent is to make a huge impact as a caring organization," says Peter O'Brien, who as chair of PCMA's Network for the Needy committee oversees all three volunteer initiatives, and who, as director of national accounts for Marriott Global Sales, based Service in Sync on Marriott's Spirit to Serve Day. "We're in the hospitality industry, so giving back to our communities is an important byproduct of our jobs."
On Service in Sync Day, members of PCMA chapters across North America will take November 2 off from work to devote volunteer labor to different community projects, such as cleaning up parks or building houses for Habitat for Humanity. For participants, the benefits are myriad, offers O'Brien: "It's a great opportunity to network since it mixes suppliers with planners, there's a built-in teambuilding element, and the reward is just tremendous when you see the results of your accomplishments." He hopes to make Service in Sync an annual tradition. "Assuming the project is successful, our plan is to capture all this in photography, put the pictures to music, and show them [at our annual meeting] in Philadelphia in January," says O'Brien. "If that doesn't sell those who didn't participate on the merits and the feel-good nature of our accomplishments, I don't know what will."
Go Fly a Kite
Many professional associations are charged with presenting a positive image of their profession, and the American Chemical Society (ACS) found an innovative way to do just that three years ago when it launched Chemists Celebrate Earth Day. Much like the AICPA's financial literacy program, the annual April activity is a community-outreach effort organized by the national office in Washington D.C. Each year, ACS headquarters picks a theme and what it calls a "unifying event," and provides its 189 local chapters with materials so that members can implement projects on a grassroots level, from cleaning up parks to running chemistry experiments at local science museums.
This year's theme was "air" and the unifying event was kite-flying, says Judith Jankowski, manager of the office of community activities at the ACS. Members went into their communities and organized kite-flying sessions that they used to teach children about aerodynamics and the atmosphere. "People often think that chemistry pollutes the air and water, and with these programs we emphasize how it positively impacts the environment," explains Jankowski. Thus kite-flying could easily segue into, for instance, a discussion of acid rain and ozone depletion, and how chemistry can help detect and solve these problems. The activity was educational, it was eye-catching (which helped attract media attention), but mostly, it was fun.
And that's what a lot of association members say about community-service projects—that the enjoyment derived from rolling up your sleeves and sweating a bit alongside your peers can't be matched. "You're devoting worthwhile energy to others who are less fortunate, and you're getting a really good feeling out of it," offers O'Brien. At PCMA's annual meeting this year in Honolulu, he recalls, attendees spent a half-day cleaning up and painting a community center for low-income families, and when some local women who used the center saw the results, they wept with gratitude: "Seeing those ladies moved to tears of joy and thankfulness was a huge reward, for all of us."
Eat This Booth
Religious associations are often the most devoted to charity work, and the Southern Baptists are no exception. At this year's annual meeting in Nashville, they came up with a surprisingly original way to donate food to the needy. A local seminary built a trade-show booth exhibit largely out of bags of rice, which were later donated to local rescue missions.
The exhibit, designed to look like a U.S. Army special operations base camp, emphasized the theme that the school's seminarians take the Gospel into new, even dangerous places. The display was constructed out of such materials as camouflage netting and sandbags, but rather than sand, each of the latter was filled with 25 pounds of rice. On their way home from Nashville, the seminarians dropped off 2,500 pounds of rice at local missions that provide meals and beds to homeless people.