Can We Really Learn from our Mistakes?
By Colleen Kelly
“Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.”
— Oscar Wilde, Anglo-Irish wit and author (1854-1900)
The incredible reach of the Internet highlights and exacerbates the territorial foolishness of the voluntary sector. It is clear that Jim Collins’ opening sentence “good is the enemy of great”, often has immediate proof in voluntary sector organizations that aim to duplicate what is available on the Internet. Does it make any sense for us to be so concerned with being “good” (enough) that we forego all chances of being “great” in really reaching the people we serve?
There were very few who predicted the swift rise of the World Wide Web. And there were few in the voluntary sector to immediately grasp how magnificent a tool it could be for those of us who work in community. I remember Susan Ellis grabbing the tool and quickly creating so much value for all of us through her websites and her electronic books. Susan has been proud of her ability to connect people — and her Internet presence makes that happen without physically involving her! Her first Hot Topic on Energizeinc.com was in April 1997 — long before many organizations in the voluntary sector had email.
Volunteer Canada quickly became aware of the power of the Internet and collaborated with Human Resources Development Canada in 1996 to create the Volunteer Opportunity Exchange (VOE). As much as it was a brilliant strategy, the adaptation did not work well for volunteer centres and volunteer-seeking organizations. One of the many lessons we learned from that internet application was the negative perception of volunteering that was created by asking individuals to post their wish to become a volunteer. Very few organizations contacted these individuals and we created the sense that we did not really require any volunteers. It was important for volunteer centres to learn that lesson at that point and ensure we created a place for organizations to post their volunteer opportunities, not a place for individuals to post. At the same time, Volunteer Victoria was working with a technology expert who was developing VICTA. This system focused on posting volunteer opportunities and, in part, because the technology was developed in collaboration with a strong volunteer centre, VICTA was the system of choice in the late 90’s.
Early in the twenty-first century, when Volunteer Vancouver (VV) began to examine the best volunteer referral systems, VICTA and the VOE were top of mind. VV purchased, learned and used VICTA. Then, in refining, we made our first request of the technology experts to write a program that connected VICTA and the VOE. (Interestingly, Volunteer Canada and Volunteer Victoria were also making those requests to IT experts.) The experts told us it couldn’t be done well. So, we began to create govolunteer.ca.
In March 2003, we launched govolunteer.ca. Of course we knew nothing of how challenging the technology was, and we completely underestimated the time and challenge of collaborating with people in other organizations. However, the tool did prove to be exceptional and it has far outdistanced our expectations. In 2005, there were 3.75 million visitors to the govolunteer.ca website.
Last summer, while examining the volunteer centre role — and writing a discussion paper, we discovered there were many for-profit companies posting volunteer opportunities on their websites. It seems to be an easy and socially conscious task for a company. However, although the idea is a great one, these companies lack a connection to organizations that engage volunteers. We also know that individuals do not approach a company seeking a volunteer role. Yet companies understand how valuable this technological connection is to the community. And we truly realized there is huge value in our network capital, and that is what makes govolunteer.ca work very well for volunteer centres.
In addition to other volunteer centres in Greater Vancouver, govolunteer.ca reaches potential volunteers who are served by three volunteer centres in the Edmonton area. Because VV did not anticipate that kind of geographic diversification (silly us!), we did not determine geography as the first search. That requires a small change if other volunteer opportunity posting organizations are interested. We even have investigated that it is relatively simple to add functionality in French, so we would have the ability to provide information for volunteers in both official languages.
Ah, but why would we do that? It seems to be that all organizations want to build their own. Although govolunteer.ca denotes no geographic location, there are many organizations that still believe they have to have their own volunteer opportunity search. And we wonder again does that really work in becoming a great organization? It is up to us to learn from our mistakes and use the technology wisely.
Colleen Kelly is the Executive Director of Volunteer Vancouver.
