[nabs-l] Action Plan, Part 2

[T. Joseph Carter]

Joe, I like the plan, but I am concerned about the question of 
stipends.  I have seen within the organization claims that leadership 
comes with lots of perks and that people who have the perks seem to 
expect a lot out of rank and file members that they don't put forward 
themselves.  I have no problem with paying board members' expenses 
associated with performing their duties.  A stipend to be used at the 
officers' discretion, no matter how carefully budgeted, seems to go a 
little too far.

Otherwise, I see little in your plan I would want to change.  Maybe a 
bit of the detail around how the organization raises money to help 
support itself, but they're minor details.

And when you reconsider a run for the presidency and get elected, 
I'll be happy to sit down and discuss them with you at length.  
*grin*

Joseph


On Wed, May 06, 2009 at 11:58:10PM -0400, Joe Orozco wrote:
>Dear all:
>
>In a landscape of grim statistics and dismal editorials regarding the bad
>economy, the hope of the unemployment rate among the blind appears equally
>worrisome.  While NABS should not make job readiness the centerpiece of its
>operations, it should provide its membership one more added incentive for
>sticking around.  To that end it is my opinion that NABS should consider
>hosting a job fair at Washington Seminar.
>
>In general, planning for Washington Seminar should begin in July, relatively
>soon after the new board has been elected.  There is the obvious point that
>the longer you have to plan, the less likely you are to stress out the
>board, but for strategic purposes, the earlier the agenda is finalized, the
>sooner you can begin selling the event to prospective funders.  Enter the
>Strategic Initiatives team.
>
>The team needs as much time as possible, at least four solid months, to
>create the type of noise befitting the country's leading blindness student
>organization.  Actually, there is no such thing as "too soon," but four
>months will give this team the opportunity to shine at what they know how to
>do best.  The team needs to be able to draft excellent marketing materials
>to lure the students that are not yet planning to join the division at its
>winter seminar, and in the case of my proposal, they need to be able to
>recruit the participation of organizations and companies in the fields where
>the membership is interested in becoming employed.  There are always job
>fairs going on in the nation's capital, and there is no reason why an
>organization like NABS could not partner up with the Independent Living
>centers, Light House, the city's Department for Disabilities, local-area
>universities  and the DC NFB affiliate to put together a well-organized job
>fair.  With sufficient time, I do not see why the Washington Post could not
>be enticed into scheduling its routine job fairs to meet that of the
>Washington Seminar.  If it does not, the paper could still be used to
>advertise the event on behalf of the division.
>
>The Benefits:
>
>1. Hands-on practice will always be preferable to living vicariously.  There
>is great benefit to listening to three people in a row talk about how cool
>their jobs are, but there is a greater impact to be enjoyed from having
>those people tell you how to draft your cover letter, your resume and how to
>polish your interview skills.  Besides, I've sat next to people who wind up
>not listening to these speakers because they're perceived as stuck-up and
>full of themselves.  I think they would shake off that perception if the
>speakers gave concrete advice on how they did things to be successful.  Over
>time I've become a fan of breakout sessions over general group speeches.
>There is simply more room for personal dialogue.
>
>2. Summer internships are not far around the corner from Washington Seminar.
>DC is attractive to many college students.  Why not make a concerted effort
>to ensure that our students get a unique opportunity to compete for those
>positions.
>
>3. Job prospects.  Students are not students forever.  Everyone is looking
>for a permanent job.  On the surface the job fair would expose students to
>potential employers and give them a very real means of practicing their
>personal selling skills.  It makes NABS look proactive in helping its
>members secure future employment.  On a subtle level things like job
>readiness sets the stage for a NABS alumni network.  Many students graduate,
>leave the division and do nothing more with the NFB because they never
>participated in chapter meetings.  Integrating students into the larger
>movement is an ongoing process, but what better way to keep people around
>than to place these graduates in a position to help up and coming students?
>The thing is, there is no grounds for an alumni network if the graduates
>themselves were never given anything tangible in the first place.
>
>4. Membership incentives.  As I've previously mentioned, people want a
>reason to belong to your organization.  In this case we are looking for
>reasons for people to want to come to Washington Seminar.  You bring them in
>for a general session of well-chosen speakers.  You showcase our esteemed
>NFB president.  You break out to smaller groups to talk job readiness, and
>then you turn the crowd loose on your collection of potential employers.
>The crowd moves out dressed to impressed, because one of the breakout
>sessions will have talked about social skills and swagger.  True, some of
>the locals may only come out to be a part of the job fair, but with
>carefully planted board members about the room you ensure that every new
>person is approached and given the pitch on why they should join the
>greatness that is NABS.  Dedicate four or five hours to the event.
>Coordinate it with the National Office to ensure it can be carried out in a
>way that the maximum number of people can participate.  Besides, you should
>be coordinating the event with Baltimore anyway to ensure that the success
>to NABS translates to success for the organization at large.
>
>Even though the meeting space is graciously provided by the NFB, there is no
>reason why the student division should not begin learning how to carry its
>own weight to help offset expenses.  It would take a few years to get to a
>point of self-sufficiency, but things like the student annual banquet are
>things that could be potentially picked up by a finely cultivated sponsor.
>When you throw a job fair into the program, you're providing sponsors one
>more layer of credibility, because you show them how you've been able to
>partner up with a number of businesses to come out and be a part of your
>activities.
>
>So, from the top, the online registration process is modified to include a
>question about future job aspirations.  The NABS board compiles the data,
>and with the Strategic Initiatives team working at the helm, a database is
>created of businesses and organizations in the fields identified by the
>registered membership.  The task may seem daunting, but not when you have
>other members in the organization in various occupations.  And, contacting
>businesses out of the blue is not altogether a bad leadership building
>exercise anyway.  Specific offices should be targeted in the Washington DC
>metropolitan area with a well-written letter that is accompanied by a small
>but compelling packet of what NABS is and what it does.  With the right
>amount of sponsorship, the board may very well be able to afford to feature
>these employers at the job fair with little or no cost to the businesses.
>In truth, NABS could charge a very nominal fee for businesses to participate
>even if sponsorship is available, money that could be used to create or
>revise job readiness materials for the future.  I'm all for volunteer
>service, but I am sure that carefully budgeted stipends to the board would
>not raise too many complaints from the board members who are doing the hard
>work.
>
>But, it is important to plan and solidify the agenda early on to accommodate
>this venture.  The agenda should be included in the pitch to businesses so
>that they see how they will fit into the larger scheme of the winter
>seminar.  It tells businesses you are prepared, organized and ready to be
>taken seriously.  Businesses do not have to send representatives to your job
>fair.  Make them feel ignorant for not participating.  By businesses I mean
>nonprofits, government agencies and corporations.  Ideally they will have a
>national scope so that the student from Ohio and Oregon are just as likely
>to find an opportunity back home to take advantage of.
>
>Now, the database of businesses and organizations would serve two purposes.
>First, it would provide a springboard for the job fair idea, but second, it
>would set the stage for a mentoring program.
>
>I am thinking of a mentoring program where our students are mentored by
>current professionals in their field of interest.  If the professionals
>happen to be blind, excellent, but my recommendation would be that the
>program not be tailored that way.  Students need to understand they're going
>to be competing in a sighted world.  I would encourage sighted mentors to be
>recruited to take on outstanding blind mentees.  First, it helps create an
>avenue for education for the mentor.  He or she will be teaching the mentee
>about a career while at the same time learning about blindness and what a
>blind person really is capable of doing in the workplace.  The exceptions
>are, of course, in situations where the student wants to go into the
>blindness field, in which case it only makes sense that they speak to
>someone in that chosen profession.  Second, the arrangement for the
>mentoring program sets up networking opportunities.  In some cases the
>mentor may even be able to offer the mentee's name for vacancies in their
>office when the mentee has graduated.  We want people employed.  The
>mentoring program could be one more vehicle to move people further in that
>direction.
>
>Perhaps this mentoring idea could be integrated into the existing NFB Link
>program.  At the very least NABS should inquire into whether or not the
>modules could be borrowed to create a mentoring program specifically for
>students.  The initial work can be gleaned from the current registration
>process, but thinking long-term, NABS should make the investment in a
>web-based system that can match, track and promote both mentors and mentees.
>There are free CRM systems out there to accomplish this, but the right
>people need to be recruited by the Director of Online Strategies to help him
>or her shape the project in a way that works smoothly and simultaneously
>promotes NABS and the NFB.
>
>This is an initiative I believe the Department of Labor would find worth
>making a time or financial investment in.  Here again the Strategic
>Initiatives team would need to spend time developing a case for why Labor or
>some other national entity would find it beneficial to contribute services
>or finances.  Talk to the American Foundation for the Blind about how their
>system might be integrated into this proposal.  They're going to be just as
>interested in a good case for why it is necessary as anyone else.  Do not
>assume that just because an organization does work for the blind that they
>have to do anything with or for you.
>
>Like most everything else I've written about up to this point, these are
>ideas that could be integrated at the state level.  Substitute the
>Washington Seminar with your affiliate's state convention.  A convention
>will draw the right volume of people and lend itself to a good public
>relations campaign that should attract the right level of interest from
>businesses.  If nothing else, the mentoring program could work better at the
>state level because creating a curriculum for the program that involves
>face-to-face meetings between the mentors could be more feasible, though
>national planning should not overlook the means to bring mentors to the
>National Convention to get the full depth of what the NFB stands for.
>
>In summary, the problem of unemployment among the blind needs to be
>addressed.  No doubt the argument will be made for how such an initiative is
>beyond the scope of the student division.  I think the argument is without
>foundation.  There are scores of blind people who leave the division to take
>on a myriad of careers.  The problem is that the number is not high enough.
>We need more students out there with a good job that is not always related
>to the blindness field.  NABS can and should teach students how to be
>productive students, but college is nothing more than an academic  training
>ground for future success in a student's chosen profession.  We often tell
>students that there is not going to be a DSS office in their future place of
>employment and that they should begin to learn how to be independent.  True,
>but there is always going to be an NFB, and if we can begin to cultivate a
>sense of loyalty to the NFB by way of a proactive student division that
>plays a major role in job readiness and job exposure, graduates will be able
>to thank the NFB for the success they achieve and be more likely to stick
>around and help younger students coming up behind them.  I am of course
>willing to entertain arguments to the contrary.
>
>The job fair can be a part of Washington Seminar 2010.  Use the success of
>that event to build the resources necessary to build a mentoring program
>that could be fully operational by 2011, and in the meantime, start putting
>people to work in their chosen field.  Education students can work with the
>Director of Education to write curriculum enhancers for teachers of blind
>students.  Business administration and marketing students can be put to work
>writing grant proposals, business plans and strategic plans that analyze
>current strategies and make projections for future improvement.  Math
>students could be enhancing a wiki project to show teachers and students
>alike how it might be possible for a blind student to excel in required and
>specialized math and engineering courses.  Journalism students ought to be
>heavily involved in the production and marketing of the Student Slate.
>Science students ought to be playing a bigger role in the planning and
>execution of youth Slam.  Computer science and information technology
>students should be working with the Director of Online Strategies to push
>the web site forward to reach larger audiences.  David Dunfy, for all his
>posts about the DJ Invasion, could be persuaded to host a NABS podcast?  The
>point is, people are more likely to help you if you give them the capacity
>to do something they would have been doing anyway.  If you can build NABS so
>that students use the organization to complete classroom projects, there is
>a win/win situation for both the student's grade and the improvement of the
>organization.
>
>Ambitious?  Of course it's ambitious.  Ambitious organizations create
>legacies.  Mediocre organizations may as well stay home and play tiddlywinks
>for all the impact they will accomplish.  The greater the goal, the longer
>the list of objectives required to achieve the goal, and the more objectives
>necessary to accomplish the goals, the more likely it is to learn how to use
>all those objectives for the benefit of other goals in the future.  People
>should not think of how difficult it would be to put on a job fair and
>mentoring program.  People should be thinking about how the steps involved
>in preparing for the job fair and mentoring program can help with the
>preparation of student seminars, fundraising campaigns and general
>membership recruitment, all of which will be addressed in future
>installments.
>
>To be continued...
>
>Joe Orozco
>
>"A man who wants to lead the orchestra must turn his back on the
>crowd."--Max Lucado
> 
>
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