[nabs-l] Action Plan, Part 2

[Amy Sabo]

hello joe,

again, i love your ideas and suggestions for the action plans that you have put to the table for nabs and the future of nabs and the nfb. and, don't forget about student who are in the field of public relations and, that they can assist with marketing and other press issues and items for advertising nabs and it's events.

i know that you were going to put that but, you forgot i see... but, again i love yourr ideas that you have put to the table so far and if i knew of something for pr for this table i would put it forward. well, that's all for now take care and good luck in hoping that these plans and goals of yours are done in the future of nabs.



hugs,
from amy

----- Original Message -----

From: Joe Orozco 

To: 'Arizona Students' , 'California Students' , 'Colorado Center' , 'Colorado Students' , 'Florida Students' , 'Illinois Students' , 'Kansas Students' , 'Kentucky Students' , 'Louisiana Students' , 'Michigan' , 'Minnesota Students' , 'Missouri' , 'National' , 'Nebraska' , 'New Hampshire Students' , 'New Jersey Students' , 'North Carolina Students' , 'Ohio' , 'Pennsylvania' , 'Presidents' , 'TABS Students' , 'Tennessee Students' , 'Utah Students' , 'Virginia Students' 

Sent: Thu, 7 May 2009 03:58:10 +0000 (UTC)

Subject: [nabs-l] Action Plan, Part 2



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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