February 9th and 23rd - Notes re upcoming May 2005 AGM

Notes from Feb 9th and Feb 23rd, 2005 meetings – re: AGM

Proposed AGM topic:

Current Social Trends in Grassroots Organizing and Implications for PERC Current trends in volunteering:

a) fewer volunteers doing more work; 5% drop; leadership being worked harder

* cut backs in 90s = orgs that used to work with volunteer orgs are more stressed and overworked

b) length of time someone volunteers with an agency has dropped to about 9 months (but PERC is doing much better than that) Trends:

* organizations are moving towards staff-based projects (rather than volunteer-based)

* small dedicated core of volunteers – no effort in recruiting

* viability of large grass-roots organizations is shrinking

* PERC needs to wrap its mind around what it needs to do about these trends

* The discussion at the AGM isn’t intended to find answers; any answer would be based on peoples’ assumptions

* Instead, need to educate people – want to take the temperature, rather than make a decision that evening to change

* Educating people will help with avoiding impossible suggestions during brainstorming – people will see for themselves where their suggestion fits in and will help to eliminate all the easy answers – need to have people realize that change is difficult -> would be enough to have this AGM show people that change is hard work – not meant to be negative, just realistic

Ideally will have the following kind of attendees:

* leadership people (financial and moral leadership); not necessarily committee chairs

Concept to be presented:

* Volunteer orgs exist on an uneven landscape

* They do not move along a horizontal line; the choice to move from one type of work to another isn’t as simple as moving horizontally

* Instead, the landscape is made up of a series of hills and valleys of varying steepness

There are three stable positions on this landscape:

1) at the bottom of a valley – very stable – when a light to medium force pushes the organization a little left or right you roll back to your normal position 2) at top of hill – not very stable – pressures can easily cause the organization to roll one way or the other 3) between the top and the bottom – very unstable – has to work extremely hard to stay in one place, can easily be pushed back down to where it’s trying to work its way up from, but a necessary stage to go through if an org wants to change something

* within a volunteer organization, different committees and groups can be in varying states of ???

* incremental changes are not possible at PERC – e.g. can’t cut back rent 10%, can’t drop one office - so any changes have to be major.

* can use a table to compare various types of volunteer orgs; what the differences between the types are, where PERC is, where it could reasonably go, what serves the movement, what it would take to get there (i.e. what would have to be sacrificed, what would be gained)

* what would be gained from the evening would hopefully be a dialogue where the attendees understand where PERC is going and how it could get there

possible categories:

* Current (PERC)

* QUANGO (quasi-NGO) (financed by government, but acts independently of government)

* Project funding

* Issue based (sexy)

* Corporate Driven/funded