Still a good day

Today I left for work early and got home just in time for the evening call, in fact I signed on about two minutes after it started. While it is true that we were dismissed from the call early to do follow ups--a great idea, keep it up!--I did not do that. I cooked myself supper instead. After eating I spent my time researching another NPO that I will be contacting soon. This one requires more research than most. It has many supporters who happen to be other NPOs whom I am already working with. I do not wish to create confusion or worse yet, any kind of negative backlash. I am treading lightly on this one.

For those of you who were not on the call this evening, I mentioned some things that I have learned about NPOs. Most of them may be desperate for money, but they have been lead down the path enough times by people who were less than sincere when they offered to help. This has caused NPOs to be skeptical at the very least and out right gun shy at the worst when it comes to "Greeks bearing gifts." At our present stage of development, (by that I mean most of us do not have much experience in dealing with NPOs), we are not going to come off as being sincere if we have not done the minimal amount of research to find out what the NPO does, how they do it, who their clients are, and where they are getting their current funding. It wouldn't hurt you to know the status of that funding--has it been cut off, has it been diminished, or is it in danger of being cut off in the immediate future. You should have enough information to speak intelligently before you call. This is what I call "hip pocket information". You may not need it on every call but you should have it in your hip pocket ready to pull out if you do need it. There is nothing more "unprofessional" than the person who calls up an NPO and offers to help and two sentences into the conversation it becomes clearly evident that the person offering to help doesn't have a clue as to what the NPO is all about. Do your home work before making the call.

Since most of us have not seen an NPO all the way though to sign up, we don't know what all this is going to entail. As Jacki said on tonight's call, "you should expect them to ask you to volunteer for the organization." After all we are calling them and telling them how interested we are in their organization. It is perfectly normal for them to ask us to volunteer. I expect my NPOs to ask and I am prepared to volunteer. If you are not sincere enough to volunteer, may be you should select a different NPO. I have made a list of those organizations I would volunteer for and I call them. I don't call NPOs that are not on my volunteer list.

This brings up another issue, we will have our greatest successes with NPOs that are close by, ones we can go to and help establish world changer malls with their members and supporters. You already know how much work it is to get a single individual up and running, now multiply that by the number of people in the organization. You have got to understand that the NPO staff is not going to do this for you (they are already over worked) and you can not do this inabsentia.

These things that I share are not intended to be discouraging. I only mention them so that You can start off on the right foot. You can avoid the mistakes that others have made. Start off with NPOs in your immediate locale, that you can drive to in the amount of time that you have allotted for MPM. Select NPOs that you are sincerely interested in and know some thing about. Do these three things and you will be on your way to success.

bzm--I re-read my own "reason" tonight. I hadn't read it in a while. It is a good thing to do every so often. Thanks for mentioning it. kny--yes, we are all one big family. The Spirit is working within the family. If you just look for it, you will see it. It is there plain as day and visible to the naked eye.