AAVA Response to Blog "Five emails and Volunteer Management Action"

Greetings DJ, on behalf of the AAVA board I would like to thank you for your email and for the pertinent questions that you raised.

The Board held its annual planning meeting this last weekend and the questions you raised informed an important part of our discussion.

The AAVA board acknowledges that the last 12 months have brought considerable challenges which have impacted on our capacity to meet the expectations of our members. We, as both board members and members of AAVA ourselves, have struggled with our understanding of the role that AAVA should fulfill and which you have articulated in your questions, especially around the role of advocacy.

To address this, the board worked with an external facilitator at our planning meeting revisiting and reconfirming the purpose of AAVA as an “organization to enhance and develop the role of individuals working in the field of volunteer management”. We then established an action plan for the coming year which will ensure that:

·we provide a quality service to our members

·the organization has robust and clear governance processes

·we communicate effectively with members

·we utilize conferences, forums and other similar events to promote the organization and the role and place of managers of volunteers

We have recognised that to be able to provide a quality service to our members, we need to first strengthen our internal processes and lay a strong foundation from which we can grow and develop. We have attached a condensed version of our action plan for your information, which may also be of interest to readers of your blog

As you are aware the AAVA Board is made up of volunteers and we would welcome yourself and other interested people to join us so that we can increase our capacity and expand the range of services that we provide to our members and the contribution we are able to make to the Volunteer Management sector

Again, thank you for sharing your concerns with us,

Leticia Vargas

President

AAVA