How many of you volunteer your time?
Whether to Girl/Boy Scouts, your church, a food bank, Public Radio, or with a group like COPMOBA, these are important hours spent for the betterment of our community, our children, and ourselves. COPMOBA is a volunteer organization, relying on the interest, time, and good will of folks who decide that trails are an important part of our activities here in western Colorado.
It occurs to me that COPMOBA needs to do a better job at a few things, chief among them is to engage in a more positive and proactive manner the people who are volunteering their time. We talk about membership numbers sometimes, and take notice that we’ve tended to max out at somewhere around 300 members, and hold steady at somewhere near 150 members. Those are not large numbers, given that perhaps 10-20% of those members are actively building trails. That’s about 15 – 60 people, which I’d say is a fair range of what we see in turnout at various activities. We hope to grow our trail activities over the coming years, and that requires us to understand well how we work as an organization. What are our strengths and weaknesses?
I think there are a few things that tend to keep people on the sidelines when considering participating in an area of interest. One large one is the sense of whether or not they have an impact or a say in what goes on with their efforts. I think a lot of [more...]
