Losing Faces

I've taken a bit of a break from my blog the last few weeks, and in looking back on recent events, I am a little shocked at how many notable people have passed away in just a few weeks. 

It was announced that Prince Rainier of Monaco died yesterday; he was best known in the US for marrying movie star Grace Kelly.  Last Saturday, Pope John Paul II died after 26 years as the Pontiff.  In the last few weeks, we've lost the following important and notable people: John DeLorean (the man with the car doors that look like wings), George Kenan (the man who created the Cold War policy of the US), and Bobby Short (best known for making beautiful music at the Carlyle Hotel in New York). 

And this is just in a few weeks!  We've lost many others who helped create the world as we know it since the beginning of the year -- and it's only April.  I remarked to my husband that it is like the world is falling away, one person at a time. 

It can seem like this in your association, too.  If you have been there any length of time, you get used to seeing certain faces involved in the activities and business of the association.  You become comfortable with this group of people, and the association takes on a certain life because of their presence. 

Then, the unthinkable happens: they lose their job, change careers, or even worse, "age out" of your volunteer system in that there is no where else for them to go after a certain level.

You start to lose knowledge, history and experience.  The association starts to look like a strange place to you because you are losing the faces that you have become accustomed to (to coin a phrase).

This is a situation that associations grapple with always, and even though it is talked about regularly in the association community, no one seems to have "the" answer.  There are things you can do, though, to try and keep some of these faces around a little longer:

1) Set up a mentoring program so that experienced volunteer leaders can teach younger ones.

2) Form a new activity (or expand an old one) that dedicated volunteers can participate in as long as they are interested; this could be an advisory council, strategic planning group, or a fundraising committee

3) Keep in touch!  Volunteers feel adrift after they no longer have a "title" with the association so find a way to keep them in the loop.  You never know when you will need them again.

The faces may change, but your association will go on, much as the world does when we lose the ones who help us define it.