What happens when Pottsy passes away in a freak gasoline fight incident? What do we do when Simon Farrow loses all will to organise after Naremburn Council removes the lights entirely from Naremburn park without telling him?
Where do we go for volunteers?
Get 'em early, get 'em young: universities are huge resources. Surely someone on the AFDA has a list of all the little yet nonvital things they want to do but haven't been able to due to lack of volunteer resources - 'update the AFDA front page', 'hold more beach tournaments in summer', 'buy milk'. Coming back from AUGs I was almost sickened by how much passion and drive there was for the sport from people all over Australia: these are future accountants, computer programmers, advertising agents, engineers and alcoholics. Why not put them to work?
The best part is, it's a two-way street: the AFDA wants things done for free, and starving uni students are looking for anything to beef up their resume or talk about in job interviews.
With some exceptions (Max and Ewan's appointment to magazine editors is the big one) I don't really see the Young Turks being utilised to their fullest extent. There are three positions vacant on the NSWFDA board, even with Frank and Nikki both holding two positions. Of course there's lots to be said against putting somebody with little experience in charge of something, but it's got to be better than the current system (which in my markedly limited worldview seems to consist of overloading a small group of people who are already time-poor and doing too much for no money).
My idea: state universities co-ordinators (or development officers? or even a new position that hasn't been invented yet - heck, everyone loves a business card) liaise with university team managers/coaches/captains periodically to see if there isn't any raw talent that can be put to use on the AFDA's backlist of random menial tasks. At first the AFDA can provide free league frees as an incentive, then as the talent is drawn further into the frisbee community, a good dose of Catholic guilt will probably do the trick. It's that simple and it takes less than an hour's worth of typing all up.
Too late I recognise this all sounds too familiar: I am poaching off this entry from Simmo.
4 comments:
There's really two ways we can think about this.
- Yes, get them young. Sometimes we find that there are the young ones out there who have all this energy and enthusiasm to commit to ultimate, but they don't know where to direct that energy. They may feel that they aren't quite "in the loop" enough to take on an AFDA role, so the appointment of Max and Ewan has been fantastic because it may encourage other kids to take on similar roles. Fresh ideas are the lifeblood of an organisation such as ours.
- But on the flipside, I really think we should be keeping their energy at the grassroots level. Doing the operational things for their local club or association, while letting the senior heads do the strategic thinking on the state FDAs and AFDA. As well as on-field, there should be a natural progression for off-field roles, so once you've graduated uni you are primed to move into a role such as league coordinator, a member of the state committee, or even a National Coordinator role.
It's a tricky thing to get right. Giving the right people the right access/resources to knock off odd jobs (and even define them) is a daunting task.
To tackle this, I'd like to see the AFDA wiki get more use, not only as a resource that can be filled up by members, but also as a way of documenting what needs to be done and who can do stuff. I understand that there's a tonne of stuff needed for the website, but there's not enough time to set things up to make those updates doable by others.
I'd be happy to chip in here and there if the list and resources were at hand, so maybe someone just has to step up to do the project management.
- Rog
I don't think anyone disputes that currently there are too few people doing too much of the work. And that eventually just ends up with burnout.
This has been an identified problem for many years and if there really was a simple solution we wouldn't be having this discussion.
(and just to nitpick the AFDA does not run leagues so is not able offer free league fees)
I think you'll find that the AFDA (and state associations) don't really have many "menial tasks". There aren't many things that someone with limited knowledge or training (even if they have IT, accounting, law etc skills) could pick up and do in a couple of hours.
The AFDA and states do tend to need people to fill executive or officer type positions. But these roles require an ongoing commitment of time. If you can find people to fill the vacant positions on the UFNSW exec, then I'm sure UFNSW will create a trophy in your name :)
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