I believe that to excite and engage members to volunteer their time you need to do a few things: You need to be a volunteer yourself, you need to give people a reason to get excited about a particular task and you need a “fit for purpose” for the volunteers.
I have been a volunteer for AAPG activities since 1979, when I was an alternate delegate to the House of Delegates while in Oklahoma City. That also happened to be the last year AAPG held its Annual Convention and Exhibition in OKC – and I ran the Tobin Theater for the Convention. Over the years, as I worked on committees and conventions, I became more enthused to see what a difference my time and that of other volunteers made in helping the organization grow and thrive.
At this point, I have been elected to the ultimate position within the organization – that of president – and what a great honor it is to be the sixth female president in the 107 years of AAPG history!
To quote an article in the August’s EXPLORER about Charles and Linda Sternbach: “A friend recently asked how I get so many people to volunteer for projects. Inspiring volunteers is easy – just add leadership.”
Sometimes that is the hardest part: finding the leaders to inspire. I encourage everyone to be the leaders we seek!
Charles went on to say that he has found a “formula for the inspiration, and I think his three points are very salient for AAPG at this time.
- Hard work: Don’t ask anyone to do anything you wouldn’t do or have done.
- Have good personal relationships with the people you are asking to volunteer. In his words, “Organizations don’t volunteer – people do.”
- Set goals that unite and motivate people, as they want their time and efforts to be meaningful, to produce tangible results that benefit them and their community.
But I would add a fourth leg to the stool: there is a cost savings to AAPG when members volunteer, and right now we can use all we can get (financially)!
Regions versus Sections
Many members don’t understand the basic differences between the sections and regions and how they function within AAPG.
The sections were formed and individually incorporated as separate entities decades ago. They are “affiliated” with AAPG but act as self-governing bodies apart from AAPG. They run their own conferences and continuing education courses, hold their own governance meetings and raise their own sponsorship monies for events within their boundaries. Each section is made up of the local affiliated geological societies and their members within those boundaries. This might include members who are not AAPG members. Apart from AAPG’s assistance in helping to hold elections for the Advisory Council and House of Delegates representatives, there is very little cost to the Association from the sections. If the section meetings make money, the section gets to keep that money and vice versa. Some sections have bigger bank accounts than others.
The regions, however, grew organically out of the international members who had joined AAPG just to be part of the organization and benefit from the science and networking that it afforded. The regions are not incorporated individually but are directly connected to AAPG at the hip. In large part, they rely on AAPG staff to handle governance, events, fundraising and whatever else comes up. This leads to staff costs associated with the regions that the sections do not have.
How Can Volunteerism Help in this Situation?
The sections operate almost entirely with volunteers. The section meetings have very little third-party help in the way of raising sponsorship support or for technical aspects of the event. They might hire an events planner to help with registration, facilities negotiation and possibly hotel contracts, but use the outside planner very sparingly. This allows them to have a much larger rate of return on their events with minimal overhead. Strategic alliances with the volunteer-led sections provide huge value to the AAPG community. For example, many students make their first contact with professional societies and AAPG through the sections of AAPG’s affiliated societies.
The regions could do this too! We have so many enthusiastic volunteers within the regions who are eager to find their calling within the organization. Why not set up tasks at regional events such as fund raising, putting together sessions and technical presentations and other jobs, some of which are currently handled by AAPG staff? Members could also be responsible for setting up governance meetings, which would also save costs. Every little bit of staff time saved is less cost to the organization and the membership.
ICE as an Example
Since 2014 we have had eight International Conference and Exhibition events, not including Oman (this year in October), as the accounting has not been completed at this point. The net income from those events totals $483,584, which is an average of $60,440 per year. However, if you look at the total of salaries/benefits/administrative overhead for those eight years, you have a total of $3,135,016 for an average of almost $391,877 per year. It doesn’t take long to realize that those kinds of costs have a huge impact on the bottom line for the event. The total revenue for those eight years at $10,716,329 against the total expense of $10,232,945. This amounts to an average rate of return of about 9 percent. We did not have an ICE for 2020 or 2021. The Madrid and Oman conferences were rescheduled to 2023 and 2024.
To be fair, some years were better than others. For instance, Cartahena in 2022 made $409,354 and had a 42.5-percent rate of return, and Buenos Ares (2019) netted $313,040 for a rate of return of 24.9 percent.
Outside of those two years, everything else has been dismal. AAPG lost $157,786 last year in Madrid. We are hoping to be in the black by a good amount when the accounting dust settles on the Oman meeting this year. Additionally, AAPG shares some “profit” with the regions for other operating costs or social events within the Region. There is no profit sharing with the sections. If AAPG holds an event in one of the sections, the “profit” goes back to AAPG. The best example of this would be the International Meeting for Applied Geoscience and Energy. IMAGE can only happen with tons of volunteer time spent on the technical program, but the Houston Geological Society or the Gulf Coast Section do not share in the monies made from hosting IMAGE.
How much of a difference would a little more volunteer time make against staff costs for regional events? I don’t have the answer to that, but I think there are places in the planning of an ICE or other regional event where member volunteers could offset some of those costs and would improve the bottom line for those events! I know it makes a huge impact in the bottom line for the section events.
An organization like AAPG is defined by its volunteers. Everyone who has ever worked on a committee or been in the House of Delegates or had other leadership positions within AAPG is truly appreciated. It is the time they take from family or work to help the organization in some way that has brought AAPG to the international status it has now – a premier scientific society of members who love anything “sub-surface”! I thank everyone for their service to AAPG!
And those who volunteer the most reap the greatest satisfaction and rewards. Let’s all make a personal plan to build our volunteer brands by giving more technical presentations, writing papers, organizing a conference, participating in a committee and rolling up our sleeves. Your colleagues and fellow geoscientists who come after us will be glad you did.
Best,
Deborah