Cultivating Volunteer-Staff Partnership

By Phil Zarlengo, AARP Volunteer Transitions alumni coordinator and former AARP Board chair

On July 12th, AARP launched a new training and development experience called the Community Leadership Academy (CLA), which I think will be of significant interest to Volunteer Alumni. It’s all about helping states cultivate strong volunteer-staff partners and empowering them to expand capacity and strengthen AARP’s local presence in targeted communities.

Here’s how it works. Over a six month period, selected volunteer-staff pairs sharpen skills through a “hands-on, test and learn” approach and design practical action plans for a community presence site. The goal is not to create more work, but rather to work together and strengthen a local volunteer team to help execute an existing community plan. The curriculum consists of six sessions (three in-person and three virtual), with pre-work for each session, and the opportunity for practical application and testing of ideas that a state has identified for its community plan.

A review committee selected volunteer-staff pairs from the following 11 communities for this inaugural 2016 cohort: Brownsville, TX; Chula Vista, CA; Evansville, IN; Jackson, MI; Louisville, KY; Manchester, NH; Mat-Su Valley, AK; Miami/Dade, FL; Milwaukee, WI; Newport City, VT; and Roanoke, VA.

Those of us who were able to join the June 21 Alumni Group conference call got a very informative preview of the Community Leadership Academy from the developers of this exciting innovation, Cindy Langley of the Office of Volunteer Engagement and James Brooks of the Office of Community Engagement. I’ll definitely be checking back and sharing updates as the CLA progresses.

If you couldn’t make the conversation, I’d be happy to share notes from the call or pass on any questions you may have for Cindy and James. Just email me at volunteer@aarp.org and please include “Volunteer Alumni Group” in your subject line. If you have topic/guest speaker suggestions for future Alumni calls, please let me know that as well.