If you’ve ever been a member of a voluntary committee, in any walk of your life, read on. This will help you!
One of the most stressful things for any voluntary committee member is what to do with all the info that is created by the committee – it’s going to take up a huge amount of space somewhere, regardless of whether it’s in hardcopy format (paper) or electronic format (hard drive storage).
One of the most stressful and frustrating things in the life of anyone leading a group of volunteers is retrieving said information.
The only constant is change
The issues tend to come from the fact that committees of volunteers change frequently and the organisation’s ‘memory’ fades over time. If a good system for information management isn’t set up at the beginning, chances are that information, important and otherwise, will be lost or misplaced over time.
Currently, committee information in electronic format is mostly stored on individuals own devices, or in their personal third-party storage accounts such as OneDrive, Google Drive or Dropbox. The problem with this is that the information for the committee tends to get mixed up with the committee member’s personal data, resulting in using up storage space, costing extra, or being deleted when the committee member leaves the committee.
Garages, attics, wardrobes and under beds
There are also committee members with info stored in hard copy format. This usually takes the form of boxes and boxes of paper stored in the garage, the attic, in wardrobes and under beds. No search option exists, and it’s likely that the documents are just plonked into a box until there’s no room left, and a new box is introduced to start the pile all over again. If the outside of the box is labelled, it’s unlikely to show what the contents actually are, and even less likely to show the period covered.
While voluntary committees do great work, it isn’t until a problem occurs that the scramble for organisational history begins and the severity of the poor storage system reveals itself. So much time can be lost looking for why certain decisions were made, which background info was researched, and the lessons learned from previous experiences (good and bad). The sheer frustration can be enormous. Memories fade or distort, people move on, and what is often the most valuable asset in an organisation, its data, can be lost forever.
It's about time
Having spent most of my long professional life working with the voluntary sector in a range of roles, I often wondered why one of the most important components to safeguard any voluntary organisation was missing.
Everyone knows that many, if not most, voluntary organisations are poorly resourced, so they have largely been overlooked by suppliers of commercially-developed products and services as the not-for-profit sector didn’t have the means to pay the prices demanded. Is this the reason for the lack of tailor-made storage solutions? Or is it just that suitable technology isn’t readily (and cheaply) available? Maybe security is another reason?
Well, the good news is that not everyone overlooked the voluntary sector and their storage needs.
Using the latest software available, we (long-established software company Expert Developments) created Oyoi – Own Your Own Info – specifically for voluntary committees such as alumni, clubs and Bodies Corporate (though it’s flexible enough to be used for any organisation’s committees). It’s cloud-based and sits on our own New Zealand-based servers, so provides neutrality in a safe and secure environment.
Easy to use by anyone, intuitive, flexible, customisable, portable, with a tiered permission system, and best of all, really affordable, makes Oyoi the obvious choice for any organisation that values its data (and its volunteers!) and the ability to easily retrieve info, as and when it’s required, free of frustration and stress.
To learn more about Oyoi, check out www.oyoi.nz or contact me.