POLICY SERIES WEBINAR ~ MARCH 25, 2008
JESSICA BRODEY: Today we're going to be going over
organizational structure, governance, and insurance. And
in many of these (inaudible) . . .
When we're talking about policies and procedures,
these are very high-level things that you'll be developing.
It is not necessarily the nitty-gritty that we'll get to
later on as we move on to other topics.
Tom, if you could go to the first slide, please, I
would appreciate it.
So one of the first questions that comes to
everyone's mind is, why do we care about policies and
procedures? We're doing just fine without them. We're
able to go step by step, and we have our business, and it's
working just fine. So what about policies and procedures?
Well, one reason policies and procedures are
important is that they really are a means to mitigate your
liability.
If you have a set of actions that are approved that
you have determined are the safe way to proceed, and you do
things in accordance with your policies and procedures,
this really does give you some level of care and
protection. If something goes wrong, if there's a lawsuit
later, you can say, "We did everything possible. We took
all of these steps," et cetera.
By the same token, if you have written policies and
procedures and you're known to consistently diverge from
them, that's also something that can be used against you
because you did something not in accordance with your
policies and procedures.
Another thing that's important about policies and
procedures is that they provide a structure to insure
practices are performed appropriately. Think of this as
sort of your best practice guide. They are really meant to
structure your practices so that things are being done in
the best possible way.
When you don't take the time to sit down and write
out the steps and write out the processes that you'd like
to see happen, people have a tendency to really operate off
the cuff.
And when you operate off the cuff . . . (audio
skip) . . . made sure that that's really the way to do
something. It can be inefficient. It can be expensive.
It can also be just flat-out wrong. And then the ability
to duplicate that over and over again becomes difficult.
And again, it's a safeguard to avoid mistakes. If
you're operating off the cuff, you're more likely to make a
big mistake, to forget something, to lose a paper, to
process something improperly.
And again, policies and procedures can also be your
guidelines for accountability. If you have employees that
are difficult and not doing their job, your policies and
procedures are a measure against what -- against which you
can measure them and say, "I'm sorry. You're falling short
here. You need to do these three things. And if you
don't, we're going to have to terminate you."
It's also a way that you can use that to give merit
assessments and evaluations for employees. You did all of
these things and, in fact, you went above and beyond the
call. Kudos to you.
And then finally it really does help with
continuity. Some of you have turnover, or you just have
people that retire, or you have one or two people that
really know the ins and outs of how things work.
And if that person gets sick or can't make it in or
disappears or just decides to move on to another job, the
transition from that person into another person is
difficult if all of the policies and procedures and basic
ways things are being done aren't written down somewhere.
Tom, next slide, please.
And if any of you have questions along the way,
please feel free to type them in the public-chat area, and
I'll address them.
One of the things that we think might be a little
confusing is, we keep throwing around these terms
"policies" and "procedures." And what do we mean by them?
When we talk about policies, we really mean
high-level guidelines. It's a plan of action to guide
decisions and actions. So it's not your specific
step-by-step, but it's really your metric by how things
should be done.
It sets out your ground rules for effective
interactions. It covers these high-risk areas. Policies
are . . . (audio skip) . . . accepted, well-defined norms
and standards of practice. Norms and standards articulate
what is done, who is served, and what resources are needed.
So your policies and procedures might talk to you
about how you go about getting assistive technology to
reutilize and the fact that they should be sanitized and
all of these things.
But your procedures then are your specifics about
how, in fact, you do the sanitization step by step.
Next slide, please.
Next slide is about defining procedures.
Procedures delineate the processes and activities
necessary to implement policies. They're essentially your
day-to-day operations. They're your step-by-step. It's
where you specify which brand of cleaner that you buy.
It's where you specify what store you like to buy from
because you have a contract there. Your procedures are
where you specify whether you use FedEx or UPS.
Procedures are usually based on professional
guidelines when they are available. So if you find
professional guidelines out there to sanitize something,
for example, you base your guidelines on that.
But the sanitization guidelines might just say,
"Use in a 2 percent solution of bleach," and your
guidelines might say, "We use brand X, 2 percent solution
of bleach for sanitizing."
Your procedures really just provide your
step-by-step guidance for your basic organizational
activities. Things like client intake, sanitization,
delivery of products, hiring of employees. All of those
things could be exact procedures.
Next slide.
So we often come up with questions about how is it
that we -- Tom, you jumped one ahead. Thank you.
How do we get policies and procedures? Most
policies and procedures should be formal, written documents
that can be used as a reference.
Some things we will be reviewing are foundation
steps and decisions that you must do first before you can
decide what your policies and procedures should cover.
So, for example, we're going to talk about legal
status. It's one of our first categories. And within
legal status, there's less about developing policies and
procedures than filing appropriate documents and developing
certain standards so that you can have that perspective as
you're moving into policies and procedures.
Next slide.
So one thing we promised was to give you a little
bit more information about how you actually write policies
and procedures.
The first thing you should know about them is that
they should be organized. There should be a table of
contents. They should be numbered. Like policies should
be grouped together.
So as we move through these next series of
Webinars, we're going to give you groupings, headings of
different categories and subsets. And this is something
that you could use to come up with your groupings for your
policies and procedures.
I strongly encourage people to use an outline
format when creating policies and procedures. That way you
have a numbering system. You number each new policy
differently. Within each policy, each major paragraph has
a section number as well. And that way you can refer back
to policy No. 4321, paragraph 2A. People know where you're
talking about. It's easy to identify. It's easy to point
out.
All of these policies should be composed in such a
way that you could easily put them in a notebook or a
binder or have them bound. You can distribute them to new
employees. Some people put them on a Web site. You can
also use the Internet.
You can look for companies in your state to really
help you out. You can look for similar corporate
structures and similar services and activities and see if
they've posted their policies and procedures online and use
these as a basis for developing your own.
What I want to do is, I'm going to have Tom click
on this link here. And I'm going to show you a set of
policies and procedures online from a college that is local
to where I live.
And the reason I picked this particular
guideline -- this set of guidelines is, if you look at the
top here, they have different chapters. They have a nice
table of contents. And it tells you -- it's all grouped
together -- what's in each of these things.
The first section is all about the board of trustee
bylaws. The second section is about the organization. The
third section is all about the personnel. The fourth is
about student affairs. The next section is about the
educational program, et cetera, et cetera. It's divided up
very nicely and very clearly.
Then when you go down to Chapter 1, it has two
different policies. And it's got the bylaws, and it has a
particular number. Chapter 2 has Organization, and it has
different numbers for each one.
I'd like to scroll down to Chapter 3, Personnel. I
think that each of you can do it on your page. I'm not
sure if, when Tom does it, it will move for everyone. But
feel free -- on the right there's a little scroll bar.
Scroll down to Chapter 3, Personnel.
And you'll see a whole lot of different policies
here, and each one is numbered sequentially. It starts
with a 3 because it's in Chapter 3, and then it's 1002,
1003, 1004. Each one is numbered sequentially.
And this is the organizational technique that was
chosen for these series of plans. And you can choose your
own numbering system, but this is a very good example of
the way a numbering system can work.
Tom, if you could click on "hate violence
activity." Is it opening up?
Well, you know what? If everyone could click on
their own, the "hate violence activity," and open it up, I
would appreciate that. Give you a chance to kind of look
at an exact -- there it goes. I think it's showing. At
least it's showing on my screen.
And what I like about this is that you can see at
the top there's the number. It tells you what chapter it's
in, what the subject of this policy is. And each little
section has a Roman numeral on the side.
Some of the other policies and procedures are far
more detailed, and they have, you know, a subsection
capital "A" and then a little number 1 and then a little
letter "a." And for each little subarea that you have,
that's how you number it. But this is a very good numbered
organized example of a policy and how policies should look.
And the reason I also encourage you to use the
Internet is you can find other policies and procedures out
there, particularly when they're within your state. And
you may say, "Oh, that's a really good policy to have,"
and, "This has been vetted," and, "We should look at some
of those things." And you can borrow language from those
other policies and procedures.
There are numerous sample human resources policies
and procedures out there on the Internet that you can look
to as a guideline for yourself.
Tom, can we go back to the slide now? I think
we're ready to go into Slide 7.
So the next thing that I really would suggest is
that, as you're sitting down and you're deciding what to
start working on for policies, you're going to pick a
subject area. You're going to decide if you want to start
with personnel or if you want to start with operations or
if you want to start with your facilities. But you're
going to pick a subject area.
For your policies, one good way to start is to
start by writing how things should work; what are the
different components involved in your personnel; what are
the different components involved in your operations
management.
Along the way in our Webinar series, we'll be
giving you suggested categories that you can use and that
you can start from. For each of these categories, you
should start talking about goals.
Thank you, Joy.
You should be talking about what goals should be
included. And Joy asked, "What mix of people should be
involved in developing your policies?" And that's a really
great question.
Sometimes it's just done at the very top. It's the
executive director. It's, you know, the main person in
charge. It's just one person.
However, that's not always the best, particularly
in a small organization. You may want to involve everyone
who's doing different things, particularly at the procedure
level. (audio skipped) . . .
. . . Involved in the direction of your
organization that could be department managers. You may
want a particular manager for a particular set of
operations. Or if you have one person that is in charge of
all of the intake of clients or somebody else who's in
charge of all of the intake of the equipment, or it's the
same person who does both of those changes. That person
would be a really key person to bring into the room.
If you have outside counsel or legal assistance,
it's a good idea always to involve them as well. If you
have some people who are really good with management or
human resources, if they're in your own division or some of
you are placed in other organizations, perhaps you could
borrow someone in there. Those are the types of people you
should involve in the writing.
But again, you really start by writing down how you
think things should work and what your goals are before you
get down to the nitty-gritty of the policies and
procedures.
For procedures, you start writing down how things
actually do work and how they actually should work. And
you give really specific steps for carrying out tasks.
And as Tom had said, the Pass It On Center Web site
is going to have resources, such as sample formats, for
developing policies and procedures. We actually have a
person that's been working on some amazing procedures for a
lot of the different topics we'll been discussing over the
next few months. And those procedures we will be providing
that you may chose to use within your own organization as
. . . (audio skip) . . . that you can implement.
And again, remember the distinction between
policies -- policies are really the high-level overview of
things. So your policy may be "We will have -- we will
collect utilized AT and distribute to people with income of
less than $20,000 per year."
For your procedure, that may be, "We fill out this
client intake for No. 2345. We have to have them come in
in person. We have to have them sign a release. They have
to go through an evaluation."
Those are steps by how you serve them. And so
that's the difference between policies, which kind of set
your guidelines and your big, broad goals, and your
procedures, which talk about the implementation of work.
Next slide, please.
So the first topic I wanted to discuss was within
the context of organizational structure. And the first
area within that is legal status. This is not an example
of something that we think that you need to sit down and
write big policies and procedures about.
However, it is an important issue to consider and
discuss so that you can go ahead and implement your
policies and procedures properly.
You need to ask yourself questions about whether
you are, number one, a legal entity at all. Do you have
the proper licenses to operate in the way that you do?
There are a lot of different legal entities. You
can be a corporation. You could be a limited liability
company. You could be a partnership. You could be a sole
proprietorship.
You can also be a nonincorporated entity. That
just means that you kind of function without having a
technical legal status. But that really means that all the
work that you do is being done by you as an individual
rather than the organizational entity.
If you decide to become a legal entity, you have to
decide if you're for profit or nonprofit. You also have to
look and see if you're eligible for tax-exempt status or to
get a tax identification number.
I see Jimmy Brown is raising a hand. Can you type
up -- the question up, and I can address it, if you were
trying to talk?
It's also important that you select the appropriate
legal entity for the activities that you want to do. So it
may make sense, if all you do as an organization is collect
and donate to another organization, to just function as a
sole proprietorship.
Oh, no problem, Jimmy.
I just realized I missed a question from Joy
before. I'll get back to that in one second.
But selecting the appropriate legal entity for your
activities is really important. So you need to sit down
and decide, what's your risk of exposure? How many people
are involved? Because later on when we get into different
issues, do you -- if you need to get insurance, it's often
easier to insure an organization than an individual. So
what level of protection do you want? At what risk are
your own personal assets?
Joy had previously asked, if an organization had a
legal proceeding, and if you have a written procedure but
no overarching policy, wouldn't the procedure be as good as
a policy?
Yes. You don't necessarily need both policies and
procedures. Sometimes it's appropriate to choose one over
the other. Not every area requires a policy. Not every
area requires a procedure. Some area requires one but not
the other.
Sometimes it's good to have both. It's good to
have sort of these overarching stated goals and then get
down to the nitty-gritty of how you want things to work.
Because it's easier to change the procedures a little bit
more frequently.
So if the procedure this month is, "We fill out
this intake form, and we send out products via Federal
Express," and in three months you get a better contract
from UPS, you can change your procedure to say, "We now use
UPS, not Federal Express."
It's a little bit more difficult often to change
policies because they really govern the whole philosophy of
your organization. So some people sometimes have their
procedures taped up on the wall on little Post-it notes or,
you know, little steps on some secretary's desk about how
to go about doing certain things.
What we're hoping to do is take it from that level
and have you quantify it, write it down in some way that's
much more accessible.
Next slide, please.
The next area that we wanted to get into that
really does require a little bit more with respect to
documents is governance. Governance is about the
operations and administration of your organization. How
does it work? How will it be run?
And one thing that's very important is board
structure. Are you going to have a board? If you have a
board, how many board members should you have? What
positions should there be on the board?
For example, do you want a president, a vice
president, and a treasurer? Do you just want a treasurer
and a secretary? Do you want all of those positions? Do
you want to have a board but no elected positions?
What roles should the board members play? Do the
board members have a very active role? Are they actually
the day-to-day operators of your organization? Or are they
more advisors or just more have to approve or disapprove of
big plans and budgets? What is the role of the board? And
that's something that you should sit down and do.
With respect to what documents you need, when we're
talking about policies and procedures with respect to the
board, these are usually more legal-type documents than the
policies and procedures I was showing you before. Although
you can put a copy of them, like the bylaws, in your
policies and procedures, just like the Montgomery College
policies did.
The one thing that you would need potentially is
articles of incorporation if you're a corporation or
articles of organization if you're an LLC. They're called
different things in different states. But it's the
formation documents.
You're going to want some bylaws that explain how
many people must be present on the board to vote; what --
how long of a term they should serve; how they get elected;
who does the electing and selection of board members? All
of that goes into the bylaws. The discussion that we had
before about positions and roles, that goes into the
bylaws.
You may want to have a vision statement. And we
are going to have some documents that we can share that
give you some information about, how do you write . . .
(audio skip) . . . or a mission statement?
Those things can be very important to your
organization so that when you're trying to explain why you
can or cannot serve a particular group or take on a
particular project or expand in a certain way, you can look
back to your organizational goals, your vision statement,
and assess whether the projects you want to move into
really match up with where your organization wants to go.
Next slide, please.
Now, in addition to the organizational structure,
you have to consider your staffing model. Are you just a
mom-and-pop shop? You're working one or two people out of
the back of a garage, volunteer? If you are, then your
policies and procedures need to reflect that.
Do you have volunteer forms that are signed for
people who are coming in? Do you have a written volunteer
handbook so that the volunteers know what they are or are
not allowed to do? Do you have volunteer commitments that
need to be made? How those volunteers work; what kind of
coverage; what kind of rights they have; what kind of
responsibilities; what permissions they have. All of that
should be written out.
If you, as an organization, are committed to an
all-volunteer force, that could be a policy. You know,
"This organization is managed strictly through volunteer
work. We affiliate with these types of organizations. We
always seek to have a minimum of 'X' number of volunteers
present each day." That's your volunteer process.
Your procedures really are your handbook. What do
volunteers do? How do they go about doing that? It's your
training information. How long do volunteers stay? Under
what grounds does somebody get terminated? Do you need to
do any background checks on these? All of that is your
volunteers policies.
For employee-based organizations, it's very
similar. You have to have a written employee handbook.
What are the different jobs you have? What are the
responsibilities for each of these different employees?
What should employees be doing and shouldn't they be doing?
What are their responsibilities? The more you can write it
out and quantify that, the better off everything really is.
So when we're talking about writing policies and
procedures, let's start from the employee-based. Perhaps
you're an organization, and you have six employees, and the
employees all carry the same title. And in your employee
handbook, you can write down that you will have -- that
these are the positions that you have; these are the tasks
for these positions. "Employees are not allowed to drive
assistive technology to individual's houses, nor are they
allowed to offer -- to drop any clients anywhere in their
own personal car."
A policy could be employee/client intake. It could
be -- just all the ins and outs of what employees are
allowed to do and how they should be doing them.
"Employees must report to work at 9:00 a.m., and they must
stay until 5:00. Employees have the right to a
half-an-hour lunch hour."
These are all things that are really relevant to
the staffing model. "Employees are hired upon the consent
of everyone else working there. At least three people in
the office must interview any new employee."
Whatever your policies and procedures are relating
to that, they should be written down. And if you stop to
think about what your organization does, you first panic,
and you say, "I don't have anything like that written."
But many of you, if you sit down and think about it, you do
have a way of doing things. It just hasn't been written
down.
So what we're asking you to do, in writing policies
and procedures is to start considering what it is that you,
as an organization, do. And the easiest thing to do is to
start looking in these areas and just start writing them
up.
Well, with respect to hiring, what do we do? With
respect to implementation, what do we do? And the things
that should be contained in this employee handbook are
really going to be a smattering of all the other things
that we're going to discuss in future -- in future
Webinars.
So when we talk about facilities management, if an
employee is responsible for managing certain facilities,
those steps and those questions that we'll raise later
would go into the written employee handbook for the person
responsible for facilities management.
So this just tells you that, if you have an
employee, you should have an employee handbook. And the
information that's written in there should come from all
the other sections that we will be discussing in the
future.
Many of you have a hybrid approach. You have some
employees; you have some volunteers. And it is very
important to distinguish responsibilities. There may be,
because of your insurance coverage, some things that
volunteers can do and some things that only employees can
do. And you really need to spell those differences out.
And if you don't know what they are or you've never
considered it, we really strongly urge you to start now.
Next slide, please.
Another area of governance, in addition to your
staffing model and in addition to your board, is an
advisory committee. Do you have an advisory committee? Do
you want an advisory committee?
If you have an advisory committee, the policies
that you'll really need to develop relate to how that
advisory committee is going to work. Policies should
include your selection process for serving on the advisory
committee; the terms of service for the advisors on the
advisory committee; the role, function, and authority of
the advisory committee; the frequency of meeting. Is there
funding for this or a set budget for the advisory
committee? Those are the things that you'll want to put
out there with respect to the advisory committee.
Some of you already have advisory committees, so
it's really just a matter of sitting down and writing this
up. And you may find, "You know, we never really did set
terms. Perhaps we should do that," or, "We don't really
know how this advisory committee came out, but how is it
composed?" "Boy, we only have six representatives from the
blindness community. We could really use some
representatives from other communities. In the future, as
people step off, we'd like to replace them with
representatives from this, this, and that community." And
it gives you a much more organized approach for how you
want your advisory committee to work.
That's correct. Joy pointed out, some people have
advisory committees who also advise a board or board
committee. That's exactly right. When you look at the
role and the function and the authority of your advisory
committee, you should assess, you know, what they're doing.
Are they advising your board? Are they coming in and
advising the employees and the day-to-day administrators?
Are they just providing general advice and evaluation and
community feedback in some other forum? What other role do
they play, and how integral to your organization are they?
And again, Joy's right. This could just be on an
ad hoc or an issue basis. So you could determine that you
do not have a regular advisory committee, but for the
upcoming initiation of project X -- it's a new project that
you're going to deploy -- you may want to bring in an
advisory board to give you feedback about how you deploy
that or to tell you about the effectiveness of something
that you've been doing for the past few years.
Those are all appropriate options for the advisory
committees. And some of you already have them in place.
We're encouraging you to write them up. Some of you have
never considered advisory committees before. It may be
worth . . . (audio skip) . . . engaging in this process.
To stop and think, "Is an advisory committee a good idea
for us in some capacity?"
Next slide, please.
So another area of governance is management. Your
management structure is very key. Some people have a
board, and the board is really the same thing as the people
who run your organization. This is often the case when you
have an all-volunteer organization. The board makes some
big decisions and announces what it wants done, and the
volunteers step up and implement it.
And that's all that you've got. You don't have any
paid, permanent staff or officers that are essentially
employees of the company that have a managerial
responsibility.
Other companies, however, really do have a much
more organized employee structure. And sometimes the
employees just report up to the board. But sometimes the
employees report to officers, that you have a president,
that you have a vice president, or you have the chief
operating officer or the person who's the project head.
That's your management structure. And it's
something that you should consider and write down very
specifics. What role -- if you have both a board and
officers, what role does the board play, what role do the
officers play, to what extent do the officers need to seek
approval from the board, to what extent is there autonomy?
If there are officers, you specify what officers
there are. Often this is done within the bylaws. The
bylaws, in addition to talking about the board, will say,
"The board will appoint a president, a vice president" --
"a president, a vice president, and a secretary," or
whatever it is that is appropriate for your organization.
The board will appoint a chief operating officer, or the
board will appoint a project manager. And that is
specified.
And again, the division of responsibility between
the different officers and between the board is key here
and writing that out so there is no confusion.
Also the staffing management is really critical in
this point. What is the supervisory structure? Who's in
charge? Are there job evaluations and reviews? (Audio
skipped) . . . Happened, how often, is there a formality
there? What is that process? Appeal if you don't like
your reviews.
Just that whole process about the management in
there -- if you want to terminate someone, whose decision
is that? Does the board need to approve it, or can the
chief operating officer or president make that
determination?
Also the services to be provided, the management
and governing -- the governance management people need to
sit down and decide what you, as an organization, want to
engage in; what you should be doing; what services you
should be providing; what are your goals?
This is like the goals that we talked about at the
. . . (audio skip) . . . really might be the nitty-gritty?
What are the parameters for the . . . (audio skip) . . .
that you will be providing? Will you be charging? Will
you be offering it for free? Who do you serve; is it
anyone who walks in the door? What are those services?
And when the next thing that really falls upon the
management and that you need to have passed out are your
standard operating procedures for providing these services?
That's the what, the who, and the how.
And when we talk about policies, we're really
talking about your standard operating procedures, the --
sorry. When we're talking about procedures, we're talking
about your standard operating procedures. It's really the
nitty-gritty, day-to-day, how should you go about doing
your job?
And it is the management who really is ultimately
responsible for ensuring that those standard operating
procedures are in place and are being implemented
appropriately.
Next slide, please.
So the last area that we wanted to cover today --
and we're trying very hard not to throw too much
information at you -- but insurance. There are so many
types of insurance out there. And what you really need to
do is sit down and figure out the first two areas that we
discussed.
Who are you as an organization? What is your legal
entity status? What is your staffing model? And how does
your governance work? And then based on those things, you
can answer some questions about what types of insurance are
appropriate for your organization.
Do you need directors and officers insurance?
Well, if you have a board, and you have directors and
officers, then, yes, you really should get directors and
officers insurance.
If you don't have directors and officers but maybe
you just have a key person, you have one person who's kind
of in charge and running the organization and a whole lot
of volunteers, you may want to insure just that key person.
If you have employees, you'll need insurance for
the actions of your employees. If you have volunteers, you
have to figure out if you want to insure your volunteers or
if your volunteers need to be insured through whatever
organization they volunteer through.
If you have drivers . . . (audio skip) . . . you'll
need driver transportation insurance. Just because your
driver has car insurance, doesn't mean that you are insured
when the driver is transporting something. That's a very
different issue that we'll talk a little bit more in depth
about. But again, it's something to keep in mind.
If you have facilities -- facilities could be your
storage units off-site. Facilities could be the place
where individuals walk in and meet with you and are served,
your clients -- then you need to insure your facilities,
and you need to insure them in two ways.
One is in case something happens to them: a leak,
damage to the facility. It's also to insure the facility
in case something bad happens at the facility. Either an
employee gets injured at the facility; or if you have
clients that come in, if the client walks in and slips and
falls on ice because the front sidewalk wasn't shoveled
properly, you'll need to have proper insurance to insure
that you can take care of that.
Your inventory -- what happens if there's a fire,
if there's a theft, if something happens to your inventory?
Do you have your inventory appropriately insured?
And then again, your activities. What activities
are you engaged in? Are you going out to people's houses
and delivering equipment to them? Are you engaged in
activities where people come into your building? Are you
engaged in activities where you go places and do big
collections? You need to have insurance that appropriately
reflects the activities that you are doing.
We talked about property. Now, a lot of property
is your inventory and your facilities. But you could have
sort of your on-site property and your off-site property.
You can have trucks. You can have big luggage carts for
moving things around. You can have land that you somehow
own that you're building . . . (audio skip) . . . on. So
you want to make sure that your property is insured also as
well.
And then the last thing I really wanted to raise
about insurance -- this is one of those areas that you're
not writing policies and procedures for insurance, but you
are looking to make a determination about acquiring
insurance policies.
And the questions that you need to ask, the
policies that are relevant here are, who are you going to
insure? What groups? What categories of insurance do you
think are important for your organization? What activities
will you insure?
And your activities and your policies must be
consistent with the insurance coverage that you have. So
if you have insurance coverage that refuses to cover you
for transporting any equipment, then you, as an
organization, need to ensure that your policies and
procedures state "No transporting equipment."
If your policies and procedures say that you can't
store anything in a room that doesn't have a lock on it,
then you shouldn't put your equipment in a room that
doesn't have a lock on it, and your policies and procedures
should reflect that.
Next slide, please.
Okay. That's really it for the substance of this
Webinar. That leaves us 45 minutes for answering some
questions. We also have a couple of other documents that
we're going to want to share with you that are some
examples of the more specific next steps and ways that you
can work.
Our next Webinar is called "User Services." It's
going to be May 13th from 2:00 to 3:30. Topics are going
to include client intake, equipment matching, training and
technical assistance, delivery, follow-up, and Web site
operations.
At that one, because it's a little bit -- we'll be
drilling down to the next level. We will have sample
policies for Web sites and procedures for those things. We
will have some of these other, you know, policies and
procedures, perhaps, for client intakes. So we will give
you specific examples of policies and procedures then.
This one we were trying to focus on how you start
the process of writing. But many of these topics were
abstract because both insurance and the legal status,
organizational structure issues are a step back. They're
not really about developing policies and procedures.
They're about making decisions, structured decisions, so
that, when it's time to write policies and procedures, you
have a basis for doing that.
I'm going to open it up to questions and actually
perhaps turn it over to Joy if you want to show the next --
that document that we had discussed.
JOY KNISKERN: Yes. We can certainly do that. And
what I would like to suggest is that we certainly want
to -- you know, before we get to that document, maybe have
some questions and answers.
And I know -- as you were going through all of
this, Jessica, I know perhaps for many of you just going
through all this can seem very daunting. And I know, when
we've talked with individual programs, what we've learned
is oftentimes a person will say, "Well, we don't really
have policies, but we have some operational guidelines that
we use," or, "We use a form to do X, Y, Z, and this is what
we use for a person in our program to sign off on the piece
of equipment they're taking home."
And so I know that everybody out there, you
probably have documents, as Jessica had mentioned earlier,
that you're already using. And so what our hope is is that
you can take a step back and look at what's been presented
and say, "Okay. What -- you know, of all of this, where do
I need to do the most shoring up?"
And as you go through that process, we'd like to
invite you to -- if you're developing a policy or
procedure, to share that with us, to share it with Jessica.
We'd be more than happy to work with you on a piece that
you are already developing or sit down and work on and then
help you shape some of those things.
So with that, I'd like to first see if anybody else
has some comments and also to hear from some of you about
perhaps some of the policies or operational guidelines that
you've developed.
JESSICA BRODEY: Complete silence. That means that
you all are so confused that you have no idea what to ask,
or I did . . . (audio skip) . . . that I've answered every
question.
Any comments on which of the two categories you
guys are falling into?
JOY KNISKERN: Let's see. I know, as you were
going through your information, Jessica, one of the things
that occurred to me is that, if -- I think there are many
of us, for instance, that work with kids in our various
programs. We'll distribute equipment to parents and, in
some cases, to teachers or providers who are working with
kids.
And when you talked about background checks, I know
that one of the things in our state contracts that we ran
into is that for any state contracts we require background
checks. And one of the things that we began to think of
was, "Does that mean that, with the people with whom we
subcontract, we should tighten things up a little bit in
our contracts and suggest that, if they do use volunteers,
that they go through appropriate background checks, maybe
even fingerprinting or something like that?"
Any other -- any comments, questions?
JESSICA BRODEY: Well, until somebody poses a
question, Joy, I want to pick up on something else you had
said.
You talked about how many organizations are already
using documents. And a lot of you already have ways of
doing things. We're trying to encourage you to figure out
how to really articulate what those steps are.
If you have a form that you use to sign off on
getting a piece of AT somewhere, and you know that it has
to go through three people and get a signature before you
can get that AT out, that's your policy right there.
That's actually -- it's your procedure.
And your procedure could be called "Distribution of
AT." Step one, get this form. Step two, fill it out.
Step three, have these three people sign off on it. You
can mention them by title. You can mention them by name if
that's what appropriate. If it's any three people in the
office, that's fine. But you spell that part out.
Step four, what do you do with the form after it's
been filled out? Turn it back in to so and so. Step five
is file it. Save it for this particular record. Step six
is, you know, set up a meeting to distribute the equipment.
Many of you have these things that you already
innately know how they're working. And you think, "Well,
if we know how to do it, why do we need to write it down?"
Because today you know how to do it, but somebody else
could come in tomorrow and take over, and they won't know
how to do it.
It also matters because sometimes you write it out,
and you look at this, and you say, "Boy, there's 53 steps
just to do this simple thing. Is there an easier way to do
it?" And it may help you improve your own internal
efficiency. It may also help you find some shortcomings in
your process.
"You know, as we wrote it up, we notice that we
never file these forms. Even though we fill them out, they
all end up in the garbage." That's a problem with your
policies and procedures.
So if you write them up, you then add a new line
about how it should be filed. And you then have a new
responsibility for somebody to take charge of that filing.
How many people know their legal status as an
entity? Are you incorporated? How many people actually
know the answer to that and have that question resolved?
JOY KNISKERN: And we welcome you to either type it
in or, if you've got a microphone that's working, just jump
right in.
JESSICA BRODEY: Sarah wrote that, as a
subcontractor, she's unsure how to deal with this issue.
That's a really good point. So just to understand, are you
a subcontractor for the state on a particular project? Is
that what it is? If you could confirm.
And then Debbie and Jean from Kentucky wrote that
they're incorporated, nonprofit.
So, Sarah, I'm going to wait until you respond.
But just to kind of talk about that, if you as a
subcontractor are a company, that's your legal status. You
are a subcontractor yourself. If you're just an individual
that's being paid by the state -- so, okay, you're a
subcontractor with the U of I, and you're a center for
independent living, your organization, the entity that
holds the contract.
Is the entity that holds the subcontract a
corporation, or are you just a person, a sole
proprietorship?
Okay. So you're a nonprofit 501(c)(3), which means
that you're an incorporated entity. That's good because
being incorporated gives you a whole level of protection.
And then your function is to -- you have a subcontract that
you are implementing.
So you've already got your legal status set. You
know as you move forward that you are a 501(c)(3). So this
is a good example. Do you have a board of directors or
not?
So you do have a board of directors. So again,
when you're . . . (audio skip) . . . about things, you know
that you're a corporation who's a nonprofit that has a
board of directors, and your mission and your goal is, at
least on one level, to implement this subcontract. You may
have other things that you do as well, but one of those
things that you'll be considering is implementing this
subcontract that you have.
Now, on your board do you already have all of your
officers set and bylaws written? I'm going to keep talking
because I haven't seen an answer yet.
In most cases -- oh, here we go. "Yes, but the AT
project is new, and they haven't really been involved in
it." Okay. Great.
So then the first thing is -- it might be worth it
to go and look at the board of directors and figure out if
the AT project (inaudible) fits in with the bylaws that you
have in existence, or do the bylaws need to be amended in
some way to consider the AT project and how that management
is going to work?
And it just takes review of the existing bylaws to
see how those things fit together. But you already have a
really great structure in place that you can kind of pick
up from. So those are a few less steps that you have to
take.
Now, do you have somebody in particular that is in
charge of just the AT project part? I'm assuming that you
do. It's either going to be an officer or a project
manager. That could go into the bylaws that there is this
AT project and that it's run by so and so.
And you may want to clarify your role with respect
to the management and how you interplay and report back to
the board what your obligations are there between you and
the board. That's an example of how you may want to amend
your bylaws and talk to them about it.
In the absence of that, then you have your set of
policies and procedures, and you look to the bylaws that
are already in existence for the rest of the organization.
And everything that you do after that needs to be
consistent with the existing bylaws. No conflicts there.
And you can also publicly look to other arms of the
organization. And if they have employment policies, if
they have all of these other things, you don't need to
reinvent the wheel. You can adopt what they already have
and just apply them to your organization as well and to
your little project as well.
And, in fact, many of those things may already be
covering you. So these are -- as you're moving forward,
these are a lot of questions that you wouldn't have to
answer. But finding out how your project, what you do,
fits into the bigger organizational structure is what's
key.
And where you'll be . . . (audio skip) . . . and
having to take charge and taking responsibility or writing
new policies and procedures will probably be in the topics
that we'll be covering next week: your client intake,
equipment matching, training, technical assistance,
delivery, follow-up, Web site operations. Because those
things are going to be unique to your project.
So many of you could be in similar situations where
you already have a structure behind you. You're part of a
church organization. You're part of a state organization.
You're part of a university. You have a subcontract. You
already are a 501(c)(3). You're part of an organization
that has nine other projects.
So when we talk about legal status, you don't have
to change your legal status. It's sometimes just knowing
what your legal status is. So that you know, okay, we're a
nonprofit. We're incorporated. We already have bylaws.
We already have officers. How does that affect us? How do
these things work together? Has our project . . . (audio
skip) . . . in those things.
So that's the kind of thing that we're asking you
to consider at this level. And we intentionally started
with very high-level topics because we're hoping that many
of you will say, "Oh, great. Been there. Done that.
We've accomplished something. Check."
And for those of you that haven't, well, you have
to start with these big nebulous issues first in order to
be able to burrow down and get to the day-to-day
operations.
If you don't know your legal status, then how can
you figure out how to work day to day because you don't
know what your liability is for different things. You
don't know what you are or are not permitted to do.
So we're kind of starting at the 360-foot overview
level. And we're burrowing down step by step. And I hope
that that helps some of you who are maybe in a similar
situation as Sarah.
JOY KNISKERN: Thank you, Jessica. And I see that
Sarah's got one more question, and then I can make a
comment, and we'll move on. Let's see what Sarah says.
"Is it appropriate to change the bylaws if this is
a demonstration grant subcontract?" Good comment.
Jessica, would you like to comment on that?
JESSICA BRODEY: It may be. I mean it may be that
the bylaws already say that any subgrants will be managed
by the grant manager, or whatever your official title is,
and that you don't want to specify this particular grant
because that money could go away in a few years, and so
it's too difficult to have to keep changing.
But you want to look to the bylaws and figure out
how and to what extent they cover you. And if they don't,
then getting appropriate language in that addresses where
you fit in, even if it's not necessarily specific to your
project.
Because, in the future, there are likely to be
other subcontracts that your organization does. And if
it's not this one, it will be some other one. So then you
can write very broad statements and change the bylaws so
that any future subcontract would be appropriately covered.
JOY KNISKERN: And I would agree with that. And
also, many of the demonstration grant subcontracts, if
they're federal subcontracts, you know, part of the goal is
certainly sustainability. So the whole point, I think, of
working on some of these things is to give you a foundation
where you can have more stability with your programs.
And if you even look at some of the information
that Jessica presented, for instance about volunteers, many
of us use lots and lots of volunteers. And we know that
that can be both a blessing, and it can also be a hurdle
when you lose volunteers and you have to replace them and
retrain them and so on.
And, of course, you're always going to have to go
through that process, for example, of -- in just that one
area, working with new volunteers and training them. But
if you've got some written procedures, some documented ways
that you do business, then that's -- it's kind of like the
80/20 rule, 80 percent of your problems are caused by 20
percent of the things that you may or may not have done
that you wish you had done in hindsight.
So I think the other thing I would like to mention
here is that we have certainly a very mixed and diverse
audience today. We have somebody -- people representing
manufacturers and suppliers, I know. And we also have
state AT programs that are operating reutilization model
programs and other individuals as well.
And I know that, from a state AT program, one of
the things we have to be concerned about is developing
subcontracts, if we're subcontracting, contracting out our
work, that is, you know, pretty solid stuff. And then
those subcontractors are the ones who are really in the
day-to-day work often of doing the business of reutilizing
products and equipment.
And so really, you know, if you're a demonstration
program or operating a reuse program as an IL center or
another nonprofit, then I think the challenge for you is to
take a look at this stuff and say, "Okay. What do we need
to develop to make sure our program is safe and stable and
sustainable in these basic sort of foundation pieces?"
TOM PATTERSON: Thanks, Joy.
Jessica, I was wondering if you could link what
you've been talking about today back to the first Webinar
in the series. And I think there really is a connection.
And if you could clarify that, I would appreciate it.
JESSICA BRODEY: By the first Webinar, do you mean
the FDA, Tom?
TOM PATTERSON: Well, yes, in the sense of relating
the concept of policies and procedures with the overall
subject of liability.
JESSICA BRODEY: Okay. And this is what I was
talking about, I think, on one of the first slides. I
don't remember which of the early slides.
But there are so many reasons why policies and
procedures are important. And they really do help to
mitigate liability. You're at risk for liability when
there is anything that's unknown. And the best thing that
you can do to try and limit or mitigate your liability is
to provide a set of good practices and guidelines that --
for carrying out activities and doing your best to ensure
that the actions that you engage in are consistent with
those policies and procedures.
And we encourage this because, as I was saying in
the beginning, if you're acting off the cuff, without
thought, without planning, if you're doing something on the
fly, that's when you are most likely to make a mistake.
And when mistakes happen is when liability comes in.
So part of this is about creating just good
practices to ensure that you are less likely to make any
mistakes. If you have good practices, then bad things are
less likely to happen.
Also, if you have good practices and you plan
things out in advance, then you are in a much better place
to protect yourself. You can say, "You know what? We've
thought about this. We planned accordingly. We've been
doing it this way since this thing happened. And it was
really beyond our control. It was not a sign of negligence
because we were being careful."
It gives you a level of defense to show that there
was forethought and that you were taking care. And that's
why I think it is so critical.
There's a question from Sarah about, "As a
subcontractor, are we to write the policies and procedures,
or is it just to talk it over with your grant receiver?"
But I do think that because -- it depends on how
much authority they're giving you. If they've essentially
turned over the whole project to you for implementation and
for execution, then I think it is within your right to
develop policies and procedures about how you will be
operating things.
And it may be that you develop them and then need
to get them approved or confirmed by your grantor. But, in
general, the likelihood is that most of the day-to-day
decisions are being left to you with their approval. So
this is one of those examples of things that you can come
up with for how you are going to operate.
And there may be (audio skipped) to high level that
are really beyond your capacity and that you can go and
turn around and ask the grantor, "What do you think about
this? What's your position on this? Can you develop
positions on that?" And that's fair.
Not everything that we will talk about in the next
few Webinars will be an important policy or procedure for
every person to do. Sometimes it is not applicable to a
particular situation.
Joy asks -- or Joy wrote two things about, number
one, the good practices, how you treat customers from A to
Z. That again applies to how that minimizes liability, I
think. And talking about and developing the policies and
procedures. I think this was in response to Sarah, that a
collaborative process is usually best.
Sorry, Joy. Just to jump back in, can we get to
that other document that we might want to put up at some
point? I think that that might be a good help for people
kind of in their heads to determine how it is that they
want to move forward.
JOY KNISKERN: Yes, we'll be getting that document
up in just a moment.
And I think that -- Sarah, I hope this has helped
you get a picture of, you know, how to best move forward.
And, as I mentioned, I think it's really a collaborative
process certainly in your case and in many cases the best
way to go because you're working directly with people in
the field, and you're going to have a different idea or
perhaps a different vision of how things might work best
and, for instance, just the kinds of equipment that
wouldn't do you much good to accept in donations to be real
specific about it.
You're going to have a better idea as the kinds of
things that the people are asking you for, the types of
equipment. And that would translate into what you develop
perhaps in procedures and some policies about the kind of
donations that you would or wouldn't accept, things like
that.
And so I'm going to turn this over to Jessica
again. We've got another resource up here for you to take
a look at.
JESSICA BRODEY: Thanks, Joy.
Now, this document was created by another
subcontractor with the Pass It On Center. And her name is
Trish Redmon. And she has done a lot of really great work.
She's going to be doing a lot for the upcoming Webinars to
help with sort of your sample procedures, the really
nitty-gritty of how do you do things. She's really working
on trying to develop some of those and put out some of the
best practices for everybody.
What I thought was interesting is she took the
concepts that we were talking about today, and she put it
into a document to sort of spell out the approach that you
might want to take in going ahead.
So for the overview, she put "Get started, define
activities, and make decisions before an organization
exists, which really is (inaudible) . . . State and federal
law considering organizational status, choose profit or
nonprofit status, identify steps --
Sarah says she lost audio. Is it everyone or just
Sarah? Sarah, you have the "Talk" button pushed. I don't
know if that affects you. Can anyone hear me now? I'm not
exactly sure what happened, but hopefully we're clear now.
I'm going to go back a little bit. And please let
me know again if the audio disappears.
One of the things that we were talking about with
identifying appropriate legal structure is that you should
go and seek legal advice and review your options and choose
whether you're for profit or nonprofit and identify how you
go about incorporating.
Many of you don't have to look at this step. Many
of you are already incorporated, already have a legal
structure. You're an organization that's been around a
long time. Or you're shared within another organization.
I see someone from DC Shares is on. And they have
a very unique status because they are connected to a
broader organization, but they function outside the offices
of that organization, and they have some interesting
partnerships.
So there are a lot of questions that can still come
up with respect to your legal status and structure. The
question is, are you part of the larger entity that funds
you? Are you actually part of their legal structure or
status? Or are your something . . . (audio skip) . . .
they are just funding?
And those are all questions that just should be
considered and asked. When you are choosing . . . (audio
skip) . . . model. Again, you review the different
governance models that we spoke about. You review the
different management models. You select a board of
directors. You complete the organizational tasks.
And many of these things will . . . (audio skip) .
. . done because many of you have organizations that are .
. . (audio skip) . . . and are in existence.
But you may want to go back and review and see, are
you missing documents? Do you not have a mission
statement? Are your bylaws complete and up to date? Do
you have officers that have already been selected for
everything?
These are sort of the, if you're starting from
scratch, what you'd have to do. If you're an organization
that exists, some of these things may not apply.
Now, we have here the CEO First Official Steps.
Well, they propose a management structure, you know, the
different roles and create the organizational chart,
prepare job descriptions.
You may find that you have your structure, but you
don't have job descriptions. You haven't determined which
of the roles for your employees versus your volunteers.
You may not have really come up with a whole fair
compensation for your salaries. It might just be people
were getting paid that, and that's what it was.
So one thing that you can do is really try to take
those things that are in existence and answer some of these
questions and define some of these things along the way.
Recruiting managers. You may already have your
managers in place, so recruitment of managers may not be an
issue.
And lastly, we put down "Develop and write policies
and procedures." So the next step is to really identify
which policies and procedures are needed. And the Webinars
and the checklists that we've been providing are really the
attempt to help you figure out what do you need, and what
do you already have?
And then we ask you to create a framework, an
organizational structure for drafting. So your framework
for drafting could be that you identify all the different
ones, that you come up with the outline of how they'll fit
together, that you determine a set or group of people for
getting it done.
You could assign it out and give people deadlines
for writing things up. You could ask people to search the
Internet. You could go to another organization and borrow
their policies and procedures and just adapt them to your
own.
That is really the best way to go about doing this
for your whole structure for drafting. You could figure
out a numbering system for how you want to do it.
So this is really how we propose that you move
forward. And the first three topics that we threw out for
you to consider were your legal status, your governance
concerns, and insurance. Because these are really
high-level issues that you want to ask first.
At the next Webinar we're going to come back, and
we're going to get into some of the topics that are your
day-to-day operations. And we're going to throw out a
whole other set of issues and give you a whole set of ideas
for what kinds of policies and procedures you might be
needing on those particular issues.
So as you're moving forward with trying to write up
some of your policies and procedures, you can wait and use
our categories as we go. You can jump ahead of us and then
come with questions. But those are the areas and the order
in which we'll be focusing on them.
TOM PATTERSON: Well, the Internet is a wonderful
thing. And of course there are glitches here and there,
but I'm sure Jessica can finish up.
JOY KNISKERN: I'm wondering if you can hear me.
If somebody could respond real quickly. Because I'm
showing that I have audio on. Oh, good. I have no idea
what happened.
The last time we had a Webinar on the 25th of
March, we had, I think, no technical glitches. We've had a
few today, and we continue to work on that. I want to --
yeah, maybe that helped. Thank you, Jessica.
As I was looking at -- I had one comment, and that
was, as I was looking at the slide on the left with the
tools and resources in the right-hand box, if you scroll
down, it talks about how to write a mission statement and
sample mission statements.
That's some of -- some of the things that we'll be
working on as tools and resources for you. And I'm
thinking, in terms of folks like Sarah where you're a part
of an independent living center. And I have no doubt that
your independent living center already has a mission
statement and all of those other things that we discussed.
If you are going to be working on, for example --
and, oh, well, we have something right up here that Trish
has already developed on how to write a mission statement.
So for any of these products and resources that we've
already developed, we will be posting that on our Web site
and getting that out to you so that those of you who can
use it, you've got it right there.
If you are operating a reuse activity inside of an
organization or as a part of an organization, like a center
for independent living, it I think is very helpful often to
go through the exercise of doing a mission statement for
that initiative as a part of your overall organization.
And, yes, the submission statement. That's exactly
what we're talking about. And so for some of the things
that we've gone over today, if it applies to your reuse
program, you can take a stab at that because I think it
will help you in clarifying where you are, where you need
to be, and will lend some stability to your program.
And I will release my mike for comments. We've got
about another -- actually, we've got 20 more minutes where
we could entertain discussion and comments and sharing of
some of the challenges and questions you may have in terms
of structuring some of these tools for your reuse programs.
Yes, we will definitely send out these documents to
our e-mail list. And that would include the PowerPoint
presentation that Jessica has done and auxiliary documents
that we have. And we will be posting those on our Web site
as well. And so, yes, definitely.
And so what questions do others of you have?
JESSICA BRODEY: Well, I'm going to turn the tables
and ask a couple of questions. And if at any time you have
your own question, please chime in.
My next question to you is, when I've talked to you
a little bit about organizational structure of how to write
policies and procedures earlier, and I showed you an
example of the policies and procedures from Montgomery
College, did that help you visualize what policies and
procedures should look like, or do you have other questions
about how to write a policy or procedures, what it should
look like?
JOY KNISKERN: I'm seeing that Sarah Johnnes
suggested it would be nice if there was a space, perhaps a
wiki space where we can share ideas. And that's a great
idea.
We have plans to release a blog on the Pass It On
Center Web site fairly soon. And we think that that might
be a start.
Would that be helpful to y'all? Good.
And while Tom is pulling that up, you can
actually -- if you can get to the Web site where it lists
some of the information there, we can get back to Jessica's
comment.
I know, Sheila, you said, yes, it would certainly
help if we had a blog. And I also know that you all --
that in Kansas you have some -- you do have at least a
procedure where you don't hold equipment for more than 90
days. And I was just very impressed to hear from Sarah at
the ATIA conference a little bit about how you do that.
And I thought that that was very helpful.
You know, it would be very helpful to see any kind
of policies or procedures you use about the whole process
of distributing equipment and your practice, at least, of
not holding onto it for more than 90 days.
And what that does for you, as I understand it, is
it means that you don't have a need for a large space to
store equipment.
I'm also seeing that Sharon Alderman mentioned that
it would be helpful to have a blog. That sounds great.
And, Vivian, you've got a comment. You used one of
the little emoticons. Thank you. Hands up. Okay. Good.
I don't know if Tom went over that, but if you
haven't tried using the emoticons in the place above where
you type in a question or a comment, you can pull down, and
you can use emoticons too. Those are fun.
Okay, Jessica. We can go back to what you had
talked about with the Montgomery College example.
JESSICA BRODEY: Tom, if you could click on that
link again, that would be great, and take everyone to the
Web site. Thank you.
So here's what I was just kind of using as a
starting point for showing you guys how policies and
procedures really should look. And I wondered if this was
helpful, if you had any other questions in addition to this
about how structures should work while you're looking at
it.
And I know that the question often comes up, "How
do we do this? This seems very daunting." So I was trying
to give a concrete example of a format that was very good
and a structure that was very appropriate to use as a
model.
And you don't have to use the same exact modeling
system or numbering system. But it's a really good basic
example of how things should be divided up. And you don't
have to call them chapters. You can just put Roman
numeral I, board of trustees bylaws; Roman numeral II,
organization. You can do it in any way.
And what I also thought was interesting about this,
that, while they have a notebook version of this, this was
an Internet version that allows you to look at everything
online. And as you move to the Internet, that's a really
great format for interacting with your employees.
So looking at this, do you have more specific
questions about how do you write or organize a set of
policies and procedures?
That's a really good question. I see Joy has got
her hand up. Sarah, there was no talking happening before,
so I don't think you were missing sound. I could be wrong
about that.
The issue with the rural program. I think that,
from -- at least as part of the policy series, we're going
to be looking just broadly about policy issues. The
specific needs of the difference between rural and urban I
think might be covered by the Pass It On Center in a
different way. So I'm going to turn that over to Joy.
But the actual policy series that we're working on,
we're not really distinguishing between those differences
other than to say you consider them in writing your
policies and procedures.
And I'm going to release now so Joy can speak.
JOY KNISKERN: Yes. I think that, yes, you
definitely have issues that are really different in rural
states in terms of setting up a program and how you work
with your different populations and certainly in terms of
getting donations and distributing equipment, finding
volunteers.
I mean every category that you go down, you would
have very different issues. And I think what would really
help us would be perhaps to schedule a conference call for
those of you who are in rural areas to look at and just
hear from you, let you do some talking about some of the
issues and some of the concerns that you have as far as
working in a rural setting. And then that would really
help us formulate and work with you and some of the unique
needs that you may have.
Even in Georgia, where we have, for example, you
know, very concentrated urban areas, we also have a lot of
distribution issues throughout the state because a large
part of Georgia is very rural.
But I think it would be a great -- I'm glad to see
that you said it would be a great idea. That sounds good.
We'll get together with our team, and we'll use
perhaps a meeting wizard to send out a list of dates where
we could basically talk.
And what we'd ask of you all, anybody in a rural
area that wants to participate, is if you could send some
questions and some thoughts back and forth once we do a
meeting wizard, that would really help us so that we can
focus an agenda that will really produce some idea that we
can share with everybody. Does that work for y'all?
When you say organizational software in terms of
policy and procedure development, that sounds like a good
question. Would you like to clarify that a little bit
more?
I see. In other words, using Inspiration -- for
those of you who -- if anybody's not familiar with
Inspiration, it's basically a software program that is a
way to map out your ideas. It's a tool to develop ideas
and to organize your thinking in maps. And then you can
use it to basically outline and write.
And I know that some of our staff use Inspiration.
And a couple of our subcontractors have used that from
anything from writing grants to writing a paper on a topic.
But I don't know of anybody specifically who has used it to
develop their policies and procedures. Great, great idea.
Has anybody used that?
We're not hearing that anybody has at this point.
That doesn't mean that people haven't. But I think what we
will do is certainly make sure that the person that Jessica
referenced, Trish Redmon, who is working on a lot of
product development for us, that she has a chance to look
at that as a tool since many of our centers may be using
that in different venues.
And Sarah has asked, "Is it a free software?"
Perhaps somebody else can respond to -- right. There is a
30-day trial version. And I don't know what the going
price of it is right now.
But if you just Google "Inspiration Software," you
should be able to get to that and -- it is a great tool.
What a great idea.
Hi, Trish. Great. And so we'll take a look at
that. That's wonderful. Trish is with us.
And their Web site -- if you Google them, you get
to them, but it's www.inspiration.com. So that's pretty
straightforward.
I would basically like to thank everybody for
joining us today. We really appreciate your time, your
comments, your questions. We hope this has been helpful to
you.
And as you go through the process of working with
some of these materials, we really welcome your continuing
comments and also any policies, procedures, paperwork that
you use in your various programs.
And again, we look very much forward to talking
with you again in our next series, which will be held on
May 13th from 2:00 to 3:30.
And, as Jessica mentioned, we will be going over
your customer intake, equipment matching, training and
technical assistance, delivery, follow-up, and Web site
operations. We'll be getting into some of the nitty-gritty
of all of this.
Thanks so much for joining us today, and we'll talk
with you again.
TOM PATTERSON: I just wanted to ask folks who
perhaps are joining us via word of mouth that, if I don't
have your e-mail address, if you could get that to me, I'd
appreciate it. And you can type it into the text box, or
you can send it to tom@passitoncenter.org.