Kiwanis PTP Dolls(Ongoing) — Lessons Learned from Chairing a Project
How is project management in a community service club similar to project management in the field of software engineering?
It’s not. At all. Not even remotely. I was just a little blindsided when someone asked me a similar question during a job interview.
Lesson 1: It’s important to answer the “Why”
Me: The purpose of the project is to deliver dolls to a hospital that need to be cut, sewn, and stuffed by Kiwanis members and Key Club members
Everyone else: Why?
Kiwanis International is a community service organization that directly sponsors and funds Key Club, Circle K, and a somewhat lesser-known subset called K-Kids. I find it a little interesting that the high school organization is probably the best-known; Kiwanis, at least among people I know outside of the organization, is not really in the vernacular. Key Club is in the vernacular, and so is Circle K, but for every person I meet who knows about or is involved with Circle K, there are two others who mistake it for the religious fellowship (Koinonia, of which we are not affiliated) and the gas station.
Fun Fact: During tax season, the public Kiwanis phone number is flooded by Circle K employees requesting W2 information.
PTP stands for Pediatric Trauma Program. The project is specific to our district, and its mission is to prevent, support, and assist children and families of children killed or injured by trauma.
What are the dolls for? Children in hospitals. Why do they look like this? They represent a blank slate, a kind of clean canvas that a child can decorate with markers to cope with the new environment (as well as the boredom). The dolls are 15 inches, covered in fabric, filled with stuffing — the dolls are soft, squeezable, and supposedly a handy aid for doctor demonstrations.
That’s all fine and good, but I think that what our club members really needed to see was someone who visited from Elk Grove and who had directly helped coordinate this project with a hospital in their area. Without even being asked, she gave a really motivating and surprisingly heartfelt “mini-speech” about how they met a student who obtained one of these dolls, used it, got released, and then kept it all the way through college as a reminder of what our organization had done for her.
This is what a project really needs — the single, simple idea of one person benefitting.
Lesson 2: Other people have different circumstances. Don’t assume yours will be the same
The current president of Citrus Heights and I visited Elk Grove’s project and helped them for a few hours. In less than three, and with something like 30 high school Key Club members, we stuffed 400 dolls.
But there was a little more to the story than that. They also sewed them, thanks to some experienced and heavily invested volunteers. I believe they enlisted the help of a large church. They took a few months simply to find a recipient hospital, which was considerably less difficult for me because they got me in touch with a similar person.
To help me in our own effort, they sent me a full layout of their budget and told me exactly where they purchased each supply. I, being the brilliant math-savvy genius that I am, took the number of dolls they produced, took the number of dolls I wanted, and calculated how much of each thing we would need.
But…hold the phone. They may have cut things differently, perhaps more efficiently. Maybe they devised something clever that I did not know about. In any case, proper consideration needs to be made when “calculating” the number of doll templates. After cutting, we did not have nearly as many dolls as we thought we would.
All good, but that was kind of dumb on my part.
Lesson 3: If you agree to chair something, you need to take responsibility of it…but at the same time, you are not in a bubble
A few people asked me questions early on, and some of them were legitimately good. I had some myself as well:
- Do we really have to sew them ourselves? What if we purchase unstuffed dolls, but affix the Kiwanis label on them? Would that still count?
- Others clubs have definitely done this. How many have they delivered to their respective hospitals?
- Are hospitals the only target? Is there anything else you can do with these?
- How long does this project typically take?
I had all of these questions, yet I did not bother to adequately pursue any of them. All I really went off of was the work of a single club, but Kiwanis also sponsors Aktion Clubs. That was an excellent resource right there. I did find out about their work later on, but it was a little late.
I think if I could go back to the beginning, and talk to my past self, I might tell him this:
This project is non-trivial. This project is actually fairly drawn-out and complex. But you are agreeing to chair it, which means you will have the authority to purchase the supplies, set your own timeline, and work with people of your choosing. You don’t know anything about sewing…work with people who do, and while you’re at it maybe experiment with a needle and thread. Remember that everyone who offers to help is doing a huge service, since there is no way in hell you would possibly do his alone, but also remember that you have the final say
The people you work with have their own agendas. This sounds dramatic and evil and House of Cards-ish, but this is true for almost any organization and there is nothing inherently wrong with it. The president’s agenda consists of serving a district and keeping up motivation. The social media chair’s agenda consists of getting some nice photos and Internet hits. My agenda involves an elaborate Chess-like play in which I leverage the power of Medium in a slow and incremental push to diversify our club and draw more interest from the next generation while simultaneously constructing a direct Circle-K-to-Kiwanis pipeline. We all have our plans.
You won’t please everyone, as a rule, but you will see your project either reach success and achieve its goals, or serve as a learning experience for projects to come. Either way, you will have learned a lot and made a good faith attempt to improve the community.
I hope you find that it’s worth something.
Some General Thoughts on Kiwanis
I believe that the main power Kiwanis has, as an enormous community service organization, is its ability to create and distribute narrative. What matters is not the actions alone, but the stories our members tell about these actions. This renews support, fosters motivation, and keeps new members rolling in.
I went to a conference that primarily discussed the issue of member retention, and…you know how it goes. Membership is dropping. It’s still a humongous organization, but membership is dropping. Some members are struggling to keep pace with all the new technology companies and clubs use to stay in touch and draw interest, while others are leveraging it. Instagram. Facebook sponsoring.
But nothing stuck to me more than the speech made by the keynote speaker. What started as a seemingly scattershot narrative about talking to a six-year-old child at an airport while her parents were busy on their smartphones suddenly did a 180. The speaker talked about what Kiwanis meant to her. The speaker talked about how, as a former therapist for adults who survived cardiovascular attacks, she would tell people to wake up every morning, stick up their arms, and declare “I’M BACK!” She talked about what it meant to her to be alive, and what it should mean to all of us.
There are more dolls to be done. I might continue to chair it, or I might give the reins to someone else. The majority were already given to that hospital, but it sounds like there may be a fresh set ready to be made, headed by a different person interested in the project.
We are community service members, and we do projects. These projects, however small or trivial they may seem, enable and lay the groundwork for other projects. Before we know it, entire movements start. Through narrative, and not through action alone, action inspires action. I want to be a part of that, and I am glad so many others have already seen the value that we provide.
