Volunteer groups advised at UMaine

ORONO – Volunteer organizations and government representatives hoping to learn how to work better with one another took some time Monday to listen to advice from north of the border.

Representatives from both sides of Canada’s Volunteer Sector Initiative told approximately 80 Mainers gathered at the University of Maine about how the Canadian program is helping government agencies and nonprofit volunteer organizations work better with each other. The symposium, sponsored by the Maine Commission for Community Service, was held at Buchanan Alumni House on the UM campus.

Canada’s Volunteer Service Initiative is a multiyear effort in Canada by government and volunteer groups to establish guidelines and goals for how to better coordinate their efforts. Marie Gauthier, keynote speaker at the event and director of the Canadian program’s policy unit, said the initiative is aimed at establishing better government policies and at delivering more effective services.

As part of the Canadian initiative, committees of government officials and volunteer service representatives were established to look into issues the two sectors have in common, Gauthier said. Among the issues addressed by the committees were:

. How to set up protocols between government agencies and nonprofit groups.

. How to raise awareness about the roles of and objectives of nonprofit groups.

. How to streamline reporting requirements and regulations for volunteer organizations.

Paula Gagnon, chairwoman-elect of MCCS, said Monday that Maine nonprofits can learn from the Canadian model how to develop better institutional skills at fund raising and establishing relationships and how to be more accountable for their work.

“They’ve got the dialogue happening at a national level,” Gagnon said.

By following the Canadian example, volunteer organizations in Maine also can learn how to have a voice in setting policy.

“It can’t all be done in Augusta,” she said.

Penelope Rowe, CEO of Community Services Council in Newfoundland and Labrador, said working with a government has drawbacks, such as having to adapt to new policies when administrations change. The Canadian initiative has helped raise the profile of volunteer groups in the public eye, however.

“The eyes don’t glaze over as quickly when I go to cocktail parties as they used to,” she said. “People are starting to get it.”

According to Harris Madson of Brooksville, a retired Air Force colonel and former executive of United Way of Eastern Maine, there is at least one other challenge to having nonprofits work more with government agencies.

“State and federal government are not geared toward taking risks,” he said.

The private and nonprofit sectors are better than government at relying on trust and instinct, he said. Sometimes, however, they should be more adventurous than they usually are in order to achieve success.

“We’re always known by our last failure,” Madson said. “We don’t encourage risk-taking.”