People power

You ask any organization what its biggest resource is, and the obvious answer will be people.

Not just staff, although they are the lynchpins to a nonprofit’s cause, but volunteers.

How to educate, motivate and mobilize those volunteers takes a Herculean effort.

Some would say it’s Sisyphean. But I’m not listening to those naysayers.

Maybe it’s because of what I do for a living or my age or my interests, but I think technology is THE way to rally the troops.

It has allowed us to communicate in ways we didn’t think possible even five years ago.

Don’t get me wrong – face-to-face contact is still ideal. Conference calls are a way of corporate life.

But we’ve gone beyond the email to a whole new arena of sharing information.

Message boards have been around a long time, but I think there is so much potential to use them in new ways as data clearinghouses. It’s a way to leverage knowledge.

I’m excited about advocacy for MS because there’s so much that can be accomplished. We just have to get out there and try it.

I’ll try to post while I’m at our conference this week. We have seminars and legislative visits and banquets and so many other things planned. I’m getting exhausted just thinking about it all!