What happens when an internal battle goes public? The Southbury Ambulance Association is finding it out the hard way. When twelve or eleven sign a petition asking for the board to resign and make their petition public, the fires are lit. The result is a 38 percent decrease in volunteer hours and a mess.
According to the Republican-American’s November 28th article, “The members have accused the board of taking away their voting rights at meetings, refusing to release financial statements, running the association for personal gain and threatening and harassing certain members.” If this doesn’t sound like a nightmare, I am not sure what does.
The worst part is that the volunteers have needed to rely on more paid staff and services have been affected. The negative PR and doubts caused by this issue could be the end of any volunteer organization. Top it off with investigations by the regional EMS council and town First Selectman and the question is, how can it get worse...
The problem is, every volunteer department has been in this position, but may have been able to keep it internal. It always starts with two members who have some type of fight about who knows what... Actually if you track it back far enough you’ll probably find that the problem was something silly like someone insulted someone else’s car or an equally minor item.
The next step is, each member’s friends get in on the fight and the accusations start. Now it doesn’t matter if the first member saves the other’s life or saves a bus load of screaming children, there is nothing they can do right. This is where the problem needs to be handled. If not, it ends up like in Southbury with accusations flowing and it gets to a point of no return.
I do not have inside information about the Southbury incident, but chances are it does flow this way. The best quote of the article is from Robert Corrigan, the regional EMS supervisor: “It all boils down to management, proper management, people being able to manage people,”. Corrigan hit the nail on the head. Managing volunteer organizations is a challenge and when you add to that the fact that most officers do not have formal management training, this is what happens.
This is why the Volunteer and Combination Officers Section (VCOS, http://www.vcos.org) of the IAFC has started their volunteer leadership program. This is also why we spend quite a bit of time talking about management at VolunteerFD.org and Crusin for Solutions.
A strong management team heads off problems like this before they are made public. In this case you have the rank and file against the ruling board of the organization. My question is, who does the board answer to? Where is the oversight?
This topic rolls over into two of my past columns, “Embezzlement of Non-Profit Funds” and “Being an Officer.” Volunteer departments need to make an effort to appoint or elect officers with the skills needed to keep the department together rather then rip it apart.