Whose Your Daddy … er, I mean Advocate?

Most of us in the field of community relations are always, no matter what our budget and staff, trying to do more with less.  My department sure does.  I like to make jokes about the three people in my department … me, myself and I.  Hey, I really like my staff, what can I say.  I do have a fantastic team of consultants that I work with, which is great … no performance reviews (smile) … but sometimes you just need the person who is helping you out with your signature project to be an employee.

Luckily, Avnet has the greatest bunch of community-minded employees I’ve ever seen (and that’s saying a lot because the Motorolans were pretty dedicated to community service).   Their help is what has made our signature projects so successful.

And, sometimes, if you are lucky, if the stars are aligned and your yin and yang is balanced, you run across someone like Toni Ramsey.  Toni works in MarCom for one of our business groups.  This is a job that keeps her really busy.  Yet, Toni still finds time to help out with lots of different community outreach projects.  She’s also a key player on our Avnet Cares – Arizona team.

Recently I had an opportunity to attend a Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship class (see previous blog for more about The Center).  Unfortunately I had to bow out and needed to find a replacement.  No one else on my staff, neither me nor myself, was available.  What to do, what to do?

So, I decided to offer this opportunity to someone who isn’t even in my boss’ department, nor is a community relations employee … yep, Toni Ramsey came to mind.  Luckily, Toni was interested and available.  And, luckily, she also has a boss who understands the value of community outreach.

Looks like it was a good call.  Read what Toni had to say about the class:
“I just wanted to write a quick note of thanks for thinking of me and allowing me the opportunity to attend Developing a Community Involvement Strategy – Boston College course.  And you were right, I really did love this course from both a personal, professional and business perspective.  I was also very proud to be representing Avnet and proud to be a part of, and share our, community involvement programs that are already in place at Avnet.  Many thanks to you Teri for driving and having the vision to implement these programs.

The local Avnet Cares Team is already fired up this year with nine new members and a full calendar of events and projects.  I can easily see how our theme of having “Fun with a Purpose” could include community outreach that supports accelerating business objectives too. [Then she makes a joke about putting a policy/practice in place but you all wouldn’t get the internal jargon so I’ll edit out her next line].”

That last part about “accelerating business objectives” made me all goose bumpy and tingly! (I’m so easy to please.  So are me and myself.  What a great staff.  We don’t always get along but, somehow, we find a way to work it out.  We taulk amongst ourselves a lot.)

So, just remember, when you are doing your training and development, think outside the box.  It’s not always your own team who can benefit from outside seminars.  You never know when grooming an outside advocate will pay off … maybe even in strategy.