The Notebook

The last boss I had in the nonprofit PR world was fantastic, but obsessive.  Obsessive about documentation.  She told all of us with whom she worked about her messy divorce.  She vehemently regretted not having proof of, well, whatever it was she knew was not good about her former husband.  Her penance for this mistake was to make everyone around her write down everything…print out every email…save every fax and confirmation…document time and date of phone conversations…create timelines for events…and then put it all in two notebooks, one to keep and one to give the client.  Our ginormous notebooks were stuff of PR legend.

Yesterday I handed off another notebook, finishing off a project and passing it on to the next volunteer.  Isn’t there something really satisfying about handing this material item off that signifies the immaterial work you’ve put in to a project?  For a list-maker like myself, I enjoy organizing the different aspect of a project and putting the sheets behind a neat little tab.  Having a timeline in the front with what the unsuspecting victim next in line for your job will be doing for the next 12 months of their life.  Printing out emails that prove that this person was a gem to work with, and that person was a jerk - so watch out.

I think there is something unique in the volunteer notebook – a sense of “what’s mine is yours.”  Like I said before, in my professional experience we kept a copy of the notebook for our firm and one went to the client – a very benevolent gesture as the client could literally take the notebook and recreate what we did.  However, in the world of volunteerism that’s what we do every day.  We take on a job for a while, make sure we package it up nicely, and share with the next one in line.  Not to say that we don’t keep something ourselves because we grow in our abilities and talents and quite often learn something new.  I just believe that the giving isn’t just in the project to which we dedicate ourselves, it’s also in the generosity of giving lessons learned on to others who are giving of themselves.

It was a moment of contentment to hand over that notebook yesterday.  But (let me hear you all say, “Amen!”) I’ve got three new ones I’m working on today….