Statistical Perspectives

Any gubmint program is immersed in numbers. Numbers are the grease that helps the wheel of gubmint turn 'round. Without numbers, most gubmint agencies would simply dry up and blow away. Naturally, you must have a healthy respect for numbers because it's the numbers that pay the bills and keep the money flowing and so forth.

I urge you not to get hung up on numbers and I doubly urge you to avoid spouting numbers like a deranged robot. Yes, numbers are important but they will put people to sleep faster than a lethal injection.

As we've mentioned, focus on stories. Meanwhile, though, you also need to be a number cruncher, a small time bean counter. You must pay attention to your numbers even if you don't use them much in polite conversation.

What are the most important numbers? There are five important numbers you need to watch:

1) Total Volunteer Stations
2) Total Volunteers
3) Total Active Volunteers
4) Total Inactive Volunteers
5) Total Volunteer Hours

All but #4 should be increasing. Obviously, #5 should be decreasing.

When you do the PPVA, there are a lot of other numbers to plug in but they are largely meaningless from your perspective. They are simply numbers that the feds need to continue to justify their bureaucracies.

You really don't need to pay much attention to these numbers on a short term basis. But you should look at them every six month and definitely every 12 months. Make a note of where these numbers are when you sign on and then track your progress throughout your tenure.

One thing you need to know about your numbers is how their statistical significance diminishes as the numbers "pass up the ladder."

Each time your numbers get up a rung of the ladder, they get aggregated and, in effect, rounded off. By the time they reach the top of the ladder on the highest national level, they are rounded off to a ridiculous degree. It appears to me lately that total RSVP numbers nationwide are being around to the nearest 100,000. It once appeared that they were rounded to the nearest 10,000. Now, I think the CNCS Top Brass has upped the ante and is rounding off to the nearest 100,000!!!! As far as the volunteer hours go, those are rounded to even more ridiculous levels--perhaps the nearest quarter billion dollars of value, but at least the neatest $100,000,000 of value equivalent.

So, here you are down at the bottom rung of the ladder trying to get your numbers right and the people above you are rounding the heck out of them. It really make you ask the question, "Why bother?" Why should you just round off your own numbers to the nearest level that makes prudent sense and then send them up the ladder. That's one reason I've encourage volunteers to stop using fractions of an hour in their time reports. PLEASE stop using half hours and, gawd forbid that you use a quarter hour. What's the point? Please round off to the nearest hour. I have actually encouraged some very active volunteers to round off to the nearest 10 hours.

I served as a Forest Service Volunteer for 7 seasons and logged more than 4,000 "official" hours. In the first season, I was tracking every little nit-picky piece of volunteer time. By the 7th season, I was rounding off with the best of the rounder offers. I never had one thought about reporting hours higher than I actually served. In my mind, I was convinced that I was actually under reporting my hours by rounding off. I really didn't care. After awhile, what difference does it make? Most people aren't volunteering because they get to report their time. They are volunteering because they case about a cause or an organization or an activity or a group of people. The reporting of the hours is typically just a big nuisance. So, don't obsess about being gnat's anatomy precise on your hours and so forth. It's the bigger picture that counts.

We will revisit this particular post often to make sure we have "got it right."