SIUSLAW NEWS ❚ WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2017
Coast
from 7A
volunteer are dependable. Over the
seven years Mealer has supervised
the driving program, not one vol-
unteer forgot about their commit-
ment.
“It’s kind of amazing to me,” he
said. “When I worked for the
power company, people would not
show up for work. I don’t see that
with volunteers. They’re there,” he
said.
And with thousands of volun-
teers in the community giving up
their time, it’s become the most
dependable workforce in the
Siuslaw region.
But Mealer sees problems when
it comes to volunteering, particu-
larly when it comes to the boards
who run these organizations.
The size of the boards can vary.
SOS has a board of 10 members,
while other organizations can have
as few as three.
“It’s a commitment,” Mealer
said. “These boards are working
boards. You’re on different com-
mittees to fundraise and work on
your bylaws. It’s not just showing
up to have coffee and cake and go
home. You have to get somebody
to commit the time to do that.
“You want to have somebody
who can bring resources to the
board. If you have an attorney on a
board, that’s a good thing. They
can’t represent the board, but they
have knowledge of law. If you
have somebody who works at a
bank with financial background,
that’s always a good asset. You
kind of look at your board and
where they can benefit the organi-
zation.”
But the number of people who
actually volunteer to be on these
boards is finite.
“Someone on one of my boards
made the comment of, ‘Yeah, if
you see someone on a board,
they’re probably on a different
board,’” Mealer said. “If they
know you’re on this board, then
they want you on another board.
It’s the same people just moving
around the town on different
boards.”
This creates a number of prob-
lems for nonprofits. First, a person
can get overwhelmed.
“If you’re on four boards, you
can get burned out. I’m retired. Do
I want to work 60 hours on all of
these different boards? It can be a
passion to help community, but at
what expense? We’ve asked people
to get onto the SOS board, and
they said, ‘I’m off of boards now, I
need to take a break.’ You can’t be
Mother Teresa doing one thing 80
hours a week.”
Another problem is diversity.
“Grantors ask, ‘What’s your
board makeup?’” Mealer said.
“You need to have different ages,
sexes and races. They want to see
what you look like. Are you just a
bunch of old white guys?
“We were at a board meeting
and we were trying to get some
younger people on our board. I
said, ‘I’m looking around the room
here, and every one of us is either
on social security, or is eligible for
social security. We have to diversi-
fy.’”
The general notion is, Florence
is a retirement community, there-
fore retirees will be on the boards.
Mealer takes umbrage with that. In
fact, he believes the “best place to
retire” is a bunch of hooey.
“I disagree with the concept that
Florence is a Del Webb retirement
community,” he said. “It’s not.
Yeah, there are a lot of people who
moved here and retired because
they sold their house in California.
That’s all well and good, but then
who’s going to pump your gas? If
this is going to be only a retirement
community, then there’s just going
to be a bunch of old people living
here. That’s silly. It’s not reality.
There are a lot of people in this
town that volunteer, of all ages.
That’s the lifeblood of any com-
munity from anywhere you go. It’s
all people that volunteer. That’s
what makes things run.”
Enter Kim Erickson.
duction, so I helped with that.”
She spent another five minutes
listing other organizations she’s
worked with.
Education, both for herself and
her children, was the primary fac-
tor in getting Erickson into the
philanthropic fold. Her first volun-
teer job was with LCC at the age of
29.
Just out of high school,
Erickson left Florence to attend
college in another town. She didn’t
like it.
“It was nothing like I expected,”
she said. “I wish I wouldn’t have
left, but it was a good experience.
If I hadn’t left, I would have
always wondered, ‘What if?’”
Within a year she was back at
Florence, attending LCC. She liter-
ally took every class the college
offered. In fact, the college brought
in extra courses just so she could
graduate from the center.
It’s that commitment to her edu-
cation that made Erickson feel she
had to give back. She had a unique
perspective on what the college
needed, being able to honestly
describe both the good and bad
experiences of the center. She
could make a difference.
At the same time, she got
“You have to give people a
chance”
“I am 39 years old,” Erickson
said. “I have two children, a 13-
year-old and a 6-year-old. I’m mar-
ried, divorced, remarried. I’m an
open book. I was born and raised
here, everybody knows me. That’s
who I am.”
She currently sits on the Rotary
Club of Florence Board for Public
Image, the advisory committee for
Lane
Community
College
Florence Center (LCC), she sat on
the Siuslaw School District
Advisory Committee, and was also
the treasurer for Quality Childcare
of Florence.
“And I help with a lot of things
that my kids are involved in. My
daughter was just in a CROW pro-
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Member SIPC
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involved with Rotary International
Club of Florence. She had seen the
work Rotary had done before by
attending the yearly auction and
being a Rotary “Student of the
Quarter.” She was impressed with
the organization, but didn’t know
if she wanted to join.
“If you’re not passionate about
it, you don’t feel like you should
be there, because you don’t feel
like you have as much energy and
you’re just there doing the foot-
steps,” she said. “There’s so many
different facets with Rotary that
you don’t have to be passionate
about everything. Even if your pas-
sions change within the club, you
can still do that at Rotary. That’s
why I felt like it was something I
could do.”
But to join, she had to be a part
of a committee.
“I knew that a huge part of the
auction was providing scholarships
back to the youth, and that’s what I
wanted to be a part of,” she said.
“This is where my passion was,
and this was a perfect fit. So, I
jumped in with both feet and
haven’t left.”
Passion is what drives Erickson
in all of her decisions about volun-
teering. At first it was her college,
then it was scholarships. Later on,
it was her children.
“If my kids are doing things and
they’re in a program, and if I want
to be involved with them, then I
need to be involved with the things
that they’re doing,” she said.
But as a working mother of two,
she had to set some boundaries for
herself. She learned to parse which
one would be too much work, and
built up the ability to say no to
organizations.
“I have to know when my cup is
full and that I’m not neglecting my
family and my kids,” she said. “If
I’m not still on the board, I’m still
a member,” she said. “I can still
give my insight.”
Plus, she feels that it’s important
for organizations to get a constant
flow of new ideas. If the same peo-
ple are on the same boards year
after year, it becomes an echo
chamber and ideas become stale.
This is why it’s important for
organizations to keep looking for
new members, both old and young.
“I feel that sometimes people in
their younger ages get over-
looked,” she said. “(Organizations)
have to ask. To be honest, when I
was a new Rotarian, I wouldn’t
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