I received quite a bit of responses from my original message regarding “another Veterans Corps”…
Thank you all for caring.
From many of the responses, there are valid arguments made for and against this new “Veterans Corps”.
On the one hand, this new initiative, if properly supported by existing VSOs, can help launch an awareness program to returning veterans and introduce them to the traditions of “veterans serving veterans”. This will help increase awareness for VSOs like The American Legion amongst younger veterans and get them involved. And with some mentoring from older veterans, we can expect these young veterans who get involved in the “Veterans Corps” eventually volunteer their time with the VSOs and continue to make an impact. As one legionnaire wrote “If the new Veterans Corps is to strengthen and enable organizations to build capacity for their own missions to assist fellow veterans, then there is a chance this new initiative will actually accomplish something.”
On the other hand, if improperly executed, this program risks wasting taxpayer money and further disenfranchise veterans who are already doing everything they can.
Your collective wisdom has enlightened me in the fact that given this initiative, we can either be counter-productive and argue who can provide the best assistance to our veterans, or we can see this opportunity and work together to help mentor a generation of returning veterans the importance of peer-support and volunteer services to strengthen their communities.
And keeping true to the grassroots, I urge you to find out more about this Veterans Corps and ask your American Legion representatives, and your congressional representatives, to ensure VSOs critical role in developing the “Veterans Corps”.
Monday, June 8, 2009
another Veterans Corps???
Congress is trying to establish a new “Veterans Corps” under the established programs of AmeriCorps. (http://hamptonroads.com/2009/03/worthy-AmeriCorps-program-benefit-veterans) The provisions introduced to both the House and Senate asked that the taxpayers to put more money into a bureaucracy and establish a program from the ground up to do the job that so many Veterans Service Organizations are already doing. From what I can tell, this new initiative will give AmeriCorps the funding it needs to establish transition assistance volunteers to help veterans.
Now correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve always thought the point of VSOs, like The American Legion, are chartered by Congress to organize volunteer efforts, manage donations, and bypassing the government bureaucracy, and putting the efforts and initiatives at the hands of veterans who understand how to help another veteran. Maintaining true grassroots and empowering fellow veterans to serve their peers not only ensure the quality but also the bond that ties a veteran to his/her community. Why do we want to waste more taxpayer’s money to build something that is already there???
So why is the Obama administration looking in another direction on helping our veterans??? Can it be simply that Obama, or Congress, didn’t really think this through? Are they just jumping into the bandwagon to simply do something for the sake of doing something???
If it were up to me, I’d say instead of building another veterans’ service organization under AmeriCorps, Congress and Obama should look at what all of the VSOs are doing, and help build partnership across the board and help facilitate peer support to reduce the redundancy and maximize support to those returning veterans that need the help…
I think this is a case where politics and the appearance of doing something needs to take a backseat. Acting with reason and operating with the best interests of our veterans and servicemembers should be our first responsibility. Congress can really make a difference by coming to the VSOs and ask for an alliance or some sort to establish this “Veterans Corps”… but that’s just my opinion…
Now correct me if I’m wrong, but I’ve always thought the point of VSOs, like The American Legion, are chartered by Congress to organize volunteer efforts, manage donations, and bypassing the government bureaucracy, and putting the efforts and initiatives at the hands of veterans who understand how to help another veteran. Maintaining true grassroots and empowering fellow veterans to serve their peers not only ensure the quality but also the bond that ties a veteran to his/her community. Why do we want to waste more taxpayer’s money to build something that is already there???
So why is the Obama administration looking in another direction on helping our veterans??? Can it be simply that Obama, or Congress, didn’t really think this through? Are they just jumping into the bandwagon to simply do something for the sake of doing something???
If it were up to me, I’d say instead of building another veterans’ service organization under AmeriCorps, Congress and Obama should look at what all of the VSOs are doing, and help build partnership across the board and help facilitate peer support to reduce the redundancy and maximize support to those returning veterans that need the help…
I think this is a case where politics and the appearance of doing something needs to take a backseat. Acting with reason and operating with the best interests of our veterans and servicemembers should be our first responsibility. Congress can really make a difference by coming to the VSOs and ask for an alliance or some sort to establish this “Veterans Corps”… but that’s just my opinion…
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
How to start a good social network for veterans:
I hear a lot of ambitious people wanting to start a social network these days to “provide transitional service and connect the veteran community”. While I admire their initiative and desire to help, often they lack the knowledge of what social networking really is and don’t know how to really tap the potential of social networking and employ the power of social media and new media.
One example:
I recently received a call from CPT “Socialnetwork Champion” to discuss his social network for the Marines. I asked a few questions about his desires, and this is the facts I collected:
• They have a brief market analysis and have determined that their targeted audience should be Marines and Veterans age between 18 and 35.
• They want to provide transitional services to these veterans.
• They have lined up one headhunting company to provide this employment service.
• They want to provide a matching feature to connect Marines with potential mentors and employers.
• They want to provide a vehicle of communication for active duty Marines and veterans.
I think what they have so far is great, but here are some problems:
• Their market research is incomplete and failed to capture the growing market share in Baby Boomer generation that encompasses the Vietnam generation veterans.
• If they do not target the older generation then how are they to provide the matching service for young veterans? Just peer-peer will not get them the experience and institutional knowledge our older veterans have with regards to the VA and other processes necessary to ensure a successful transition.
• Their identified goal of providing transitional services is too general. There are just too many issues for any one person to tackle. Transition means anything from PTSD support, to financial services, to family life mentoring, to job placement, to social reintegration. If a social network does not identify and target a function to provide a service, users may be distracted and do not recognize the things that makes your social network unique. The point here is that social networking is like any other competitive market, where you have to offer something new and useful in the product you are trying to deliver to ensure users return. Social networks are nothing if you don’t have users and no one is coming back for a unique service and/or function.
If you are thinking about using a social network to connect and provide a service to our veterans, here are some of the things to think about to ensure your success:
• You need to identify your targeted audience. Be as precise as you can and cast your net as wide as you can. What you may need to do is to segment your audience types and by demographic. Once you have that, then do your market analysis to determine just what the needs are in each segmented section and determine the services and function you can provide to that section.
• Then you have to carefully determine the risk and return on your investment on each of the sections of your segmented audience group. If you are providing a peer-peer support service to women veterans, then you need to determine what competitive edge you have, is there a existing social network providing the exact thing? Also keep in mind that the functions you decide must meet a need and has to depend on your Voice of Customer analysis. So you may want to do a small online survey to see just how many people may be interested in getting online peer support for VA home loan process (or whatever else you have identified). What you don’t want to end up with is a high price function, connecting Marines with golf courses that provide discount to veterans, that only serves a small population and is not demanded by users on the social network environment.
• Also you need to design a functional process that your social network will adopt and practice. You must always identify key input variables and output variables of that functional process so you can improve on this process int eh future depending on user input.
• You must identify all open-sourced social networks and see if any of them can provide what you wish to accomplish before you decide to spend a few million dollars on tech cost. A lot of times software companies will sell you on things that they know won’t work because they know the exact same function is being performed by Facebook or Boomj. But they will sell you the software solution anyhow just to make money off you. So do as much as you can open-source, and host only critical information on paid technology. I recommend that database functionalities are a must pay service since that allows you to collect user data for your own segmentation and targeted marketing.
• And lastly, know your users and keep up on your users. Drive your users to your site. Your social network is nothing without users so don’t focus too much on the technology and forget your users…
One example:
I recently received a call from CPT “Socialnetwork Champion” to discuss his social network for the Marines. I asked a few questions about his desires, and this is the facts I collected:
• They have a brief market analysis and have determined that their targeted audience should be Marines and Veterans age between 18 and 35.
• They want to provide transitional services to these veterans.
• They have lined up one headhunting company to provide this employment service.
• They want to provide a matching feature to connect Marines with potential mentors and employers.
• They want to provide a vehicle of communication for active duty Marines and veterans.
I think what they have so far is great, but here are some problems:
• Their market research is incomplete and failed to capture the growing market share in Baby Boomer generation that encompasses the Vietnam generation veterans.
• If they do not target the older generation then how are they to provide the matching service for young veterans? Just peer-peer will not get them the experience and institutional knowledge our older veterans have with regards to the VA and other processes necessary to ensure a successful transition.
• Their identified goal of providing transitional services is too general. There are just too many issues for any one person to tackle. Transition means anything from PTSD support, to financial services, to family life mentoring, to job placement, to social reintegration. If a social network does not identify and target a function to provide a service, users may be distracted and do not recognize the things that makes your social network unique. The point here is that social networking is like any other competitive market, where you have to offer something new and useful in the product you are trying to deliver to ensure users return. Social networks are nothing if you don’t have users and no one is coming back for a unique service and/or function.
If you are thinking about using a social network to connect and provide a service to our veterans, here are some of the things to think about to ensure your success:
• You need to identify your targeted audience. Be as precise as you can and cast your net as wide as you can. What you may need to do is to segment your audience types and by demographic. Once you have that, then do your market analysis to determine just what the needs are in each segmented section and determine the services and function you can provide to that section.
• Then you have to carefully determine the risk and return on your investment on each of the sections of your segmented audience group. If you are providing a peer-peer support service to women veterans, then you need to determine what competitive edge you have, is there a existing social network providing the exact thing? Also keep in mind that the functions you decide must meet a need and has to depend on your Voice of Customer analysis. So you may want to do a small online survey to see just how many people may be interested in getting online peer support for VA home loan process (or whatever else you have identified). What you don’t want to end up with is a high price function, connecting Marines with golf courses that provide discount to veterans, that only serves a small population and is not demanded by users on the social network environment.
• Also you need to design a functional process that your social network will adopt and practice. You must always identify key input variables and output variables of that functional process so you can improve on this process int eh future depending on user input.
• You must identify all open-sourced social networks and see if any of them can provide what you wish to accomplish before you decide to spend a few million dollars on tech cost. A lot of times software companies will sell you on things that they know won’t work because they know the exact same function is being performed by Facebook or Boomj. But they will sell you the software solution anyhow just to make money off you. So do as much as you can open-source, and host only critical information on paid technology. I recommend that database functionalities are a must pay service since that allows you to collect user data for your own segmentation and targeted marketing.
• And lastly, know your users and keep up on your users. Drive your users to your site. Your social network is nothing without users so don’t focus too much on the technology and forget your users…
Friday, February 6, 2009
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
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