TGIF: Hanna Taddese

Good morning achievers! Matt and I recently met this week's interviewee at a Seth Godin Linchpin event. What Hanna doesn't say in her interview below is that she is the self-proclaimed "biggest fan" of Seth and his work. We have to say, she's doing some pretty cool things herself! Read on to learn more about her & have a great Friday!

My name is Hanna Tadesse, I am a marketing professional in the DMV. I work for BLEN Corp, a tech company that specializes in application/web development & Visual Communications. I handle the client relations at BLEN, most of the work I do relates to marketing and client outreach. You can learn more about BLEN by visiting our blog at www.blencorp.com/blog and following us on twitter at www.twitter.com/blencorp.

In my free time, I volunteer at a local non-profit organization called Artists for Charity. We host a Benefit annually during AIDS week. Every year I feel overwhelmed and end up stressing out on the logistics of our Holiday Benefit. This year, my goal was to delegate and not stress as much.

This goal was important because I needed to learn not to try and take on too many things at once. Delegating not only reduces my stress, but also helps empower our volunteers. The more our volunteers are involved, the more likely they will be to continue helping us in the future. Retaining volunteers is an organizational challenge at AFC, so the more involved volunteers, the better!
First step was reaching out to friends, family, and folks in my network and asking for help. Working with the founder and other AFC members also helped me, because it solidified the problem or the issue I was trying to address. I no longer felt that I was alone in accomplishing my goal.
Waiting for results was frustrating and could have really hindered me from succeeding. I would wait around for volunteers to organize and mobilize, hoping for a surge of emails. But that didn’t happen. Instead I got incremental success, I kept at it and so did my network.

Consistently taking action and knowing that things won’t happen overnight kept me going.
Everyone in the organization helped as we knew we wouldn’t have a successful Benefit without the help of volunteers. There were no ifs or buts about it.
When we saw how many volunteers turned up we were ecstatic! This served our entire organization and especially myself as a lesson learned--asking for help and continually working towards your goal can really make it happen!
Don’t give up! Also, don’t waste time by trying out too many different methods or tactics. Stick to a few tactics that you think work best, trust them to work out and you will succeed.
Next for AFC is to continue growing our volunteer base and expanding the way we advocate, and educate the public about HIV/AIDS. Two minds are better than one, so we embrace our volunteers & supporters, the more the merrier. You can learn more about volunteering at AFC here.