In this podcast, I share a presentation I gave at the 2019 IISE Annual Conference in Orlando, FL on May 19, 2019.

For the past 3 years, Lean and Six Sigma practitioners in Portland (Oregon) have been volunteering with local nonprofits to teach and mentor them on process improvement. The focus has been on environmental reuse nonprofits primarily. The effort gained traction due to beach cleanup volunteer project started by the IISE Sustainable Development Division at the 2013 Annual Conference in Puerto Rico. I share best practices and key findings about applying Lean and Six Sigma principles with nonprofits.

I also provided an update on a new book called “Lean Six Sigma for Good: Lessons from the Gemba (Volume 1),” along with a plan developed by Royal Roads University (Victoria, BC, Canada) to expand the volunteer effort across the US and internationally.

You can learn more about nonprofit volunteering, personal benefits for volunteering, and learn how they can get involved with or setup local volunteering efforts in their city.

Links

* Lean Six Sigma for Good: Lessons from the Gemba (Volume 1) * IISE Sustainable Development Division* IISE Annual Conference* LeanSixSigmaForGood.com* LeanPortland.com

Transcript

In this podcast, I share a presentation I gave in Orlando a

couple of weeks ago for the IISE annual conference. It was a presentation on

how to expand Lean and Six Sigma in nonprofit volunteering around the world, but

I primarily focused on the United States. I share a project that I worked with

some students from Royal Roads University. I asked them to help me put together

a plan and they came up with some great ideas for help and connected me with

students, volunteers for the nonprofit, and he nonprofit themselves. The audio

from that presentation is available, but the video is also available through

the website, leansixsigmaenvironment.org, or also

at leansixsigmaforgood.com. Thanks.

Brion (B): 

… how do you align everybody up to get the nonprofits on the board at

the right time with the volunteers that want to be there. It’s been difficult

coordination but we know they want the help and we know we have volunteers. I

have like 40 on our list that want to help, but it’s all a coordination

activity, so it’s there.

The turnover in the nonprofits is way higher than I imagined

and that’s really disrupted a lot of activity where you have a lot of start and

stop. Then just trying to match up people’s schedule with when the nonpro...