How Volunteers Built the Society

The Society’s lack of money meant that it depended almost entirely on volunteer labor. But our volunteers were no longer limited to the three of us who founded the Society and functioned as its initial officers — Charles W. Williams, Peter Zuckerman, and myself. Many of our new members had begun helping with Society tasks. We also pressed our wives, children, neighbors, colleagues, and friends into performing Society chores.

Our new members bubbled with ideas for programs and activities. Futurists, we found, are all idea-people, and some were willing to do the work required to transform an idea into reality.

Joseph F. Coates, for example, volunteered to start a radio program on the future, and he proved to be an excellent interviewer. The program, called “The Future of—,” featured lively discussions with experts in many different fields. The program was broadcast initially over WAMU-FM (American University’s station) and distributed by National Public Radio to stations across America.

Major Joseph F. Martino, an Air Force operations officer, proposed a column for THE FUTURIST on technological forecasting, and he soon began producing a series of brilliant articles based on his intimate knowledge of military forecasting. The U.S. Air Force had pioneered in technological forecasting since the end of World War II, and Martino knew everything there was to know about what was going on. Later, he wrote Technological Forecasting for Decision Making (1972), the classic textbook in this field, and we happily included it in our book service for members.

Hollis Vail, a management consultant with the U.S. Department of the Interior, volunteered to make tape recordings of speeches at Society forums. So we began marketing his tapes to members who could not be at our meetings. Hollis also gave us professional management advice, which I badly needed since I had never before managed anything but myself — and had not done such a good job of that!

Volunteers helped enormously to expand the Society’s services to members but did little to reduce the workload on those of us who founded the Society. Our growing membership and expanding services meant that we desperately needed staff people to do things for which we had no suitable volunteers.

So I was always behind in my work — both the work I needed to do to keep my paid job and my volunteer work for the Society. One result was that my home office overflowed with unread manuscripts and unanswered letters. I tried to prioritize my tasks by putting incoming materials in boxes labeled CAN WAIT and URGENT. But the letters and manuscripts assigned to CAN WAIT were quickly buried by additional incoming mail while the URGENT boxes became forbidding towers of paper.

In desperation, I set up a special box for items that were more urgent than urgent, and labeled it URGENTISSIMO. But the URGENTISSIMO box also quickly filled up and overflowed, and months might pass before I got around to dealing with a manuscript or letter.

“You’ve caught a tiger by the tail!” one of my friends informed me, and that expressed exactly how I felt. The Society had developed a forward momentum that was both exciting and terrifying. I couldn’t ride the tiger and I couldn’t let go of it. I just hung on to its tail for dear life!