Towards communicating the value of volunteers: lessons from the field
Well-managed volunteers are assets that charities insist they cannot do without. Nevertheless, few charities publish the value of their volunteers' efforts in annual reports. Charities' current practices in communicating volunteers' value reflect the regulatory environment, but not their increasing professionalization. Valuing volunteers can assist charities in services planning and to build their reputation in their communities. However, charities' managers must also accept that judgement is required in negotiating the sensitive nature of defining volunteers' value.
Surviving a Football Club Crisis: Focus Groups Talking
Outside of an earlier set of research questions, it was amateur football club focus group data which revealed previously unidentified research questions of key interest to participants: how do amateur sports organisations weather a crisis for survival? What are the roles of leadership which empower rebuilding, rather than complete disintegration of an amateur club? Focus group and interview data was combined in the analysis to answer these two questions, supported by the Theory of Practice (Bourdieu). Five case studies clearly identified the roles of habitus and the uses, or transformative capacity, of different forms of capital (in particular, social capital) during crisis management. Two different leadership models were apparent in this Bourdieusian analysis of these amateur clubs which survived such a crisis. The sports field may be seen as solely an arena where there is competition for the ball, but it is also a bounded space of symbolic actions, building culturally identifiable commonalities for participants, and a deep commitment to the specific sport. This study offers a fresh appreciation of the role of leadership and the transformative capacity of different categories of capital in amateur sports club. Such findings may well be transferable to other entities in the not-for-profit and charities sector.
Space Qualification Testing of a Shape Memory Alloy Deployable CubeSat Antenna
Abstract : Increasingly capable CubeSat missions require antenna with improved Radio Frequency performance over the traditional CubeSat antennas. Deployable quadrifilar helical antennas (QHA) enable an acceptable stowing volume and deploy to provide increased gain and bandwidth over traditional patch and dipole antennas. Extensive ground testing is required to ensure the antenna is space qualified and to characterize the antenna deployment in the space environment. AFIT requires a QHA to perform a future CubeSat geolocation mission and contracted Helical Communication Technologies (HCT) to design and manufacture a Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) L-band deployable QHA. Vibration, thermal vacuum, laser vibrometer, and Voltage Standing Wave Ratio (VSWR) experiments were conducted on the HCT antenna to verify the hardware in a simulated launch environment and to characterize the SMA deployment in the simulated space environment.The HCT QHA successfully passed all required NASA General Environmental Verification Standards space qualification testing. Several anomalies experienced by the QHA encourage a redesign. The deployed antenna length varied from 250-290 mm and future RF testing is required to determine if the antenna geometry variations are significant enough to impact the geolocation mission.This research documents the test results for a QHA deployable CubeSat antenna testing and aids the development of CONOPS for the future AFIT CubeSat mission utilizing the HCT QHAs.