Here’s an idea – why not have a volunteer recruiting event for singles on Valentine’s Day? It’s fun, unique, and – trust me – it’ll be more interesting than what most of us singletons end up doing on February 14th. Check out this excerpt from A Toolkit for Volunteer Speed Matching to spur your thinking. The Toolkit was developed in England for volunteer centers who want to help a number of organizations showcase their volunteer opportunities; it could work equally well for one organization anywhere with a number of different volunteer roles. I’m sure there’s lots of other great ways to play off this concept to design a fun, memorable, and effective recruitment event. If you’ve done an event like this before, or you’re going to try it this year, leave a comment and let us know!
Excerpt from A Toolkit for Volunteer Speed Matching by Volunteer Centre Dacorum, ©2005.
Why Speed Matching?
- It offers a new way of recruiting volunteers, which is fun & upbeat. Not all volunteering could be described as fun, but there is no reason why the recruitment process has to be too heavy, especially at the first “date” stage.
- It makes a change from Volunteer Fairs, where often the most positive outcome is networking with organisations on other stalls.
- It focuses organisations’ minds on the way they portray their activities to the general public. It’s much easier to talk at length about what they do than to distil it down into 3 or 4 minutes.
- It makes organisations realise the competition they have from other local organisations. Why would a volunteer join them rather than another group?
- It can be used as a PR opportunity for organisations – a chance to describe what they do to a variety of people regardless of any potential volunteering relationship.
- It creates a lot of interest, especially from the media.
- The Speed Matching model can be adapted to various situations.
Adapting the Speed Matching model:
- Volunteer daters need a choice of opportunities. Volunteer Speed Matching can be run with a variety of organisations, or by one large organisation that has a variety of opportunities.
- Themed sessions can be run:
- organisations with something in common e.g. disability / elderly
- volunteer “daters” all from one source e.g. hold the event at the premises of a local company as part of an employee volunteering initiative. We currently have Epson interested!
- hold an event just for potential trustees
- run an information event using the speed matching model e.g. for personnel &/or politicians from a local authority
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day of Service (MLK Day) is the most widely known and supported single day of service in the US. I’m sure many of your organizations are hosting a group of volunteers today.
“Planning and Executing Successful Large-Scale Days of Service,” training material developed by HandsOn Network, is featured in the new issue of e-Volunteerism. I wish we could have offered it to you before MLK Day, because it has lots of great information on carrying out a successful day of service – including the important and often-forgotten goal of raising awareness about your issue and providing entry points to ongoing ways to serve. But since there are many other events like this around the world, it’s not too late for this material to be useful – or plan ahead for next year!
As this issue’s Training Design feature, “Planning and Executing Successful Large-Scale Days of Service” is a complete toolkit including a 28-page guide, a Facilitator Agenda, and a full set of PowerPoint slides. If you’re an e-Volunteerism subscriber, you can access the complete toolkit here. A brief excerpt on evaluation and reflection is included below, which I hope will help you as you wrap up and assess your event.
Evaluation and reflection are key components to a Day of Service. As the projects end and volunteers celebrate and tools are put away, take time to ask volunteers about the day. What worked? What didn’t work? What did they learn? What will they – and the community – do now?
Evaluation
Following the Day of Service take time to celebrate and reflect. Take a look at what worked and what needed to be improved. Create a “best practices” document to keep on file for next year’s planning and list what could be improved. Compile surveys from the Day of Service and share results with staff, volunteer leaders and project volunteers. Create an additional evaluation to send out to volunteers and leaders to ask them about their experience.
Reflection
As discussed in the Planning Guide section, reflection is on way to educate volunteers about their communities. Reflection provides volunteers with a way to look back at their experiences, evaluate them, and apply what is learned to future experiences. Without reflection, volunteers just report on experiences instead of examining how what they have done impacts themselves and the community. Reflection activities that are designed well and implemented thoughtfully allow volunteers to acquire a deeper understanding of the needs in their community and how they can continue to make positive contributions in the community. Reflection is one of the most productive aspects of volunteering. Project leaders should plan reflection activities for all volunteers on the project; the committee should also participate in an additional reflection led by staff or committee chair once their work is completed. The staff can do an additional activity once all work is complete. This allows everyone to process their varying levels of participation and to capture and improve the process for the next time around.
Are you looking for ways to re-energize your recruitment and retention efforts? Our online journal, e-Volunteerism, has recently published two really interesting articles on the possibilities that social networking holds for volunteer engagement.
The first article is “Using Social Media in Your Volunteer Engagement Strategy” by Joshua Fixler. This Training Design article will help you and your nonprofit or government organization identify opportunities for using social media in your volunteer engagement strategy. Use it as the basis for in-house training (it even includes a ready-to-use Microsoft PowerPoint presentation!) or just read it yourself to jump-start your thinking. (This article presupposes a bit of familiarity with social media tools on your part. Need some basics? Read this free article from JFFixler and Associates (and be sure to check out the resources and definitions at the end!). Here’s an excerpt from the article:
Some Tips on Using Social Media (The Five Bs)
- Be Yourself
Do not just go to social media to sell something. Share your interests, passions and skills, just as you would in an in-person relationship. People do not come to these spaces to be pitched to, but they are always happy to hear about exciting opportunities from people they trust.
- Be Prepared (to give up some control)
You will have less control of your message, but your message will be more powerful. Think of the difference between the impact of a handwritten appeal versus a form letter. When asked, your circle of influence will be happy to speak on your behalf…
(You’ll need to read the full article to get the other three “Bs”!)
Full Text (for e-Volunteerism subscribers)
Purchase article (for non-subscribers)
The second article is “Social Media and the Gift Economy: Volunteerism in the Vanguard” by Patrick Daniels in the UK. Here’s an excerpt:
Increased Visibility for Volunteering
Engagement with social media can increase the visibility of volunteers’ experiences and improve volunteer managers’ understanding of the volunteering they offer. When a volunteer is providing service online, perhaps as a discussion board moderator or an online peer mentor, a big chunk of their engagement is clearly in the form of comments, posts, edits or messages. A consequence of this is that much of what the volunteer does is probably recorded, searchable and, to an extent, measurable.
Social media also offers the volunteer manager more opportunity to be open and transparent with volunteers about the particular needs of the project and its service users. Blogging or sending out regular e-mail updates about the project keeps volunteers more informed about the broader context and empowers them to get more involved should they want to. This can also give volunteers a perspective on the wider work of the organisation should their involvement be narrow, such as volunteering for a short shift outside office hours or remotely away from the main office.
Full Text (for e-Volunteerism subscribers)
Purchase article (for non-subscribers)
