Recruitment
Reach Out to Youth - Their Way
The Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta, Canada has a dedicated volunteer corps that until recently was comprised mainly of adults who had been serving the Museum for 20 to 30 years. Little thought had been given to succession planning, although the volunteers were clearly aging and not very diverse, yet some of these older volunteers are eager to train and teach others to take over.
The Glenbow made a conscious decision to focus recruitment efforts on youth, especially students from junior high to university. These young people have brought new enthusiasm to the volunteer program and offer hope for maintaining volunteer commitment into the future. This article examines what was learned about the special needs of young volunteers, particularly in how to communicate our recruitment appeals and how to support their efforts.
Home Office Older Volunteers Initiative
The current UK government has often re-iterated that its policy is 'evidence led'. Whether this happens in practice is for others to decide, but a useful spin-off is that research has become more prevalent in areas interesting government.
This Research into Practice focuses on a report reviewing how volunteer-involving organisations attract and involve older volunteers. Between 1999 and 2003, the UK Home Office spread £1.5 million between 26 projects with the aim of looking at how to involve more older people in volunteering.
The report is a summation of the experiences of those projects, highlighting some well-trodden issues: what volunteers have to offer, what volunteers want and the barriers that need to be overcome to involve more older people. It also tries to distil lessons that are transferable.
Merging Customers into Employee Volunteering Efforts
Just when you think you've seen everything in volunteerism, somebody comes along with something totally new.
And then you discover that other people are thinking about it as well.
Steve was sitting in the Washington Dulles airport over the holidays, engaging in the popular airport occupation of people watching. In front of him was a young couple en route to Vermont, laden with lots of bags of Christmas presents to take to friends and family.
It was the bags that caught his attention.
Two of them were from a familiar store - REI, or Recreational Equipment, Inc., an outdoor equipment supplier. The interesting part was the message blazoned on the side of the bags: "Volunteer with us!"
Steve and Susan highlight what might be a new trend - "customer volunteering" - and what might be the implications of this form of service, both philosophically and managerially.
Getting the Attention You Want from the Media
Through several years of working in public relations (PR) and journalism, I've heard many publicity officers of social and sporting clubs and PR officers of non-profit organisations complain they are not getting 'enough exposure': 'I sent a release to The Times last week, and they didn't publish it' or 'I e-mailed a three-page letter on the annual general meeting two days ago, and the radio station didn't put a word of it to air'.
Having studied both public relations and journalism, I know that newspapers and the radio/television media, especially outside of capital cities, are always on the lookout for good local items of interest. I also know that there are rules that the media themselves must follow, in order to meet their own time lines.
If we learn to submit a press release using the right procedure, and if we do it right, it will go to air or be put into print. That is the basis of this article.
Thinking the Unthinkable: Are We Using the Wrong Model for Volunteer Work?
Right now in volunteer management we are facing a rising tide: the increasing preference among potential volunteers for short-term, episodic volunteering. By all guesses, in practically all countries, the number of volunteers preferring a shorter term commitment is rising and there isn’t much on the futures forecast to give one hope for any reversal in this trend. We need to step back and take a concerted look at what we are asking volunteers to do and how we are asking them to do it.
Is Volunteering Work or Leisure?
The field of volunteerism spends inordinate amounts of time arguing the finer points of just what is and what is not volunteering. Most readers are familiar with a range of concepts that strive to ‘define’ volunteering. Such concepts include volunteering being conducted
- without coercion,
- without monetary reward, and
- for the benefit of the community.
However, a much more fundamental question was posed recently on both the OzVPM (Australasia) and UKVPMs (United Kingdom) newsgroups, causing quite a reaction, and prompting us to share the thoughts of respondents with you all through this Keyboard Roundtable forum.
The question was, quite simply: ‘Is volunteering work or leisure?’
With the generous permission of the participants, we have compiled some of the key postings in this debate and hope e-Volunteerism readers will join in.
Volunteering as a Reflection of Life, or Wanted: Volunteer Toad Callers
One of the most fascinating things about volunteerism throughout history is that it represents the basic human response to "can you help?" It also reflects the culture, values and state of the times in which it occurs. What kinds of things are people willing to do to meet needs outside of their own? What does this tell us about our values? Our worries? Our hopes and fears?
In this issue we will share some of the original ways in which people both ask for volunteers as well as volunteer. We will also invite readers to share their own examples of wild and wonderful volunteer opportunities around the globe!
Fun and Simplicity Make These Recruitment Techniques Work
Tired of trying to get your group members motivated to help build membership? The General Federation of Women's Clubs knows that you have to make membership campaigns easy, rewarding and fun. We'll profile several of their membership-building strategies such as "Membership Round-Up" and you'll see how your group can try some of these great ideas to re-energize your members to recruit!