Creating A Positive Volunteering Experience

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Are volunteers seen as partners of your organization, contributing to, extending and enriching the care of the beneficiaries or are they seen as a troublesome bunch of people who needs baby-sitting and take staff away from their work?

Throughout these few weeks, I have been thinking how the volunteering experience can be made a positive one? The volunteering experience can be positive and meaningful for both staff and volunteers if enough effort has been put in to prepare to receive volunteers and help them to understand and do their work. It can be a win-win situation.

Before Arrival of Volunteers

• Identify tasks to be performed by volunteers and their respective mentors or I/Cs (It might help to also have the job description on hand)
• Prepare all tools needed which might include stationeries, admin forms, tags etc
• Identify the reception area where volunteers will be received and briefed to ensure it is conducive

When Volunteers Arrive

• Usher volunteers into the reception area. Most of the time, volunteers need to wait for the whole team to arrive and you can make them feel comfortable by offering them something to drink and/or some reading materials on the organization
• Orientate your volunteers so they know the organization and the cause they are volunteering for (even if they are just episodic volunteers). Volunteers who know where they are in the scheme of things and the role they play may decide to do their best in their service
• Ice-breakers
• Introduce self and ICs
• About Organization
• About Centre
• About Volunteers and their roles
• About Beneficiaries

• Brief your volunteers on admin matters as it is inevitable that some paperwork e.g. attendance taking, volunteer service hours certfication etc will be needed
• Attendance taking
• Volunteer service certification procedures
• Safety & Security matters
• Washroom locations
• Refreshments (Can you imagine volunteering for an organization for 4 hours and not even offered a drink? What impression will you have of that organization?)
  
• Bag deposit
• Volunteer tags

• Next brief your volunteers on their tasks and their role and give them the necessary training for them to do their tasks
• Break into task groups
• Assign a leader (makes your coordination work easier and allow volunteers to take ownership as well)
• Issue tools needed for the tasks
• Describe the tasks as a "project" and leave the teams to organize themselves
• Give task and time targets (especially time for packing up to avoid situations where staff have to pick up the pieces after the volunteers)
• Look into job rotation if volunteers are staying for long hours
• Have fun
• Ongoing supervision and mentorship

Preparing to Leave

• Gather at recpetion area
• Debrief & Feedback Forms
• Group photos
• Issuing volunteer hours certification (with photocopies being made for filing)
• Distribute list of volunteering opportunities and application form (so volunteers keen to stay as regular volunteers can make the decision to sign up)

Post Activity Follow-Up

• Follow-Up visits to other centres
• Send Thank You Letter
• Send photos
• Send list of volunteering opportunities and application form (if necessary)
• File documents

Some important questions to ask:

• How much time is wasted on waiting? (Causes volunteers to be restless)
• Are refreshments provided? (Helps volunteers feel cared for)
• Are there service learning opportunities? (Helps makes the most out of the volunteer service)
• What kind of impression does staff gives to volunteer's involvement? (Help volunteers feel as valued partners)