I’m here at the CBAIS conference attending the “Recruiting, Retaining, Managing Volunteers” session led by the Akron Urban League.  The Urban League has a Connect Your Community program with 60 volunteers, which include one-time, continuous, and at other levels of engagement.   The urban league has clocked 5662.68 volunteer hours to date through all of the classes.

I had the privilege of attending this excellent session with a room full of smart, thoughtful people who are sharing strategies for how to recruit, retain and sustain volunteers in public computing centers.

Recruiting

So where do you find volunteers?

The Akron Urban League finds them through their organizations.  They say that if you make volunteers feel important they will come back.  Another good place to find volunteers is through internship opportunities at training sites, social service agencies and political meetings out in the community.  In one example, the urban league said they recruited almost half the students for their computer class at a recent meeting in the community.

The discussion quickly opened up and participants in the room shared their own stories of how they are recruiting volunteers.  Some of the great ideas included looking for volunteers who have participated in past classes and through local colleges.

One participant mentioned that Health and Human Service Department will provide food stamps to volunteers and HHS will count their volunteer work in public computing centers as community service hours.  Through this program, one organization found that they were able to attract volunteers for over 120 hours a month.  It’s important to check local areas and see what kinds of HHS hours they have that can create volunteer opportunities for your organzation.

Local businesses are also great places to look for volunteers. They often have staff who can come in and teach about Internet safety and other important topics. Software companies and banks are good places to look.

Other groups have had great success with their local libraries.  Librarians can sometimes come in to teach computer classes, depending on the type of relationship that an organization may have in their community.

Family, friends, and neighbors also make great volunteers.

It may also be important to work with a local social service agency that can provide background checks on volunteers for public computing centers.  VolunteerMatch.com provides a platform where orgs can post their volunteer position descriptions.

When selecting volunteers, ask people to bring in a resume.  Look for people with an IT background, teaching background, or work study students who are majoring in education.  Career counselors at local colleges and universities can be helpful places to look.

Retaining

How do you keep students in class?  The Akron Urban League provided these three tips:

1. Create relationships – Get to know your volunteers.  Bring them out to lunch or offer to write a reference for them in return for their service.
2. Follow up with your volunteers – Once you know what matters to your volunteers, then you can go out of your way to meet that need.
3. Praise! Praise! Praise! – Just say thank you.

It’s important for organizations to give something back to their volunteers.  Provide networking opportunities or recommendations for resumes.  It’s key to get people to understand that there’s something in it for them in order to get them involved as volunteers.  At the urban league, we give out certificates, people have emailed to say thank you for my certificate, that was so nice. Benefits for volunteers

Once you lose contact, you may not hear from them again.  Consider keeping a schedule that will help you know when people are available to volunteer.

Volunteers like to be needed.  Hold a public event and give people certificates.  Honor their service to the community.

Managing

In the final section, the discussion focused on strategies for managing and sustaining your volunteers.  Here are a few important points offered by the Akron Urban League:

• You can’t teach someone to teach that doesn’t want to teach.
• Create specific in-class tasks based on talents & abilities.
• Need to set boundaries and rules – let the volunteer know they are not the teacher.
• Provide a model for how to be a constructive.
• Volunteers should stay with their original instructor
• Provide encouragement to your volunteers

One participant mentioned that Michigan State has a great resource on volunteer management available through the Michigan State Extension.

If you have suggestions or lessons learned on how to recruit, retain, or manage volunteers, please consider sharing them in the comments section below or on the CBAIS wiki.