Project Evaluation

Mike Watkins commented on the blogs of group 1 and group 5  
Mike Rivera commented on the blogs of group 3 and group 5

Volunteer Interview

Their role and position

Brooke, Career Center Director at a local college. I volunteered at an event that provided free clothing to those in need within the community.

What do they like most about your project? 

In order to enhance volunteer retention, the group spoke of offering training to the volunteers. I feel this would be seen as a value to volunteers because not only are they doing a great thing for the community, but they will also gain personal and professional growth in the process. Volunteers must see a value and each individual may have different reasons for volunteering their time. This type of incentive reaches volunteers by offering a professional value opposed to the more traditional incentive-recognition.

What do they think should be improved? Why? And how?

The only opportunity I saw is to provide a volunteer opportunity that is unique to other opportunities. This is only because Habitat for Humanity is so popular and this potential volunteering organization would need to differentiate themselves with those that associate building homes with Habitat for Humanity or show how your organization is better than Habitat for Humanity. I feel the product that the organization has developed will potentially be better than Habitat for Humanity and marketing would help show this to potential volunteers.

Volunteer Leader Interview

We interviewed Liane, who is the supervisor of the volunteers at Amanda’s place of employment.  It is a facility whose primary responsibility is educating adults in the early childhood field. Liane is the education coordinator and assistant program coordinator.  She oversees the other employees as well as develops the training calendar.  Another one of her duties is to oversee volunteers that may come into the facility.  She prepares them for their duties by giving them background information on the facility as well as the expectations of their volunteer experience.

Liane noted that she thought our group’s project did a great job of being people focused.  Usually, Liane is working “with one volunteer at a time, so it doesn't get too crazy. It is easy to get to know them on a more personal basis because it is on a small scale.”  She noted that we seemed to really focus on giving our volunteers a voice and a say in the work they were doing. 

Liane also liked how we allowed volunteers to collaborate.  “In our situation, there usually aren't other volunteers to collaborate with.  We do, however, have the volunteers shadow employees in order to understand what everyone does.  This does promote some collaboration.  This kind of tied in with the not making them feel lonely too.”

Liane thought that overall we seemed to have a good plan.  The only area she thought could use a little work was instead of just discussing the mission; she thought we should give the history of our program as well in order to show where it started and how that fits into the mission statement.  She also noted how well pairing volunteers with paid employees works for them and thought that might not be a bad idea especially if volunteers were new to the hard labor aspect.

Reflection

In the volunteer interview, Brooke, brought up a good point about how providing training for the volunteer not only benefits the organization, but also the volunteer as they can gain personal and professional growth in the process. With our program we can help potential volunteers see how they training they will receive can lead to growth in other areas. This should help increase our retention rates, as the volunteers are also receiving something, and not just the organization.

Brooke also brought up a good point about how our organization has a similar mission to that of Habitat for Humanity, so we will need to work to show potential volunteers how it is different, and why they should volunteer with us. While our organization provides clients with a new or remodeled home, the main goal of our organization is to better the community by creating self-sufficient citizens. 

In our volunteer leader interview, Liane thought our organization does a good job in giving volunteers a say in the work they do. This should help our organization retain volunteers as they will be able to take ownership in their work and help decide how they want to spend their volunteer time. Liane also liked how our organization encourages collaboration, which helps the volunteer in becoming part of the organization. They get to know the paid staff and other volunteers, which helps encourage teamwork and build unity.

Liane had a couple suggestions on how we might improve our organization; explaining our history to potential volunteers, and possibly having volunteers work with paid employees. Providing our organizations history to potential volunteers will help them see how the organization has progressed over time, and what it has accomplished. While our organizations looks to give volunteers a voice in what they do, having them work with a paid employee could be beneficial if they do not have much experience. The paid employee will be able to provide them with guidance so they don’t feel lost, while at the same time teaching them new skills that they can use in other fields. As the volunteer becomes more confident they would gain more independence and not need to work alongside a paid employee.