Meeting with the Clubs on Volunteers

As part of my VISTA assignment this year, I was asked, along with my co-VISTA, to entirely revamp Boys & Girls Clubs of Portland's volunteering program. This has been a very exciting process over the last few months, and we were excited to hear that BGCP has put a new position in place to continue this process. Over the past month or so, we have been working with this new Coordinator of Program Collaborations and Volunteerism, Tonya Peshel. Tonya and I just finished meeting with two of our Boys & Girls Clubs to talk to them about their perception of the volunteering system as it stands and their vision of how the program can change to benefit the Clubs' operations.

Checking In

 

Our first step was to figure out what the Clubs thought was going well, and what needed some improvement, as well as what the immediate needs were. Our consistent answer as to what was going well was that volunteers who were in place with a specific program and strong idea as to what they would be doing each day were doing a great job. This is heartening, but it's consistent with what we've said is a big problem with the volunteering system as it stands: volunteers with no expectations of what they're doing are wandering around aimlessly, not contributing, and feeling unwanted, so we lose them. It highlights the importance of making sure each volunteer has a set of expectations in a written position description: the more people know what they're doing, the more they'll do and the better they'll feel doing it.

As to what needed improvement, in addition to what was said above about the aimlessness of some volunteers, we saw some consistent issues with communication and the process for staff to follow. At one site the wrong person had been getting communication about prospective volunteers, while at the other staff weren't sure who was in charge of a given volunteer. One of our main goals for this process revamp should be to make sure all duties are clearly assigned by role so that when one staff member departs the expectation is clear as to what the new, replacement staff member's job is with regards to volunteers. This also makes communication clear between the administrative team and people on the ground in the Clubs.

For immediate needs: both Clubs have been waiting on a new Orientation procedure that we will be delivering in the next couple weeks. The Clubs also needed re-clarification about what to expect and tell volunteers in the near future. It's good to have a reminder that even though we may spend a lot of time thinking about it, the Club staff have a lot on their plates and can use frequent contact and reassurance.

Big Dreams

 

The next part of our meetings was my favorite. This was a chance to talk about what the Clubs would really like to see come out of the volunteering program. It's great to see the passion our Club staff have for making the kids' lives better, and the ambitious ideas they have for significant, exciting programs that volunteers could provide. I think this is our best way in to reach the Staff about what volunteers can do for the organization: start with the promise that skilled volunteers have for providing exciting programs, and then start in on the process stuff that might not be as shiny but has the potential to really simplify and expand the impact of the jobs they spend every day doing.

Out of this conversation came a very important point that I had read about previously, but hadn't fully considered and understood: the importance of an orientation into the population and neighborhood that the volunteers will be working in. I'll be writing a separate blog post on that subject in the near future.

Designing Positions

 

Last, in theory, came the designing of a specific position description. This was a step that we really wanted to help the Clubs out with since we ran out of time at our All-Staff Training where we wanted to cover it, but it seems like it might be unnecessary. At our training, we went over all the ingredients in a good position description but never had the chance to put it all together. Before the training, we had seen that people creating position descriptions found the task very daunting, but today it seemed that our staff were much more comfortable with it. Going forward, we're going to spend a little bit of time reviewing the subject, but not go through the whole process.


All in all, I'm happy to say that I consider our meetings today a success! We took away some lessons that will help us make them even stronger in the future, and accomplished our goals pretty well. I'm confident we can rise to meet the expectations of our Club staff and create a strong volunteer program that will really expand the capacity of Boys & Girls Clubs of Portland to deliver an incredible program to the kids!