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Make New Friends but Keep the Old...

Submitted on 25 May 2007 by Carol Glass, Saint Joseph's Hospital of Atlanta, Director of Volunteer Services, Atlanta, Georgia USA
About recruiting: We advertise our volunteer program in the hospital on the "wrap" for the free newspapers given to the patients.

Submitted on 23 May 2007 by Kathleen Richardson, Southeast Steuben County Library, Volunteer Coordinator, Corning NY USA
Since stepping into this Volunteer Coordinator position in 2001, I’ve done very little recruiting.  We treat all volunteers as valuable members of our library family. A former volunteer has invited staff members and several volunteers to his upcoming wedding. Some staff takes their volunteers to lunch. We’ve attended funerals, remembered birthdays, and celebrated births.

Four teens started with us six years ago, at age eleven, each accompanied by a parent because of their ages. Each parent eventually decided to volunteer, too. Now the teens are about to go off to college and we would welcome them back anytime. Increased responsibility is offered to teens and adults alike over time.

Special care is taken to match volunteers to a task they’ll enjoy and take pride in. We check back with them regularly to see if it’s working for them. If not, we reassign. One volunteer who started out shelf-reading decided she disliked that job. We finally settled her in book repair, a brand new skill for her in her 70’s. After three years, she’s really good at it and is now teaching a highly capable 12-year old how to repair books.

A half-dozen or so adult volunteers have been hired by our library. Also, we encourage all teen volunteers to fill out applications for Page positions. One volunteer became a page, then left; she’s now 21 and has been hired here fulltime.

Our volunteers number over sixty each month and they are family to us. This brings them back. They bring family and friends. Our volunteers are our best recruiters.

Submitted on 1 May 2007 by Hillary Roberts, President, PLNJ Inc., Keyport, NJ, USA
An insightful topic, and I am surprised to learn that the idea of keeping in touch with youth volunteers as they move into higher education and/or careers isn't exercised. 

This year, I was contacted by an Americorps volunteer from 2001 who has since earned her Ph.D., married, celebrated the arrival of her first child and moved back to the east coast.  She contacted me for volunteer assignments, non-profit job leads and for a lunch date! Another, a young man who I placed in a volunteer tutoring position while he attended high school, contacted me to pledge 5% of his sales earnings to this agency as a "give back" and lastly an art major I met during my stint at the local Volunteer Center who contacted me for a job reference.

Maybe good communication skills are easier for some.  Susan certainly points out frequently the various modes of electronic communication we can all use and learn from but communication should be personal and mutual. 4,000 emails a year used to frighten me, but I've come to realize what they represent:  an intelligent network! There is every reason in the world for a non profit/charity to stay in touch with its pool of volunteers and community supporters.  We should be honored by the endorsement! 

What I am most proud of (in the context of this hot topic) is having two members on our Board who originally came to us their last year in high school.  When they decided to attend college locally, they applied for Board posts and are two of the most enthusiastic, active Board members we have. Volunteer Managers must be talking heads; facilitating the BEST form of communication they are capable of and setting both a standard and a protocol for welcoming others now...and in the future.

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