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Developing: Before You Recruit: Planning Your Approach

Ideally, you will have the basic structure of your program in place before you bring in volunteers. Volunteers, particularly those who have participated in many volunteer activities, may have high expectations of their volunteer experience. At the very least, it helps to anticipate what will come next. Be prepared for when they are ready to take their next steps. For example, you might first make a rough plan for outreach to prospective volunteers when you start organizing materials for the interviewing and screening process. Likewise, in preparation for interviewing, you may want to consider possible volunteer training activities.

The most important part of planning your approach to the volunteer experience is having a clear, compelling vision of your MRC’s role in the community. Without this vision, you will have difficulty with attracting volunteers, designing training, attaining support from response partners, and keeping your volunteers engaged. See the other publications of the Technical Assistance Series for help with developing a vision for your unit.

Optimizing the Volunteer’s Experience

Each volunteer joining your MRC unit will experience similar steps, from preliminary introduction and screening, through orientation and training, and ideally moving toward utilization and renewed commitment. This is a continual cycle, one in which your efforts and knowledge will be continually refined.

Effective communication will build on the foundations of earlier interactions; training and practice can be directed toward skills refinement; and utilization will proceed much more smoothly. You also will have a better sense of which type of post-response activities and recognition will be effective.

When you consider making the volunteer’s full experience as positive as possible, it can seem like a big task. One way to simplify the factors affecting this experience is to imagine them as part of a process. Each follows in a sequence that builds on the proceeding one. To some extent, each part will be revisited as the volunteer becomes more integral to your MRC team.

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Last Updated on 8/29/2006