New: Volunteers Hours Tracking

IMHO

I’m sure someone will be getting back to you within a week or so about the Volunteers

Ridayah wrote:

The volunteer hours are linked to your account here, and up to each person to submit – that puts the power in their hand. If they care about their hours, they are able to submit, if not, then it’s no issue for them. And with the website here we also have the means to reach out and communicate with them, which readily solves a lot of problems the old system had. I hope that helps answer questions!

Thanks, I remember now you telling me that! It is a helpful remember to me and will help those who haven’t heard yet!

But I’d be against trying to build one system coding system to rule them all as it has turned out to be problematic in the past (read: less volunteers as no one wants to manage the process).

Drake M. wrote:

In the end, I personally like the past process of paperwork being brought to an event and individual volunteers signing off in ink…That is a solid hard copy. Then someone higher-up can keep it on file and, if necessary, type it up and keep an electronic version on hand.

And nothing stops that from still happening. This just gives a way for individuals to mark down the hours they feel they did independent of the tallie keepers. And it can/should be compared to what comes from event runners, convention staff, etc.

I’m doubting that anyone is stating that what is entered is automatically “blessed” and considered approved. It is just a tool to help in reporting. Nothing more, nothing else.

I’ll try and answer the questions here in order:

1) Paper trail – we’ve tried this for three years now. The problem is, even when we give out the forms and clearly show how to get the hours on them, people wouldn’t fill them out, they’d be missing critical data (people putting different names/emails/etc for the same person at different times, due to changing ‘sona identities and such), and they’d rarely, if ever, get turned back in. This was happening no matter how much it was stressed. This included the board (and me), so I know it’s not just a training thing but rather the principle matter.

2) Whom is approving it – This is the same team it’s always been, those whom are part of Volunteers/Secretary team. If there’s any question on hours, they go to the event runner of the event in question, and ask them, or ask those who attended if they remember X person doing work. This method also allows for them to submit what the work was, so it’s easier to verify. Hours submitted without descriptions of the work are unlikely to get approved.

3) Why we track hours – MNFurs is a nonprofit. Volunteers are the lifeblood which help bring all our events and tasks to life. None of what we enjoy (furmeets, picnics, the convention, bowling, zoo boo, and so on) can happen without the efforts of those volunteers. We want to honor and show our appreciation to those people who take the time out of their busy lives to help us. The biggest perk right now is that 20 volunteer hours allows you to run for the board and vote in the elections. We have other perks planned too, just can’t announce them yet!

The big thing is this put the power in the hands of those for whom its important – the volunteers. They don’t have to submit if the ‘perks’ aren’t important to them (though we’d still wish they would so we could tell them how awesome we think they are!), but if it is, the power is now theirs. They don’t have to wait for some other person to do work, or forget, or misplace things. They don’t have to wait until election time to find out how many hours they’ve volunteered. They now have ALL the information at their fingertips, and the power is theirs, and yours.

Does this help clear things up for everyone, @sauce, @mouring, @drakem, @jw6?