A brand new workshop is always a learning curve. The Volunteer Management Toolkit was being presented by me for the second time.
I knew I was distracted by it when I left my Credit card and flash drive in the
Kinkos store as I printed off stuff for my workshop. They were there two hours later when I returned. Phew!
Thank you to the 185 people who squeezed into a room for the North American debut of this workshop- please let me know what you think?
In the past we have had a room monitor who helps with tasks like this. Not sure if they are not doing that this year or I didnt get one. It meant I was
more frenetic than normal!
I welcomed people
and ran around giving out groovy coloured sticky notes pieces of paper.
based on the length of time in community engagement/volunteer management:
- Green -under 1 year
- Blue 1-5 years
- Pink 6-9 years
- Purple over 10 years
Interestingly, we had lots of green and pink but not as many blues and purples in the room.
We talked about the key tools you need. The piece of coloured paper was used for a couple of interactive exercises.
I was fascinated at how many people have much work to do on their very first tool (message me for what that tool is). A lot of work. Good luck guys. Am happy to come and help your agency work through things like:
- Knowing where you are going with your community engagement strategies
- Identifying and meeting meet agency goals (strategic & operational)
- managing change
- Knowing needed skill sets of agency
We engaged people in lots of adult education opportunities with people mixing into pairs, triplets groups and mega groups.
In the end we identified THE tools for a volunteer program by voting. The information re these tools will be typed up soon.
Thanks for everyone who came up and gave me feedback on the session. There is not a formal evaluation of every session at NCVS this year. Some workshops are being audited - mine was not one of them. Sorry, I dont like that. How do you keep quality control at this learning event and how do I learn as a presenter? Especially as this was my second time presenting this session.
Only two people tweeted using the session hashtag #voltools Why does NCVS insist in hashtags on every session..does anyone use them????????
Next workshop tomorrow morning at 830am: How to Sabotage Your Volunteer Program.
Here I am pictured with John, one of the three Australians at the Conference
