Thursday, May 5, 2011

Acting as Volunteers

Here are some obvious pros and cons I found online about managing volunteers:

In many ways volunteers are easier:

  1. They want to be there
  2. You generally don’t have to fire volunteers
  3. There are no salary negotiations
  4. They’re willing to do work that may be boring, unpleasant or too time consuming for you
  5. They make you look good!

But managing volunteers adds some challenges:

  1. They come in all ages
  2. They take long vacations
  3. Sometimes they don’t show up
  4. They might cancel at the last minute
  5. They may have more experience than you (or think they do)
  6. Their priorities may not match yours.
What are other things you could add to these lists? What things can you take from this list and put into place about today? Personally I felt like a lot of people weren't so excited about the project before heading out to Edison, but everyone really seemed to enjoy themselves as we started making progress, and I'm excited to head back out and see if the flowers perked up at all in a few weeks!

6 comments:

  1. You are right! I totally agree about the stuff that you said. Plus, volunteering requires good attitude and dedication!

    ReplyDelete
  2. In high school my friends and I lead a student organization that fully depended on student volunteers to assist in project like the community garden. For having the experience of relying heavily on volunteers, I agree with the list of pros and cons. We had to have sets dates for our events that everyone on campus knew about so people would remember to show up. People did end up not showing last minute would have to deal with the extra work. In the end all of our events ended working out successfully, but I can definitely relate to the frustration that comes with relying on volunteers.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I think this list is great.

    Some others…
    Pro
    -It’s Rewarding
    -Provides Health Improvements
    -Community Service Hours (for students)
    -Personal Growth

    Cons
    -Frustration
    -Emotional Involvement

    To read more about the above listed pro/cons you can go to this website http://www.livestrong.com/article/70771-pros-cons-volunteer-work/

    I think we forget sometimes that pros/cons can be different for each person. Some people never get frustrated, while others do constantly. Some people just do it for service hours. It all depends on how we look at it.

    ReplyDelete
  4. I think this is a great base list and obviously there is more to be amended to it. I think that volunteering shows patriotism for people who do not need to fill out community hour sheets because you are helping out not only the group of volunteers but you are helping out the entire nation just a little bit and that can be satisfying. I think a disadvantage is motivating some volunteers to show up all the time.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I agree as well with this list. I think that volunteer's usually start off very motivated, but may lose enthusiasm and flake out after a while. Employees must show up everyday unlike volunteers.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I agree with this list as well. But I feel, volunteers come, do the work and go and if there is nobody to take care of the work that volunteers did then it can make volunteers frustrated.

    ReplyDelete