Animal Welfare Professionals

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  • 1.  What are the best changes you've made to your volunteer program?

    Posted 10-22-2019 10:10 AM

    How are these changes helping your organization?


    #volunteers
    #questionoftheweek
    #volunteersupport
    #PeopleManagement
    #qotw


  • 2.  RE: What are the best changes you've made to your volunteer program?

    Posted 10-22-2019 10:48 AM

    having the volunteers sign up for a time slot and not just show up!

     


    #PeopleManagement


  • 3.  RE: What are the best changes you've made to your volunteer program?

    Posted 10-31-2019 03:33 PM

    Lisa, I would love to hear how this went over when you started it. I'm looking at doing this very soon at our shelter as well :) 


    #PeopleManagement


  • 4.  RE: What are the best changes you've made to your volunteer program?

    Posted 10-31-2019 06:01 PM

    Most (90%) of the volunteers loved it.  The older volunteers gave me a little push back.  "It's not the way we did it in the past, I can't use a computer", that kind of stuff. 

     


    #PeopleManagement


  • 5.  RE: What are the best changes you've made to your volunteer program?

    Posted 10-23-2019 10:06 AM

    Having volunteer mentors do most of the new volunteer onboarding. It saves so much time and gives them 1-on-1 attention.


    #PeopleManagement


  • 6.  RE: What are the best changes you've made to your volunteer program?

    Posted 10-24-2019 04:39 AM

    We only allow 16yrs and older to come alone which has helped cut down on dogs getting loose and or accidents. 


    #PeopleManagement


  • 7.  RE: What are the best changes you've made to your volunteer program?

    Posted 10-24-2019 07:27 AM

    I really love having kid-specific education programs or volunteer opportunities! For me, that's mostly been something like having Scout troops come visit for a volunteer afternoon, or a short "kids' camp" during the summer, etc... things that engage the kids, but are pretty much supervised by staff the whole time.

    I am, in theory, such a fan of including kids in rescue because it's excellent learning opportunities for them, and I think encouraging them to get involved in their communities early on is incredible!!! ....But I also think there's liability issues with the 'regular' volunteer shifts (where they aren't supervised, except for their parent -maybe). One of my previous shelters went above and beyond to allow younger kids to volunteer normally - using green, yellow, or red "stop-n-go" signs to indicate kid-friendly cats and dogs (green being "go" for kids). It turned into a bunch of bite quarantines that shouldn't have happened... and then a roomful of yellow signs and fielding SO many complaints from parents because there was only one or two cats their 11 year old could pet 


    #PeopleManagement


  • 8.  RE: What are the best changes you've made to your volunteer program?

    Posted 10-28-2019 07:58 AM

    We used to have our volunteer application on our website and running bi-weekly orientations.  However we were getting so many people just coming to volunteer once to "pet cats or walk dogs".  We've made it more of a process to volunteer, orientations are every 6 weeks, capped at 14 people and we spend the next 6 weeks really training people.  Our goal has shifted from quantity to quality.


    #PeopleManagement