Responses
to February - March 2009 Hot Topic
In
debt to volunteering?
Response
posted by Chris Morris on 4th April 2009
Hello
there
I am a Theatre volunteer coordinator owned and
operated by Gosford CityCouncil on the Central Coast
of NSW.
Presently we have 2 coordinators in a job share
capicity plus volunteersupervisors that oversee any
one theatre shift consisting of 7 to 9 volunteers.
Since I have taken over the orientation / induction
volunteer program manyyounger volunteers have signed
on and recently one is a uni student. I too am interested
in the dicussion of what will be involved when thisperson
has a need to fill out forms by myself from 'Youth
Corp' project. They have asked at their university
and were told nothing ishappening as yet.
I must say that some of our Theatre volunteers
have been actively signingon for shifts for 20,15,10
and 5 years, with the current trend of the younger
generation applying ( 22 - 40 years ) we have a 'buddy
systemin place that is working well and any fine tuning
is always appreciatedwith volunteer feedback on how
we could do improve things better.
I am enjoying your site immensley
Response
posted by Margaret Redsell on 4th February 2009
I
perform my volunteer management role as part of my
'real' job. No recognition is given to the human resource
management skills required.
It
wasn't even in my job description until I asked for
it to be revised to include it. I am not considered
even to have 'staff' that I have to supervise when
working out my pay rate. Part of this stems from the
sessional nature of my volunteer projects. None of
my unpaid workers work full time (not unusual I would
think). Some of my unpaid workers would be more in
the line of sessional workers and some consultants
for the organisation. A worker with 2 part time paid
workers would find it easier to argue for recognition
of their staff supervision role than a worker with
30 part time unpaid staff.
Unfortunately
sometimes NGO's are our own worst enemies as far as
not recognising unpaid workers as staff is concerned.
We need to recognise the skills that go into management
of unpaid staff, and make sure that funding applications
include training and funding for volunteer management.
NGO's will not do that until they take the first step
and recognise these workers as 'staff' and treat them,
and their supervisors, accordingly.
Let's
hear what you think!
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