By Whitney Lingafelter, SHARE Operations Coordinator
As the saying goes, "Those that can, do. Those that can do more, volunteer."
As SHARE volunteers, you all know the importance of the community that is SHARE. As the mission states, SHARE is an independent volunteer-run information technology association and volunteer support is critical to the success and future of the community.
Recently, the SHARE leadership created a strategic initiative, complete with goals and objectives to steer the organization in a successful way. One of the major goals in this strategy was to develop a formal recruitment and onboarding process for new SHARE Volunteers.
Recruitment, the process of attracting new volunteers to the organization, is now, and should always be led by volunteer leaders. Implementing a good foundation for managing and supporting the volunteer corps is key to attracting new people.
Currently, SHARE is using an informal recruitment and onboarding process for prospective and new volunteers. To help strengthen these efforts and subsequently, the organization, SHARE headquarters will work with these volunteer leaders to develop and implement a more defined recruitment and onboarding process that includes providing volunteer leaders with a set of tools and a framework and allowing SHARE headquarters to be of service to the volunteer leadership in their recruiting and onboarding efforts.
To assist in this process, SHARE headquarters has developed a Volunteer Recruitment & Onboarding Project Plan, which is currently being carried out through a volunteer task force.
The final deliverables of this project include:
- A visual volunteer job board on the SHARE website, including:
- Available volunteer positions with clearly defined roles and responsibilities
- An improved volunteer interest form
- Clearly defined new volunteer acceptance criteria
- A new, repeatable volunteer onboarding process including:
- A SHARE organizational chart
- An onboarding webinar lead by current SHARE volunteers
- Quality assurance surveys for:
- Newly onboarded volunteers
- Current SHARE volunteers that participate in the onboarding of new volunteers
- The creation of Committee Charters
- Plan to maintain the volunteer onboarding process
The above project objectives tie directly to the fourth goal in the SHARE Strategic Plan: Create a Sustainable Volunteer Organization that Fosters Growth and Leadership. Specifically aligning with in-flight objective number one; Create a specific volunteer recruitment and onboarding process.
The project deliverables listed above also support the following in-flight objectives:
- Create well defined job descriptions
- Create a volunteer job board
- Volunteer specific communications plan reminding them of opportunities - and/or volunteer resource center
Once this project is completed, ground work will be laid to move forward with other objectives aligned with the goal.