Thank you to everyone who attended the Working with Volunteers discussion, and added value with your contributions.
Working with Volunteers Discussion
We had 17 participants from 7 different organisations attending this event. It was a great opportunity to connect in-person and many valuable ideas were exchanged and discussed.
“Volunteers are the backbone of conservation in Aotearoa,” was our guiding attitude for the session. The event involved a structured discussion between participants around Working with Volunteers, the structure was loosely based on Design Thinking Steps.
The process engaged a dynamic flow of discussion and idea sharing, it also brought about connection between participants and functional awareness of the other participants’ projects. In the end, four large posters were covered in a rich diversity of answers, and 9 sticky dots had been left to highlight particularly insightful, new, or useful answers.
Key points are summarised in the PDF below:
Further Ideas and Resources:
1. Collaboration opportunity:
Volunteer coordinators/ managers from the Network North group could volunteer some of their time with other organisations within Network North. This way we can be reminded of what it is like to be a volunteer, we can learn new ways of dealing with volunteers, and we can give feedback and continue this discussion within our Network North circle. We essentially end up strengthening each other by offering encouragement, constructive feedback, and new eyes on our own blind spots.
Have many volunteer policies, templates and useful resources ready to go that may be handy.
3. Finding new volunteer sources:
- Student Volunteer Army: a great source for student volunteers and to promote your events, this initiative is steadily growing with more and more students across it
- Street Guardians volunteers organised through City Mission
- Corporate volunteers: We discussed addressing this as a topic in a future Network North event
4. If anyone is door knocking to recruit, we are keen to hear what works and how successful it is
-posted on the 25/07/2022
