we're struggling with this as well at community cycles.

one of the main struggles has been how to transition from a "if you want to volunteer, just show up when you're free and do some work" model to a "ok, here are the shifts we have available for volunteers in the shop. if you're available outside of these hours, or don't want to work in the shop, here are some other things we need help with (like making phone calls, making artwork/flyers, etc...)

the biggest problem--or so we thought--was the mechanics and volunteers who have been around for a year or more, who never really committed to us formally to a shift, but have just found their place on a tuesday night, for instance. (not that these folks aren't committed, they just never signed up for a shift...) after much discussion, we figured it would just be easier to allow those folks to continue contributing their part, and any new people that come on board, we'd funnel through our new system. eventually, hopefully, the scheduled/committed-to-a-shift volunteers become the larger group and the norm, and the folks who just come in when they want are the anomoly...

what we started doing last month--and have already seen improvement with shop traffic, volunteer retention, etc--is to have a little bit more of a training period, where shop volunteers must serve as a greeter for 4 shifts. this includes signing up EAB'ers, answering phones, directing people traffic in the shop, handling sales, and some other stuff that most of your shops do in one form or another. basically, the greeter is our front face. so it's on us to make sure they're trained correctly. we put together a shop manual that we're constantly updating so that it will answer most or all the questions faced by new greeters.
once they've been a greeter for 4 shifts, they can move up to a facilitator. at this point, they also must commit to one 3-4 hour shift per week. ideally, after being the greeter for 4 shifts, they're no longer intimidated answering the phone, or answering in shop questions, and have a pretty fundamental lay of the land in the shop and about the organization.

as for what to do when you have a lot of volunteers at some times and not enough at others...unless you can get some of those volunteers into the shifts they want to fill, then there's not much you can do to fill the empty times without recruiting more volunteers. in our shop, tuesdays are pretty much the night when the older school drop-in-style volunteers have started becoming regulars. so, whenever we have a volunteer orientation night, we don't even mention that we need volunteers on tuesdays. (again, unless you're interested in some outside-of-shop stuff, in which case here's what we need...) unfortunately, we're not able to utilize every volunteer to the max of our ability/need. coming to that realization has removed quite a bit of stress from staff trying to organize the volunteer armada...

hope all of that helps. sorry it's so long winded...

josh.

On Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 9:56 AM, Urban Bike Project Wilmington, DE <urbanbikeproject@gmail.com> wrote:

First, thanks to everyone who commented on the "What happens when you add new hours" post. Very helpful.

Scheduling Volunteers

We just had a Volunteer meeting and discussed the need to schedule, ahead of time, so that we can know how many people to expect on any given day. Right now we sometimes have 3 volunteers or as many as 10-12 show up for an open shop day...One day, too many; one day, not enough at all. 5-7 is our "comfort" range.

One of our more reliable volunteers sent me some questions and I'm curious how other shops deal with the specific issues mentioned. Thanks for taking time to respond.

1.) "How is it going to work if "too many" people sign up for a given day? Are the volunteers going to be asked to leave, or can they work on their own stuff, or what?"

2.) "how many is too many? Obviously if there are 2 kids there, 10 volunteers is overkill, but realistically, how many volunteers do you think you should hold to the schedule for an open shop night?"

3.) "What if a vol. can't make it when they're scheduled? Obviously, trying to get a hold of someone to cover the shift is necessary, but who's responsibility is it? Is it the shop's to try to get someone to come in, or the volunteer's, because they can't make it?"

4.) "What happens with a no call/no show? What happens if someone shows up 45 minutes late?"

Brian

Urban Bike Project of Wilmington
-a 501(c)3 non-profit bike shop-
1908 N. Market Street (entrance is in the parking lot behind the building)
Wilmington, DE 19801

Hours:
Thursday 6:30-9:00
Saturday 1:00-4:00

Visit us online at http://urbanbikeproject.org

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