Hey Brian,
Yeah we have similar issues at Community Cycles. We have a dozen or so core volunteers who show up each week for a three hour shift, we call the facilitators. Most of these folks have worked in bike shops or are advanced shade tree mechanics. By and large most of our facilitators are limited when it comes to people skills. In addition, even though these facilitators show up on a regular basis it's been almost impossible to schedule them for a shift. And a lot of times facilitators show up and don't even work on bikes they just hang out. We do have a monthly facilitator meeting which has been sparsely attended at best.

Currently we don't have a mechanism for interested volunteers to become facilitators or high level volunteers. The result is our facilitator pool has become old, stagnant and untrained. To address this we've been working on developing a facilitator training process.

The training process, still in it's first draft, is broken into four training sessions. The trainings are focused on admin/greeter, daily shop ops, mechanics and community outreach. Once you've gone through the training you'll be qualified to schedule a three/four hour facilitator shift each week at the shop or work on a special project/event.

As you mentioned a lot of enthusiastic volunteers are not particularly mechanically inclined. One perk we've talked about is if a new facilitator commits to 6 months of shifts they can take our Bike Mechanics 101 class for free http://communitycycles.org/programs/classes.html

We'll be launching this new training program at our next facilitator meeting at the end of this month. Wish us luck.

Ride On!
Rich

CC Facili(Tator) Training Manual
To become a facilitator or high level volunteer at Community Cycles, you need to go through a series of simple trainings. Once you've gone through them, you're qualified to represent Community Cycles at events outside of the shop. Facilitators gain privilege to order from our wholesalers at 10% over cost.

Criteria

To be a facilitator you must have completed the training and commit to one shift per week for a minimum of a three month period. If you are unable to make your shift it is your responsibility to have it covered by another facilitator. If you cannot cover your shift please let staff know asap that you will not be able to attend.
Attend a mandatory monthly facilitator meeting at the shop. Usually the third Tuesday of each month.

Trainings
You'll need to schedule to complete four trainings during open shop hours. Each training session is 3 - 4 hours. You must complete the trainings within two months of your start date.

Greeter
The greeter is one of the most important roles in the shop. Functioning as greeter is a quick way for you to get oriented to Community Cycles and what we do. We've put together an awesome Greeter manual that will help you answer the most common questions we hear in the shop each day.
Kids Bikes and New Donation processing
- Strip bikes for parts as needed
- Check - Frame and wheels for cracks, dings and bends
- Fix Tubes - patch tubes and replace as needed
- Replace - Rotten tires, seats, grips, frayed cables and rotten cable housing
- Remove - light and lock hardware, seized rusty chains...
- Clean - Drive train, wheels and hubs, frame, handle bars...
- Install - Missing reflectors, valve caps
- Flatten Bikes
- Sort parts
Shadow Facilitator

Shadow a certified tater for a shift helping EABers in progress, tune ups or sale bikes. Shadow taters will do one tater chore; i.e. clean bathroom, take out trash, sweep... After this shift you will be "qualified" to help EABers and work on in shop tune ups.
Grab Bag - Would be taters can choose from any of these activities.

            Repeat any of the first three trainings
            Greeter Trainer
           Finisher/Sales
           Community tabling event
           Street team
           UCAR
         CHaRM
           Farmers Market
           North Storage staff assistant
            Tune Ups
            RBC
            Special event

Super Facilitator
Volunteers who demonstrate mastery of bike mechanics and/or volunteer beyond one shift per week. Super facilitators gain access to the key code on a case by case basis.

Complete the six week bike mechanics course or other bicycle mechanics training course.
Demonstrate bicycle mechanic mastery
Complete a bike safety instruction course
Demonstrate bicycle safety and be capable of teaching a short bike safety seminar
Volunteer for 2 or more shifts per week
Be active on a sub committee of the CC board of directors
Work on a special event or campaign.

Urban Bike Project Wilmington, DE wrote:

Hi All,

Since we opened shop I've observed that our best volunteers are those that hardly know anything about the mechanical side of bikes but have enthusiasm and a desire to learn. They end up being the most patient with customers and eventually the best teachers/passers on of bike knowledge. On the flip side are experienced bike mechanics. Most, but not all, are pushy, completely disregard our "hands off the tools philosophy" and don't understand when we ask them to "please attend volunteer orientation" if you would like to volunteer as a mechanic here ("but i'm already a mechanic!").

Recently a bike mechanic of thirty years came in because he heard about us and wanted to observe what went on. To make a long story short, he did everything BUT observe and I had to ask/tell/almost yell at him several times to let people in the shop "do it themselves". The last time I told him to "let him do it himself" he responded with "but i have so much knowledge to share!", to which I replied "here we let people get that knowledge themselves and don't watch over them constantly or take tools out of their hands", which he didn't seem to understand ("what if they make a mistake and something breaks?!"). To lighten the mood (they'll probably laugh, or cry...), bring a hammer out and explain that this is your "rim straightener" or "frame alignment tool".

My questions to the other collectives out there:

1.) Do you have a similar issue? or is it just us, haha
2.) How have you gotten experienced mechanics (like the above example) to "buy-in" to your system if at first they resisted?

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 19802

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

Visit us online at http://urbanbikeproject.org
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