fbpx

New Year’s Challenge

New Year Challenge

New Year ChallengeSo it’s six weeks into 2015 and we have already finished three amazing events. February, with the major summer events behind us, is usually the time we celebrate our New Year and start planning for the next one. Accordingly, we wish all of you a very Happy New Year!

New Year is also traditionally a time for resolutions, and I’d like to invite you to join us in ours. This year, my resolution for Eventeamwork is to create stronger links between you and your volunteer community. We find that organisations that take time to think about their volunteers before, during and after events get better results, so we have a challenge for you.

Volunteering is a very special experience, and it’s an experience you deserve to have – so here’s your challenge: volunteer for something this year, for someone else’s event or festival or fundraiser. It’s a chance for you to see what volunteer management looks like from the other side of the fence but more than that, it’s a way for you to more deeply understand what volunteers do, how crucial they are to the events and organisations they serve, and exactly what you and us can do to give your volunteers the kind of experience that will make them sign up again and again.

Between all of your great events we have a great variety of choices. We are constantly updating our homepage with new opportunities so check it out and let us know where you want to get involved. We look forward to seeing you all very soon!

Here is to a great year of volunteering in 2015!

Small gestures make for big returns

Small Gestures

Christmas is such a two-headed beast for most of us – equal parts stress and joy, a frenetic loop of decorating, shopping, wrapping, and cooking to prep for the big day where hopefully it all comes together and we can finally enjoy each others’ company. There’s so much to do, and it’s madness to try to do it all on your own.

In my experience you can’t make a good Christmas without a good team, which is why it seems to me that Christmas is a lot like volunteer management. The way Christmas works is the way all events work. You plan the day > you recruit your team > you lead and direct them, engage and inspire > you teach them what they need to know so they can do a great job > and finally you thank them.

This last stage – so often forgotten – feeds straight back into the recruitment stage for next time. Thanking volunteers, expressing gratitude and making them feel appreciated is what ensures they will volunteer again. Who wants to volunteer for something that makes them feel invisible?

Simple moments of recognition are crucial to the success of the relationship between the organiser and the team. That’s what Christmas is about – the relationships between friends and family, taking the time to notice each other and be grateful for having those people in our lives. And that’s what the volunteer movement is about too. The research is clear that an overwhelming number of  people who volunteer do so to experience community and connection. This Christmas I’m hoping we will all honour that motivation by expressing our thanks to everyone on our teams. Because ‘thank you’ always feels good, whether you are receiving or giving.

So before you tidy your desk and head off to your family celebrations, how about sending an email to thank the volunteers who helped you in 2014? It’s a small gesture but it goes a long way towards keeping your volunteers happy, so they’ll step up for you again next year. Letting people know you saw their work and that you really valued it – that’s the greatest gift you can give.

We are wishing a smooth and merry Christmas to you and yours.

Sydney’s powerful spirit

I’ve been debating what to post in the wake of Monday’s events. I’m sure you’re as sobered and shaken by the siege in Sydney’s city centre as I am, and as lost on how to respond. Eventeamwork is now in the process of reorganising the volunteer briefing for Sydney Festival, which had been scheduled for Monday as well as supporting our clients and their volunteers as we prepare for our summer events in the city. These are small things compared to what the hostages and their families, emergency services and everyone caught up in this ordeal went through, and we are all thankful for that as our hearts go out to those more directly affected.

There was, however, something incredible in the wake of this that caught my eye and that I wanted to share with you. It is a grassroots volunteering phenomenon that speaks volumes for the way the instinct to reach out and support others can really kick in during a crisis. Concerned about a racial and cultural backlash, Rachel Jacobs and Twitteruser @sirtessa started a campaign to volunteer to accompany Muslims on public transport. #illridewithyou is not just about sharing the hashtag (and it’s up to 17,000 at the time I’m writing this). All over town people are actually riding buses and trains with the Muslims of Sydney, keeping them safe and making them feel included and welcome and valued. For me, this shows the power of community volunteering and the way something small and quite easy to do – like ride a bus with someone – can make an enormous difference and help us reconnect with one another. It’s a heartening thought as we approach Christmas. I’d like to personally thank all those who step forward to help as volunteers at any time, but especially in this time of crisis. Our city is a better place for it, and we can all be grateful for that.

Do young people want to volunteer?

One of the many myths about volunteering is that most volunteers are older people—generally people think of retirees volunteering at the local op-shop!

Of course that isn’t the whole picture. The highest rates of volunteering are to be found in the 45-54 age bracket, but that doesn’t mean that younger people don’t, or don’t want to, volunteer.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics found that of all the people who volunteered in 2010, 9.4% were between 18 and 24. As almost 6.1 million people volunteered in that year, that means well over half a million young people volunteered. Overall, more than 27% of young people volunteered in 2010.

Young people do indeed want to volunteer, and are an important cohort. As might be expected, volunteering for groups related to sport and recreation was the most popular choice, with over 183,000 volunteering. But they aren’t the only group to prefer those kinds of events—all volunteers up to the age of 65 show a preference for sport and recreation.

Young people also volunteered strongly for religious groups, and almost half volunteered at least once a week. Most also stuck to one organisation. This points to an important point about youth volunteers—one of the reasons they volunteer is to be with friends, which means they are often influenced to volunteer by their peer groups.

So how do groups encourage young people to volunteer? Recent research by Volunteering Tasmaniafound that young people value skill development and like to feel they are genuinely making a contribution, but that there were some important practical factors that helped them engage.

Young people needed roles that reflected their lifestyles, which generally could not accommodate regular commitments, and they often found transport a problem. The research also found that most groups didn’t use social media platforms like Facebook enough—the younger generation looks first and foremost at the web to gain information and communicate, and any organisation serious about attracting young volunteers needs to connect with them there.

Offline, young people are very engaged with their peers, so having young volunteer ambassadors and making personal approaches through peer networks, schools and families was also essential—backed by a strong web presence, a short and easy application process and a personal point of contact within the organisation.

Once engaged in volunteering, the research also found that young people overwhelmingly felt that they would continue to volunteer in later years, so engaging volunteers positively while they are young paves the way for an ongoing ‘volunteering habit’.

Perhaps the question is not whether young people want to volunteer, but whether organisations are doing the right things to facilitate young people’s volunteering.

Unpaid does not mean unprofessional

It’s all too easy to judge a person’s ‘worth’ by the fee or the salary they command, and to make assumptions about what their pay says about their professional skills or talents.

Unfortunately this means that volunteers can often be perceived as lacking in all sorts of areas – lacking in skills, in experience, professionalism and even basic value beyond being a ‘pair of hands’.

But consider this: statistics show that people in full or part time work are more likely to volunteer than those who are not. People in middle age have higher rates of volunteering than other age groups.

Translated, this means that volunteers are often mature, employed people – people with plenty of professional skills and experiences to offer. The reasons most people give for volunteering—to make a difference to their community and feel a sense of purpose—also suggest a strong motivation to share those skills.

Added to that, many people volunteer in order to gain new skills and experiences. A volunteer program that trains its participants well (with or without a formal qualification) is more successful not simply because the volunteers ‘do what they’re supposed to do’, but because the volunteers can deliver a highly professional service.

A professional, well-organised and well-trained volunteer force is not just essential to the success of the event, it is also deeply satisfying for the volunteers themselves and of enormous value to the organisers, who can look forward to continued high engagement from skilled and enthusiastic volunteers.

Volunteers genuinely want to share their knowledge and skills, and also want to help organisers to make their events successful. So it’s also very important to communicate with volunteers, recognise their efforts and provide ways that they can feed back their experiences. Being heard is also a win-win for the volunteer and the organiser, because the volunteer feels that their experience and insights are valued, and the organiser of course can get the benefits of those insights by using them to improve future events.

Great volunteer programs don’t just deliver great events, they also develop, employ and reward the professionalism of the volunteers.

Volunteering may not be a traditional economic exchange of money for labour, but it is nonetheless a value exchange—volunteers give their valuable skills and time, and in exchange they deserve positive experiences, recognition and personal reward.

2013 Special Olympics – one week, 3500 volunteers

2013 Special Olympics

One of our biggest events last year was the Special Olympics 2013 Asia Pacific Games (SOAPG 2013), held in Newcastle in the first week of December.

The Games was one of the largest community events the Hunter region has ever seen, with 2500 athletes competing from 29 nations, 600 officials and an estimated 200,000 visitors – all adding up to an injection of more than $20 million for the local economy.

Eventeamwork was engaged by the Games team to run the volunteer program, which was sponsored by ClubsNSW. The team came up with the idea of ‘Volunteer Champions’, a program which invited local businesses to promote the games and the opportunity to volunteer.

It proved an excellent way to secure local engagement, and ClubsNSW drove a huge local campaign through over 100 clubs in the region to attract a group of 25 Volunteer Champions, including organisations that already had a strong commitment to community partnerships and that could tap into large member or volunteer bases. The Champions really got behind the Games, not only promoting the event but giving their employees time to participate.

One Champion, Hunter TAFE, won funding from State Training Services to fund a Certificate II in Tourism for up to 350 volunteers, and ClubsNSW ran the campaign to encourage volunteers to take the training.

This year, the outstanding support of ClubsNSW was acknowledged when they won the award for Outstanding Regional Initiative at the 2014 Clubs & Community Awards.
We at Eventeamwork are extremely proud to see this kind of recognition for the efforts of the local community – it was so inspiring to see so many local businesses and individuals jump on board to support the Special Olympics and make it such a successful event – not just for the region and its businesses, but for all the athletes, the spectators and the fantastic cohort of volunteers.

The ‘Volunteer Champions’ concept set a high standard for similar events and, according to Jon Chin, the Newcastle & Hunter Representative of ClubsNSW, the model is being used by organisers of other major events in the region and beyond.