Speaker 1: I'm sorry, can I ask you a question? Should I just follow up? No. Maybe set a time to get together? Right. Yeah.

Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sorry.

Speaker 3: Move. I'm a volunteer. Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

Speaker 4: So, thank you for coming back for the afternoon. There's a couple new faces. So I'm going to introduce Charlie Mulligan again from GIVGAP, and he's going to go into greater detail about volunteer recruitment. And then this is Yvette Rubio, and she's from the Tompkins County Public Library, and she also is a volunteer coordinator. And so there's a little bit of diversity in the level of volunteer coordination, but it gives you a wide spectrum of volunteers in the capacity and how you can utilize them when doing events or making your way to governmental events. Charlie?

Speaker 5: All right. Thank you. I think what we were going to do real quick is I was going to have kind of a high-level discussion of how we, at GIVGAP, view the volunteer space a little bit, and Yvette has very specific things that she's dealt with and a lot more experience in this. So I think that would be great to hear from her. So just real quick, kind of even before I go through some key stats, just to kind of discuss why GIVGAP even exists. The reason why GIVGAP exists is because four or five years ago, I was reading an article on how people that volunteer at least once a month increase their happiness as if they doubled their salary, and that was something that I found fascinating, because I think everyone wants to be happier, and I think that a lot of people think the path to that is to work harder, make more money, but there's such an easy path to actually really increasing your happiness, and it's volunteering. Once I started to look into it more, there's just so many things. I won't go through every study or other things like that, but there's study after study that shows people that volunteer live longer or happier, more likely to have meaningful relationships, more likely to actually make more money. There's all kinds of these benefits, and they come from people who volunteer more often. So it's such a great thing, and so that kind of got our thinking going, and so when we created GIVGAP, we thought of it completely from the volunteer's perspective, and so we always try to think of why people volunteer in the first place. So before I jump into that, I just have a few stats here. I'm not going to read all of them to you, but the point is if you're a nonprofit group or any organization, there's a lot of potential out there. Right now the volunteer hours in the U.S. are estimated to be worth about $180 billion a year. That's an amazing number. There's $180 billion of potential help out there, and then you have to go out and get it. So why do people do that? Again, back to kind of our original premise for GIVGAP was that we wanted people to volunteer more often, and so if you want people to volunteer out more often, you think, well, why would people volunteer in the first place? And so you could, I mean, there's a lot of ways to look at it. You could list 20 things, you could list 10 things. We picked these three things to focus on. I'm not saying it's the only reason people volunteer, but these are three key factors that I think we can really think about a lot. And so people really want to make a difference, and one way we like to put it is they want to matter to something that matters to them. And so this is more than just making a difference to something in general. It's making a difference to something that's greater than themselves. To me, this is a... I don't know what's happening here.

Speaker 6: I think it's trying to access the Internet, so...

Speaker 5: Are we back? Sorry about that. We are a tech company. LAUGHTER So, again, you know, that's a key thing. People also want to, you know, be social and have fun. So a big reason people volunteer is they actually want to meet new people, they want to have a good time. And then finally, people want to gain a sense of recognition and accomplishment. And so I think if you want to recruit more volunteers and use the tactics that Yvette's going to talk about, you need to think about these three things a lot. And I know at GiveGap we think about this all the time. Are we helping organizations satisfy these three needs? And if you do this, if you satisfy these needs of potential volunteers, you won't have a problem retaining volunteers. But if you don't do these three things, you're always going to be searching for new volunteers because the ones you have are going to go somewhere else that satisfy these needs. So as far as make a difference, and I know almost all of you were in my presentation earlier, a lot of the reason people volunteer is the same reason people donate, and a lot of the tactics are pretty similar. And so I talked about the U-Test this morning, and I'm going to mention it again. But if you're making a kind of conversations to get volunteers, you really need to think about the U-Test, which is you use the word you twice as often as you use me, we, us, anything about me. It's about the volunteer, just like it was about the donor earlier today. They need to feel like they're really important. And so again, I talked about it this morning, make them the key warrior in your battle. You really need to make them the key piece. And if they feel important in that way, they are going to volunteer more often. But what's great, that also helps you get the right volunteers, because if they're the people that can really help you, they're going to naturally feel important. So if their skill set doesn't match what you need, they're not going to come back anyway. Another thing is you really want to make sure there's personal asks. And so this is, like we were saying before, there's lots of ways to go get volunteers, but the key volunteers, you need to build a personal relationship with people and make sure. Because then, one, you can kind of figure out if they're going to be a great volunteer, but two, that's another way of making them feel very special. And that's what you really want to do. And then you need to be specific on why they matter. If they're going to matter to your organization, then you need to tell them why they matter. Hey, we need an accountant to help us here. Something like that. Here's your specific skill set that can help. If you're generic, then they're not going to feel very special. The other part about social and fun, so there's a couple benefits to this. I hear nonprofits all the time tell us that. We have a thousand volunteers in our database, but we only have five good ones. It's kind of an exaggeration with those numbers. And the truth is, that means you have five volunteers and then a lot of names in a computer somewhere. And so why not take the great volunteers you have and tap into their networks? If Casey is a great volunteer for our organization, why not have her ask her friends to go volunteer with her? Because, again, she wants to volunteer. Volunteering is very social for her. And if she's passionate about what you're doing, then she probably knows other people that would be passionate about what you're doing. So it's really a lot of organizations I don't think about tapping into their current volunteers. I think they also need to highlight the benefits of volunteering. And I touched on it before, but volunteers live longer, happier, healthier. There's all kinds of things. You're never going to find a study that says volunteers live shorter, are miserable. It's never going to happen. Every study says how great volunteering is. And then I like to use this term, gamify. This is something we do on our site by giving badges and other things. But gamify when appropriate. And by that I mean just make it fun when you can. If it's about something super serious, then giving ridiculous trophies to people or something like that might not work. But if there's any way you can make them feel special in some way, just giving them a virtual badge or here's the person who volunteered the most hours or something like that, it makes a huge difference. And we noticed once we started adding badges on our site, the number of volunteering jumped dramatically. It was amazing. And it's not just 20-year-olds. We have 80-year-olds that want to get badges. I mean, it's not something that's locked into a specific group. Everybody wants to feel like it's fun in some way. So if it's appropriate, do that. And then finally, as far as gain recognition and accomplishment, again, everybody that was here this morning knew how many times I said you need to thank people. Thank them, thank them, thank them. If that's all you take away, you should make sure you thank your volunteers. And I can tell you I've volunteered a lot since I started Big Gap. Probably 25% of the time I get thanked. And the reason why people forget to thank is because you have 100 volunteers showing up. And being a volunteer manager is a super hard job. You have a million things to do. And after the event, you need to clean up and you need to do all these other things. You just forget. But if you don't get thanked, you know, no thanks equals no retention. Just like I said earlier, if you don't thank people, they're not coming back. And so it's something to think about. I also think you need to make sure there's tangible goals with kind of a reward. And this is what I was talking about before about gamifying things or something. You don't want to tell them we need to volunteer all the time or a ton. You want to say something specific like, hey, we need you to help us accomplish this task. And then once you do, they should feel great about it in some way. If you can make them feel great, we accomplished this as a team, as an individual. You need to feel great. And that's why I kind of highlighted the individual team accomplishment, too, because it's fun to kind of gamify this in an individual way. But what people really want to do, if you look back, the reason why people want to volunteer is they want to matter to a group that matters to them. So you really want to highlight how people can celebrate together. And so, again, this is just a high level, and I thought this would be a good intro to what you guys want to talk about. Yeah, it's not this. I can add more, you know, if there's questions.

Speaker 7: We'll make a group and talk together.

Speaker 5: Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 7: It's okay if I sit over here? So, I coordinate with volunteers at Hopkins County Public Library. But before I start, let me just see, kind of show of hands, how many of you here use volunteers? That's everybody, okay. And I thought if you could just, real quickly, say one or two of your challenges when it comes to volunteers. That will also help me give you information that you might really need. So, do you mind starting? I don't. Oh, you didn't raise your hand. Sorry.

Speaker 1: So, right here. Well, I've worked with volunteers in the past, so I can attest to that. But the problems are reliability and just a consolidated organization.

Speaker 7: Could you talk more about what that means?

Speaker 1: Just, well, I mean, kind of a platform to keep everyone on the same page or how to communicate messages to everyone as a group most effectively.

Speaker 7: So, communicate messages just as a group. And did you also mean maybe how you have a volunteer track management system of some kind? Or just the communication piece as well? The management. Okay. All right. Thank you.

Speaker 8: So, one of the organizations is Grief Alive. And that requires around 100 volunteers. I think so many of them are students, so that partially we don't want to do Grief Alive when students are in town. At least that's what it feels like. Right. I would say volunteer recruitment. Something we're always anxious about.

Speaker 7: And is it just finding enough or finding enough and getting good ones?

Speaker 8: Finding enough.

Speaker 9: Challenging? I think a few challenges. One is feeling bad about giving them too much for dusty, dingy work. And another one is, you know, needing them or having them available to us when we need them. You know, say we have a giant mailing, you know, we get a thousand envelopes or something. You know, are they available when we need them to happen? And also sometimes higher level skills. Because we have such a small budget in so many ways that it would be nice to have somebody who can volunteer to do design work.

Speaker 10: Yeah, I would say the skill set is not understanding the skill set and how to appropriately match them up. Like, with a couple of different things that people have come deciding or desiring to volunteer, it's, you know, there's so many different things that you can have a volunteer do. But there's only so much of it. You know, so like you may have a volunteer that has all day to give you, but if what you really need is someone who can work the computer but they don't have that skill, then how do you best utilize somebody who doesn't have the skill you actually need? Right. Is like the challenge for me. Yeah, without being like the person who's like, no, the house needs cleaning. Or you could do the, oh, let's see, you could go through this stack of paperwork and see.

Speaker 11: I think one of the biggest ones that hasn't been mentioned yet, because I definitely agree with the quote that a lot of volunteers in that want to do the fun stuff, like feeding the animals, or a lot of times they'll want to do stuff that they're not quite qualified to do, or they would need a lot of training to do, which leads into the other problem, which would be a lot of people will want to volunteer for, you know, a couple weeks, or one day for a few months, and you have to do all that training, and it takes a lot of time to train them.

Speaker 12: We use volunteers for events, but also for just programs. So I guess for events, it's like Jonathan was saying, managing them. Recruiting them, we have a lot of difficulty for certain events in the first place. And again, we use a lot of students who come and go. So it's not, we can't retain them even if we were successful. That's an issue, and trying to have some connectivity with educational programs where we want to use students.

Speaker 13: I would echo a lot of what was said in terms of reliability and how it matches evolving skill sets, but also finding a way to efficiently track that information, keep it updated, and communicate efficiently so that the whole data isn't lost on, you know, tracking and communication areas.

Speaker 7: I wanted a day, just including data.

Speaker 10: Volunteer to put the data into it. It's almost like, are you really gaining if you have to put that much energy into being a volunteer when you actually already know how to do it? And if you're going to stay a little while, it's like, how productive is volunteering?

Speaker 14: I think ours is a little different because we pull volunteers from service providers, so their employees come, so that's limited, but we need more. And we also go to the private sector for families, and these are families with children with challenges, so having them come and be a part of it is a challenge in itself because they need to come away from their home. There's food and gas and many things that we have to find funding to do that, but they're necessary to do what we're doing. It's challenging.

Speaker 15: Coming from CSPU Community Credit Union, one of our strategic goals is community involvement, so we're on a different spectrum of we're trying to get our staff to engage in volunteer opportunities, and some of the fears, I think, of that are, you know, how are they going to time manage volunteer hours and work life and home life, or just kind of a fear of the unknown, and also finding an opportunity that they have passion for, that they feel good about.

Speaker 2: I would say we have a lot of challenges, but the reliability and the commitment seems to keep popping up year after year,

Speaker 16: where, for example, with events, we need a certain number of volunteers to show up at a certain time for the event to be successful, and on average, we have an 80%. That's our rule of thumb, that 80% will actually show up when they said they would, and we have to be really careful about that because if we have too many volunteers show up, then it can make our jobs a lot harder.

Speaker 3: So I'm an organizer in the grassroots arena of hastening the transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. I see a lot of familiar faces. And, for example, like to get a ban on fracking statewide, and now fighting the compressor station on Seneca Lake. I'm one of the organizers of We Are Seneca Lake and some other grassroots efforts to just hasten the end of fossil fuels and make the transition to renewables. The biggest challenge is that we are all volunteers. And so our biggest challenge is governance, I would say, because activists by nature take initiative and take responsibility and have strong commitment, but there's a difference of strategy. And so it's hard when you have hundreds and hundreds of people to govern in a very democratic way. So I would say it's an issue about making sure every voice is heard somehow through democratic talking circles that have representatives, you know, and so forth. But that's the biggest challenge because it's like this floating structure where everybody's a volunteer.

Speaker 7: Well, this is helping me a lot. I'm not sure everything I'm going to say is interesting or addressing the problem, particularly yours, because I'm actually coming from an organization that gets volunteers. So in many ways, my challenge is balancing the needs of the staff and the needs of the volunteers. I'm going to sum it up on the highest level possible. So we don't have that problem. I don't know. I would have no advice during this moment.

Speaker 3: But I'm also with Liz from Healthy Food for All. That's why I'm here today. So as a volunteer.

Speaker 7: I'm going to kind of talk about what I plan to talk about and make sure I address everybody's points and who's watching time to let us know when the time's up. You are, thank you. How much time do I have at this point?

Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, this session has 15 more minutes.

Speaker 7: Okay. This particular demo in the Q&A or?

Speaker 4: No. So you have 10 minutes.

Speaker 7: I have 10 minutes. Well, you know, I thought some of the points I'll address will answer some of your concerns, I think, or address them in some way. So I thought I'd start with opportunities rather than my own challenges. So at least we'll get that out when time gets cut off and that it won't be so bad. You'll get maybe some tactical tips. I think the opportunities that exist in the community right now is IC and Cornell. And, yes, they're one-time folks, but what I see coming from those two educational institutions is a very strong commitment to ensure that their students are participating in community service. Cornell, IC has been stronger in my experience, but Cornell's coming up with this whole new initiative to have that kind of community service be part of their life, and I see it showing up dramatically. An example is tomorrow I'm on the board of Food Net Meals on Wheels, and I'm in charge of coordinating the volunteers for the mac and cheese event. And Cornell is sending me, I asked for 10 volunteers. They sent me 20. So I've got so many volunteers showing up for this. I mean, I'm hoping your 80% is right, that I've never had that. Everybody keeps showing up for my event, so I'm hoping that I won't have to disappoint some folks. By saying, don't come. Also, what's happening tomorrow, this is the other opportunity, is the Greek service fraternities at Cornell are having their day of, I never say it right, is it Demeter or Demeter, I'm not sure what. So it's happening tomorrow, it usually happens in April. And I don't know how many volunteers are going out there, but I know last year I had 20 signed up, and 75 showed up. So they just send these hordes of students out the door, and we cleaned about every book in the child section that day, which was great. So those are opportunities, and I'll get specific about when those things take place. Retired folks, obviously everybody knows that, they're an opportunity. The downside is that RSVP is just where you can get a lot of retired folks, it's just they're going to go out of business in April, so I'm not sure where to find those folks. That used to be the channel that I looked at from. The other opportunity is there are a lot of young adults out there, especially the underemployed and the unemployed, who want to develop skills or want to put something on their resume. And I find these folks through places like JobLink, and they actually get paid to come and work, to come and volunteer. So JobLink through Workforce New York is a place to recruit that group from. And then teens are also an opportunity because they need to develop their skills. They're in an honors course, they're in the National Honor Society, they have to do the full volunteer hours. If they're taking a different high school, and I think at Grassroots, and the Lehman School, they all have obligations to do some kind of community service. So in terms of, is it helpful to give you some really down and dirty specifics, like who you call? So at IC, call Don Austin. He's the Assistant Director of Community Service and Leadership Development. He's in charge of the Martin Luther King Day of Caring. They do these service Saturdays where they take busloads of students out into the community. He'll meet with him, talk to him, build relationships. That to me is the foundation of my job right now, is building these relationships. I can pick up the phone and say, hey, I need these main volunteers, and it's just done.