When recruiting volunteers for your organization, not everyone has the same skills and interest areas. However, when working in an organization, everyone must have equal opportunities to explore their strengths and experience new niches. For that, you must provide all the volunteers a brief training and orientation so they are not entirely lost when assigned a task that does not involve their expertise or that they are experienced. This way, you both will save time, and there will not be room for surprises in the future.
While the majority of volunteers that join organizations are dedicated to their tasks, however as the founder, it is your responsibility to track their progress. Moreover, it becomes easier for you to delegate work and announce any updates if you have a good management platform. So if you are looking for a professional tool and reasonable prices, check out Vome Volunteer management systems.
Effective ways for orientation and training your volunteers
- Ask for feedback from previous volunteers
Supporters that participated in the previous volunteer programs are the best option to know what you can improve and which technique or method of your organization is ineffective. You can also ask them for any particular suggestions they found missing during their orientation which must be included for a newcomer in your non-profit organization. Whether these volunteers are still working with you or have left the organization, try to contact as many as possible to achieve substantial feedback.
You must wonder how you will accommodate everyone’s suggestions in your training and orientation session. The trick is to compare all the feedback you receive from current or past volunteers and highlight the most common advice most supporters found missing in your sessions.
This way, you can quickly implement all the missing practical methods and also focus on the current training strategies that your volunteer found helpful then. You can also ask them if there was anything in particular that could have been done differently during these sessions. The overall feedback from the supporters will help you understand which aspect needs betterment.
- Provide training resources to each volunteer
Most people forget about 70% of the training they take in any session. A similar situation can occur with your volunteers as well. However, they must reverb each aspect of the orientation as it will benefit them and help form future tasks.
If the volunteers do not remember the lessons, they will perform poorly. However, it can negatively impact your organization as most of them will quit.