I’ve been with the Red Cross for the last three years. In that time we’ve had a dozen people show up for meetings once…but they didn’t take the required courses and wouldn’t sign up for on-call, and left. We had two or three people take CPR and intro, show up for their first disaster meeting, and disappear. We’ve probably had 50 people put in volunteer applications…but when called for a follow-up they say they’ll call back “next week”. We sent 120 new people to Katrina relief; TWO have remained on board. In the mean time there’s a core group of 15-20 volunteers who staff the health fairs, take the classes, go on call, perform community outreach, and make sure there are enough pens and staplers in the go boxes. My other volunteer place has the same stories, so it’s not just ARC.
With all the other stuff going on, why should any non-profit expend so much wasted time and energy on someone when there’s less than a 1% chance that person is actually going to stick around?
If you really, really want to volunteer, you fill out the app and keep making telephone calls until you get a meeting with the volunteer coordinator. It not only means you have the stick-to-itiveness that strapped non-profs really need; it’ll also get you a volunteer position.
I really, really want to volunteer and I have limited time and resources with which to volunteer. I am going to choose to give my time to organizations that make it easy for me to do so. I am not angry about people not getting back to me, but I am going to make the assumption that I am not needed by your organization if you can’t return phone calls or e-mails and move on to a different organization who does reply. I volunteer for pleasure and the more it seems like work, the less likely I am to go. I’ve posted about Habitat for Humanity before, their organization didn’t really work for me so I moved on.
BTW, I don’t volunteer for the Red Cross, but you guys do good work (even if you won’t take my crappy blood). Thanks for doin’ it!
For what it’s worth, my father (a retired chemical engineer) volunteers at the Exploratorium in San Francisco one day a week. He filled out an online form offering his services, and they had him signed up on a project in a couple of days. Everyone has been appreciative of his skills, and he’s absolutely loving the work (and putting in lots of “research” hours outside of his one full day per week). So not all nonprofits are terrible at this.