Volunteer Management Workshop for NGOs
June 17, 2005
India Social Institute, Bangalore

iVolunteer Bangalore organised its first Volunteer Management Workshop for 20 non-profits. Acting as facilitators in the process of volunteering, iVolunteer, through such workshops, aims to assist NGOs in better utilising the skills and services of volunteers.

The event began with an introduction by Ms. Antoinette Lopez, the event manager and Centre InCharge of iVolunteer Bangalore. She briefly introduced iVolunteer, the organization, and its objectives, as well as its two directors - Mr. Shalabh Sahai and Mr. Rahul Barkataky. After discussing the objectives of the workshop, she encouraged the participants to introduce themselves, their organizations and their expectations from a workshop such as this. Their expectations included a wide range of volunteering aspects like recruiting long term and committed volunteers, managing and retaining volunteers, efficiency in the selection of volunteers and utilizing staff and time.

After a short tea break, Mr. Sahai began the next segment on the Changing face of Volunteering: Opportunities & Challenges, National as well as international scenario. He began by brainstorming a list of words that come to one’s mind when one thinks of volunteer. The group came up with a large and comprehensive list of terms like willingness, involvement, support, commitment, passion and last but not the least iVolunteer. He touched upon the different types of volunteering like philanthropic, mutual aid and self help, public service, etc. and informed the attendees about volunteering in the 21st century in the US, Canada and UK.

Following this session was a case study conducted by Mr. Barkataky. This highly interactive case study is a tool to understand the preparation that goes into volunteering from the perspective of a host organisation as well as a volunteer. It touches upon issues such as the receptiveness and attitude of a volunteer towards the working style of an NGO and the attention and orientation that an NGO should provide to a prospective volunteer. After a lively discussion, the participants, who had been divided into groups of four, put down their points of view. At the close of this segment, a list of 13 steps that must be followed in Volunteer Management was enumerated.

With the participants charged up, thanks to the case study, Mr. Sahai began a detailed session on Volunteer Management Systems. The first part focused on managing volunteers - are NGOs ready to utilize volunteers and resource allocation. The second part, taken up post-lunch, was based on recruitment of volunteers - how an organisation should develop a volunteer profile and write a search brief such that a volunteer has complete role clarity before commencing any volunteering work. The final part of this session, lead by Mr. Barkataky, was on promotion - how to attract volunteers and, more importantly, how to write an attention grabbing advert such that it appeals to socially aware and unaware volunteers.

The day-long workshop came to a close with the last segment on Volunteer Categories. Concentrating on offering different types of volunteering possibilities, Mr. Sahai talked about the benefits of individual volunteers, foreign volunteers and group volunteers for an organisation.