Nikhil Sheth
Groups I'm involved with: Swaraj University
Interested in: Sustainability
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Post by Nikhil Sheth on Mar 10, 2014 8:02:22 GMT 5.5
Some things to keep in mind when working with people who have volunteered to help you organize an event.
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Nikhil Sheth
Groups I'm involved with: Swaraj University
Interested in: Sustainability
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Post by Nikhil Sheth on Mar 10, 2014 8:11:26 GMT 5.5
A volunteer is not a secretary / P.A. There is a difference between the two.
Use case scenario: You want to have the details / invite for the event sent to so-and-so people, whose email id's are with you. A mailer having said details has already been sent out to all by the registrations team volunteer, and is there in your inbox.
1. Do not write back to the volunteer telling them to make sure so and so people having these email-id's get the mailer.
2. Go to the mailer/invite, press FORWARD, and fwd it to those people yourself. In the forwarded email will be the email address of the original sender. At most, keep the registration-in-charge in CC, and put in a line telling the recipients "if any queries, please write back to <NAME> CC'ed"
If you really need someone to do this for you, then either hire a secretary and pay them a real wage, or recruit a volunteer explicitly for the role of your secretary (and let's see who signs up). But don't increase the volunteer's workload unnecessarily; do not give work to a volunteer just for the sake of giving them some work. They can easily tell the difference.
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Nikhil Sheth
Groups I'm involved with: Swaraj University
Interested in: Sustainability
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Post by Nikhil Sheth on Mar 10, 2014 8:33:53 GMT 5.5
Hospitality: Here's the flow:
1. Treat your volunteers with hospitality; Respect them. Involve them in the whole process, share all information with them, empower them to take decisions concerning their roles.
2. Your volunteers will then treat the guests with hospitality and take good care of them.
You cannot achieve point 2 without doing point 1. So, at certain tricky situations, there is a tendency to push volunteers into over-reach for the sake of hospitality for the guests. However good it feels, if the actual act of over-reaching has to be done by the volunteer and not by you, then do not impose this on them. Plan a little in advance, take the time to explain properly why you would like to see this done, then present this not as an order but as a "you could do this..." and leave it to the volunteer to take a call, with all other tasks under consideration, whether this extra act of hospitality is doable or not.
Be TOTALLY COOL and ok if this extra act of hospitality (like, say, going to the airport for picking up) is deemed not doable. The sky isn't going to fall; your event will not be ruined, the guests WILL NOT FEEL BAD AT ALL. (And those who do, should not be invited to events that are being run in good faith by volunteers : design mismatch)
Do not abuse your volunteers in the pursuit of giving your guests an touch of extra hospitality.
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