Ten Commandments for Effectively Using Volunteers

DON’T

• Just sign people up. . .
• Recruit people to come to meetings . . .
• Make new volunteers work alone. . .
• Just tell them what to do. . .
• Ask people what they want to do. . .
• Use them up and burn them out. . .
• Ignore their suggestions. . .
• Let them starve for appreciation. . .
• Assume volunteers can only be “workers”. . .
• Assume you don’t have time to train volunteers. . .

DO

• Give them something to do!
• Recruit people to come to activities!
• Assign them a partner or put them on a team!
• Involve them in project planning!
• Ask them what they like to do!
• Keep expectations reasonable and keep adding new volunteers to share the work!
• Let them know you appreciate their input!
• Pay them with praise!
• Let them run projects or be trainers and coordinators for other volunteers!
• Consider whether you really have time to do it all by yourself

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