The Volunteer Union

The volunteer union is intended as a very small project, easy for other organizations to participate in, filling a specific niche. The front page describes the tools from a "user" perspective. This page adds some "why."

• Getting commitments. Lots of good-hearted people sign up and flake out: the action of committing, of making a clear promise, feels like the most important part of this, far more important that the actual ratings. The site should be useful for the first organization to use it, even if the ratings/records system requires a critical mass later.
• Keeping it positive. Finding a way to get volunteers to commit has been a huge problem for SpaceShare and other organizations I've talked to. It's a challenge: when someone offers to volunteer, I don't want to frown and say "volunteers rarely show up, are you an exception, will you sign a commitment paper?" Our organization needs to stay positive. By funneling people to a standardized program, I can keep our conversation with the volunteer positive, but nonetheless get them thinking about whether they really want to volunteer.
• Ratings. Just knowing you will be rated, just knowing you'll have to make up excuses about why you didn't meet your promise, is the real goal -- again we don't see this as a project like EBay where you're looking out for crooks, just helping people think twice before they make promises.
• Funnelling volunteers to the right organizations. When I first moved to the Bay, I tried to get involved witha few organizations that did amazing work. I found the big, famous organizations were swamped with volunteers and didn't give me anything useful to do - looking for volunteer roles was as bad as looking for a job. See SF Volunteer Seedlings.

Side projects (feel free to pick one or add one!):

1. Create a list of resources for volunteer coordinators, organized by both style (Global Exchange and a food bank have very different needs), and how long it will take to read - some one-person groups are looking for one page suggestions, others are accidental full-time volunteer coordinators looking to read multiple books.