Welcome & Instructions

Submitted by admin on Sun, 2006-02-19 19:24.

The Volunteer Union is here to help make Volunteering more worthwhile.

The Problem: When most potential volunteers fail to show up, organizations don't take the real volunteers seriously.

A huge proportion of people who offer to volunteer don't follow through on their committments. So, nonprofits give up on training and providing worthwhile tasks: people come with their hearts on fire and are tolk to stuff envelopes. Too many people who really want to make a difference get burned out on volunteering from being given small tasks.

Many organizations, SpaceShare included, have struggled with having huge numbers of people say they are interested, use up the time of the few people who do all the work in any organization, and then disappear. Conversely, many nonprofits give volunteers menial little jobs like stuffing envelopes because they've stopped taking their volunteers seriously.

The Solution:

Find a way for volunteers to gain a reputation for committment, and for organizations to gain a reputation for providing worthwhile opportunities and training.

Worthwhile work, infused with joy & community. That is our goal.

Our approach:

  1. To create an agreement between potential volunteers and organizations. The struggles many volunteers and organizations have all come from people of good will failing to communicate their needs or communicate their seriousness.
  2. To help you create a record of your activities, so that others (volunteers or organizations) can have confidence in you. We want good volunteers to be known, and receive time and energy for training and worthwhile tasks. We want organizations that have good volunteer programs to have volunteers knocking on their doors.

This website explores the challenges of volunteering, and helps volunteers create an online resume.

* Commit to a schedule.
* Start with a small project. Let us know that you are serious.
* Please recognize that we have a lot of people who express interest, and it can be overwhelming to take everyone by the hand. Tackle a little role, tackle it well, and we'll know you're serious.
* Once we know who is really showing up, together we can do amazing things, and we will invest the time to give you interesting projects.

For Volunteers:

Post a volunteer resume: gain a reputation as someone worth taking seriously.

Requirements and Goals

Participating in the Volunteer Union is both a promise and a demand:

  1. you promise to take your volunteer roles seriously.
  2. you demand that organizations treat your time and your mind as worthwhile.

The general pattern is to expect the first place you volunteer to give you one (maximum) old-style task, such as asking you to show up and sort letters going to different politicians... something where they can do it if you don't show up, where they don't have to train you. After you do it, all participating organizations in the VU have agreed to take you seriously.

How to

Membership in the "Volunteer Union" is self determined. There are two ways to share your information with the world:

  1. Post it anywhere that Google can find it with the tag "volunteer-union" and your name, along with your "volunteer resume."
  2. Post your volunteer resume here.

Be a good reference for volunteers who put their heart in.

Either on your own website or here, provide space for volunteers.