Learning Day

Volunteer Engagement

Strengths

Struggles

Distance (e.g. Australia is large)
Professional organization and having paid staff - some volunteers dislike this
Commitment
Culture of volunteering
Lack of volunteers
Policies & rules
Disruption
Too few leaders - not enough time
Burnout - people once active get tired
People wait for training to get involved
People don't want responsibility
Dominant personalities drive people off
Just getting started (very new)
Fulfilling time commitment (Indonesia)
Neglecting volunteers (eesti)
Coordinating communications (CH)
Retention (Shared knowledge)
Not enough physical meet-ups (A2K)
We don't know what to assign when we get new volunteers
We don't have on-boarding process for new volunteers or board members (very important but very time consuming)
Too much time to explain movement to new comers
It's hard to trust people who come from outside the movement (some people)
Its difficult to re-engage with community after a long period of absence
Need to keep volunteers all the time or else the lose interest
Lack of communications across departments (?)

Internships
Mentorships
Financial support
wiki project specific training (offline)
Tutorial videos, handbooks, cheat-books
Curiosity
make a difference
don't make it feel like a factory - think of ways to return dedication further than thank you notes.
make sure there is an open door

Attend Annual general meeting
Legitimate
fresh/openness
Connection to roots
Personal interests attract new volunteers - new exxposure
learn & challenge the existing group - shake up
bring own projcts
No vision yet
Students learn with WEP, reinforce what they learn in school
sharing vs knowledge vs altruism; learning, reading, writing
Wiki Loves Monuments is very different - care more about photographs
Provide opportunities
Give access to resources, fund for travelling photos,
Global underrepresentation for their culture & community; motivated to fill in gaps --> can invite new volunteers to help fill in gaps
Money for projects
Facilitation, connections
interest/agenda
Novelty enthusiasm
Be involved, help
feel more official
identity "I'm a Wikipedian.."
New, democratic , free
Look at my edits!

havint finished mission
skills & resources (e.g. writing articles, content building)
Bridge & ambassadors
vision of how they will help
"volunteers" is value - image of the organization is different of the organization
cultural foundation --> "sense of community" how to measure?
volunteers stay longer if they become paid staff?
Career progression in organization
Loyalty, invested
ownership/empower
Developing skills
Career, life development
Apply experiences to personal life
Organizational changes

Local meet-ups
Recognition
- Encourage to run own project 00> Funds for projects generated from community, gives a sense of ownership
Send to conferences
Wikipedia of month/year
Attribution via annual reports
Engage other NGO's via jury
Share stories in local newspapers
Organize unconference and engage volunteers ; session leaders & facilitators
Mentorship matching when facing challenges
Be thankful to those who have been around
Send cards & verbal gratitude
What would they tell their friends and family?
- their awards & their work
- number of articles they've written
- Good civic involvement & donating time

Keep providing opportunities
Make sure people have fun
Actively reaching out; make them feel there is a good reason to come back --> personalized
offline - have an open-office day
Announce frequently on the same mailing list
It is important to meet people in person to keep volunteers engaged
With online volunteers to need to designated times to engage them
Make events a series
continue to show appreciation
Professional developing in areas they are interested in

Think of what the results will influence
Have questions related to your expectations
Test the survey with people (board members, and wikipedians will help you make questions clear and distinct)
Volunteers may question why an organization is doing a survey -- may get negative
- Feedback about the survey
- Challenged why you are spending money on this
Posting survey to village pump and newsletter
People compain I didn't hear, I didn't want to hear about this
- related to topics they didn't like/do not contact
List of questions are spcific related to where there was a problem (biased in this way)
For proper survey, need to watch out for biases
Doing surveys about community for replication in other communities
- Publish Results: commons, WMNL, wiki-l, newsletter
- Ask communities for input about approaches in the organization (e.g. communications, conflict training, gender, that may result in offline workshop)

Need to target the people intended
Know who to target and how - didn't know how to use site notice
Questions must be clear and exact
- Still agenda to what you ask
- Survey by WMF years ago - questions can skew results if leading questions - leading to answers by method, including inclustion of participants - some dont want to use google surveys
Analysis - profession - sometimes need to ask/have someone who knows what they are doing
Double check question - ask experienced outsider - pilot with small set of people
Not too many questions or all same type of questions
Open-ended questions are difficult to analyze - can cause fatigue
Need balance
Complex language - Response bias

Community involvement

Discussion on limit to see what we should ask from who
Learn what questions communities need to answer
Allow to review an document on designed draft
- Be cautious if surveys are for research in which knowing in advance may alter future answers.

Strengths

Weaknesses

Opportunities

Threats