Comments on: Apparently forethought isn’t one of the skills they should plan to share http://blog.snappingturtle.net/archives/1216 Beautiful Soup, so rich and green, Waiting in a hot tureen! Wed, 04 Aug 2010 01:17:48 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 By: Emily Cain http://blog.snappingturtle.net/archives/1216/comment-page-1#comment-33448 Emily Cain Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:32:08 +0000 http://blog.snappingturtle.net/?p=1216#comment-33448 Set up the volunteers to administrate themselves; the various heritage/historical societies provide a model. The Province paid for megabucks legal advice to provide any historical society/museum support society with a model constitution which could be adapted and widely used. In the olden days I was president on and off of a heritage umbrella organization and we used this constitution at least 10 times. It provides a structure for volunteers attached to a paid-staff institution to generously interact. At one point the HAMILTON-SCOURGE Society had a skills list for each of oh, maybe 150 members, and, just for example, when Bob Ballard wished to dismantle computer equipment on a barge, we were able to provide two volunteers whose volunteered expertise that was--and the match had to do with prior data-collection, of course. It's a whole field of endeavour for a staff member to make the most of volunteers and this is optimally done by setting up an independent volunteer organization which is self-administrated; you'd be very good at this, Robyn, if it interested you. Done well, this is mostly interface, by contrast to what is usually understood to be administration. In a big volunteer organization, many people come with vast amounts of administrative experience; they administer themselves if organized independently. You can contract volunteers, of course, as does the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, which contracts for years-long contributions within its independent volunteer organization. It shouldn't be a problem to use every erg of a volunteer army if we are lucky enough to have one, if it's set up so they do nearly all of it themselves. Set up the volunteers to administrate themselves; the various heritage/historical societies provide a model. The Province paid for megabucks legal advice to provide any historical society/museum support society with a model constitution which could be adapted and widely used. In the olden days I was president on and off of a heritage umbrella organization and we used this constitution at least 10 times. It provides a structure for volunteers attached to a paid-staff institution to generously interact. At one point the HAMILTON-SCOURGE Society had a skills list for each of oh, maybe 150 members, and, just for example, when Bob Ballard wished to dismantle computer equipment on a barge, we were able to provide two volunteers whose volunteered expertise that was–and the match had to do with prior data-collection, of course.

It’s a whole field of endeavour for a staff member to make the most of volunteers and this is optimally done by setting up an independent volunteer organization which is self-administrated; you’d be very good at this, Robyn, if it interested you. Done well, this is mostly interface, by contrast to what is usually understood to be administration.

In a big volunteer organization, many people come with vast amounts of administrative experience; they administer themselves if organized independently. You can contract volunteers, of course, as does the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, which contracts for years-long contributions within its independent volunteer organization.

It shouldn’t be a problem to use every erg of a volunteer army if we are lucky enough to have one, if it’s set up so they do nearly all of it themselves.

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