I just wanted to share a recent email from James, our Director of Operations and Volunteer Coordinator, to current volunteers:
Hello TSI volunteers,
I’d like to give you a quick heads up about the progress of our volunteer program. This past week has been phenomenal — between our recent press coverage in Wired and CNET, and our networking at the BIL conference, we’ve doubled the size of our active volunteer team from about 10-20 people. These volunteers are helping with website development, writing, community relations, outreach to potential partner organizations, and more.
This is really great news, because growth in the volunteer organization translates directly to progress against our vision. There are only 3 of us employed here; we can set the strategy, but we need you guys to do help us do the work, and we are still small enough such that each person makes a significant difference.
The cost of fast growth, though, is that it can be difficult to manage. I’m going to focus on recruiting some volunteer coordinators/managers, but until then, I’ll be spread a little thin. For those of you who regularly work with me directly, I’d like to ask you to be patient if responses are a little slow, or direction a little sparse, for the time being.
How can you help? Try to be proactive; keeping me posted with periodic status updates helps me a lot. If you’re sure you know what needs to be done, do it. If you’re not sure, go ahead and ask. And please keep the lines of communication open! I’m always interested in knowing how things are going for you, and if there is anything else I can do to help. I want to continue to make sure that each of you is having a volunteering experience that is rewarding and engaging.
Thanks, James
So, our #1 volunteer need at this point is for volunteer volunteer coordinators to help manage our volunteers. That’s success as far as I’m concerned :).
A big thank-you to all of our volunteers, and to James for scaling the program so quickly! I look forward to seeing our progress rate continue to increase every month, thanks to your help.
