Hi, Natalie --
To begin, since you have not mentioned it, I am going to assume Hay House does not have a labor agreement that would preclude replacing paid employees with unpaid ones. For many organizations, a labor contract or collective bargaining agreement would have to be renegotiated before such a dramatic change could be made.
The most logical place to start is to review the decision to go from volunteer docents to paid docents which you indicate was made circa 2000. It's likely that a robust local economy 8-10 years ago made it difficult to recruit volunteers but there was probably more to the decision than that. You need to review whatever documentation is available (board minutes, correspondence, monthly reports) and see what the reasons for going to paid staff were and determine if those reasons are still valid.
Keep in mind that the segment of the population that made up the majority of volunteers in the 1990's has now aged 8-18 years and, as a rule, those volunteers have not been replaced by the younger volunteers. In most areas of the U.S., the number of women (traditionally the great majority of volunteers) who have the financial means and inclination to volunteer has been in a decline since the 1970's.
A more recent but very serious concern that you will have to factor in to your decision if the rise in the price of gasoline So, is public transportation available? Can you offer carpooling or a discounted bus fare? At a minimum volunteers in this area are rethinking their commitments and reducing the number of days they drive to their volunteer jobs.
I think it would be a very good idea to contact similar organizations in your area and see what their experience with recruiting and retaining volunteers is these days. There has always been a fair amount of variability from region to region but there are probably even more organizations than ever competing for an ever-smaller pool of volunteers,
If you decide to proceed, then:
- create a paid volunteer coordinator position (unless there's someone on staff with sufficient free time to take on what's likely to be a big additional task) and hire someone with experience running a volunteer program and, hopefully, good community contacts.
- prepare a job description for volunteer docents (revise existing description for paid docents judiciously; if you are likely to replace a younger worker with an older volunteer, you may need to make some accommodations)
- estimate the minimum number of hours of volunteer time that will be needed to cover upcoming tours and establish a minimum time commitment for the volunteers
- create a new training and orientation program for the volunteers (compare old programs with the training offered to paid docents)
- advertise that Hay House is recruiting volunteers via local media outlets
- utilize your Board and membership/Friends group to help recruit
- consider holding a volunteer fair, or joining forces with similar local organization to hold such a fair
- be prepared to do ongoing recruitment and training plus more arranging for substitutes or rescheduling than was the case with paid staff.
--- On Tue, 9/2/08, Natalie Bari <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> From: Natalie Bari <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: Tuesday, September 2, 2008, 4:00 PM
> The historic house museum where I work is, like all of us,
> feeling the pain of low visitation. My director has been
> number crunching and is attempting to find cost saving
> solutions. One solution was to cut back on docent hours.
> Sometime around 2000, the museum made a decision to stop
> using volunteer docents and hire paid docents (a minimum
> wage level position). It has been suggested that perhaps
> we should return to using a primarily volunteer docent
> corps. And thus, my question is...has anyone else tried
> returning to volunteer front-line support instead of paid
> front-line support? If so, how did you go about this?
> What problems were encountered? Have you since
> re-evaluated the arrangement? Would you consider it
> successful?
>
> I appreciate any and all feedback.
>
> Best,
> Natalie Bari
> Education Coordinator
> Hay House
>
> Natalie Bari
> 870.897.6288
> [log in to unmask]
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