We have a small staff at the Catalina Island Museum (just 5 full-time)
and one of those wears the hat of volunteer coordinator (she also
performs some admininstrative support and manages membership data).  She
reports directly to our director and works closely with our education
coordinator to recruit and train our gallery docents.  Her position is
evolving and we hope in the coming years that she will spend more and
more time focused on her volunteer responsibilities.  In our experience,
it is important to have a single person as the main contact with the
volunteers.  Warmth and caring are key characteristics of a good
coordinator, I would say.  Since we've had a centralized person as
coordinator who does exhibit those characteristics, I believe our
volunteers are a more dedicated and happier bunch of people.

Our volunteers do not have their own organization--they report directly
to our coordinator and to their individual supervisors (for instance, if
they work in the collections department they work directly with the
collections manager and report hours, etc. to the vol. coordinator.)

Hope this helps!

Stacey Otte
Catalina Island Museum
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Richard Chute wrote:

> 1.  Do volunteers have a formal "volunteer organization"?
> 2.  Do they have a professional staff member to coordinate their
> activites?
> 3.  Who does the volunteer coordinator report to?  a) they are their own
> department/program; b) they are a part of the education department; c)
> they are a part of development department; d) they are part of community
> relations; or e) something else.
>