I'm
going to print your rant to share with others on our board. Whenever the Board
suggests that we take add a new time-consuming project to our list and we balk,
they say, "can't you just find some volunteers?" as though there is a volunteer
tree somewhere that we can pluck a few skilled, motivated people who have time
they are willing to commit to our project.
We
have one and a half employees and quite a few volunteers. And, yes, they are
only willing to do certain things because they are doing it as a hobby. We can
not ask them to take on difficult or time-consuming responsibilities. They draw
a line between the fun stuff and the really hard work - which leaves my
assistant and I to do a lot of support work for the volunteers! In addition to
the long-running volunteers, we also have the periodic volunteers who show up
for a couple months and then leave. The prime example of this is the community
service volunteer who needs to fill 20 hours.
Don't
get me wrong, I love my volunteers. Many of them give 15-20 hours a week and are
worth their weight in gold. But volunteers are not a
panacaea.
Erica S. Maniez
Museum Director, Issaquah Historical
Society
425/392-3500
[log in to unmask]
www.issaquahhistory.org
I am
writing on list because I have a particular rant on this
topic.
The money
is typically so short in museums and the number of services we are expected to
provide are increasing so exponentially, that we must rely on volunteers to
help us meet minimum service levels instead of hiring additional staff.
The kind of thing we need done by people other than ourselves is rarely
exciting enough to hold the interest of skilled volunteers (who are well aware
of their worth anyway and are always looking for paid opportunities), yet the
volunteers who could be trained have erratic schedules and are apt to up and
leave anyway. We find that to continually invest our time in training
volunteers takes away from our other duties, and once trained their major
motivation is hanging out and socializing with us---hardly conducive to
getting our own work done.
Typically
a job or program starts out being done by a motivated, skilled
volunteer, then it becomes so invaluable that we allot $ to it to make it a
part-time position once the volunteer threatens to quit. It then gets
integrated into our operations to the extent that it becomes a full-time
position. The total elapsed time to get this accomplished is about 5
years. We have a staff of 22 full-time people and 6-8 part-time
people--the institution was all-volunteer from 1934 to 1976, when it got a
total of one full-time paid person. Today our volunteers are
used as docents, supplementary office help in all departments
and installation assistants--we tried to have a volunteer
coordinate our volunteer efforts but...you got it...it got
turned into a paid job once it started to entail some real
work.
End of
rant. But you see what I mean?
Julia
Moore
Director
of Exhibitions and Artist Services
Indianapolis Art Center