Hi Elizabeth,

The Sonoran Desert Museum in Tucson has one of the best volunteer training
programs I've seen in my 35+ years in the museum field.  They have similar
problems with long waiting lists and slow advancement, but this is
primarily because they have so many folks wanting to work as volunteers.  I
don't have a contact for them but they are easily found on the web.

Gretchen

On Sun, Aug 27, 2017 at 12:43 PM, Elizabeth <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> Hello!
>
> I am looking for input from those of you out there who work with
> volunteers who undergo extensive, long term, skills based training
> programs. Our volunteers operate our historic, interpretive railway and
> come to us with varying levels of experience.
>
> We are lucky to have a volunteer run operations leadership team which
> oversees qualified trainers and proficiency standards. Our issue is that
> access to training gets gummed up - volunteers remain on wait lists for
> long periods of time and advancement is slow. The reasons include: having a
> limited number of qualified trainers, the fact that our train runs
> seasonally (meaning limited access to hands on training during the off
> season), moving "up" the training program requires increasing levels of
> knowledge, experience, and skills (the process gets slower the more you
> advance), and that our system now includes time based, as well as skills
> based standards.
>
> I would love to hear from you if you have had experience streamlining a
> highly skilled training program. I would be happy to supply additional
> information. Ideally, I would love to see a program that is continuously
> accepting and graduating folks, allowing us to grow our volunteer base,
> increase the number of qualified trainers, and eventually to have too many
> qualified volunteers to know what to do with ;)
>
> Thanks in advance for any input!
>
> Elizabeth Rudrud
> Volunteer and Events Coordinator
> Northwest Railway Museum
> www.trainmuseum.org
>
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-- 
Gretchen Voeks
Museum Curator, Scotty's Castle
Death Valley National Park
PO Box 579
Death Valley, CA  92328
(760) 786-3258
Mon-Thurs 7am - 5pm

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