Here's one regarding the age of volunteers. You reconstruct a Victorian
garden around the Victorian House where your museum is located. Before
the project starts, volunteers promise to help the landscape architect
who's been hired and who's established his/her costs in accordance with
the number of hours/volunteers that was promised. But volunteers are all
80-90 years old; they hardly show up at all during the summer, except to
look at progress.  The landscape architect ends up doing a lot of the
work by him/herself and has to hire help for manual labor. You manage to
keep the project within budget despite the increased expenses but you get
blamed by the board (where the very same unreliable volunteers sit once a
month) for a garden that has cost more than what was initially planned.
Sad but true story...

Hervé Gagnon

Wayne and Mary a écrit:

> Let me give you a couple of examples:
>
> We have volunteers that have been with the museum for nearly
> 25 years.  Many of them can no longer negotiate the stairs to
> turn on the lights for patrons. So they don't. The curator (also
> volunteer) wanted to install a light switch at the bottom of the
> stairs that would handle the upstairs lighting. Board members
> said no - what you need to do is get younger volunteers and not
> allow the older ones that can't go upstairs to sign up for the
> season.
> We're talking here about folks bordering on 90 years old  - who
> never read the guidebook from year to year because they figure
> there is nothing new in it etc. etc.
>
> Then you have the volunteer on the board who comes to 1, possibly
> 2 board meetings a year - which is clearly in contradiction of the by
> laws concerning attendance for board members and who can be
> ousted for non attendance - but have never been told to vacate the
> spot by the President - because  - after all, they ARE volunteering
> their time. What has happened here is that there are only 6 or 7
> board members who take an active interest in the doings of the board
> and in the running of the museum.  The rest only show up for the
> annual meeting and the volunteer dinner.
>
> Regards
>
> Mary Haegele