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Volunteer Basics
Volunteers can be a great resource for your Summer Food Program. They can help with outreach efforts, run a summer food site, and provide activities. At some sites, volunteers help supervise kids and offer crowd control services. They can also provide positive adult role models for children at a time when many need it most.
Reasons to Use Volunteers
This section will discuss the reasons to use volunteers, how to manage volunteers and tools you can use to connect with volunteers. We also offer some sample volunteer “job” descriptions.
Why Use Volunteers?
The top five reasons to consider using volunteers at your meal site(s):
- Volunteers increase the quality of services that you provide.
- Utilizing volunteers saves your program money because you don’t have to hire as many paid staff.
- Volunteers increase public support for your program as they share their positive experiences at your site(s) with others in their community, helping build community ownership.
- Volunteers help you provide more personalized attention to the children you serve.
- Your organization has access to a wider range of specialized skills that volunteers may possess.
How to Manage Volunteers
The central idea of volunteer management theory is the volunteer management cycle.
Planning
- Designing volunteer positions & job descriptions.
- Identifying the supervisor for the volunteer.
- Determining whether a background check will be necessary for volunteers.
- Developing applicable policies and procedures.
- Educating others in the organization about involving volunteers, including training site supervisors on how to work with volunteers.
When you have taken care of these planning items, you have a solid foundation to support your volunteer program.
Recruitment
Be creative as you brainstorm who, why, where, when and how to find volunteers.
- Who would be the ideal
 volunteer?
- Why would they be interested in your volunteer opportunity?
- Where and when can you reach these people?
- What recruitment messages would be most likely to motivate or encourage potential volunteers to volunteer for your organization?
If you need help figuring out where to start, staff from the Oregon Hunger Relief Task Force are available to help you brainstorm a recruitment strategy!
Orientation and Training
When you have recruited your volunteers, you will need to provide them with orientation and training to give them general information about your organization and specific information about the volunteer position(s) available. Orientation and training help your volunteers feel confident and prepared. You also decrease the chances of problems occurring by making sure that all volunteers know what will be expected of them. Orientation and training may be as simple as having your volunteers meet up on the first day of the Summer Food Program and explaining to them about what the program is, who can be served, site rules, and tips on making a site a friendly and welcoming place for children. You may also want to consider providing background information on the need in your community.
Supervision and Evaluation
This stage is for your benefit and the volunteer’s benefit. You need to know that the volunteer is fulfilling their role effectively and the volunteer needs affirmation too. Regular evaluation and check-in with the volunteer gives you both time to assess how the volunteer placement is going and if changes could be made to improve the volunteer’s satisfaction or performance.
Recognition
Recognition happens in an informal way every time a “thank you” is said. Formally, volunteers are thanked through celebrations and recognition events planned in their honor. It is important that the thank you fits the volunteer; you need to know your volunteers so that they can be thanked in a way that leaves them feeling truly recognized.
With good planning and management you will retain your current volunteers and be ready to involve new volunteers as the cycle begins again.
Tools for Finding Volunteers
There are several organizations and web tools that can help you connect your program with interested volunteers by offering free or low-cost listings of volunteer opportunities:
There are also other organizations that are not specifically focused on volunteers but that may have members with an interest in volunteering:
- Schools. In high schools, ask about honor societies, Key Clubs, and service learning programs. Colleges may also have volunteer or service learning requirements or service programs to help students get practical experience.
- Corporate volunteer programs. The bigger a company, the more likely it is to have some kind of corporate policy encouraging employees to volunteer. Some that we know of in Oregon:
- Umpqua Bank
- Washington Mutual Bank
- Nike
- Intel
- Retired Senior Volunteer Program (RSVP)
- Community centers, including senior centers.
- Churches and other faith-based groups.
- Community organizations, including Rotary Clubs, Lions Clubs, social groups, language groups, civic groups.
- School year volunteer programs like foster grandparents, Start Making a Reader Today (SMART), and mentoring programs.
There are also more general communication strategies to recruit volunteers:
- Newspapers: Ask if they have community pages or columns where you can post your volunteer opportunities. Or ask them to run an article about your summer food program and include your need for volunteers.
- Local TV, community cable, radio: Ask about running public service announcements (PSAs), public affairs programming or including announcements on community calendars.
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Case Study: FOOD for Lane County
Program: FOOD for Lane County, www.foodforlanecounty.org
Contact: Karen Roth
Phone: 541-343-2822
Fax: 541-343-5019
E-mail:
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With 54 sites, one central kitchen facility and five satellites serving an average of 3,000 meals per day, Food for Lane County’s summer meals program is the perfect example of what can be accomplished with commitment, strong leadership, a bit of creativity and the help of many volunteers.
FFLC took over the summer food program from the local housing authority in 1997 after a 9% cut in reimbursement made it no longer feasible for the housing agency to continue sponsoring the program. At that time the program had 32 sites. Karen Roth was hired in 1999 to run the program and she has helped grow the program to the thriving community resource that exists today.
Their program makes heavy and effective use of FFLC’s dedicated group of volunteers. The meal preparation at the Eugene kitchen, overseen by school cooks, is handled by volunteers, allowing Karen to hire temporary staff to pick up meals, transport them to sites around the county, and serve them to participating children.
Because Karen thinks that menu variety is important to attract children to meal sites, she’s found creative ways to offer hot entrée items every day except Fridays, even at the park sites. Most of the food served consists of pre-cooked entrees that are heated to the correct temperature. Her volunteer kitchen help then pack up the food and transfer it to prepared food storage units which keep the food hot long enough to allow it to be transported to the sites and served. A typical meal might consist of a chicken patty (which is added to a bun on-site by the server), a serving each of a fruit and vegetable, and milk. Her satellite kitchens have the facilities and staff to do more home cooking so are able to rely less on pre-cooked items.
To control costs, most FFLC meal sites only offer lunches. Breakfasts are limited to programs like summer schools and Boys and Girls Clubs because those are the sites mostly likely to have staff to serve the meals and more regular attendance. Karen also uses her urban sites, which tend to have higher participation and lower transportation costs, to subsidize her rural sites, which are still important but which typically attract fewer kids and cost more to serve. The result of this hard work and planning is apparent in the happy faces of children who come to the meal sites. The children enjoy the meals and the opportunity to meet with friends. The site coordinators – many of whom come back year after year – are well trained and enjoy the chance to be involved with a project that does so much good for so many children in the county.
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Volunteer Job Descriptions
The following link reveals a sample flier you might be able to use (or adapt) for your volunteer recruiting efforts. Note that it lists volunteer job descriptions as well as how to get involved.
Foods Volunteer Program job Descriptions
Resources
- Oregon Hunger Relief Task Force
- Phone: 503-595-5502
- Website: www.oregonhunger.org
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