17 Agencies Become Silver Level Partners!

This past October Youthlinc hosted its first-ever, 6-hour Volunteer Management Seminar at the Youthlinc office! Although it was a tight fit, we had 17 agencies throughout Utah attend this highly interactive and collaborative training. The seminar was made possible by the generosity of the George S. and Dolores Doré Eccles Foundation and  the Vern & Marva Wolcott Charitable Foundation.

Attendees included Bad Dog Arts, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Camp Kostopulos, Cascade Springs Home Health & Hospice, Easter Seals-Goodwill, Elevation Hospice, English Skills Learning Center, Friday’s Kids Respite, Harmony Home Care and Hospice, Mundi Project, National Ability Center, Neighborhood House, Playworks, Real Life, Tennis & Tutoring, Utah Open Lands, and Valeo Hospice.

Each of the attendees became a Silver Level Partner with Youthlinc and will be more highly promoted to our Service Year students. Click here to learn more about our Local Service Directory Partnership Levels.

We discussed fundamental principles of volunteer management including volunteer motivation, position descriptions, recruitment, retainment, recognition, and how to deal with difficult volunteers.

Here’s what our attendees had to say!

I appreciated the opportunity to meet other coordinators and learn about their organizations. I always benefit from learning about creative ways to acknowledge and recognize volunteers. –Heidi MacNaughton, National Ability Center

I learned how to use the Youthlinc Local Service Directory to create volunteer opportunities and will undoubtedly use this resource.-Darren Janes, Cascade Springs Home Health & Hospice

I plan to be more precise with the praise I give to volunteers, trying not to make gratitude feel empty or repetitive. –Jessica Hercules, English Skills Learning Center

It was good to hear that ours is not the only program that struggles with difficult volunteers sometimes, and to get ideas for how to better address those problems. –Meg Young, Neighborhood House

It was especially beneficial for me to learn different ways of recruiting volunteers and discuss how to identify what volunteers hope to achieve by serving your organization. Knowing such strategies will help me ensure that we establish a good relationship with our volunteers. –Kirsten Schiel, Bad Dog Arts

I like that there was a lot of diversity at the training. Everyone uses volunteers in a number of different capacities and it was interesting to learn how everyone utilizes volunteers. –Abram Sherrod, Big Brothers Big Sisters

Because of this training, I plan on reaching out to volunteer groups I hadn’t previously thought of such as families. I also realized that many of my tasks could actually be handed off to a volunteer. I didn’t realize that so much of my workload could be volunteer task if I set it up to be. -Charity Jessop, Utah Open Lands

I liked the workshop-like feel to the program, since it promoted collaboration on addressing various challenges in volunteer management. –Margaret Bowman, Mundi Project

I loved the idea of featuring a volunteer of the month. We are looking to utilizing our volunteers even more next year and this will be a great way to give recognition where it is due. –Caitlin Christensen, Splore

I definitely learned more effective training strategies that I plan to implement with new volunteers. I also picked up quite a few recruitment tips – I especially liked the idea that the more difficult you make a volunteer position seem, the more coveted it will be. –Theresa Dellomo, Playworks