Volunteer skill set categories

Hi. I'll be helping put together an online form for a volunteer recruitment drive aimed at computer techies interested in helping improve health care in developing countries--primarily Open Source developers, but also any other interested cadres. We're wondering if there should be a drop-down menu with skills, to help organize our volunteers and link them up with opportunities. Do people have any experience with this sort of recruitment division, please? Do you have suggestions on skills to list, or how finely we should be dividing and tracking people at this point? Any suggestions or lessons learned from similar experiences would be appreciated. Thanks!

hvalli:

I'll be helping put together an online form for a volunteer recruitment drive aimed at computer techies interested in helping improve health care in developing countries--primarily Open Source developers, but also any other interested cadres

Good luck with this initiative and I'm sure you will get plenty of positive feedback.

As you are considering recruiting OSS developers do you think it might be worthwhile evaluating the way OSS projects recruit developers? - As a rule of thumb OSS projects attract people by means of promoting project virtues (usefulness, positive attributes, ethics, 'right-ness' etc.) and once attracted; invite dedicated and well performing people to become 'contributors' (coders, testers, domain experts etc.). The underlying premise being that people will commit to a worthwhile project if and when the project treats them with equal respect.

So generally speaking... volunteering for an OSS project is not a matter of saying "I want to volunteer'... it's a matter of being invited to volunteer. Most OSS projects find that promoting the concept that volunteerism is a privilege is the best way to attract good people... for the simple reason that good people are in high demand!

So rather than recruit, why not invite?

Good luck! Don

hvalli:

We're wondering if there should be a drop-down menu with skills, to help organize our volunteers and link them up with opportunities.

Hi Heather,

In addition to Don's excellent advice, I wanted to add a comment from my experience as a marketer.

At what point in the process of connecting with your volunteers are you planning to use the form? The amount of information you request would be different depending on that.

From your comment, I think your web form is being thought of as a first point of contact with a possible volunteer.

If that is the case then your web form is about generating a list of 'possibly interested people.' It is likely that both you and they will want to get more information before a firmer committment is made.

A webform is one of the easiest and most accessible ways for people to 'nearly anonymously' express an interest. Therefore, in my opinion, if this is your first point of entry, you would want to ask the minimum of qualifying questions, just enough to get a sense of the person and their level of interest and skill and not enough to scare people off.

Best wishes,

Sasha

Thank you, Don. I appreciate the suggestions and a new (to me) way of looking at things. We'll be publicizing a new initiative and part of it will include an invitation to volunteer. Once people click on the "Yes, I want to volunteer" link I was hoping to set up a drop-down menu with skill sets so we could route people towards suitable volunteer areas.

Thank you, Sasha. I think you make some great points here, and I'll relay them to my development team.

Definitely make your volunteer application form robust and detailed -- this is your first crack at screening in volunteers who know how to make a commitment and know how to communicate via the written word, and screening out people who don't understand that volunteering online takes real time and commitment. If you make a skimpy expression of interest form for new volunteers, you can expect a lot of people expressing interest, but very few actually taking on and finishing assignments.

I think it's best to let volunteers self-select assignments -- let them see what's available and express interest in specific tasks, rather than your trying to match people to assignments. That takes a lot of management off you. 

As for a drop-down menu, have a look at the various online databases out there to recruit volunteers and those to recruit paid staff, as they have so much in common in terms of applications. Look at sites like VolunteerMatch, Idealist, the UN's Online Volunteering service, DevelopmentEx, and ReliefWeb (vacancies section). Look at how assignments are posted, and how people complete online applications to both express interest and to show off their online communications abilities.

Also, read over the information at the Virtual Volunteering Project; although it's no longer updated, it still provides detailed information about working with volunteers online. The Virtual Volunteering Guidebook available for free on the site has been substantially updated and will be published, again for free, later in 2009. 

Thanks for the suggestions and the links. I'm familiar with Idealist, but DevelopmentEx and ReliefWeb were both new to me--I'm looking forward to checking them out.