 Hi everyone we are going to give it just a few minutes to allow this room to populate. It's one o'clock eastern right now. So we're going to give it just a couple minutes for everyone to come in. As we're waiting I want to introduce myself. My name is Robin Bauer-Kilgo. I'm the C2C Care Coordinator, and you are here for a C2C Care free webinar on how to manage volunteers in collections. So we're hoping to have a nice informative program today. I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. So like I said we're going to slowly get started today. As people come in today you are here for how to manage volunteers in collections. Part of our C2C Care program will be online for about 1pm to 2pm eastern so about 60 minutes. And my name is Robin Bauer-Kilgo. I am the C2C Care Coordinator. I am located just outside of Washington DC in Silver Spring Maryland so I would encourage all of our attendees to go ahead and say hello in the chat if they'd like to maybe say where they're from. It's always interesting to kind of see that at the top of the program. And yeah, feel free to go ahead and share that whenever you have a chance. If anyone who might be new to our program, this is our home on the web. It is connecting to collections.org. That is our website address on that website. You will find all sorts of fun information including upcoming programming which I'm going to talk about here in just a second. You'll find a past archives of all of our courses and webinars. C2C Care has been around for over 10 years so we have quite the library of items. We also have a link to our community which is there is a moderated community where you can ask questions dealing with collections care to a wonderful group of people who monitor the questions coming in and then we'll go find you answers using both their own knowledge and experts. So those are a wonderful group of volunteers. We always truly appreciate doing that. And then also we have a link to curated resources. So if anyone's interested in just any topic when it comes to collections or collections care, I would encourage you to go to our website. We also have two spots that we are on social media. One is on Facebook, which is that at C2C care and then the one is on the network formerly known as Twitter which I believe is now called X at C2C care. On both those websites on both those days you'll see upcoming announcements on programming and other items so I would encourage you to follow us there. Finally, a quick tech review for today's program. You as attendees have the ability to look at two or to interact with us two different ways. One is with chat. One is with the Q&A box. The chat is there for saying hello saying where you're located as we talked about a little while ago people are doing a great job of that which is always appreciated. The other item that you can actually access is the Q&A box. The Q&A box is there for questions. So if you have a question of our presenter at any point during today's program, please use that Q&A box you can pop a question in there and we will track it. We really like that Q&A box because it allows us to kind of track the questions. If you put a question in the chat box sometimes it can be kind of lost in the stream of consciousness which is the chat box so I encourage you to use that Q&A box when you can. We also have closed captioning enabled for this program today so if you hit that CC button down in the bottom you will be able to see that as well. We are also recording today's program so if you have to dip out or you missed it please you can come back to our website in a few days and we'll be able to access it there. Upcoming programming notes. So CDC care is made up of two kind of programming aspects. One is our live free webinars. One happens once a month usually. We encourage if you're interested in it please go ahead and log in and register for it. This is today's program is one of our free programs. So I'm glad you all are here. Upcoming programs we have for that series on September 6 from 1-2 we have arsenic and collections. We'll be talking to someone who works at the National Park Service about kind of when they dealt with arsenic and collections how to deal with it all that kind of fun stuff. We also have an extra webinar in the end of September. Also still dealing with poison seems like September is our month of poison and death so it should be a good time. Later September webinar is about the poison book project which is a project that's been happening for the past couple of years so you'll hear a little bit more about a certain type of object that has been dealing with it has made you some poisonous materials in it that might be really interesting this one specifically in historical book findings. And again encourage you to register for that if you're interested. And finally in October we have a fire suppression for museum so we have a specialist coming into us from Smithsonian. He's going to be talking about fire suppression systems being used throughout the museum world so that should be an interesting program as well each of those are 60 minutes long with a Q&A period during that time so I encourage you to register for them. The other type of programming we have the CDC care is a thing called a course now of course is set up of separate webinars so it's a series of webinars make up one course, this one is a four webinar series all about writing a long range preservation plan. This is something you'll often see kind of talked about in grants or if you've been through the map or the cap the museum assessment program conservation assessment program will often mention creating these plans which will help your institution kind of think about long range preservation. In this course we have Nicole grab out who works for the Midwest art conservation center. She's run this course before with them now she's running it with us she's wonderful. I would encourage you to register for it to four webinar series she will lead you through what is included in writing a long range preservation plan we've also included outside of the live kind of recorded programming, but that will be recorded for me. She's also going to be doing some office hours for people to ask one on one questions to her as she's doing it. So the hope is, by the end of the four webinar series you would walk out with a long range preservation plan so it'd be a really good way to kind of get this core document that you might find really important done in a nice compact amount of time. The other reason I'm really pushing this today is that we today is the last day for the early bird registration and sign up for this for series course for only $99. It's the one kind of program that we charge for today's the last day for that cheaper amount. After that's going to go up to more like around $149. So if you're interested sign up today, you can get in for a cheaper amount and still get the joy of the program that program starts on August 23. For any of these you go to our website connecting to collections.org you will find information and how to register for it. So now I'm going to go ahead and give this program over to our speaker today her name is Jenny Woods she is the past president the American Association for Museum volunteers. Today's program is going to be really interesting because a lot of us have dealt with volunteers within our institution so Jenny's going to be talking a bit about an overview of collections volunteers how to create a volunteer program or even maybe aligning a program with best practices so I'm going to go ahead and throw this over to Jenny and then I'll be back for the Q&A afterwards Jenny feel free to take over whenever you are ready. Great. Thank you Robin. Let me share my screen and get my slides up and running here. Bear with me. Two seconds. Okay, I'm hoping you're all seeing the slide view and not the presenter view someone holler at me if that's different but it looks perfect Jenny you're good to go. Good. I'm always I'm always worried that I've that I've done something just just wrong in that moment but thank you so much for having me here today it is morning where I am I'm in Seattle, but I know it's afternoon for some of you. Yes, I am the past president and a current board member for the American Association for Museum volunteers if you're not familiar with our organization. I do have this to help people who work with volunteers in museums, regardless of what their job description is or if they're a staff or a volunteer. We provide resources around volunteerism in museums. I do have 20 plus years experience working with volunteers in museums. Right there. My experience is really based in art museums. So I have tried throughout my presentation to think of other non art museum examples. But I will acknowledge that there's probably a little bit of art museum bias that sneaks in without me even realizing it when I'm talking about collections, I'm always thinking of art. I have a secret crush on collections management work, but I know it would never work out between us so I'm going to leave it there I'm going to stick with my day job. So please welcome to reach out with me afterwards with questions or anything else at a and V membership one at gmail.com that will come right to me. So, this is what we're going to go over today. We have a little bit of volunteer management one on one really a bit of framework of a volunteer program. Now when I looked at the registration list for today. I was struck by the variety of types of museums and where you are in the world we have people not just in the US, but from all around the world today, and also the size of the museums that were registered and it does present a little bit of a difference. Some of you are at small museums, maybe one or two staff maybe no staff at all maybe entirely volunteer run some of your medium size museums, and a few of you are a few of you are at larger museums and I know you probably already have a volunteer manager who's running this part of the program for you. Hopefully this will be some helpful information just thinking about volunteers and sort of what their needs are within the program. In a couple of minutes talking about volunteer recruitment retention and recognition. I could do a whole webinar just about that. So this will just be a taste of that. And then we'll turn our attention to thinking a little more specifically about collections volunteers and the specific considerations that come into play there. Got just a few resources to share and as I as we've said there will be some time at the end for questions and answers. First, I have some questions for you. Robin if you will launch the first poll. I want to get a sense of if you are currently using collections volunteers do not use collections volunteers, and then I put a third choice in there it's complicated I hope not all of you choose it's complicated because I won't know what that means. But we'll give a minute here for people to have a chance to answer that. We have about 85% participation. And, yeah, I think we're let's, let's, I think if you wanted to participate you probably had an opportunity to should we should we close close the poll and see where we are so it looks like about 59% of you are currently using collections volunteers, just under 30% I do not use collections volunteers but maybe want to start 13% of you have a complicated relationship. I don't know if we have time we'll delve into that in the Q&A I'm not sure if that'll work or not. That's great. Alright, we have one more quick poll. Robin if you'll launch poll number two. So I want to know if you're paid staff or volunteer staff. I think that is helpful. We're going to talk about both sides of the coin there but I just wanted to get a sense of who's on the webinar today. Right, I think we're holding pretty steady around 90%. Let's go ahead. Look at those results so overwhelmingly paid staff on the webinar today. 96% paid staff and 4% volunteer staff. I'm going to address some things that are specific to volunteers working with fellow volunteers, but a lot of what I'm talking about is when you are a paid staff member and you're working with volunteers so thank you very much for participating in the polls. And up next. Oops, what's going on here. Okay. Oh, we went too far. There we go. There we go. I pressed the button too many times now we're ready. So let's dive in with the framework of a volunteer program. So I think the most important place to start when you are thinking about volunteer programs is what do volunteers do. You should have a written document a position description is a great word for it that outlines the parameters of what your volunteer does, and it probably also outlines what they do not do. I think in my years and years and years of working with volunteers, the one thing I have learned this is like the number one takeaway from today is that if you want to avoid a lot of trouble and headaches. Make sure you have a written document about what volunteers should do because it just goes poorly when it's a little loose and people don't know for sure what they are and are not supposed to do. Sometimes I think people think of these position descriptions is like, oh, I got to sit down and write this whole thing. If you have a general sense of what your volunteer is going to do this position description should take you five or 10 minutes to get a rough draft. Yeah, you might need to edit it a little bit but I bet you all can carve out five or 10 minutes to take a moment to write down the job description or position description for your volunteers and like to say save yourself so so much trouble in the future. And so that's that's my my key takeaway for today, write it down. Real quick, I want to talk about the difference between a volunteer and an intern because this does come up sometimes now. I personally believe that volunteering should be voluntary, and that interns should be paid. Even the real world, and I recognize that me saying that doesn't suddenly create magical funding that allows you to pay your volunteer so I'm going to go ahead and assume that you are working towards paying your volunteers but maybe you still have unpaid volunteers at the moment. Let's talk about how they might be different than. Sorry, did I say unpaid volunteers I meant unpaid interns at the moment volunteers are unpaid. I understand how this works I promise. Let's talk a little bit about what an unpaid intern and how that is different than a volunteer. So an intern is probably with your organization for a short amount of time maybe a quarter. They're probably there a significant number of hours per week maybe 1015 20 hours a week. They are doing skilled based work for your organization. So they are learning things and this is equivalent to what they might learn in a college course. And the primary beneficiary of the internship is the intern they're there to get something out of it. You as an organization might also get something out of it but that's not the purpose of the internship. Volunteer on the flip side, it might be with your organization for one day or might be with your organization for multiple decades and everywhere in between. So we are more likely to volunteer at your organization a few hours a week or a few hours a month. So a lot less frequent frequency there. Yes, there are some magical unicorn volunteers that come for 10 hours a week, but they're magical unicorns that not not every volunteers like that and they will not last. So recognize that volunteering is is a lot less frequency. The work volunteers do might be skilled work and it might not be. And the primary beneficiary of the volunteers work is the organization. You have a volunteer program not because you like running a community program for people who like to give their time, but because you need help so you are benefiting from the volunteers work. They're going to get some perks as well we're going to talk about that a little later, but I do like to just be really clear about those differences. Now I'm trying to not press the advanced key too many times. Okay, there we go. So what policies and procedures should volunteers know I believe in setting folks up for success. And I think the best way to do that with a new volunteer coming into your organization is to have some information for them so they know what they're doing don't throw them in at the volunteer handbook is a great place to put policies and procedures that may already exist at your organization that's half your handbook already written. But you also should include information that would be helpful for the volunteer to know who's their supervisor how do they get a hold of them if they need to call in sick, where do they park, where do they put their coat when they come into volunteer, what happens if the fire alarm goes off. All of these sorts of things can be really helpful to getting your volunteer on the same page as your organization and feeling comfortable and knowing just what they're doing. A volunteer orientation is a great way to get this information to them and give them the handbook and show them where they hang their coat up. And then of course position specific training should always be a part of their role as well so as they say set them up for success give them some help give them the the information they need to be a successful volunteer. So, who is supervising the volunteers. Now, I believe that supervising volunteers is different from supervising staff. And I think there are a few things that come into play there. So, if I'm supervising staff, I have some different expectations than I have for when I'm supervising volunteers first of all, staff are likely to be there. You know, multiple days a week probably and multiple hours on those days they have a specific job description they are being paid to do that specific job. And they have a much more of a familiarity with the organization with the ins and outs with the secret processes that nobody ever talks about with with how it works at that organization. A volunteer, on the other hand, probably is not at your museum as frequently my expectations for volunteers is that they know how to do their volunteer position because I trained them how to do their volunteer position. I don't expect them to have this wider knowledge about the inner workings of the museum, and I don't expect that same, that same level of autonomy sometimes comes into play I'm here to serve to help my volunteers and to answer their questions and to help them and I don't always expect them to go out and figure it out on their own. Another thing that comes into play when we're talking about the difference between supervising volunteers and supervising staff is that volunteers are not paid. And I know you're saying to yourself yeah Jenny, that's the definition of volunteerism, but stick with me I have more that comes with that. So for those of you who are paid staff. I sincerely hope that you love your job that you find great fulfillment in it and that your supervisor is very, very generous, and that every day is a joy for you to go into work. But I'm going to guess that you also probably enjoy getting a paycheck. And that might be some of your motivation sometimes for going to work. And if you're particularly if you're in the US, your health insurance might be tied to your employment, and your name within the close knit museum community might be tied to you showing up to work regularly and doing a great job, and all of those things. For volunteers, their motivation for coming to our organizations is not a paycheck. It's that they have a love of our collection or love of our subject matter they love our organization they want to give back. It's part of our community. That is so different than being motivated partially by receiving a paycheck and I think it does. It does influence how I supervise someone and it's not that I expect less of volunteers it's that I expect different things of volunteers and I expect different things about what their motivations for being there are. So I've been talking a lot about paid staff supervising volunteers. I do want to just address briefly when volunteers supervise fellow volunteers so we've got an all volunteer run organization. And that can be a tricky situation for sure. I think the best practice there is having a really clear structure for how decisions are being made. And everybody knows oh this is these are the people who get the final say, or this is how the decision process happens and how the board all votes on what we're going to do. And having that clarity can really avoid hurt feelings and resentment and confusion over why does that volunteer get to get to tell me what to do when we're both volunteers so making that really clear I think is is key to supervising volunteer to volunteer relationships. Okay, so what is the process when things go wrong sometimes things go wrong. It's great to have a thought out discipline and dismissal policy for volunteers. And what a perfect thing to put in that volunteer handbook we talked about few slides back. So the one diagram here having a verbal warning a written warning and then dismissal if the behavior doesn't change is a really common one you don't have to use that. People do use that because it's pretty simple and there's a written component so we've got some documentation behind it. I'm always really clear with volunteers that we have a discipline and dismissal policy and that this is what it is and I can skip right to dismissal if their behavior is so egregious that it warrants that. Volunteers love to say to me, I'm a volunteer I can't get fired and I always like to come back with yeah but you can get dismissed but I say with a lot of charm so I get away with it. But I think being really clear that if the volunteers not serving your organization you do not need to keep them around. And that that is okay. Another thing to really think about particularly if you're setting up a new volunteer program or you're kind of bringing your current volunteer program into a line with a few other things is having a conflict of interest policy and how that impacts volunteers. Usually conflict of interest policies are just barely vaguely written they're saying if there's a conflict of interest you should let us know and then like we never define what that is. I'm going to I'm going to throw out a tricky situation and I acknowledge this is a tricky situation, but it's one that a lot of museum sometimes find themselves in. And I think there, there's a case to be made that this could be a conflict of interest so if we've got an organization that has paid staff and they have a board of trustees. They have a member of the board of trustees, who also wants to fulfill a volunteer role at the museum outside of their board of trustees role. So suddenly you've got someone who has responsibility for hiring the director of the organization, who's a volunteer reporting to the volunteer manager, or another staff member who reports to the director. It's a tricky situation and I think the case could be made that that could be a conflict of interest. So something to keep in mind when you're sort of looking through what could go wrong with the volunteer program. I don't mean to be negative about it but I think it is part of the process to think about okay what are things that we should be prepared for that if in case they go wrong. You should keep track of some volunteer data do a little record keeping I feel like I'm talking to my people here on record keeping but here's some some things that are good to keep track of contact info. I didn't list this year specifically but emergency contact info is really great thing to have on file, tracking your volunteer demographics service hours number of years that they've been volunteering. The way I like to do it is I ask volunteers to track their service hours and report that to me through some mechanism, and I keep track of the year they started because no one can ever remember what year they started once a few years are down the road. So I track how many years they've been volunteering and they tell me how many hours that they have been volunteering for us. There are volunteer management software tools out there. I think the size of your program really can dictate if this is something that you need or don't need. If you've got more than maybe 100 volunteers I think some sort of tool might help you keep track of scheduling and hours and contact info and all of that stuff. So if you've got a small volunteer program like less than 50 volunteers, I think an Excel spreadsheet can do this for you without any problem. And there's a few tools that can sort of fill in those in between gaps. If you've got a membership database at your organization already there might be a volunteer portal attached to that that you could use doesn't have a lot of fancy bells and whistles but could sort of help you track some volunteer stuff. The screenshot here is a picture from logistics which is a pretty popular volunteer management software for larger organizations. I think it's overkill for smaller organizations and I just want to state. I'm not here to sell you logistics. It just happened to have the picture. And as an example of what volunteer software management management software excuse me, looks like. The one thing to keep in mind throughout this whole process of setting up the framework of the volunteer program is how are the DEI principles included in this framework. So how are you looking at what your volunteers do in the lens of diversity equity accessibility inclusion, how what what barriers, are you maybe inadvertently putting up to having people volunteer at your organization. Sometimes that's things like the time of day when volunteers can can come and do their training and it's only Wednesdays at 10 and then you just can't figure out why you can't get anyone who's not a retiree to volunteer at your organization but you'd love to bring in some people who are maybe just starting in their career but yeah that's I think I've sleut out the problem. It's the time of your volunteer training. Another barrier to volunteering that's worth considering is background checks. So the systemic racism in our police and judicial systems means that certain people are less likely to pass a background check and that might be a barrier to volunteering. And I think that I'm not saying don't do background checks, I think you should do background checks, but I think you should distinguish between, you have to pass a background check, or we do a background check and we consider results on a case by case basis can sometimes lower that barrier a little bit and make your volunteer program a little more accessible to all different types of people. So if you have a volunteer program and you're sort of looking to bring this DEI lens into the program, I think the great place to start is with some training for your current volunteers around. What are these changes, what are we talking about what are the issues that are coming up here. What is a microaggression how do I have we're doing them. What is implicit bias. I think it's great for your volunteers to sort of receive this, this training and learn all about this, and it will only benefit your program in the end to have folks who are really comfortable talking about this, and really comfortable with the changes that are coming and, and, and sort of understand what, what is going on within the organization. I will mention am v the organization I'm a part of we do have a DEI toolkit for volunteer managers. It is available on our website for free for anyone. I have a link for it in the resources, but it's a great tool, particularly with, you know, thinking about volunteers in museums specifically and and some actionable items and things you could do today. Some things that are much harder and will take a lot longer to do but still have to be done, but it really gives you some framework so I definitely encourage you to check that out if you haven't seen that yet. Okay, we are going to move into the middle section of my presentation today and I'm going to have a little bit of water while we're moving into that. I'm thinking about volunteer recruitment retention and recognition the three Rs of volunteer management as I like to call them. As I said before this is just a taste of some things around volunteer recruitment but I think the, the best thing to do when you're recruiting volunteers is to advertise or put the word out in the areas where you want to recruit volunteers from so if you're looking to diversify your volunteer program. Then that means you're looking at the diverse parts of your community and putting the word out there. If you're looking to you want to get more younger volunteers, you have a local college you could partner with get the word out there. Community centers neighborhood newsletters. I'm not sure if I can totally recommend the next door app maybe maybe you're at neighborhoods better than mine but it might be worth a try to put something out there that you're you're looking for volunteers. The word of mouth events can be successful and bringing in interested people they sometimes are not as good at bringing in diversity, people may tend to just bring people they know who might be very similar to them. One of my favorite things that I've done relating to recruitment is partnering with other local organizations and museums and sharing recruitment leads so previously I was the volunteer manager at the big art museum in my city. And we constantly had people applying to be docents at our program, and we only put together a dozen class like every three or four years so I was always having to turn people away. We'll find other roles for them, and saying nope I don't have a dozen program I don't have a dozen program program conversation with some volunteer managers at some other local organizations revealed that they sometimes struggled to find volunteers for their programs. And so finally I had a place I could send people like say you know we're not doing a dozen program right now, but such and such museum is putting together a class, and it was just a great way to sort of share that those opportunities. Don't overlook having signage about volunteering at your museum. You have a info desk or a front desk, maybe a sign there it says you know, find out more about volunteering and the link to the website. If you're a volunteer badge, can you purchase some cheap lanyards that are printed that say volunteer, and having them wear those sometimes just letting people know that they're interacting with volunteers the thing that clues them and like, oh, they're volunteers here I could volunteer here. No matter what you do have a simple application, do some sort of interview that's a formal word but some sort of meeting with the perspective volunteer before placement so you get a sense of what they're looking for. Make sure they're a fit for what you need and vice versa. So, volunteer retention, the best way to keep volunteers is to keep them happy and keep them engaged and connected with your organization. So, as we talked about before, it's likely that people volunteering at your organization are interested in the subject matter of your museum. So are there some continuing education opportunities you can provide for them or there are some special behind the scenes tours they can be a part of. And whatever it is that that might really hit with that crowd provides some opportunities for them to learn more about about your collection or about your subject matter. I think communication is so key and volunteers really need to feel like they're in the loop at your organization they know what's going on there. And that means if there's a big announcement that's going out about the directors retiring the volunteers get a heads up about that before they read about it in the newspaper. That they know who to go to with a problem who they should talk to. They know, they know what's going on at the organization because that's communicated to them and they know how to communicate back to the institution as well. And for staff I don't think this feels like much of a perk but I think having access to staff or subject experts can be can be something that will really build community within your volunteer program so if someone has a question about an object in the collection can they contact the curator and ask them about that. If there's a special lecturer coming through town, our volunteers invited to participate in that. And having that having that sort of access can go a long way. Perks can be pretty easy. Do you have a staff break room with a coffee machine can volunteers get a cup of coffee from the coffee machine during their volunteer shift. Or can you negotiate with the bakery across the street and volunteers can get a 10% discount if they show their volunteer badge and get a muffin. You know what if over time if they've if they've served a certain number of volunteer hours can they earn a membership at your organization. If your organization charges admission, your volunteer should be getting in for free, even when they're not volunteering with their volunteer badge and you probably should be giving them some guest passes that they can give to friends and family to. In general, you should treat volunteers as valued team members and publicly recognize what they the service that they give so maybe the number of hours volunteers have given is listed in the in the members newsletter that goes out or it's on the website. Maybe the members are invited to come to the staff meeting once a month I know a museum that does this their monthly staff meeting is staff and volunteer meeting. It's just like a regular staff meeting the volunteers can come, and they feel like they know what's going on and they feel like they're, they're part of the team. So thinking of ways that you're making sure your volunteers are really recognized in that way. And that leads us to volunteer recognition. So the first thing listed here, every day simple recognition. This is the most important one. Good news. It's the easiest to do and it's completely free. So, everyday simple recognition, here's how you do it. You say to your volunteer. Hey thanks so much for your help today we really got a lot accomplished. That's all it is, it is thinking your volunteers, every time they come or pretty much every time they come, thanking them for their time, thanking them for being there, acknowledging what they do. If you don't do any of the other things on this list, make sure you do that one. Now, some organizations like to do a once a year volunteer celebration. This can be a fancy party with past door derves and champagne. It can be as simple as a potluck picnic, where everybody gets together and enjoys some social time together and maybe we talk about how many hours volunteers contributed over the past year. I encourage tracking milestone hours or years and giving out awards and acknowledging that. I think that is important. It's important for people who've given literal years to your museum to acknowledge that. I like to, you can buy these pins they say volunteer service award five years 10 years 1520 they go up to 50 I can tell you they stop at 50. But they cost, you know $4, but present them to the volunteers they pin them to their lanyard they wear them when they volunteer it's a great way for them to once again feel recognized for that work. And then I'll mention that National Volunteer Week is the third week of April each year. It's great to acknowledge that in some way, both with your volunteers and once again, that's a great time to have a special feature in the newsletter about volunteer contributions to your organization. Here in Seattle, I know that the museums locally we all do reciprocal admission for each other's volunteers that week so we everybody who wants to participate we make a big list of who which which organizations are participating. Anybody who shows up during that week and shows their volunteer badge from another museum on the list gets in free. It doesn't really, it's not really costing us that much money I mean I'm sure there's some built in costs if you look at it but it's a great way to provide a nice perk and recognition for our volunteers, without having a huge budget to do that. Okay, we're going to move into some more collections specific considerations now. What do collections volunteers do, and I would love if you have collections volunteers throw in the chat real fast what do volunteers in the collections department do at your organization. I've got a few things listed here but I'm sure there's lots of things I've missed. So, take a minute throw that in the chat I'm going to keep talking while you're doing that. Let's see what what everybody comes up with but I want to acknowledge that sometimes collections volunteers do everything, particularly for volunteer or for organizations that are volunteer run or have very limited staff so I do want to acknowledge that that volunteer sometimes are doing absolutely everything in the collections. I think that is a very common one materials classification right now I'm working with a group in Texas is putting together a volunteer program around some archaeological collections, and it turns out, you can have school kids come on field trips, and they learn about archaeology by washing the artifacts and the artifacts then get washed. This, I'm from an art museum background this blew my mind that you could do this but anyway, no, no end to what volunteers could apparently do. So, archive research handling objects, I'm going to scan through the chat here real fast. I've got sculpture cleaning, oh it's going so fast I can barely, I can barely see it. Processing archives cataloging artifacts scanning images photography I didn't list that one that's a great one sorting materials, data entry catalog artifact. Here. So, take a take a peek through there I'm not going to be able to read them all out, but lots of lots of great work is happening with collections volunteers at lots of your organizations. Okay. So, what do we need to consider when we're thinking about collections based volunteers. I think a big thing that comes up around collections volunteers is risk management and liability our collections are precious that's why museums exist is to keep these collections safe. And so, I wish I could say to you, ah, here's how you have collections volunteers do a BC and D here's their job descriptions now go. You can see that your organizations are so vastly different, and the policies at your organizations are really going to limit or allow what volunteers do and do not do at your organization. I think that's the place to start is what are your policies. What are your policies around handling objects for volunteers versus staff what are your policies around who can see which documents in which files. What are your policies about all of that, and then building your collections volunteer program or making your plans from there. I think is really key and like say I can't tell you what that is exactly, you're going to have to way through that yourself. I do think it is key that you have plans in place to mitigate risk. And once again, this is going to look different depending on your policies and your organization. Maybe one of the rules at your organization is that volunteers cannot be in the collection storage area by themselves they need to be accompanied by a staff member or a fellow volunteer, or maybe their rules about who can and cannot access different files so the volunteer can help with the object files but they can't see the donor files, or the, the database parts of it can be edited and parts of it are read only. Maybe staff volunteers all need to open up their bag as they leave and somebody needs to check and do a security check on bags before they leave. I don't know exactly what it is you do have to figure out those puzzle pieces that mitigate risk for your organization. Now I have background checks listed here again we are talked about background checks. I'm not going to discuss this because I do think you should do background checks for collections volunteers, but I want to be clear that that should not be the only thing in place to mitigate risk background checks. The limitation of them is you only know who got caught. Right. So, we don't have the full picture all the time with background checks so do background checks and do other things as well to mitigate risk around collections for sure. So, another part of the considerations here is the confidentiality around information that we have. So, as a museum staff member, if I walk through the galleries and I see a label on an object and it says anonymous donor. I think that donor is you guys, you guys know who that is. It's in the object file it's in the donor file. So, bringing volunteers into these areas means that they are having access to confidential information. And I think it's really important to have volunteers sign a confidentiality or a non disclosure agreement and be really specific about this is the information that we need to keep private. It's the information that it's okay for people to know, and so that they're not mistakenly putting out some information that they shouldn't. I know we've already talked about conflict of interest and it appears here again and I have a collection specific scenario, I'll throw out at you and this is a fake scenario completely fake. Let's say you're a military history museum, and you have a keen volunteer who would like to help you clean up your object database and files that are a bit of a mess not not because of you your predecessor obviously didn't do a great job with those. And this volunteer you know also has a business in their personal life, and they sell military memorabilia. What would you do with that situation. There's no conflict of interest there their business is selling objects similar to things in your collection and they would have access to information about who donated it and appraisal value and all of this sort of thing. That's a that's a no go for me personally. So thinking about specifically the confidentiality issue, and you know what, how that impacts collections even more so than just general volunteer conflicts of interest. Finally, I want to acknowledge the skilled work that you all do. And how tricky, it can be to find a volunteer who either has those skills or has capacity to learn those skills. This is not just a you know a dime a dozen volunteers coming in and you can set them all up and they immediately are going to understand cataloging and how to do all of that. There's a skill and there's training and involved in here in all of this work. I think this is one of the real limiting factors for having a lot of collections volunteers and why most museums that I worked out we have a lot of volunteers and just a handful of collections volunteers. It takes time. You've got to review the quality of the work whether that staff reviewing volunteers work or volunteer to volunteer making sure everybody's using the same terminology and the database. They're all in the same page there. There is a supervisory component that is no joke with finding the volunteer first of all, hard enough in itself, getting them trained, supervising their work, keeping them happy and all those other things we talked about. There, there is a time commitment here. And I don't, I don't say this to be discouraging. I want you to have a full picture of what is involved, because the work that you do is at the heart of the organization. It is critical work and figuring out how to engage with volunteers with that work is challenging and it is rewarding and it is special. And it is unique from all other volunteer roles in the museum. So, I encourage you to do that work to have collections volunteers and to go in with your eyes open. So, now I've got a few resources we're getting there on time aren't we. Yes, my organization. I'm a volunteer program V dot org that DA tool kits there. There's a volunteer recruitment retention and recognition webinar 60 ideas and 60 minutes I participated in a few years ago. American Alliance of museums has a designing a museum program toolkit they put out a few years ago if you're starting from scratch with your volunteer program, or nearly scratch. I definitely encourage you check that out. There's a cost associated with it I think it's like $30 so well worth it. And a V did a podcast a couple of years ago about volunteer programs and risk management, and then these last two volunteer pro and points of light are not museum specific they're just general volunteer organizations after have some interesting articles and resources about volunteer stuff. And now, what are your questions I'm going to stop my screen share. And let's get to the questions and I'm going to take a drink of water. Take a break Jenny that was great thanks so much. I grabbed what I could from the chat and through whatever was giving examples, and through it into a word cloud generator so I was trying to get frequency of terms because I was curious to see what popped up and of it wasn't perfect because obviously there's a lot of words in there. But it seems like most people have their volunteers working on inventory data photography and research, where the big ones that you see in there and there's you know obviously a smattering of other things but I just thought that was kind of interesting to see what the technology was going to pop up. Okay, so we already have questions rolling it so let's go ahead and see how many we can get to you right now. We're going to start with the first question is our board has discussed mandatory volunteer hours as part of their board service. Would you not recommend that. I mean, me personally, I might push back on that a little bit because it can get sticky. It definitely depends on the structure of your organization and what that looks like and I think if you have some really clear expectations in place and if every board member has to do this and they're really clear about what this means and who they're responsible to report to while they're doing this volunteer service. Yes, I think that could possibly work. There are situations where no thought has been given to any of that, and it gets messy, kind of quickly so I will. Yeah, it could work. It might not. Sorry, that's not much of an answer. No, that's fine. I think and also you was going through my head when you were talking is like, I think it depends also if you have like the working board or more the advisory board. Absolutely. I think there's a big difference with what you do. Also, you know, to me, most board services, you want folks to be the outward facing folks to your community, right, like to be like hey come on through to our programming and donations and that kind of stuff. So I think it kind of depends on, again, what you said your institution, and what's needed because you might need that workforce to so if you need it, you need it. But have some parameters in place. Oh yeah, no that would be one of those ones it's kind of like I worked at a couple of places where they wanted to start up internship programs which I'm totally for. But it's always like let's have a bunch of projects ready to go that are intern projects rather than all of a sudden just getting a bunch of people a big like what are you going to do, like in making like quick projects to do like you kind of want like your homework done for and all right volunteer data and demographics. Do you have any demographics that you would track and why or what are ones that you think are important to track. Yeah, so I have usually tracked the fairly standard ones so race and ethnicity, age, veteran status disability status, what am I forgetting gender. And what I have often done, and I'm sure I forgot a few more there off the top of my head but what I've often done is sort of compiled those and see looked at the demographics for the city or the county. So those are made public, and I like to compare my volunteer core to what my city looks like and see really, oh, here's a big gap, we do not have a lot of folks from this ethnicity, or, wow, my volunteers are 80% female and my city is not 80% female and thinking about how that can come into play so those are I just I just usually capture the pretty standard ones, but for me it's more that comparison to the data I can get from the place that I'm my museum exists in. Perfect. So someone says this is a good question I struggle with how much time it takes to train volunteers, I am a staff of one such time is precious, but they also need volunteers. Yeah, they try to require a minimum of time of hours to make sure it's worth the time. So that's not really something you can enforce right. I've been told I'm good to work for but retention is a struggle any words of wisdom or advice when you kind of find yourself in that situation. So make it a little easier on yourself and see if they're, can you record some of the trainings that you're doing over and over and over again and then you send the volunteer a video is that as dynamic is sitting face to face. No, but if sitting face to face and doing those trainings in person is cutting into so much time you can't get enough work done. So that's a sacrifice that I would make I would I would record some of the standard volunteer trainings and have volunteers watch that and then check in with them later and have that face to face like hey what do you think of the video, any questions that come up. So that's one part of it. I think that it's, it's normal, I think to sometimes feel like you're, I don't want to use the word failing but, but that, that, you know, thing you're, you're struggling, if you don't have great volunteer retention, and I will tell you, pre pandemic, a good, not a good retention rate was 60% of the volunteers you had might be with you a year from then. And I think the pandemic has skewed that, and we don't yet really have data on that, but volunteerism has changed, it really has in the amount of time people want to stay at a place has changed. And sometimes that involves thinking about okay, what can short term volunteers to do for my organization I can't get people to stick around for decades. But what can I get somebody who's going to be here for six months to participate or can I partner with a local college, and knowing that those college students are not going to be around forever, but that for a quarter or semester that maybe they will come in and help with something and thinking a little more project based is one one way to sort of tackle that like it's kind of like embrace the lack of retention, almost, and acknowledge that that's that is the reality that a lot of people are facing right now. Yeah, it's going back to that you know just, I'm reading some of these questions people are asking really good ones and it's kind of like how it's kind of like personnel management right and you and I talked during the practice session on some of these questions. And what you just mentioned about how like a lot of us are put. I think I say this this is a this is a generic generality with collections folks but we tend to be more on the introvert side of the house so dealing with this kind of management aspect and dealing with you know managing people and stuff like that is a whole. I want to say it's a new world for us but it's definitely like a world sometimes we don't have a lot of formal training and so I think it's interesting you're here all these tips and tricks that you have. One of the questions came up was how would you handle a volunteer whose work isn't up to standard so it's kind of in that same main of conversation, especially if they have been there a long time and feel misplaced confidence in their ability or knowledge which I think we've all a lot of us have encountered that type of person before. Yes. Do you have a position description. I don't have one. So, I don't let that slide. It's awkward conversation no one enjoys having those. But I use my position description I meet with the volunteer and we sort of go over hey I've noticed a few things that I would love to see a little bit of change about how we're approaching it and not a you're doing this wrong you're doing that wrong, but can we change how this is happening. And being clear about the standards of the museum and the standards and you need to be held up to and like I say it's going to be like the most miserable meeting of your whole week. It just is there's no way around that. I think letting it slide what is that. What are the repercussions there so it's kind of like that rip the band aid off have the tough conversation with the volunteer, they've always the situations they've always been there for years and years and years and they're probably also like former college roommates with somebody on the board of trustees that's always how it goes. So, you still need to have those conversations even though it's tough and it's awkward and I hate doing it as many times as I've done it. Like I say have a position description, a piece of paper in front of you can be your security blanket and really help you through that conversation. Well, and this, this goes the same long line of I've always been a huge advocate for in our collections world, one of the biggest things you can have the backbone behind use your collections management policy right, and that's the thing that'll basically be the thing that if you have donors to come forward with stuff that you don't want if you want a certain accessioning thing you have this written policy kind of in place to be like that's great but we have this thing that was vetted and approved by the board. You know what I mean or your institution, hopefully you'll have the guns to do it. That being said, and you were very good at mentioning these caveats, sometimes you end up with people or things or stuff that you just end up with and you do your best right like that it's just that's real world. Yes, so remember that as well. So going back to the HR kind of not the HR but like more the contract written side of the house someone said should an organization include a volunteer contract with a volunteer policy what are your thoughts on that I kind of like the idea of someone signing something but I want. Yeah, it's they're usually not binding legally. But yes, I like the idea of I usually call it a volunteer agreement. We agree these are the standards we agree you're going to show up for your volunteer ship we agree, and then you they sign. I like the formality of it I like that it's a thing that some people will take seriously and some people will not take seriously and like I say I don't think it's I don't think it's legally binding but I, I often will include a volunteer agreement at the end of like the orientation like okay now you've heard it all sign here. I think, and there's some great templates for those out there there's some on a mv.org that exists so it's easy to find some, like I say, not actual legal language but kind of like legal less language about what they're agreeing to. Yeah, and I think it takes people I still I do believe that if you put your name on something you'll take it a little bit more differently than just being like showing up on a day and doing stuff so yeah I like that idea. I'm going to try to do two more questions 157 we're trying to get it we've had a lot of people talking about the generational divide, which has been very interesting to read. And trust me, this has been something that I have dealt with from the dawn of my career is dealing with. If you're volunteer crew tends to skew older, right, and you are more maybe the early end or mid career area. If you have any other words of advice on how to deal with kind of that issue that can happen that you'll have and we've talked about this a little bit but just having this old guard kind of showing up and saying this is how we do things and then you showing up with more, you know, background maybe more formalized training, you know what I mean of how best to deal with that. Part of me wants to say welcome to managing volunteers that so that's a day out thing. But I think, you know, it, it, it sometimes depends on, does your organization have your back on this and I hope they do I sincerely hope they do, but having, having them back you up on that you are the staff member who is overseeing this volunteer program and you have some authority and, and, and, you know, bringing people to toe and, and, you know, not always not always worry about stepping on toes it's so hard to do because we're, we're, you know, volunteer managers, especially are so engaged to like, you know, oh, we're people people we're here to make everybody happy. But recognizing if someone is not helping your organization they are hindering your organization, then that's, you know, it doesn't matter if you hurt their feelings. But I recognize once again there are always other circumstances that are involved here, and does your organization have your back on on that and sort of taking that authority and saying like actually I know things have happened in the past but it is no way to do it in 1967 and this is how we're going to do it in this year. And you can say that in a nice way that was a not nice way I just said that but you can sort of say that in a much nicer way and, and, and allow people to, to bring themselves along you say these are the standards. Come and join us here at these standards if you want to continue as a volunteer. Oh, I'm muted, I know I was like why did I muted that I think having this volunteer crew like they can be a huge help, they can also be a true congruence so it's good to have as many as we said earlier as many of them in a row as what is expected, what is needed, done before they end up opening doors to the program I completely agree with that. So I have one other question I wanted to get to because they've asked it a couple times you had mentioned, people have asked about maybe doing some sort of a rubric for feedback to try to get certain milestones is they're hitting things you have any examples of where people can get any kind of a rubric, or an idea of where people can do like the surveys afterwards I do think doing a survey with your volunteers is key, because that's going to be where you get your true feedback but I didn't know if you've had any examples. So you guys are collections people aren't you rubric. That's a new one for me. I'm sure one exists. I definitely have seen lots of surveys out there and some like, you know, like some, some volunteer programs you like peer to peer review of volunteer practices and things like that so maybe there's rubrics involved there. And off the top of my head I cannot remember if we have something like that on a mv.org in our template section we might. But I think, I mean I think you know if it makes sense for your volunteer program I think that makes sense. But I admit that's not that's that's kind of a new one for me. Sorry I didn't mean to laugh. Yeah we are all data nerds. I was like, yeah of course a rubric. So that's our world but I gotcha. And I will add to the last comments to someone said you know like all things in the chat they said this going back to our conversation about how get your ducks in a row before you open it. She said they said all the things I should have organized before being thrown for summer students for the first time as a loan collection staff member. Again, we're collections people right how many of us have walked into a collections area and been like so this is what I'm managing. You're just like, alright got to write that policy now to try to put a hold on it same deal this is just people element to it so I think that, as we said before, volunteers can be great wonderful resources I think that you've outlined that wonderfully I think that they can be I think that all the examples that you gave within our world and even what our audience gave today can show what a wonderful asset they can be to an organization, if managed well, and thought out. So, I did any other final thoughts today before we close out today's program. Just thank you so much for this opportunity for me to think about volunteer management from a sort of a different perspective than I usually do the collection side of things was like, oh, yeah I got to turn my brain on for this one a little bit more. But I do. I love volunteers I love what they bring to a museum I encourage you to work with volunteers because I think it can be a really dynamic relationship, even though sometimes it is also some hard work so that's that's that's it. Well thanks again, I'm going to put I just put in the chat again a link to the resources that you put together thank you for doing that also includes a link to your presentation and the survey link for this month survey please take it if you have a minute. Thank you Jenny this was huge today we really appreciate it. Thank you to IMLS for supporting our program thank you to FAIC, you should see the recording up by the end of the week, and we will be back in September for our month of poison, it seems like we had a theme going for September. So thanks again Jenny and you guys can see all this fabulous information on our website by the end of the week. Okay, thanks everyone. Bye bye.