 My name is Joy Banks, and I am the Project Coordinator for the Clear Strategies for Advancing Hidden Collections' Six-Part Webinar Series. Welcome to our third webinar, Making the Most of People, Recruitment, Retention, and Recognition. This series is offered through the generous support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. It is my pleasure to introduce our speaker for today, Sarah Liu. Sarah is a Project Archivist at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Sarah previously worked as the Lead Project Surveyor for HSP's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania's Small Archival Repositories, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The goal of this five-year project was to make better-known and more accessible the Hidden Collections at small and largely volunteer-run archival repositories in the Five County, Philadelphia region. During the course of the project, Sarah worked with over 80 small archives, museums, libraries, historical societies, and historic sites, and other archival repositories. Sarah earned her BA in Art History and Classics from Syracuse University and her MSLIS with a concentration in archives from Drexel University. Please welcome Sarah. Thank you, Joy. I think I unmuted myself. Can everybody hear me? Does that sound good? Welcome, everybody. I'm excited to be here with you today. You've already heard about project planning and how to determine what and who you will need for your project. Today we're going to talk about how valuable students, interns, and volunteers can be to GLAM projects, how to reach out to these groups, how to best utilize them and give them a positive experience, and things we can do to recognize their work and show our appreciation. In addition, because projects can be lengthy and their work can result in various people working on them throughout their duration, we'll touch on tips for maintaining project consistency. We also have a list of resources in our resource library that relate to working students, interns, and volunteers. Please note that we will not be talking about everything it takes to create a formally run volunteer program. There just isn't enough time today, but please see our resources in the resource library for materials that do relate to this topic. So here's just a quick reminder of the objectives of the webinar. They were also posted in the lobby. Also, when you first came into the lobby for the webinar, there were some polls we asked you to respond to. If you didn't do that yet, I'm going to switch back to the lobby so people can do that. Okay, great. It's like there's a lot of academia here, some nonprofits, historical societies. That's good. Public places. Let's see. How many paid staff members? Mostly one to five there. Some six to 20. That's a lot. And some 21 to 40. Also a lot. 41 or more. Wow. That's awesome. I'm so glad that people have paid staff. That's just excellent. Let's see. Have you worked with students, interns, volunteers? It looks like almost everybody, almost everybody has. Okay, that's great. I'm going to switch us back now to the slides. Great. So that all looks wonderful. So as we all know, staffing for the Brown and Project work is often a challenge, especially in smaller organizations. Also for larger organizations, but especially in smaller ones. And when planning a project, you can turn to current staff as well as individuals outside of your organization to help you achieve your project goals, including students, interns, and volunteers. Depending on your type of organization, one of these groups may be better suited to your institution than another. Each year, many glam organizations must find a way to continue their work with small and often reduced personnel budgets. One way to compensate for lack of personnel funding on projects is to make use of volunteers and interns for the brunt of project work. Whether it's scanning materials, creating metadata, cataloging objects, or another task that constitutes the bulk of project work. However, you should be aware that though many students, interns, and volunteers are not paid, as Rosemary mentioned in last week's webinar, nothing is free. It will take staff time to train students, interns, and volunteers, and staff members may even be needed to do or complete the project work. A staff member will also be needed to spend part of his or her time supervising the work done by students, interns, and volunteers. Proper training and adequate supervision is important to maintaining consistency throughout the project, which you will discuss further in a little while. Training is also important to keeping your students, interns, and volunteers happy. A common complaint of volunteers at nonprofits is that they did not receive what they felt to be enough for adequate training in their duties. In addition to being a source of labor, volunteers can connect your institution to other organizations and community groups. They can also act as a liaison to your local community and become some of your organization's greatest advocates. Of course, this all depends on the volunteers having a positive experience. Volunteers and others who are not paid employees can also give you a fresh perspective on your project and be helpful in usability testing if you're creating a website or another digital project. Another issue to be aware of when working with students, interns, and volunteers is the potential for turnover and reliability. Because students, interns, and volunteers' schedules can be unpredictable, you may have to deal with people leaving during the project or work not getting done as quickly as you had planned. It is always a good idea to manage your expectations from the outset when dealing with students, interns, and volunteers. Although these same issues can occur with staff working on the project, it's less common, and therefore these issues could serve as an argument to stakeholders for funding additional staff during your project planning phase. Okay, so how do you know which type of volunteer is best suited to your organization? If you're in a school, college, university, or other type of academic institution, students and interns will be your best bet. But be aware that students, especially interns, will often have a set number of hours they need to work in order to meet an internship or volunteer requirement. Students and interns will also be looking for a project that provides them with a learning experience, which is more than just a work experience. And skills that will be transferable or otherwise helpful to them in the future. There are also some newer legal requirements related to interns that require payment and rather specific job description requirements to prevent companies from taking advantage of a free intern system. Our resource library will have additional information to help you understand more about this issue. If you're a community organization, such as a public library, high school students, or members of community groups including Boy Scout troops, 4-H clubs, rotary international or other civic groups, or senior centers may be a good place to look for volunteers. High school students often have to satisfy a community service requirement for graduation or may need community service hours for scholarships. Additionally, court-ordered or court-appointed community service volunteers may be another source for public libraries, although there will be paperwork or weekly reports required for this type of volunteer. If you're a museum or other member-oriented organization, your members can be an excellent place to find volunteers. Members of your organization and volunteers from community groups often have altruistic motivations or are interested in the benefits of your organization. Historical and genealogical societies can also be a good source of volunteers for archives and libraries because their interests are often aligned with those of the organization. I should also point out here that I've highlighted each type of institution's best bet among students, interns, and volunteers, but that doesn't mean that you can't bring students, interns, and volunteers from elsewhere. For example, a museum may also find several volunteers among other community groups in high schools. So when reaching out to potential students, interns, and volunteers, there are a variety of methods. You can contact schools, community groups, and or courts that require community service hours. You can also have a section on your membership form or library card form that asks if the individual is interested in volunteering or working on a project and also asks in what areas of volunteer service they are interested in. This is a good way to match people to various projects. Using social media, digital videos, your own website, emails, newsletters, blogs, and flyers can also be good ways to announce that you are seeking help with a project. You can also post announcements for the staff at your institution in case people know anyone who might be interested and also post announcements at community center schools or through graduate programs. If you're going to be contacting a larger institution, you may need to get in touch with a volunteer or community service department. They often keep lists of available volunteer or internship opportunities that they maintain or email to students or members of the organization. Staff members and current volunteers can also be used as ambassadors for your GLAM organization. If they're going to or if they're hosting an event that you think might be a good source for potential volunteers, ask them if they'll make an announcement or distribute flyers. It's also a great idea to establish a connection with local news stations or other types of media organizations. If they're running a story about something happening at your organization or about a town anniversary or another topic that you have materials that relates to that topic, collaborate with the media and show them your collection. And also slip in an announcement about volunteering. If your project could benefit from volunteers with a specific skill set, all of the other methods I've already mentioned could still be useful. But it can be helpful to contact specialty newspapers and community centers or other places geared towards those who may have the skills you need. This could be especially helpful if, for example, you're processing or cataloging materials that are in a foreign language and you're looking for someone who's familiar with that language to help you understand the object or the collection. Also remember that the motivation to volunteer will be different for different people. So highlight a variety of benefits when reaching out. Students and others with a variety of commitments in their lives may value flexibility and scheduling while others may respond better to a fixed weekly or monthly schedule. So others may value free tickets to an event at your organization or a discount to your gift shop. Additionally, when advertising a volunteer internship opportunity, give an overview of the project but don't make it so complex that it will turn people off. Give the project context and point out why it is important and how the project will help the organization, the community, or the researchers and patrons. This can help weed out volunteers who may not be suited to the project. Also, if you can present all of this in a visually appealing manner, sort of unlike this slide, that's even better. I want to point out that in addition to seeking students, interns and volunteers, don't forget about staff you already have that may be suited to the project at hand. If you have staff that has expressed an interest in a particular project or that already has some skills in the area that you're looking for, you may wish to approach them and see if they can contribute to the project. But make sure that participating in the project won't put too much on their plate. If it does, think about whether you can delay starting the project until that staff member has more time or speak with a staff person supervisor to see if there's a way to temporarily reduce some of the person's other duties to make time for work on the project. Have some reasons ready to back up why that specific staff person could be helpful to the project. Talk about what they would add to the project and or how he or she could be helpful to completing the project on time or under budget. Okay, it's time for first activity, so I'm going to move us to discussion Room 1. So similar to the other webinars you participated in with this series, I'm going to put out some questions so that we can learn from everyone else's experiences about outreach and recruitment. The first question is already posted here in the chat thread on the left. How have you effectively reached out to these types of groups before students and turns volunteers? Okay, I'm also going to start asking some other questions now. There's so many great answers. What types of outreach methods have worked better for you or what places have been the hotspots for you really like really worked out for you? And why do you think volunteers come to your organization? What do you think motivates them? Do they want what kind of benefits do they want or is it mostly requirements? Okay, so I guess I'll move us back now to the rest of the slides. That was great. I really enjoyed seeing all of those thoughts and comments. It's wonderful. I just want to take a moment here to mention that there is an ethical debate when it comes to sources of free labor, quote unquote free labor, such as volunteers and interns. Of course, I wish everybody could be financially compensated for the work they do all the time. And we should all be advocating for that to become the standard. However, as things stand today, small budgets and reductions in funding make this difficult. This is part of the reason why volunteers are so valuable to Glam organizations. That being said, if we cannot pay everyone for their work, I believe that the volunteer and the parent organization relationship should at least be symbiotic. A two-way street. In other words, a mutually beneficial relationship. If we can't directly pay people for their work, we can at least make sure that it is a worthwhile experience and that the volunteers are getting what they want out of it. Of course, we also want to get something out of it too. But that goes a long way towards retaining volunteers and ensuring that they have a positive experience, ensuring that they get whatever it is they want out of the internship or volunteering. So once you have people interested in volunteering or interning, you want to be sure to match them to a project that they will find interesting and of value. This is where interviews, questionnaires and other ways of determining a volunteer's skills can be helpful. Use interviews and or volunteer applications or questionnaires to find out what is important to students, interns, volunteers and make sure they get that out of their experience. You should also use these tools to learn about skill sets and interests so you can match them to a project that will appeal to them. Some people may feel intimidated by a formal interview or a formal interview may not fit the sell of your particular organization. So you may want to consider meeting up for lunch or coffee or tea with your volunteer and having an informal chat about their interests. In a more relaxed setting, the volunteer may be more open and honest and it may be easier for you to evaluate them. So there are a number of examples of volunteer applications and questions to ask volunteers available on the internet. I've included one here from the Yale Peabody Museum in Connecticut and the Peabody also has a really nice landing page on its website for volunteers, so I put that in here as well. And these can also be found in the resource library. I want to point out here that while it's important for you to gather information about volunteers, it's also important for them to obtain information about your organization. Several GLAM institutions have a volunteer form or handbook that outlines important information for volunteers. These documents will often include statements regarding the institution's volunteer code of ethics and professional standards, general volunteer policies and procedures, and expectations for volunteers, including not only what the institution expects from volunteers, but also what the volunteer can expect from the institution. I've included an example here from the Alexandria Museum of Art in Louisiana. These documents are also available for download in the lower left-hand corner. Don't forget to discuss or gather information about the volunteer's availability. I think you probably all know, since most of you have worked with students interns and volunteers, that this is super important. It's best for your organization, although not required, if volunteers plan to be there for the entire duration of the project. Although, as we all know, that often doesn't end up being the reality. This is one of several reasons why planning a timeline for your project, as mentioned in the first webinar in the series, is important. That being said, if you think the volunteer is really exceptionally well matched to the project, or even just well matched, they don't have to be exceptionally well matched. You should still consider using them, even if they will not be available for the project's duration. As we will discuss later, there are ways to maintain project consistency when you have a turnover of volunteers throughout the project. Okay, once you have gathered information about skills and interests, and they have information from you about the work environment and expectations, you can begin to match the volunteers to projects that will best suit them. For example, if they are good in the technology and detail-oriented, you can put them on a scanning and metadata project. If they are good at seeing the big picture, have them help with project planning issues, planning programs, exhibits, social media posts, or other things that can happen across your organization's departments that all relate to the project. If they get bored easily, make sure they have a variety of tasks. If they love genealogy, put them on a family history project. Additionally, if you find someone doesn't quite fit what you are looking for, or you don't think that they will enjoy the work you have for them, you should consider if they might be a better fit for a different project or task, even if it's in another department of your organization. If this is the case, you should ask them if they are okay with that and then go ahead and set it up for them. Also consider if they would be a better fit at another organization, and then refer them to that organization. In any case, you should remember to follow up with a volunteer to see how they are doing or how things have worked out, even if they have moved on. This can also be a helpful step in maintaining contact in case a project that suits the volunteer pops up later on. Okay, so what about existing volunteers or staff? I think it's important to mention that if you already have a group of good volunteers working for you, you might consider evaluating their skills and interests and building a project around them. This is why it can be important to already have projects in mind for your collections, which I believe was mentioned in Week 1's webinar. The same goes for your staff. You should take note of your existing staff skill sets, not just their job descriptions, and see if there is a project that might match those skills. So what are some ways that you can figure out skills your staff has that might not be obvious to you? Well first, you can just be direct and ask them. Either ask them directly or have them fill out a survey or questionnaire. Maybe someone on your staff knows Mandarin. You never know unless you ask. You can also try assigning people a small group or individual project to see how they handle themselves in these different environments. Similarly, we have people switch jobs for a day or shadow someone in a different position or department. That's sometimes we do that at my organization and it's worked out really well, I think. Encourage staff to go outside their comfort zones. Trying new things can often lead to the discovery of a hidden talent. And the next suggestion might not work for every place, but you can also try doing peer-to-peer reviews. But remember to try and keep it positive. If you choose to allow criticism during this activity, make sure it's all constructive and presented without hostility. So now I'm just going to take a few minutes to discuss two nontraditional ways of utilizing volunteers for projects. Crowdsourcing and BLIX projects. Crowdsourcing is a way of accomplishing tasks by outsourcing the tasks to multiple people. Crowdsourcing projects can increase access to collections by providing your institution with data that would take much longer to gather on your own. It can also be a great marketing project by bringing awareness to your collection and getting people invested in it. If you're using crowdsourcing to gather data, there's a few things to keep in mind. One, definitely keep things simple. The data you're requesting or the task you wish to accomplish should be straightforward and unambiguous. Things like transcription and indexing are ideal for crowdsourcing. Projects that involve asking users to analyze material and write full text descriptions tend not to work as well. The quality of data will vary and people will not be able to spend enough time with the material. If you're doing an in-house digital crowdsourcing project, you may need to have tech people on hand to build and maintain it. But you could also use existing services like Flickr and Vimeo. I've highlighted some examples of crowdsourcing projects here on the right. A Library of Congress, University of Iowa, Smithsonian, and also an article on crowdsourcing that has additional examples on it. LITS projects. As the name implies, LITS projects are intended to be short-term and intensive. As the saying goes, many hands make light work. Like crowdsourcing, these projects are an excellent way to increase access to collections, and it's a good idea to keep LITS projects simple and well-defined. It is also important to make them rewarding for those who participate. LITS projects that are completed in a day are good for volunteers that have limited time to work on a project. Day-long projects also ensure that just one set of volunteers works on the project, so you won't have to deal with the potential of turnover. You can also plan LITS projects that are longer in duration, such as a weekend or up to a week. Once you have determined what your project is, you can determine how many volunteers you will need to finish it in a desired amount of time. And just a little tip here. If you have a project that could be broken down into separate smaller projects, you could create a series of LITS projects over a selected period of time. Doing this allows you to use a different set of volunteers for each LITS project if necessary. However, you should remember to document everything you did over the course of each LITS project in case you need to refer back to it for the next project. It's also crucial to explain to the participants in the LITS project why their work is important. Sometimes the work can be tedious, but if people feel invested in the outcome, the quality of the overall enthusiasm for the project will be greater. LITS projects can be developed for your current staff, too. If there's a project that has been lingering but no one person has enough time to work on it by themselves, it might make sense to create a LITS project where everyone works on it together. Although not recommended for volunteers, you can also use LITS projects for training staff. For example, if there's a new software that the staff has to learn, set up a one-day LITS project with the tasks that will help orient them to the software, but at the same time enter data that reduces your backlog into the new system. Another benefit of using LITS projects for training staff is that if everyone is doing the project together and learning at the same time with the same instructions, it will ensure continuity and consistency in the training and the data that gets entered into the system. Recognition and reward. It's important that volunteers feel like they're valued by your organization and are considered to be part of the team. This is something that goes towards retention of volunteers. I also just saw a new study that's out saying that treating your volunteers like staff members when it comes to providing preparation guidance and feedback will help you place them into roles that suit them best, which makes the volunteers succeed and feel fulfilled. That being said, it is also very important to maintain a balance of responsibility with volunteers to make sure they have enough of it to feel satisfied and that they have a positive experience, but that they do not become too bossy or pushy to the detriment of the project or the annoyance of the staff and other volunteers. One way to do this is to incrementally start out giving them a lower amount of responsibility if they handle it well, consider giving them more. The bottom line is make sure they know the boundaries and do not cross them, but also show them how much they are valued by recognizing or rewarding their work. Here are some ways to show your appreciation. When selecting how to show your appreciation, remember to think about what the volunteers said they were hoping to get out of the experience when you brought them on board. It will likely be different for each person. You should always remind them how their work directly impacts the organization and its users and patrons, such as how their work fits into the bigger picture. For example, you could say, because you did X, visitors or researchers can now do Y, or this work is important to our organization because of ABC. You can also invite them to project-related events such as lectures, exhibit openings, other programs, and other events. This will make them feel valued, and also depending on how in-depth the volunteer worked on the project, it can be good to have him or her around to answer questions at events that relate to the project. I know that when I've worked on projects before, all the project staff is always invited to any event if, you know, we're promoting the work of the project or if it's a lecture related to the project event staff, or I mean project staff is always invited just in case they can give more insight, because oftentimes the volunteers or the people who worked on the project, they have the most insight into what was in the collection or, you know, what the object is and the cataloging process and everything like that. So it's good to have them on hand to answer questions. Something else you can do is have a volunteer appreciation day. Volunteer Appreciation Week is in April, but you should consider having a volunteer appreciation celebration multiple times throughout the year or at the end of the project, since not all volunteers from the whole year may be able to attend something in April or the project may conclude before April or after April. Having multiple celebrations is also a good idea for longer projects that may have different waves of volunteers. Also, make sure whatever you do for volunteer appreciation day can be enjoyed by all of the volunteers. For example, having a pizza party is not always a great idea if not everyone can attend or people don't even eat pizza. Where I work, we have a digital wall in our lobby and at various times to show our appreciation to volunteers, we'll run a slideshow on the wall depicting our volunteers working on projects. We also put their name up there in various words such as thanks and great work and we just do that to express our thanks to them. But you should, however, get permission from the volunteers when you're taking their pictures to use their images on the wall. And this example is also a great way to generate conversation with visitors to your organization or board members about all the work being done at your institution. And if you don't have a digital wall, that's okay. Use a display case to do the same thing, but just be sure to change it out so that it's current. Another way to show appreciation is to have the president write the volunteer or intern a letter thanking them, give them a certificate or send the letter to the rest of the organization about their accomplishments. You can also give volunteers gifts or prizes, possibly merchandise from your organization that's only given to volunteers. These are also nice to give out in celebration of a volunteer when they have worked a milestone number of hours or volunteered for several years or even one year. Another idea that I really love is to set up a meeting with the donor or the donor's family. Volunteers often will have the most, as I said earlier, they'll often have the most hands-on experience with the item or collection depending on the project and donors like to talk to people who work with the material. They're always really interested in what's happening with their stuff. So we did that once with an internship that I helped to coordinate. We set up a meeting between the intern and then the donor's family, and it was a really great experience. And it was also a great experience for our organization because you can potentially get media to cover the story or at least put it in your newsletter that goes out to people. For students especially, you can keep a log of their hours, tasks and accomplishments and give it to them at the end of their project so that it's documented or add deliverables from the project to the student's internship portfolio. Or even if they're not an intern and they're a student worker, you can just make sure they have those deliverables so they can show the work that they did. As a bonus for yourself, you can also use the information you gave to the student to justify the project or garner additional support for another rendition of it. You can link to project deliverables in the annual report or departmental reports or even a newsletter. Also, if you're going to present about the project at a conference or use it for a poster presentation at a conference, you should offer the student the opportunity to join you and assist. Alright, I think it is now time for our next activity. Another discussion room. In this discussion room, we're going to talk about concerns people have about working with students, interns and volunteers. So what challenges have you faced? Are you concerned about what students, interns or volunteers? And if anybody has solutions, feel free to jump in and suggest them on the chat board. What kind of appreciation tactics work for you? What do people seem to like? Okay, maintaining consistency. As I mentioned in the beginning of the webinar and several times throughout here, projects can have a high turnover rate, which is not coincidentally why I have the Apple Turnovers on this page. Sometimes a high turnover rate is because the project is long and sometimes, as we all know, things just happen. This is why it is extremely important to have project documentation, communication and evaluation. So first off, documentation. We were just talking a lot about this in the chat room. You should document staff and volunteers work that goes into the project. Ours work has completed deliverables and other things. You should also document their job descriptions, the recruitment sources you use to find them and the skill sets of the staff and volunteers that worked on the project. You may also want to create a volunteer card for each volunteer that lists their contact information and skill sets. This way, if another project comes along that they might be a good fit for, you can just contact them directly. In addition, you should document the project's workflows and any procedures that occur within those workflows. If you have specific metadata that you're capturing or data that you're cataloging, write it down, write down what and how. If there's a specific standard you want the metadata to follow, state it. And really trust me on this. This will provide consistency when you train staff and volunteers and will lead to greater continuity throughout any staffing changes during the project's lifecycle. You should also make sure that all staff and volunteers are following the steps in the documented procedures. Again, that's about supervision. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. If you start out with five volunteers in September and train them, but then in July of the following year or even a month later, you have to train a new batch of volunteers and you didn't write anything down, you'll be kicking yourself. Save yourself the stress, be proactive. Write down all of your decisions and even write down why you made those decisions in case you have to justify them to someone else or remember why you made the decision in the first place. It will also help if you or someone else does a similar project several years down the road or if work on the same project continues at a much later time due to funding or other issues. I really can't say that's enough. Document everything. You might even get a thank you in the future from someone after you left the organization. Alright, communication. Something else we were talking about. Communication is also very helpful to ensure consistency during staff turnover. The person responsible for managing volunteers on the project should set up a regularly scheduled check-in time, whether it's multiple days during the week, weekly or monthly, depending on the complexity and duration of the task on which the volunteer is working. Again, this takes a lot of time, as we already talked about, or it can't take a lot of time. But this does provide volunteers with a set time during which they can ask you questions or report any problems and you will hopefully be able to catch inconsistencies or errors before they get out of hand. It would also be beneficial to review a sample of the volunteer's work to ensure things are going smoothly. Part of maintaining consistency throughout the project is good supervision. And that's something, as we all know, and I've said about 30 times, I think, requires time. This is why volunteers are not always the free labor we think they are. Evaluation is key in any project. It is important to note that evaluation does not have to be left until the end of the project, and in fact, I really believe it shouldn't be. In addition to evaluating the various aspects of the project, you should evaluate the volunteer aspect from your organization's point of view. How did using volunteers work out for the project? Was it worth it for you to use volunteers instead of staff? Remember, you also need to evaluate the project from the volunteer's perspective. Gather feedback from the volunteers. Give each volunteer an exit interview, as we were mentioning earlier. You can also do something less formal, if that's more your style. Ask them what was good and what could be improved upon. What would make it a better experience? Did they feel the instructions were clear? What did they learn from the project? What did they learn from the project is a great question. If you're doing an internship or something where students get, like, practicum credit, because they always have to be learning objectives, at least most of the time that I've dealt with those. There have to be learning objectives. After the exit interview, you can post positive testimonials about working on the project to your website, and you can also include those in your annual report for future ads for volunteers. Also, don't forget to document how you evaluated the project. Documentation. For more on evaluating a project, don't miss the sixth and final webinar in this series on February 15th. And just one last time here, the importance. Document your projects, workflows, and procedures. You won't regret it, I promise. You will thank your past self for your forethought. Okay, so other things to consider. As I stated at the beginning, unfortunately, we don't have time to discuss building an entire volunteer intern program. But don't forget about a resource library where there are materials for that. I know we've talked about how training volunteers takes time and often involves training materials, so I want to remind you here, don't forget to budget or account for training materials and build time in your project, and also build in additional time. Yes, you will need to train them to do the tasks which they have been assigned on the project, but there may be additional areas in which volunteers need to be trained, such as privacy and confidentiality issues for safety training. You may also need to train new volunteers that you haven't planned on training as the project goes on. Also, remember that students, interns, and volunteers will have a variety of knowledge bases, but all will need to feel comfortable and confident in the work they are doing. That goes a long way towards retention. Some volunteers may require training that uses layman's terms, while others may be more familiar with Glam terms and other professional jargon. Some people may be hands-on learners, and others may thrive in more of a classroom setting. When determining what to include in your training, ask yourself what you want the outcomes of the training to be. Make sure your training includes information about being a volunteer, like what's expected, the dos and don'ts. Basically, a short outline of what is in your volunteer guidelines and handbook, which they should have read and signed. Your training also includes things the volunteers should know about your organization, its operational structure, its history, its mission, and other important information. That can go a long way to helping them become invested in your institution if they understand its history and its mission. Detail the work they'll be doing and how they will be doing it. This is really important and it should be effective so that volunteers being confident in their tasks. Be sure to include best practices and explain why best practices are important, because we all know they are. After the training is done, evaluate the training and build upon your program. Retain what was effective and get feedback from the volunteers who went through it, as well as past volunteers who have already been doing the work for a while. Also, you could ask a staff member for input. After obtaining the feedback, update your training program and include new information and strategies for training. Be aware of anything in the training that needs to be updated based upon the season. At our building in the wintertime, we highlight the implement weather policy. That's what I mean by seasonal. I mean, there's other seasonal things. If you have seasonal projects or seasonal programs, you might need to change the training up to cover those two. Consider how to present your information and your training sessions. With in-person training, you can answer questions immediately and that are specific to that volunteer. But in-person training only takes place at a specific time and location, and not everyone may be able to make it, and it will take time to run additional training sessions. Recorded trainings are more flexible for volunteers with busy schedules, but then you cannot directly answer their questions unless they contact you afterwards. Some people may also become distracted easily while viewing recorded trainings. You may also wish to assign pre-reading for the training sessions so that volunteers can move through it at their own pace. Hands-on training is another method of training that is good for teaching volunteers to do specific tasks. But I would suggest having a binder that has step-by-step instructions detailing the procedures from that hands-on training in case people forget something. You can also have a binder detailing the information from a general training session about policies and practices at your organization. But that should also be included in your handbook. Think about trying to present information to volunteers in at least three different ways because people learn differently. Give breaks if needed and limit spurts of information to about 20 minutes at a time and give them time to process it. It's not unusual for 20 minutes of content to take one hour of training. Alright, so moving on from training, I just want to share a little tip in case it might be helpful. Think about the possibility of collaboration with other institutions to overcome staffing challenges. If there is another GLAM organization located near you, talk to them. They might have some insight on recruiting and retaining volunteers. Additionally, it could be that they have some volunteers that might fit a project you're undertaking, or you might have some volunteers that fit a project that they're doing. Talk about the possibility of creating a collaborative volunteer program. This will keep volunteers continually working on new projects, which may entice them to stick around longer. It's also just a good way to help out your fellow GLAM institution because we shouldn't be competing against each other for volunteers. We should be sharing the wealth. I know I've mentioned it several times, but please be sure to check out our resource library for additional information. Alright, so you made it. You made it through the webinar. Well, I would certainly like to thank all of you and Joanne, Krista and Amy and Daniel and everybody, everybody who helped work on this and everybody who attended.