Brainstorm on why we loose volunteers? What are the problems?¶
- Don’t feel they are doing meaningful work
- Intense meetings
- Not part of the big picture
- Not feeling a part of the community
- Not ready for tasks and or not feeling ready
- Not supported in building skills
- Feel you are “done” and that it is OK to move on
- “Nobody had my back and my turn is up”
Solutions to some of the listed problems¶
- Taskarade — Have specific projects during periodic work sessions
- Volunteers night could be made into a volunteer meeting 1 time a month
- Check-in with volunteers
- How can support be given?
- Mechanical training to be given before open shop each weekend
- Write-out a job description for specific & special jobs
- Worker councils as a system (Not sure what this is, maybe committees) for getting detailed work done
- Send out fun and motivating content to email lists, like cool vidoes are stories maybe
- Want volunteers? Ask.
- “Bike feast & de-grease”
- Take sabatocal or time-off when people feel too stretched
- Forum to express when people are doing too much or just feel plain old bad
- Monthly go-arounds for the collective only
- Shop closses if only 1 person is there. Make that or something similar a concrete rule.
- Take 1-week off for everybody
- Annual retreat — all about staffing
- Social settings and have fun to allow members to bond
- Mingle-brainstorm with paper on the wall & markes to write with so that quiet people can have a voice
Observations¶
- Ownership leads to empowerement
- Break thinks down to smaler jobs that new people can tackle
- Make it apparent how the little jobs contribute to the big picture
- Empowerement through events outside the shop
- Give a chance to hang-out and have casual, informal interaction
- Social/Community
- Tiered orientation jobs with sign-up or other documentation for long-term jobs
- An example long-term could be checking the emails
- Stability and consistency helps people know what they are getting into
Burnout as a result of no structure¶
- Some people feel forced into taking on more and more without feeling any support
- Rotate “coordinator positions”
- Identify what tasks fall to the same people and make them rotation.
- Set a maximum to prevent people getting stuck
- Positives of having stucture
- Prevents hierarchy and power-struggle
- Gives conflict-resolution
Big-impact Improvements¶
- Rotate tasks & be transparent
- Potentially offer sabatical as mechanism to force rotation
- Build community
- Debrief & Vent to be honest to build support
- As noted above, structure has benefits
- Prevents power struggle
- Gives conflict resolution
- Provides a system of support
