Learn tips and hints to use a variety of electronic and technical equipment to enhance work with volunteers.
by Jane Cravens
Video is a great way to support your volunteers, and your computer likely has all of the tools you need to make a video, or to engage in a live video conversation with others.
Short video presentations are great for those volunteers providing service remotely, either on site at a different location than your own or virtually, via a home, work or school computer. They are also terrific for reaching volunteers you don't regularly supervise or interact with face-to-face. With free online sites like YouTube, you can easily create a space to host such videos, for free, without bothering your organization's web master.
What are your options?
(1) Short video presentations, produced on your computer, can feature your staff, volunteers, clients, or you:
- Welcoming new volunteers to the fold
- Reinforcing a recommended practice, policy or procedure among current volunteers
- Thanking volunteers for recent service
- Announcing an event or change to volunteers in a more personal way than just an email
(2) You can ask volunteers to submit clips of themselves in action, and you can splice these short clips together into one video that shows how volunteers make a difference at your organization, the fun they have, the diversity they represent, etc. This type of video production can be done easily on a variety of computers sold now; you can even ask a volunteer to help you with producing such a video.
(3) You can ask volunteers to provide their own training videos, to help support other volunteers or to help build the capacity of staff at an organization.
In addition, you can interact with volunteers via live video. There are a range of free tools that allow you to do this. One of my favorites is iVisit (http://www.ivisit.com). You can engage in one-on-one conversations, or, you can ask volunteers to all log in to watch someone speak live, and they can submit their questions or comments for the presenter by instant messaging.
Check out Jayne Cravens' YouTube channel,
http://www.youtube.com/user/jcravens42
See a sample of a homemade nine-minute video that discusses this subject further and shows you how easy short videos can be to produce. More tips from Jayne at
http://www.coyotecommunications.com/volunteer/
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