Group Events Volunteer (GEV) Recruiting

This role is the person who takes on the community promotion of your group. A description of the different roles for promoting a local group are described more fully at Group Promotion Volunteers.

Step 1: Consider your existing members

Considerations for choosing potential volunteers

Your first tactic could be to approach members that you have seen using your group effectively, politely and within the rules of your group.

Consider members who:

• have posted community notices on your group or you know are already active with community groups
• are off moderation and haven’t deliberately or repeatedly broken the rules
• have written in to the owner address with a valid comment or feedback
• post correctly without prompts
• post a mixture of wanteds and offers
• write clearly and politely and with a friendly tone
• ideally live in the immediate group area or a potential split-off area
• request or offer items that show a non-wasteful mind – i.e. items needing to be repaired, parts to replace a broken part of something else etc
• post received messages following wanteds, takens following offers etc
• don’t have anything risqué or extremely controversial in their Yahoo, Google or social media profiles
• have no complaints about them
• have been active on the group for some months

Send your volunteer team a short-list of potential volunteers' IDs/email addresses to to see if they have any thoughts or experiences with any of them.

If you have several that look promising write to them and ask if they would be interested. If you get more than one interested, do consider recruiting more than one as it often helps new people to integrate and learn together.

Sample letter to unsuspecting potential volunteer

Hi xxx,

Thank you for being an active member of xxx Freegle. I hope it has been a positive and enjoyable experience.

As a member who posts clearly, politely and within the group rules, on behalf of our volunteer team I would like to thank you sincerely - this helps our job enormously.

We are currently looking for more volunteers, specifically to help us promote our group in the community and wonder if you would consider finding out more about what is involved?

Group Promotion Volunteers ideally need:

• to be local
• to be familiar with the group, freegling and reuse
• to enjoy talking to new people
• to be helpful, friendly and patient
• like working equally with a team or on their own

Being part of our team is a voluntary position. With a large enough team of volunteers, the time involved can be whatever suits each individual. It doesn't need to take up much time (unless you want to get significantly more involved) and most Freegle volunteers have busy lives outside their volunteering role. There are also resources and support systems in place.

Once again, thanks so much for being an active member of our great organisation, and please do let me know if you'd like to know about joining our team, I would be delighted to tell you more.

With warmest wishes,

Name
XXX Freegle Team
contact email address

XXXContact telephone numberXXX

Step 2: Send out an Admin

If you prefer to send out a general request (or perhaps individual approaches haven't worked!), then here is a suggestion for a post that you could send out to your group.

Sample Admin to recruit event volunteers for your group

Thanks for being members of $groupname.

Behind the scenes, there's a group of volunteers who keep the group running smoothly. I hope we're doing things ok, though we can always do it better.

It would be great to have some more help with promoting our group. We are particularly looking for some physical events yo be organised, so if you'd like to volunteer to help us with this type of promotion, please email us at XXX@XXX, and tell us how and why you would like to help. If you've responded to one of these mails before, then feel free to respond again to let us know that you're still interested.

You'll need to have a working knowledge of using Freegle, have contacts in the local community, organisational energy, enjoy meeting people and an interest in promoting Freegle in our area.

We don't have anything tangible to give to a volunteer – it's all free, right? – but it's rewarding nevertheless. With over 500 communities across the UK, you'll be keeping Freegle relevant, well known and ensuring usable items stay out of landfill sites to have a new lease of life.

With warmest wishes,

Name
XXX Freegle Team
contact email address

XXXContact telephone numberXXX

Step 3: The Reply and Application form

Hopefully candidates will respond to your request for volunteers to say they are interested. You should aim to respond as quickly as possible with a personal message and an application form.

Here are a couple of ideas for finding out more about the applicants to take you onto the next stage of assessing their suitability:

Response to interested people 1

Hi <insert candidates name>

Thank you for your interest in volunteering to help the group.

My name is <. ...... .> and I'm the owner of ............. Freegle.

We are looking volunteers/a volunteer to help with promoting our group and Freegle to our local community.

Below is an application form. Basically it is a tool to help you tell me about yourself and how familiar you are with Freegle. It would be great if you could complete it and email it back to me. Please feel free to add any other information you think helpful or contact me if you have any questions.

With warmest wishes,

Name
XXX Freegle Team
contact email address
XXXContact telephone numberXXX

Application form for Group Media Volunteer (GMV)

Name:

Contact details:
Email address
Telephone
Home address

Personal Details:
Age
Education

How long have you been part of Freegle?

How did you first come across Freegle?

What is the best thing about Freegle for you?

What do you dislike the most about Freegle?

Can you say why you would like to volunteer to help Freegle?

Do you use other reuse groups?

What experience of promotion, publicity or events do you have?

How much time do they estimate you would be willing and able to contribute and how often?

Do you have any first thoughts about how you could help Freegle?

Please do add any further information you might think helpful:

Response to interested people 2

Hi XXX,

Thank you for your interest in joining our volunteer team for XXX Freegle. This is great news for us.

In terms of what is involved, we would like to cover the following tasks:

• communicate and work with other members of our volunteer team
• promote Freegle in the local community by organising and attending promotional events, eg. Give and Takes, Reuse Roadshows.
• have knowledge of local charity shops and other reuse or recycling facilities
• help to produce and distribute promotional material about events
• engage traditional media (local papers, radio)

If any of this sounds like something you'd like to do, please get back to me. Please could you tell me a little more about yourself, such as any relevant work or voluntary experience that would be helpful for us to know, why you would like to work with us and Freegle and what personal skills you are able to bring to the role. Please could you also include your full name, home address and a landline number.

Do let me know if you have questions and we can go from there.

With warmest wishes,

XXX Freegle Team
contact email address
Contact landline number

Step 4: Assessing the returned applications

This is where you start to be enthusiastic about or eliminate candidates!

1: Are their answers relevant and clear? yes/no

• ( You could consider a 'no' to this to probably mean the candidate should be eliminated )

2: Age - Candidates need to be 18* or over

• (If you have to eliminate a candidate because they are too young then you could encourage them to contact you again when they are 18.)

(*if you know the candidate and are able to properly support them, you could consider someone slightly younger- it is up to you, it is your team!)

3: Their 'experience of Freegle':

• The more they have used Freegle the better
• Compare their answers with their membership history
• If they say they have used any other Freegle group, you can check with that group owner for confirmation [1]

4: Their promotional experience:

• The more experience the better
• A range of existing contacts would be very useful

5: How much time can they volunteer?

• Hard to know, but probably an hour a week would be an absolute minimum. Anything less is probably too little and suggests that they may be well intentioned but not willing or not able to commit.
• This role's work could be very fluctuating - running an event could take days of work, so their time flixibility will be important.

6: Ideas about how they might help Freegle.

• This is where a good candidate should shine through. They should have ideas and be able to express them. But don't dismiss a candidate because they haven't offered any ideas.

Step 5: Personal Contact

Hopefully you will still have a couple of viable candidates at this state. A phone call or ideally a personal meeting could be your next step.

a. Email the candidate and suggest a telephone call so you can talk things over. Suggest a time that would suit you and ask them to suggest an alternative time if the time you suggest won't work. A phone call is important for the following reasons:

• You want a telephone number to be able to get hold of them quickly if the need arises and you need to be able to get them even in your off-line.
• You want to know that they can respond to an email
• It's much easier to understand an email from someone if you have already spoken to the person
• It's also a way of checking that you are dealing with a genuinely interested person and that you can have a working relationship with them
• If they still don't want to give you a phone number at this point then you will probably should eliminate them as a candidate

b. Don't rush the call.

• You want them to sell themselves to create a good impression.
• Have their application in front of you.
• Highlight any points you specifically want to bring up.
• If you like to work from a list, go through the application and their answers one at a time.
• You could start by asking them to tell you a little about themselves, where they have worked, do they have family, have they lived locally for long. It doesn't really matter much what you ask, it's just a way of starting the conversation.

c. Ask what they know about Freegle.

• Depending on what they already know, explain how Freegle works.
• Then explain what promotion your group already has undertaken and how you feel that has worked.
• Ask them how they think your group could promote itself.
• If you have some ideas of promotion then suggest them, see what they think.

d. Wrap the call up

• Explain that Freegle has some guidelines and you will email them the links (which are listed below under additional resources )
• Ask if they are still interested.
• Remember there is no need to make a decision there and then. If they push for a decision all you need say is that you are not ready to make a final decision yet/need to discuss with the rest of the team etc.

e. After the call is finished

• Make a few notes about the person (don't forget to put their name on the notes, this is especially important if there are several candidates).

Step 6: Assessing the candidates

At this point you will probably know the best candidate, but you may still find it useful to use the assessment form below as a check.

5=Good/suitable, 1=Poor/not suitable

1. How easy was it to organise the telephone call/first meeting	5	4	3	2	1
2. How much do they know about Freegle	5	4	3	2	1
3. How positive is their attitude towards Freegle	5	4	3	2	1
4. Do they have respect for other's views.	5	4	3	2	1
5. Do they have good communication skills.	5	4	3	2	1
6. Are they confident	5	4	3	2	1
7. Have they made appropriate self disclosure	5	4	3	2	1
8. Do they have promotional experience	5	4	3	2	1
9. Have they got existing contacts that would be useful	5	4	3	2	1
10. Is the time they can commit appropriate	5	4	3	2	1
11. Did they have good ideas/suggestions about promoting the group	5	4	3	2	1
12. Any other comments that might help.

Step 7: Due diligence

Please be fair in your assessment of candidates, our Freegle Equality and Diversity Policy gives good guidance.

Verification:

• Check they are who they say they are.
• The candidates will almost certainly have a public presence on the internet, and that presence should not be in disagreement with Freegle's principles or provide opportunity for bringing Freegle into disrepute e.g. Google their name/email address, check Linkedin, Facebook, news items etc.
• Such precautions might be excessive, but why take an unnecessary risk.

Step 8: Appointing

First make sure that your team are in agreement with the choice made. Then contact your new team member by whichever way you feel most comfortable with, or have told them you will (phone, email) and give them a starting date.

Step 9: Volunteer Training Stage

At the moment we haven't got a set of guidelines written to help with training a local events volunteer, but much of the Mod Training is relevant. The Mentor Team (mentors@ilovefreegle.org), Support Team (email support@ilovefreegle.org) and the Head of Media (media@ilovefreeegle.org) are all available centrally to offer advice.

There is a section of this wiki dedicated to aspects of publicity - Publicity Depending on what promotion your team are interested in pursuing, you could direct your new volunteer to the appropriate pages.

If any groups have experience of a team member who helps or takes responsibility for promoting the group, it would be great to have some feedback on how this works for you and to hear any hints or advice your might have for others.

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