Group Media Volunteer (GMV) Recruiting

This role is the person who takes on the social media presence of your group. The different roles for promoting a local group are described more fully at Group Promotion Volunteers.

Step 1: Consider your existing members

Choosing potential volunteers

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

Consider members who:

• have interacted with any existing social media for your group - search for them on Facebook etc to see how active they might be at present
• are off moderation and haven't deliberately or repeatedly broken the rules
• have written 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 mindset - i.e. items needing to be repaired, or parts to fix something else
• post received messages following Wanteds, and takens following Offers
• don't have anything risqué or extremely controversial on their online 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' member IDs/email addresses to see if they have any thoughts or experiences of 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 a 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 on social media, and wonder if you would consider finding out more about what is involved?

Group Media Volunteers ideally need:

• to be local
• to be familiar with the group, freegling and reuse
• to be online a lot
• to enjoy Facebook and other social media
• to enjoy talking to new people
• to be helpful, friendly and patient

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 more about joining our team - I would be delighted to tell you more.

With warmest wishes,

Name
XXX Freegle Team
XXX Freegle-volunteers@groups.ilovefreegle.org
XXX Contact telephone number XXX

Step 2: Send out an Admin

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

You could try posting it as a 'straight' admin message rather than a special notice, because you are probably looking for a currently active member who monitors social media closely.

If you don't get enough responses, you can always re-send it out as a special notice.

Sample Admin to recruit media 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 a better social media presence, so if you'd like to volunteer to help us with promotion, please email us at $groupname-volunteers@groups.ilovefreegle.org, and tell us how and why you would like to help. If you've responded to one of these messages before, then feel free to respond again to let us know that you're still interested.

You'll need to be computer literate, competent with social media and interested 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
XXX Freegle-volunteers@groups.ilovefreegle.org
XXX Contact telephone number XXX

Sample Admin to recruit media volunteers for a family of groups

You might wish to consider finding a volunteer who could help more than one group, as the sort of information that is promoted on social media is often relevant to neighbouring areas. If you go this route, then this Admin might be useful (it can obviously be tweaked/reworded as you like - it is just a suggestion):

Appeal for social media savvy Freeglers!

We want to say a big THANK YOU for being a part of the Freegle movement - we couldn't do it without you!

There is certainly strength in numbers, so we want to spread the word about Freegle to as many people as possible. Too many people are still just throwing things away that someone round the corner might love.

Our lovely volunteers are the lifeline of our charity, and keep Freegle going all over the country, helping us to help our planet (and each other). We are currently in need of people to help us promote Freegle groups on social media. If you are interested in what we do and you know your tweets from your posts, we would love to have your help. Whether it's every day or once a week, we would really appreciate having you on board to help share the Freegle love. Although it would be voluntary, you will receive our eternal gratitude and you might just meet a lovely bunch of people (if we do say so ourselves).

If you think you might want to get involved, or you just fancy a chat, get in touch with us at:

Happy Freegling!

With warmest wishes,

Name
XXX Freegle Team
XXX Freegle-volunteers@groups.ilovefreegle.org
XXX Contact telephone number XXX

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 candidate's 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 for volunteers/a volunteer to help with our group's social media presence, which at the moment is rather lacking! We do have a Facebook page/a Pinterest account, which sadly are not receiving the attention they deserve.

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
XXX Freegle-volunteers@groups.ilovefreegle.org
XXX Contact telephone number XXX

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's 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 social media do you have? Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, other internet social sharing networks.
• What experience of promotional and/or publicity work do you have?
• Have you used social media on behalf of a company or organisation? (Maybe a band, a club, a church?)
• How much time do you 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:

• promote our group on social media
• research and find news stories and photos about reuse
• engage traditional media (local papers, radio) and non-traditional media (bloggers, tweeters, vloggers) through social media
• identify any need for promotional Admin messages on our main group, and respond to member feedback as appropriate
• communicate and work with other members of our volunteer team
• ideally belong to national or regional support groups, to provide a cohesive web presence for Freegle - this also ensures that a reliable source of advice and support will be available to you at (pretty much) all times

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

XXX Freegle-volunteers@groups.ilovefreegle.org

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 probably meaning 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.)

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: http://ilovefreegle.org/groups/

4: Their social media experience:

• The more experience the better.
• Social media work for an organisation is far more useful than spending hours tweeting about everything they do, chatting to their friends or checking Facebook updates.
• Experience of the full range of social media is an advantage.

5: How much time can they volunteer?

• Hard to know, but probably 30 minutes a day, or 3 hours a week, would be a good start. Anything less is probably too little, and suggests that they may be well intentioned but not willing or not able to commit.

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 stage. 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, even when they're offline.
• 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 them.
• 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 probably should eliminate them as a candidate.

b. Don't rush the call.

• You want them to sell themselves and 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 sort of social media your group already has and how you use it (hopefully they will have already looked for themselves).
• Ask them how they think your group should use social media.
• If you have some ideas of how to use social media, then suggest them and see what they think.

d. Wrap the call up.

• Explain that Freegle has some media guidelines, and that you will email them the links (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

Question	5	4	3	2	1
1. How easy was it to organise the telephone call/first meeting?
2. How much do they know about Freegle?
3. How positive is their attitude towards Freegle?
4. Do they have respect for others' views?
5. Do they have good communication skills?
6. Are they confident?
7. Have they made appropriate self disclosure?
8. Do they have personal social media experience?
9. Do they have work-based social media experience?
10. Is the time they can commit appropriate?
11. Did they have good ideas/suggestions about promoting the group?
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 media volunteer, but much of Mod Training is relevant. The Mentor Team (mentors@ilovefreegle.org), Support Team (support@ilovefreegle.org) and the Head of Media (media@ilovefreegle.org) are all available centrally to offer advice.

Remember you are a team, so good communication between you is essential.

• The Local Social Media Guidelines are recommended to be adopted by groups.
• Freegle Affiliated Group Name and Logo Guidelines includes advice on naming Facebook accounts.
• Linking group messages to Facebook information can be found at category:Facebook.
• See also Instagram and Pinterest for some starter information on these two platforms.
• Blogs and Sample Press Release might be useful if the role expands.

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 you might have for others.

Links

• Group Events Volunteer (GEV) Recruiting
• Recruiting, Training and Retaining
• Admin