Group Media Volunteer (GMV) Recruiting

You could approach members that you have seen using your group effectively, politely and within the rules of your group, or (riskier) you can post an Admin to the list, asking for volunteers.

Suggestions for choosing potential volunteers

Consider members who:

• 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 profile
• have no complaints about them
• have been active on the group for some months

For a Media Volunteer who you wish to do social media, see if they have interacted with your existing social media for the group and do a search for them on Facebook, Twitter etc.

Send the current volunteer team a short-list of these potential volunteers' Yahoo IDs to to see if they have any thoughts or experiences with any of them.

If you have several that look promising write to them 2 or 3 at a time (it can be good to recruit two at a time as it can save time and novice volunteers can support each other and bond well)

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, your messages are no longer moderated. On behalf of our volunteer team I would like to thank you sincerely - this helps our job enormously.

We are looking for more volunteers to moderate/help with promotion 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 like Twitter/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 moderating role. There are also resources and support systems in place.

Once again, thanks for being an active member of this 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

XXXFreegle-owner@yahoogroups.com

XXXContact telephone numberXXX

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 looking for a better social media presence and also to explore some opportunities to promote ourselves in the community with events, displays etc. If you'd like to volunteer to help us with any (or all!) aspects of promotion, please email us at $groupname-owner@yahoogroups.com, 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 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 400 groups 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.

Sample Admin to recruit media volunteers for a family of groups

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 on:

Happy Freegling!

Sample letter once potential media volunteer has expressed an interest

Hi XXX,

Thank you for your interest in joining the 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 (bloggers, tweeters, vloggers)
• produce and distribute press releases
• compile list of media contacts
• run local promotional events
• identifying the need for promotional Admin messages and responding to member feedback
• communicating with other members of the volunteer team
• ideally belonging to 2-3 support groups to help local and national communication within 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 and what personal skills that you might be 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

XXXFreegle-owner@yahoogroups.com

Contact landline number

Volunteer Training Stage

At the moment we haven't got guidelines written to help with training a local Media volunteer, but much of the Mod Training is relevant. A spec for the job is at Group Media Volunteer which gives an idea of the role and type of person you would probably look for.

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.

Back to Recruiting, Training and Retaining or Admin