Volunteer Handbook Updates

We are looking for a volunteer who can update our volunteer handbook. We're hoping to find a partner with a background in volunteer management and curating the volunteer experience. We aim to enhance our volunteers’ experience by clarifying the volunteer’s responsibilities, and expected commitment, and to better communicate their impact on our organization in a new or revised volunteer handbook. This project will include the following activities:

-Conducting an audit of our existing policies, including reviewing our existing materials and asking any clarifying questions
-Identifying policies that we should modify and any new policies or areas that should be addressed and included
-Presenting a detailed outline of a new handbook
-Finalizing the handbook after receiving feedback from our team
-Creating an onboarding checklist for new volunteers

At The Crossroads recently completed a major update of our employee handbook and is ready to focus on our critical volunteer program. It has been several years since we revised our Volunteer Handbook. We are seeing a decline in volunteers across programs and inconsistent attendance for some of our current volunteers. We recognize the need to adapt our volunteer program and ensure we are providing an engaging volunteer experience to remain competitive in the current volunteering climate. Updating the handbook and onboarding plan is the first step in that process.
Volunteers are a critical part of our operations, and maintaining that community after COVID has been challenging. Our goal is to encourage a deeper commitment from our core volunteers so that we can continue to provide consistent support for our clients. At the end of this project, we would like to have engaging materials that we can use to recruit and retain volunteers for the long term. With more volunteers completing more tasks, it will further free up our counseling staff to focus on our clients.

Volunteers are critical to achieving ATC’s mission effectively. Volunteers prepare the hundreds of supplies we hand out each week and help keep our inventory organized. This project will help us level up our volunteer program and meet the rising needs of the people we serve. Helping ATC ensure that we have a volunteer program that attracts and retains volunteers and sets clear expectations for their experience volunteering with us, means that our team can spend more time working directly with clients.

To prepare, we've designated a team member to partner with you on the project starting in early January. We'll provide you with our existing Volunteer Handbook, internal documentation regarding the volunteer program goals, and any other volunteer policies we have in place. The volunteer should expect to spend 15-20 hours over 4-5 weeks and should communicate with us on progress every week. Once this project is complete, the handbook will be a key training and recruiting tool as we search for and onboard new volunteers.