Food For Thought

May marks the end of another successful volunteer year. Looking back, our chapters have accomplished a great deal and have taken on many new changes and initiatives, not only as individual chapters, but as a group as well. We’ve seen our chapter meeting attendance bounce back and new volunteers step forward. Our chapters are embracing our new banking system and working more closely together and learning a lot through our 1:1 calls with National and members of the Chapter Leadership Team. We’ve had some great discussions during our happy hour calls and had various opportunities to learn new leadership skills from each other. As we close out the year, we want to continue this momentum and ensure our incoming (or returning) chapter leaders are set up for success. Here are a few ways we can do this:

Orientation & Onboarding – Chapters should consider hosting their own orientations to go over governing documents, reimbursement policies, and role expectations, as well as hands-on training with the chapter portal and the new online bank, if available. Provide new volunteers with the roles and responsibilities and chapter rebate requirements checklists as well. An orientation checklist is available in ANFPConnnect in Volunteer Resources to help you get started. 

Orientation with National - New volunteers can start their orientation with our online courses: Volunteer 101 and Chapter Board Orientation. They can also take courses specific to their role. These courses are available in the Marketplace at no cost (e-mail staff for discount code). National will also be conducting a live board orientation (click here to register) on Thursday, May 16 at 2:00 p.m. We encourage new volunteers to attend the live session. A similar PowerPoint presentation with talking points on ANFPConnect is also available for your chapter’s orientation. 

Check-in – New volunteers may feel overwhelmed by the amount of information they receive during the orientation, so it's important to check in with them during and after your chapter’s orientation. Returning chapter leaders should act as mentors and have regular communication with new volunteers outside of board and business meetings to ensure the new volunteers can ask questions and run ideas by someone with experience. 

Make it Easy – Making training and orientation accessible and flexible is key to getting your new volunteers started on the right foot. This may mean holding your orientation, as well as board and business meetings, virtually. Not all members are able to take time off their jobs to attend such meetings, so bringing the meeting to them will ensure they can attend. Also, let them know of all the materials and resources available to them (Volunteer Handbook, Volunteer Resources, mentors, staff contact info, etc.) should they have questions. And encourage them to ask questions!

Encourage Engagement – While training is a very important part of our volunteers’ success, we also want to see our new chapter leaders engaged. Encourage them to attend the leadership happy hour calls (typically the first Tuesday of each month at 2:00 p.m. CT) as well as the virtual chapter best practices sessions, town hall meetings, and of course all your chapter board meetings. You can have them reach out to new members on a regular basis and if you have social media accounts, ask them to help share posts in addition to the other work that has been assigned.