We're going to go ahead and get our recording started, and I'm very excited to invite Carla Lehn to this session. She is an old, old friend of WebJunction, young old friend I should say of WebJunction, she's a recent retiree from the state library of California, and she is now principle consultant for the Lehn group. She's also an author of a new book which I'll let her tell you about. Thank you so much for being here, Carla, and you guys are in for a real treat. She is going to inspire you. Welcome, Carla. >> Thank you, Jennifer. Thanks a lot, I'm glad to be here. I'm glad to see so many folks joining us. Thanks so much. I'm trying to change the slide, Jennifer, and nothing is happening. We practiced this and it worked before. >> I'm sorry, I forgot to move the slides over. There we go. >> Okay. Jennifer mentioned my new book had just came out in may. And I wanted to share with you that this book is based on a project we created in California called get involved, powered by your library. In the first five years of that project we saw a 52% increase in volunteers in California libraries. But not just great success in increasing the numbers of volunteers, but also in the kind of work they were doing, helping a nontraditional way to expand and enhance programs and services. We also found 80% of the volunteers that came to us through our partnership with VolunteerMatch.org, it was their first time volunteering for a library, and we were thrilled at the idea that we're engaging new community members with libraries in new ways, and we found through research on the project that they were naturally turning into strong library supporters and advocates. And Jennifer did post a thing there that libraries unlimited is offering 20% off coupon code for anybody interested in the book, so please feel free to take advantage of that. The project was so successful in California, we received a federal grant to expand it to three additional states. That's a three-year grant, which we're in the middle of. And so I'm going to share a also bit with you today about things we've been learning, and strategies, and techniques that we have found useful. These are my learning objectives for you. I've got time to briefly touch on these four topics. I'm sure there are many more topics, and you're -- be happy to type in questions to the chat, as Jennifer said. But these are the ones we'll have time to spend a little bit of time on today. Let's start with trends. What's making us think that we need to look at volunteer engagement differently? Not just in libraries, but every organization that I utilize as volunteers. Most volunteers starting with the baby boomers, no longer just want to come and do the traditional library volunteer roles. You will still be able to find folks who are interested in coming and putting the books back on the shelves and doing the kinds of things you had them doing successfully for many years, but there's a trend, again, as I mentioned, starting with baby boomers, but we're seeing that the changes we've made to address the baby boomers' interests have also appealed to the generations that follow. And these are the trends that I think you need to be aware of. First of all, today's volunteer wants to engage their skills and expertise in their volunteer assignment. They have learned things in the work force, they've -- they have professional skills and interests, and they want to share those with the community as a way of giving back to the community. Today's volunteers also interested in flexibility and a wide variety of options. So they're not just looking to come in and do the jobs that you've currently got available. They're going to want you to think beyond that, are there other options they could participate in, maybe related to their specific interests or talent. And also they want to have some flexibility in when those are available to them. Volunteers also want clear expectationsing of time, tasks, and training. And I know I've been around long enough, and some of you have too, I'm sure, to remember we used to have debates about whether we should even have training for volunteers, because gosh, how could we ask them to take their valuable time and do training when we have so many things we need them to do for us in the library? But what we know again is that today's volunteer has these expectations, they want to be successful, they want to understand how much time this is going to take, they want to be clear about what it is you need from them, and if training is required to be sure they can do the job successfully, they want that. That's something that's of interest. There are also -- they're also very interested in impact on mission. If they do come to volunteer for the library, how will their time that they give you make a difference? They're less interested in how many years or how many hours they've volunteered for you, and much more interested in what difference has their effort made. So really, the bottom line is, we need to go beyond what we have been traditionally doing in the field of volunteer management, and look at how we can engage volunteers in new and meaningful ways. So that brings me to strategy number one I wanted to talk about today. That is the idea that you should design roles for skilled volunteers. Here are just a smattering of the kinds of volunteers that libraries in our get involved initiative have successfully recruited and utilized in their libraries. From computer coach, graphic designer, people with high skills are interested in bringing those to help you as well as help other organizations. And as Jennifer mentioned, that link up there is not live to you, but what it is, is a great list of other ideas for skilled volunteers. If you haven't thought of any, this is a 50-project ideas just to name a few. You could have volunteers who have killed in designing and conducting surveys or focus groups come in to help you, you can have someone help you with a social media strategy. Or reach out to reporters in the media to generate coverage. Or maybe you need a strategic plan or event planner who could come in and help you make a difference. So these are just some ideas, and I hope as you're out there thinking about this you might type into chat if you are currently utilizing any skilled volunteers in the library, please tell us that and what roles you're engaging them in. I think that will help everybody get some ideas about what they could be doing. So to do -- engage volunteers successfully in new design skilled roles you're going to build for them, it's really important to have a very well-written volunteer job description. And this slide shows you the elements of a job description that we recommend. Things that volunteers are going to want to know before they even consider saying yes to getting on board with you. And I thought we would walk through them by actually looking at a job description, which I have put in the packet, or I know it's an electronic packet, so if you had the opportunity to pull out that public speaker job description, that's the one I'm going to be walking through, just to show you a little bit about what's included in making an effective job description. The first statement you're going to make about it is a brief overview of the position, but also you're going to give a clue to what impact is going to be made by the volunteer working in this job. In this case, this is a public speaker, this is something who is going to make presentations about the library to community groups to raise awareness about what the library has to offer, and to attract potential library users, volunteers, and supporters. So this gives you a sense of what the job is, it's a public speaking skill that's required, so somebody who is afraid of public speaking is not going to be interested in this. But it also gives you a sense of what difference you're going to make if you say yes to volunteer here. Then we just list three or four key responsibilities in an effort to show the person what they're going to be asked to do. To make it clear so that they can see what the person in this job responsibilities are. When I work with libraries I'll ask to see job description and this is often all they have, a list of tasks. I want you to include the list of tasks, three to five is usually enough to give someone a picture of what you need from them, but then you need to include some additional information on the job description, and first of all you'll see their qualifications. You want somebody who is willing to be committed to the library's vision and mission, and in this case you need successful public speaking experience. So by saying that, you're not looking for people you can train to be public speakers, you're looking for people who already have that skill, and who are willing to share it with you. Then you tell people what training and support is going to be provided. So that they understand that they are not alone in this, that once they take the job if they have questions, they want to understand more about the library, they know how that's going to happen. And in this case you're going to give them orientation to the library, you're not going to train them how to be a speaker, but you're going to show them what the public speaking objectives are, you have an outline and materials you're going to share with them to make their presentations with, and they will have access to a speaker's bureau coordinator when they have needs and questions. One of the biggest questions volunteers have before they say yes is how much time is this going to take? And we answer that in two ways in the job description. First you try to estimate the amount of time it's going to take for this person to do this job, and in this case an average of three to five hours per month based on the number of speaking engagements offered that you can fit into your schedule. So another clue we're sharing with the volunteer here is that this is something we're going to work around their schedule, it's not a Tuesday-Thursday 3:00 to 5:00 job, instead somebody is going to call you and say, are you available to go to Kiwanis at noon on Thursday, or are you available for the soroptimist for breakfast on Friday? Then you tell them how long you need this person, this is often a way to say, look, you don't have to do this for the rest of your life, but secondly it's a way for you to say to them, we need you to make a commitment because we're going to be implementing some -- investing some resources new. You're going to tell the benefits of volunteering, because every volunteer comes with a different reason for doing it. Some people want to get to know their communities, some want to give back to the community, some want to utilize their skills in public speaking, in this case some people might want to develop new community contacts, and that's okay with us. You tell them who they're going to be working with, in this case the speaker's bureau coordinator, you tell them location, because you may have somebody doing all their volunteer work in one of your library buildings. They may be going to one or more branches, or in this case, this person is going to be going most of the time out to community group locations where they're giving the presentations. So that gives you a basic understanding of what should be involved in the job description. But what I want to show you next is the second job description also in the electronic materials, to give you another idea how -- about how to make time for yourself to do this. We know how busy you are. We know you can't do everything and you can't supervise 100 people, but instead, you could get a volunteer to be the speaker's bureau coordinator. This is a skilled volunteer position, because you're looking for somebody who has successful public speaking experience and project management skills. But it can also be viewed as a promotion for one of your current speakers. Somebody who would like to take another step in helping the library. And how good would that make you feel to be approached by the library and say, gee, we love what you've been doing and we'd like to see you do more if you can fit this into your schedule, would you like to be the speaker's bureau coordinator? This is the person who is going to be calling the speakers, this is the person who is going to be calling the community groups to see when you can speak, and going to be making the -- making up the materials and answering your questions. Now, their time commitment then increases to about eight to 10 hours a month. They can do that from home, around their own schedule. In this case we ask for a minimum one-year commitment. And their benefits of volunteering are increased a little bit because it's the additional things that they're doing. Now, I might say here too, even though we don't have time to talk about volunteer recognition today, this is a great way to give volunteer recognition for somebody who is doing a great job, offer them a promotion. What could feel better than that? We're going to move on now to our second strategy that we've learned is really important, and we call that targeted recruitment. The idea here is that not that they're going to post a sign on the circulation desk that says volunteer here, but you're going to take this job description you've just craifl crafted and like a heat-seeking missile you're going to go and find exact perfect person for this job. It's important for us to remember that not everybody warm body fits every position. If you had before people come in and you asked them what they'd like to do and they say oh, whatever. And you give them whatever, and then they disappear in two weeks, it's usually because they don't like the job. And they didn't know how to tell you that's not what they wanted to do. So you really want to have a conversation with someone to find out what are their interests, what are their skills? How can you make the best fit for this person's interests, and your needs at the library? If you do that, when you make a good fit with somebody, you're going to -- all those problems that you've been having over the years with people dropping out, or never being seen again, or not doing a good job, a lot of those things are going to go away because you've taken the time up front to be sure you've made a good fit, both for them and for you. It's also really important to not be limited to who you know. You need to work together with others to think about who they know, including your other staff and volunteers, who they might know that has the interest and skills to do the kinds of jobs you've developed here, that's why it's important to share with others your library director and others what volunteer jobs you've created. But also to use multiple recruitment methods. And I'm going to share a couple of those with you today, but there's lots of ways to think about reaching out into the community to find people who can help you meet your goals often while you're helping them meet theirs as well. I always have to tell people this, because this is one of my max Imelda Staunton for volunteer engagement -- it's better to have a vacancy than have the wrong volunteer in the position. When you have the wrong volunteer, then have you a personnel problem. And we know that that is not fun for anybody, and it's not fun whether it's a paid staff person El problem or it's a volunteer personnel problem, because they're all kinds of issues and bad feelings that nobody wants to get into. So when you do targeted recruitment and find exactly the right person, that's how you're going to avoid a lot of the problems that you've had in the past. So I have provided a tool, again, in those electronic resources that will help you to do targeted recruitment. And what I suggest you do with this targeted recruitment plan is lay it down right next to your -- the job description that you created and you'll notice that the two boxes at the top come directly from the job description. What are the qualifications this person has to have? What skills or attitudes, experience, or time are you looking for? And what benefits will the volunteer receive? Is there something they're going to gain experience in? Will they be able to share skills or meet people, or whatever their particular interests in volunteering is, what are the things that will benefit a potential volunteer in this job? Then you take a moment to ask yourself, how could we find people like this? So you might say, who has these qualifications? Is there a particular profession or an age range, or a group? For example, if you're looking for a public relations specialist, you might look for a local round table or association of public relations people that you could approach. Or do people like these congregate anywhere? Do they congregate in a service club or a corporate volunteer program? Are there people that you might find in a faith community that could be useful to you in this? Another community group you could consider partnering with are like police or fire departments who need to get their safety message out to groups and could bring their cars and trucks and uniforms and working dogs to do a program at the library. This gives the library a win, and also gives that other organization a win. So think beyond just individuals and think about groups you might be able to access who could help you in your volunteer recruitment. And finally at the bottom, you're looking for how you will find these people. And first of all, you want to talk about personal connections. Who do we know who knows people like this? Is one of your volunteers married to somebody who works at a local bank that has an I.T. department and you're looking for somebody who can help with a technology project? Is your -- is somebody on your board in a position to know someone in the faith community that could reach out to people who are engaged there? What you don't want to do is shoot yourself in the foot by assuming that you as the volunteer coordinator have to be the only one who is out looking for people to fill these jobs. If you want to do targeted recruitment, you're going to have to reach out beyond who you know and therefore you're going to have to engage with others in the organization to be sure they're aware of the kinds of folks you're looking for to help expand and enhance services in the way that you're planning to. Then for many of you there are local recruitment options, some of you may have a local nonprofit volunteer center or a hands-on network, a united way, or a local newspaper. Are there ways you can reach out in those venues to help you find folks who could be of use to you? And finally, online recruitment resources. Some of your -- VolunteerMatch or serve.gov, or idealist. There's lots of ways you can search for people online who might be interested in what you have to offer at the library. So let's talk just for a minute about our strategy number three engaging volunteers online. And there are several pieces to that. One of them is to utilize online recruitment sites such as VolunteerMatch.org, dosomething.org or the points of light foundation hands-on network. The federal site is serve.gov. There are others. We partnered with volunteer match from the very beginning of this after doing some research. They're sort of the 900-pound gorilla in online recruitment. That's why we partnered with them. We've been very happy with that partnership but there are other resources that you can certainly take a look at. Linkedin has become a great way to locate volunteers and I'll share with you the partnership that VolunteerMatch has with LinkedIn as well in just a moment to help you reach out beyond even the folks that are on VolunteerMatch. I wanted to mention virtual volunteering for a moment. This is the idea where the volunteer completes the assignment all or part of it online. This might be research for our grant proposal you're writing or a newsletter support person. Or somebody to translate documents into another language. I've worked with an Idaho library who's working with a grant writer in North Carolina who is helping them to meet a program goal they have locally. Even though they've never met, the library is in Idaho, and the grant writer is in North Carolina, they found each other on VolunteerMatch and have built a partnership that works for both of them. And I'm going to share some more examples of virtual volunteering, but I wanted to raise one other point, and that is that in using virtual volunteering, also opens a volunteer recruitment and service opportunity to people with serious disabilities who may not be able to come to your library to do their volunteer engagement. So I want to raise that as a way, something for you to think about as another way you can be providing a service to others while getting service for your self and the library as well. Is I mentioned VolunteerMatch's reach to give you a sense. When we first started talking about this, the library said oh, Carla, nobody is going to go online looking for a volunteer opportunity. Well, let me just disabuse you of that notion. Many, many, many people do, and this is just a graphic that VolunteerMatch provides to show how many people just go to their site. First of all, they have 15 million unique visitors to VolunteerMatch.org every year. So just 15 million, think about that. And in addition, I mentioned they have formed a partnership with LinkedIn, and the way that works is that when somebody on LinkedIn identifies that they're interested in volunteering, and they put in what kind of skills they have, VolunteerMatch will automatically go out and reach out to people on LinkedIn who are -- who have those skills and might be interested in working with you. So don't miss that, and if that wasn't enough, there are many more, but I'm going to mention one more from this slide, and that is employee volunteers. VolunteerMatch works with well over 100 companies who are trying to engage their employees in community volunteerism. And there are numbers of reasons why companies want to do that. And it's growing actually, recently posted an article to some of our libraries that are working with us on the project about how millenials are basically demanding this of the organizations they work for, that they be good corporate citizen and that they provide opportunities for them to get involved in the community. And what VolunteerMatch does, they build sites for these companies they partner with that actually have places where those employees can search for volunteer opportunities in their communities, and if your volunteer opportunities are posted in VolunteerMatch, they also show up in those employee volunteer searches on their sites as well. So just if I haven't convinced you that there's a lot of benefit to using some kind of volunteer recruitment online, in addition to the other ways that you do recruitment, I don't know how I couldn't have convinced you, because it's a big deal these days. I mentioned I wanted to tell you two other little stories. I'm not going to show you these little videos, but the links would take you to them if you're interested. This one is about two minutes long. And this is a library director from a small town in Texas who posted her interest in a graphic design volunteer on VolunteerMatch. She had a number of potential volunteers respond, so she was able to select the one she wanted by asking those potential volunteers to send her examples of their work. So she selected the ones that she liked the best, that volunteer actually created this logo for her thousand books before kindergarten program, and -- which is what she had recruited the volunteer for. But the amazing thing too was that the volunteer and the library got so interested in working together, that they continued and this volunteer has created additional collateral materials for this program. And did I mention that the libraries in Texas and the volunteers in Pennsylvania. So this is another one of the examples of virtual volunteering, and this is not just for small libraries, though this adds tremendously to your capacity in terms of who, what volunteers are available to you, those of you in small and rural communities, but even if large communities, you can use skilled volunteers. When I was at the state library I had a very high-skilled social media volunteer who was across town. But our town was so terrible in terms of traffic and parking, that it didn't make sense for us to try to meet each other in person when we could work online together. So think about virtual volunteerism, not just in terms of somebody who is far away, but it may be somebody who is not too far, but there's another reason why they can't come to you. And this is a second example, this is a very small town in Texas, that's Maggie, the library director. It's about a five-minute video if you want to watch this. But the bottom line here I wanted to share with you is, she posted a need for help with her I.T. department, she's not real proficient in technology issues. She needed some help, somebody to come in and help patrons and also to help her with the equipment periodically. She posted this need on VolunteerMatch, and it was shared with some guys on LinkedIn who had those skills. And it just happened that these were two local guys who had just set up a business that Maggie didn't even know about, and they came to the library and offered their services, and they now come twice a week to help, and they've made a huge difference already, and she's recently been offered a maker space option by her state library, and those volunteers can't wait to help her with that as well. So my message to you all in terms of skilled volunteers is, dream big. What do you need in order to serve your community even better? What would help you if you could have any skill, walk in and help you in the library, what would that be? And then do targeted recruitment, and you can have it. So I would be interested as you're thinking about that if any of you have great ideas, something has popped into your mind about a skill you wish you had a volunteer for, please type that into chat, because you'll stimulate other people's thinking as well. A now, a fourth strategy that we know is very important is the importance of gaining staff buy-in. And this starts at the top. It's really important for you to have the support of your library director in making this work. Because if you've got staff who are not so excited about volunteer engagement, it's really important to have the library director who can say why we're doing this, why are we expanding volunteer engagement, because we want to reach out to people beyond our usual suspects, we want to bring the community in, we want to be able to engage skills that we don't currently have here on staff, we want to be able to offer and expand or enhanced services we're already providing or increase the ability of our own staff to do the jobs that they're trying to do. So starting with the library director, it's important to have that person on board. And after that, we know that it's true, not just in libraries, but in other organizations that work with volunteers, that sometimes your staff is not as welcoming or as excited about having volunteers come on board as you think they ought to be. And here's my message to you about this. The bottom line is that some staff do have legitimate concerns that can and must be addressed. I've included a handout in the electronic materials you're seeing just a portion of it here. Sometimes they have a fear of losing their jobs. It can feel bad if somebody thinks oh, we're going to increase volunteer engagement so we can reduce staff engagement. So it's important for that to be stated up front that that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about enhancing what paid staff are willing and able to do. And one way to help, the way this handout is laid out is on the left is a reason, a legitimate reason why a staff person might be concerned about this. And on the right, steps you can take to avoid feeling uncomfortable about it. And you can actually establish an official policy on supplementing not supplanting staff positions. Many, many libraries have a done this, it's a really important aspect of this, it also helps the community to understand the importance of having paid staff and library staff, people with library degrees on board. You want to also clearly define roles, and involve staff in that process. One of the things I often recommend is as you're designing a volunteer job description, get the staff who are going to be working with that volunteer on board with helping you design the job description. They're going to be in a much better position to know what makes sense, what doesn't make sense, and the advantage is, if you design a job that makes sense to them, they're more likely going to be willing to engage with that volunteer and welcome the volunteer on board to help them do that job. I also encourage you to include them in the interview process. So they can have a say in who we're bringing on board. For those of you who have labor unions involved in your library work force, many of us do here in California, and I'm sure that's true around the country. You want to engage the union from the very beginning in volunteer engagement planning. At the state library when I was planning our own volunteer engagement, our HR department reached out and we made a rule we could not post any volunteer job that had not been cleared through HR and in their consultation with the union if that need ed to happen. So know that having a union is not an insurmountable problem in having a skilled volunteer engagement program. Some staff may feel -- fear a decrease in quality or loss of control in their job. One way to help allay those fear assist to start small. Pilot program. Start with one staff champion who really wants to try this. I really don't recommend that you start this and try to do it throughout the library all at once. Instead you want to start with inthb who is going to have some success, who can then start talking about the success so it's not just you in the library -- and the library director talking about how great this whole skilled volunteers thing is, but you've got other staff on board who can share their success stories and make people want to have some of that. Some people have had previous bad experiences with volunteers. If you can show them that you've designed job descriptions, that you're going to be carefully targeting your recruitment, finding exactly the right person, making the right fit, including staff in the job design and the interviews, and you're going to be available to support them, it's going to go a long way to help them understand that maybe the bad experiences they had before won't happen again because somebody is paying more attention to the purpose of volunteer engagement and making sure that it works well. I call staff resistance one of the big four potential barriers in volunteer engagement. The other three are union won't allow this, I don't time for this, and can I fire a volunteer. And all of those things are addressed in the book, though I'm also willing to twaik questions on those. And I think you'll find that none of those big four are insurmountable reasons why you can't consider doing this. So I'm hoping if any of you are having issues, staff buy-in issues, if you want to enter some issues in there, we can address, I'm happy to do that. >> Thank you so much, Carla. There have been some questions for sure, and please, folks, continue to share those questions. They also responded to your call for examples of gaps that they'd like to fill with skilled volunteers, marketing and publicity, someone suggested getting help with making tutorial videos about some of the services that the library has. Website design, certainly is an excellent example. And someone said that they've worked with virtual volunteers to post library events or community events to -- events to community websites, communicate it with local newspapers, T.V., radio stations, community calendars, and visitor bureau sites. It's sort of another aspect of your public speaker kind of p community marketing role. So that's all very good. >> Yeah, that's great. Actually that makes me think, I think it's the Austin, Texas, Public Library that has something called social media ambassadors. Which is very similar to that, it's just a great idea, so I love all those ideas. It's awesome. Thank you, guys, for -- >> yes, we have someone from that -- from the Austin library present in one of our social media webinars. So, yes, that's an excellent example. >> Yeah, I'm really impressed by that. Any of you who are not aware of that, go to their website and find out about it. It's really a great idea. >> There were definitely -- there was a question early on in terms of the union environment and there's been a few more folks chiming in on that. I did take a look at your clearinghouse, which I know you were going to mention on the next slide, and just thought I'd see what comes up if I search for union, and you all have a lot of really good examples of how that looks. So I think you're your -- the idea of being able to show people what skilled volunteer engagement looks like, there are plenty of resources and examples to share with folks. So -- >> good. And one thing I would say on the union issue, that was an issue for us in California when we got started, we formed an advisory committee to talk about what would be the potential barriers, what should we address before we get started. And the union issue came up. We did an informal survey, we interviewed library directors in -- all around the state, all sizes of libraries, rural, urban, suburban, big, small, and asked them to take a look at their union contracts and see what was in there about volunteers. And none of them -- we didn't look at every single contract in the state, but none of the ones we interviewed found anything in the union contract that prohibited volunteer engagement. Often times this is a perception we have, so what we've found to be one of the biggest success strategies for libraries who want to engage more volunteers using the skills and the strategies we developed here, is to reach out to the union, begin with that, and even form what we call a volunteer engagement team, where you might have -- if you're a library with a number of different departments, you might have a representative from each department that's how we did it at our state library. We also then had somebody from human resources. You might have somebody from the union, or if you're a library with a number of branches, you might want to engage people from the different branches. So you've got a central group that's thinking through these issues and problems and resolving them as well as coming up with great ideas in terms of sharing the message with everybody within the library community. So for those of you with union issues, I highly recommend you take a look at some of the stuff we have in the clearinghouse, or reach out to me, I'm happy to take your email questions as well if we can't get to them today during the session. But know that it's not an insurmountable problem. It can actually be a real boon to your program to engage the union in all of this. >> That brings up -- let me follow up with one more focus on the union. So there's an example from apparently the New York civil service has an issue -- rules around union hiring and if you have a role that you want to be filled, they would rather you create it within their classifications for it, and somebody else mentioned that they have trouble finding skilled volunteers and that they've actually hired a few volunteers that they've hired as staff. So is the opportunity of identifying the gaps and that perhaps skilled volunteers could fill, does that perhaps lead to opportunities to put people in positions with the library? >> I think that happens sometimes, and what you need to be careful of is not making it an expectation, that if people come to volunteer that it might turn into a job. However, what could be better than hiring somebody who you already know their work ethic and their capacity? I was in Arizona training libraries just a couple weeks ago, and one of the library folks had done something I had suggested in another training, which is to think -- we know you don't have time. And so what I suggest you do is if you're the volunteer coordinator, get some volunteers to help you. Because it will do two things. It will give you more time to do things you need to be able to do, but secondly, it will demonstrate that you're not asking the rest of the staff to do something you're not willing to do yourself. So I had suggested that in a training, and somebody stood up in a training in Arizona recently and said, she had recruited somebody to be her volunteer coordinator assistant. And that's a position I filled for myself at the state library as well. I had somebody, I designed a job to help me follow up with VolunteerMatch and help schedule interviews. It can be whatever you want it to be, you decide which pieces of your job you need help with. And this person had done that, the volunteer she got was outstanding, she did a wonderful job. And the library hired her for another position. So again, because the woman was so great at her job, and they could see that, and she applied for a job and was hired, so now the good news and the bad news is, that woman got hired on and that volunteer coordinator now has to fill that position again. But, you know, what's wrong with having as many great people on board as you can have whether they're paid or volunteer, and finding good paid staff through a volunteer program is not an unusual thing to have happen. >> Indeed. And it sounds like there's some folks here that even started off as volunteers. So perfect example. >> That's great. Very good. >> Another question actually back earlier on when you were talking about VolunteerMatch and you had that from that blog post, is there a way to find out how many of the visitors to the site are from specific geographic areas? Or is there a way to understand where VolunteerMatch is in different states? >> I'll just tell you that my experience, and now working beyond California with the three other states I'm working with, is that they're everywhere. Don't assume that they're not there. And what I encourage you to do is post a volunteer opportunity and see what you get. See what happens. Because remember, you're not just talking about people in your local community, you're -- if you've got a virtual type job, you're talking about the universe much volunteers around the world. Not just around the country. So don't assume that you are not going to get what you're looking for. My guess is you're not getting everything you're looking for now, if you're just doing traditional kinds of recruitment, if you're just posting a sign on the circulation desk or putting it in your newsletter or social media, or whatever, you want to reach beyond the people you currently know and have relationships. To me that's one of the most beneficial things we've done with this effort, is that as I said, 80% of the people who came to us through VolunteerMatch were not library volunteers before this. And many of them had not used libraries in a really long time and were turned on to libraries as a result of their volunteer engagement. I'm able to do a survey of the volunteers who sign up for California libraries because I can have access to the email addresses through -- from VolunteerMatch. And we've been surveying them to ask them things like, did you find somebody, how is it going, what job did you take? But then I also ask them, because one of our goals in doing this project is not just to get more work done, but also to expand the reach of the library and bring in people who might be willing to be our community ambassadors, our supporters, etc. So I'm able to do research and over the years the research has shown that about 70 to 80% of the people we recruit go out and tell people in the community what they learned about the library. And about 30 to 40% of them go out and recruit volunteers for the library. Because they're having a great experience. And the things they learn, because I asked them to tell me what have you learned about the library, are things like, gee, this isn't the library I remember when I was a child. Or, gee, did you know the library has all these great technology opportunities? Or they have all these free programs? They have computers available, they have literacy programs. And those are the kinds of things, then, that these, our new ambassadors, who started as volunteers, are taking out and the sharing with their friends, their coworkers, and others in the community. So I think that thinking of this in materials of a large picture of what we're trying to get done here, we're not just trying to get more work done, we're not just trying to make busy work for people who want to volunteer at the library. Instead, we're reaching out to a community of people who may be new to the library, who start understanding what the library is all about. And are not excited about it, but -- not only excited about it, but are willing to start talking about it with others. And what could be better than that, to have our public relations message being carried by people who think we're great as a result of their relationship with us. >> I just started reading a book by Eric coastlinenberg who's been in the news lately, talking about libraries as a part of the social infrastructure of our communities, and he actually mentions volunteerism as a part of creating that infrastructure. So I think you're definitely highlighting -- >> put that link up so I can read that book. >> Here's -- he did an opinion piece in the "New York Times" a while ago. So that's a good place to start. >> Very good. >> So there are questions about younger volunteers. Under 18 and how folks engage with college volunteers, knowing that obviously they may not be long-term volunteers, to, can you talk about how people are structuring that volunteer opportunity? >> Sure. I think that -- I think they're using similar strategies that we're talking about here, they're reaching out in different ways, however, probably to schools and Universities, although there is a way to reach out to youth on volunteer match, I'm sure that's true on the other online networks where you can identify positions that you're scheduling, that you've got that are suitable for teens or children. So feel free to use those online recruitment sources to find kids too. But I might add, and I'm an old girl scout leader, so I'll tell you that I'm someone who really believes that we can provide a service to those kids that we're engaging in volunteer activities by helping them understand how to do good work by making sure they have a job description, by putting them through a little interview process, by helping them through training programs. That's the way we engage their understanding of what the future world of work is going to look like in addition to helping them understand about volunteer engagement and how they can help their communities. So, yeah, I'm a big proponent of youth and teen volunteers, so, yeah, more power to you. And I saw somebody talking about the VOLUN -- Volunteen program, and I highly recommend you consider looking more. And there's all kinds of teen stuff in the clearinghouse as well. So maybe I'll just take a moment to tell you what's on the screen here, and then we'll have time for more questions. The get involved clearinghouse is a searchable database that we've created as a result of this project where we're loading in all kinds of documents such as sample job descriptions that other libraries have created. Part of this you can sort of just cruise through them to see what kinds of ideas you might find, and then download them and use pieces of them to shape something you're trying to build. There's also materials like sample applications for adults, applications for teens, confidentiality policies, volunteer handbooks, as well as training materials, photographs, and lots of other materials that you can search. And in a moment I've got a picture of it, I'll just put it up so you can see. Also for those of you interested in how to make VolunteerMatch work for you, I did a little tour, it's just a 40-minute little video piece where I show you through a webinar how to make VolunteerMatch work for you. We in our four-state collaborative for the get involved initiative are offering webinars on a regular basis, the next one is October 24th, where do I go from here, engage volunteers in new ways. And we always post those on the get involved clearinghouse, so feel free to use that. I also provided Jennifer with my bibliography on volunteerism, so please take advantage of that. And for those of you who are in one of the four states, Texas, Arizona, Idaho, and California, but you are not participating in the get involved initiative, please, please contact the contact person there you see, they want to engage you in this. It comes with not only training and support, but also a free upgraded volunteermatch subscription. Anybody can use VolunteerMatch for free, but if you pay, I think it's $9 a month, something like that, you get the additional features that allow you to be more visible to be more responsive to people interested in it, etc. Or for any of you who are out there whose states are not participating, one of the things we're trying to do with this three-year grant from IMLS is to demonstrate how states get involved and at what level, and how much impact they can make with this get involved initiative, the training and the resources. So if you have someone at the state library who wants to reach out to one of us that they know or just reach out to one of us period, we are happy to talk with other states about how they might be able to get on board with the get involved initiative and make more materials available to their libraries. I'm just going to show you, this is what the clearinghouse looks like. I mentioned it's a searchable database of management tools, job descriptions, training materials, and photos. There's also just a regular search feature you can use. We add new materials every month. Either just in new materials or in what we call a play list. So, for example, a play list might be about millennial volunteers, and you can find those there, and we also always post the free upcoming webinars and events that are taking place in those states. So I wanted to make sure everybody is aware of that. And I'm happy to answer any other questions you've got there, Jennifer. >> So someone said what reminds us what the get involved initiative is, if you want to just reiterate what you said at the beginning about that. >> This was -- in California we started a program to see if we could not only increase the number of volunteers in public libraries, but increase their engagement with the library in terms of finding out if they naturally turn into library supporters and advocates. This was an outgrowth of project we were doing in California at the time called transforming life after 50, some of you might remember that. So it started as a baby boomer initiative because all the research showed that baby boomers were volunteering at higher rates than the generations before us, even while they were still working. And over time we found that the strategies and techniques that we've implemented in the program are not just suitable for attracting baby boomers, but also attracting gex and millennial volunteers as well. So it's a combination of training and resources and support, that is provided for libraries, and we're now doing 90 four states as a result of a four-state grant from the institute for museum and library services, which is about halfway through its course. So I'm happy -- >> and also, well, this clearinghouse that you see here is -- everything is open and available to everyone, so all of the great work coming out of those more focused initiatives are being shared widely and available to anyone regardless of where you're from. But as Carla said, it's something that they hope to bring to other statewide initiatives. So stay tuned, hopefully. There was an excellent question, this one, community -- they have a greater demand from citizens looking to volunteer than they have current openings. So they are a staff of 80 with over 250 volunteers annually. So how do you sort of weigh that balance that when you have more folks than you have work to do? >> Well, I would look at it two ways. I mean, one is, you can be pickier if you have that, if you have that many more people than you have jobs to fill, you can pick the cream of the crop, and it becomes something that everybody wants to do, but not everybody can do it. So there's some cache to that. But I prefer instead to think about how we could engage more people and what I would do is sit down and talk with a few of them about what skills they have, talk with the staff internally and with the board about what programs they've wanted to start or expand and haven't been able to. And see if you can create a piece where a volunteer could help carry something out a little farther than you're able to do with the current staff that you have on board. One example of a California library a few years ago, they wanted to expand their story time out to locations in the community. So they had their children's librarians create a training program and a contract for volunteers, they identified a job description with specific qualifications, brought those people in and interviewed them, and shadowed them while they learned, and now they're offering story time on Sunday morning at the local mall and at whole foods. So I think we're only limited by that which we don't think beyond. And so what I try to say to people is, let's think about how we can take all this energy, all these resources in the community that are out there the whether they're individuals or community groups, or other city or county departments we could work with and expand on what we're able to create for our community based on these rich resources and the strategies and techniques that we've developed to make volunteer engagement work really well. >> I wonder too if in any of your work you've seen libraries sort of flip it and maybe not talk about it as a volunteer piece, but rather as a community engagement piece. Are there ways to kind of create community conversation around either the message of the library more advocacy focus, have you seen that happen? >> Yes. As a matter of fact, one of the hats I wore at the state library was with rural libraries, and we did a big rural initiative where I went out to some very isolated communities around our great big state, and we had the local library pull in people from the community, not just people they work with all the time, but they -- we asked them to reach out beyond the usual suspecting, bring in groups of people, and we had focus group conversations about what the needs of the community are, and how could the library address them? And one that comes to mind that I just love is in a very isolated community in the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada range in California, very rural community, very tiny town, and what they discovered was that not everybody could get the newspaper delivered, the closest newspaper was from Reno, and a lot of people drove on Saturdays for a couple of hours to Reno in order to do their shopping, but they couldn't get the local newspaper so they could see the sale papers, etc. And in one of these focus groups that I did, somebody said, well, I could -- I live in so-and-so, I could pick up the local newspaper and bring it to the library on Friday night, and the library said, that's great, we could expand our hours on Friday night, and make a pot of coffee so people can come in and take a look at this. And it was just -- it was a wonderful sort of community building opportunity for those of you who are not familiar with the book "building community from the inside out," it's a story of asset-based community development, I use those techniques in my work every day, all the time, helping particularly underresourced communities or rural communities think about how they can utilize the wonderful assets they currently have and leverage those to get things that they need that are beyond there. So that's what I would recommend, is reaching out beyond what we usually do. >> Excellent. And I'm just finding the link to that book. >> Good. It's a great book, and there's a whole chapter on libraries in it. When library people ask me what's the book that changed my life, that's the one I say. Building communities from the inside out. >> And does 1993 sound about right? >> Yes. It's not a new book, but there's a lot of still some really good work going on with that, the folks who are -- who wrote that book. >> Excellent. Well, as we wrap up here, a reminder that Carla has just published this new book with all of her great wisdom, plus more that you heard today, and again, the libraries unlimited folks have provided a 20% off coupon code for you all, so be sure to check the event page for that. And I will send you all an email once the recording is up today, and I will send acertificate for attending within the week and I'll also as you immediately leave here, send you to a short survey and we collect that feedback to share with our presenters as well as help us guide our ongoing programming. So thank you for taking that time. And thank you all of you for being here today. And for thinking about ways that you can empower and engage with your volunteer community. Thank you so much, Carla. And we look forward to staying in touch, and seeing what amazing work you do here in your retirement. >> Thanks. Thanks, everybody. Great to talk to you today. >> Okay. Bye bye, everyone.