Charities Newsletter
Issue 6

We’ve heard lately from a couple of charities where they’ve heard from a volunteer who seemed interested in working with them. After a brief exchange of information the charity never heard from the potential volunteer again.

If this has happened to you, I imagine you felt rather disappointed – especially if you haven’t heard from any other volunteers. But don’t panic yet!

Remember that our volunteers are busy people. Perhaps they’ve suddenly got more responsibility at work or some problems at home. Could they have been trying to contact you and you haven’t been around? If your office isn’t staffed full-time or you don’t check e-mail regularly you may simply have missed their messages. Maybe they’ve even lost your phone number!

If a volunteer has gone quiet the first thing to do is wait. But not for long. A couple of weeks is probably about right. Then try to get in touch with them. Give them a call or send an e-mail. Let them know the project is still available if they’re interested but that you’ll understand if they’re not able to help this time.

If you still don’t hear from them please let us know. We can’t force a volunteer to work with you but perhaps we can feature your project in a newsletter or advertise it in a different way to attract some other potential volunteers.

A similar situation can arise with a volunteer you’ve actually been working with. For perfectly valid reasons they may go quiet for a while. The same rules of thumb apply – try to contact them a couple of times, even if just to confirm that they won’t be able to complete the project. If they can’t complete please let us know and we’ll try to help.

If you simply can’t contact them let us know that too and we can discuss re-advertising the remainder of the project.

Anne Donnelly
Project Definer