Volunteer Point of View

There are times when I just want to give up! I know that the voluntary sector do not have enough resources in terms of manpower to carry out some of their activities, but the least an organisation can do surely is to have the courtesy to keep the communication channel open regarding their requested projects and keep their end of the bargain.

OK – fellow volunteers you may think that I do not have the patience nor any understanding of the sector, but here is the situation:
An organisation registered with iT4C for a volunteer to assist with a database. I started working with the charity on the project in December last year (2005) with the hope of finishing it during the quiet period around Christmas.  Things appeared to have been going OK. I gave the charity a new version of their database to test at the end of March 2006.

Guess what! I haven’t heard from them since. I have sent them a reminders and my last email reminder was in June. I finally got a response from them saying that they are busy (I said I understood) and suggested that we try to do some work with it before September.

September has been and gone and I am still nowhere. It’s now October and I've not heard anything.

I am vexed! How long do I wait? How do I bow out gracefully? While I'm waiting I don't want to commit to a project with another charity so possibly another charity is missing out. iT4C has an "in progress" project that isn't really in progress.

And I'm feeling unappreciated ;-)

Editor: Tell us you tales of woe, or joy, we are happy to publish them without your name attached if we are confident they are genuine but we can also give you name and even your contact details if that suits you best.

.....their end of the bargain

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