Why some opportunities aren't attractive

 

In last month's newsletter we asked why some opportunities don't get chosen by volunteers. It was great to get so much feedback on this issue. Here I'll summarise the comments and explain how we hope to improve things if we can:

Opportunity description isn't specific enough

You commented that if, for example, the charity has a CMS-based website, you need to know what CMS is used to know whether you can help. Often the charity contact doesn't have this information but in future our Project Definers will try to get more detail even if it means speaking to more than one person at the charity.

The charity has already decided on the solution

You're concerned that the charity haven't thought it through properly. Our Project Definers will find out whether there's been a proper investigation of the solutions available and, if not, suggest that a volunteer help with that rather than dive-in to implement the wrong solution.

Too simple/too difficult/wrong skills

The accountancy-based opportunity provoked lots of contrary views. Some thought it a simple task, others that it was far too difficult or that IT volunteers wouldn't have those skills anyway. I'm not sure that there's much we can do in this instance, but we do stress to charities that we may not be able to find a volunteer with the skills they need. If based on your experience you think that the task is too complicated why not drop us a line to discuss it? Perhaps you'll be able to help the charity find a better solution.

How old is an opportunity?

While we understand that it would be useful to show how long an opportunity has been advertised on the website we don't currently have budget for changes to the functionality of the site so we won't be doing that in the near future. However, over the last few months we have started removing opportunities as soon as they are a year old. That means with a few exceptions - where the charity has told us they still need help - all opportunities listed should be less than twelve months old.

Travelling is too expensive

We appreciate that it can get expensive if you need to visit a charity a few times. Many charities will pay reasonable expenses although some simply can't afford it. The only way to find out is to ask. We always recommend, to both charity and volunteer, that they sort out details like this right at the start so that no-one gets a shock.

Thanks again for all your comments. We will try to improve the opportunity descriptions where we can and if you have any other ideas for improvement please let us know.