hi Krishna everyone welcome to principles of Temple Administration so this is volunteer management and this is uh best practices part one so we're going to look at a few points as you know and we discussed previously that iscon is principally a volunteer-based organization and we really depend on uh volunteers or communities of devotees who dedicate their time and really don't expect any remuneration this is a huge offering Krishna explains in the babag that more more important to him uh than an offering of of money uh is actually that one gives one's time so volunteers are
exceptionally important to us so it it it's it's valuable for us as a human resource to look after them in the proper way create the proper infrastructure and to appreciate and and assist them in any way that we can shil propa was so grateful and careful to encourage everyone to do a little bit of service or as much Service as they possibly can knowing that this will be for their ultimate benefit actually there's one Pastime from the early days of 262nd Avenue when in the middle of a class one local bum uh brought in some
toilet paper because they had run out Shila propa was so pleased that he commented in the middle of the class that just see the natural propensity to serve is there in everyone so like this shil pra was always very encouraging of any service that anyone did and as Leaders we should be careful not to destroy the spirit of voluntary service volunteer management is about ensuring the organization benefits as much as possible from volunteer involvement and that the volunteer benefits by being part of it today we'll be looking at a few different topics so the short
overview is we're going to be looking at volunteer management planning volunteer management role or sorry volunteer manager role volunteer policies and procedures and volunteer recruitment here you can see the volunteer management cycle which starts with planning so whether you have already started or are planning to start engaging volunteers you will need to do some planning basically you need a mission statement you need shared Vision you need to set some goals and objectives you need scope for involvement from the volunteers and also the staff and different persons involved you need to set aside some Financial Resources
monitoring and evaluation are a must and some of the core values that have to be in place in order for there to really be true success with your volunteers is there has to be an understanding of and a commitment to the ethos of volunteering and an understanding of what actually motivates each volunteer this is crucial some some key questions to answer are why do you have volunteers what is their role what limits if any are there to the range of activities that you feel volunteers can get involved in and what can you in turn offer
Volunteers in order to really be prepared for engaging volunteers it is best that you appoint someone as the volunteers manager or coordinator best is that it's not someone who's already engaged in so many activities that they're stretched to the limits otherwise the volunteer manager will not be able to ensure that volunteers contribute to the overall effectiveness of the organization because he'll be so busy thinking of so many other things and this will help him to help the volunteers sorry to help him or her to help the volunteers to meet the Strategic strategic goals of the
organization while at the same time the volunteers will find it a very rewarding experience basically the mission benefits and so do they successful involvement of volunteers is means that volunteers become involved at all levels and play many different roles from support to management to leadership especially in London we found that volunteers they permeate our entire Community from trustees to department heads to ashram Residents to drivers and basic General Services all over the temple and if you're going to have volunteers though it's a good idea to have some policies and procedures in place in order to
deal with them policies help us to be clear at times of doubt and basically they tell us what to do procedures tell us how to do it an example is volunteers expenses there may be a policy that dictates that volunteers can claim travel expenses but not over a certain amount or over a certain number of times per week the procedure will then explain how to make that claim where and whenn on this point of expenses it's an important topic actually as Finance always is and it needs to be clarified for the volunteers and they need
to know what if anything you're planning to reimburse them for okay so now we've done some planning I think it's time we do some recruiting so there are three important things that should be in place before we start to recruit there should be a role description describing the level of commitment the tasks expected and the training required for this role then we need to match that with personal skills and attributes that will be required in order to perform this role and finally you have to know who is going to supervise this person this volunteer you
will see that we have given a sample application form for volunteers to use you can adapt this uh in your own Center if you feel that is very useful so once this is done you should only interview those people who actually fit the role this will reduce wasting a lot of time and energy and also the number of persons that you may have to say no to it's not easy to do but if the person doesn't suit the service you owe it to that department and to your Center to make sure that you just say
no but we've included some nice tips on how to do this because it's such a difficult thing so if they are a yes then great you got the person you need but that is really just the beginning so we will continue the volunteer management cycle in the next module called volunteer management best practices part two we hope you're enjoying the course we thank you very much for uh watching and viewing it'd be a great asset to you and your your Center your temple if you can put some of these uh tips and some of these
aspects into practice in your Center har Krishna
