|
This site initially took online registration and site preferences for VITA volunteers in Santa Clara
County in California, part of San Jose Territory. The information was
forwarded to the IRS Relationship Manager by email, and and also collected in a
table. The service was developed over several years in cooperation with the Relationship Manager who directly managed the efforts of 20-30 site coordinators in
the county and was also responsible for several other counties.
Unexpectedly, prospective volunteers from other counties signed up requesting
help in locating nearby sites. Since neither the webmaster
nor the IRS VITA Coordinator in Santa Clara County could help these volunteers,
a separate page was set up for
such volunteers whose registration information was emailed to the national
VITA office.
This site proposes to expand this service of online registration to
others interested in using such a service. It will provide a limited number of SPEC IRS Relationship Managers
with this service next year. The redesigned website for the next season is expected to debut
later on in 2009.
What to expect from this service:
- Immediate email notification of
prospective volunteers signing up to provide contact and personal
information you need, including special skills and site preferences.
This is information you would otherwise receive from this website
via the National VITA office and routed to your Territory Manager and
on to
you, and is currently being done for volunteers in Santa Clara County. If there is other information that you need, that can also be
collected and provided if that field is entered in the spreadsheet.
- Periodic updates of the information in a spreadsheet that
is imported directly into Microsoft EXCEL (this avoids entering
volunteer information into spreadsheets from paper
registration forms, email messages, and hastily scribbled personal
particulars from garbled voicemail messages)
- An opt-in email address list of
interested volunteers throughout the year, so you may contact them
by email
- A forwarding email address for
potential volunteers to ask for further information, so that
your real email address is not on the web to avoid getting on unwanted email lists. At your option, the forwarding email address can be
changed when you start getting too many spam emails, or be shut off
completely without exposing your real email address or telephone number on
the web.
- Volunteer contact information and site preferences in a database
on a password protected SharePoint web site that is accessible only
to Relationship Managers and site coordinators to collaboratively
assign and allocate potential volunteers to the various sites.
What is needed on your part:
- an indication of interest as soon as possible so that the next version
of the software system to support multiple counties can be designed
and tested before deployment for the next season
- putting the URL of this site on flyers and
other communications as a
place to obtain more information about VITA in your specific area of
influence or interest
- putting the URL of this site on your voicemail and other email
communications as the place to get detailed information on volunteering
(this will reduce the number of
voicemail messages have to return, and after getting the same question
repeatedly, you can provide the answer to be put on the web)
- VITA site details including names, addresses, days and hours of
operations
Who can benefit from this service:
- Relationship managers and those personally
responsible for recruiting and staffing a large number of local partners and site coordinators,
and who do not have the support of a large national or regional non-profit
to
handle recruitment and training through its own outreach activities.
- Relationship managers who wish to increase productivity by
reducing repetitive data entry tasks
- Relationship managers proficient with computers and have working
knowledge of spreadsheets.
- Relationship managers willing to try out prototype software that
helps their productivity and do not expect product quality customer support
- Relationship managers whose names, addresses and email addresses can be
validated through IRS offices or the VITA national offices
- Relationship managers who need to deal with 50-400 volunteers and 10-35
sites. Below these numbers, paper and pencil is adequate, and the
service has not been tested above these numbers
- Relationship managers who recognize that it
is their responsibility to managing volunteers, and that using automation reduces tedious time-consuming data entry tasks, thereby
giving them more time to improve the quality of interaction with
volunteers, but would not count on a fully automated system
For further information, send an email to webmaster
(at) vita-volunteers.org
|
