Intro

A well-trained volunteer can make all the difference to your organisation, and a comprehensive volunteer training program is the key to ensuring that all volunteers have a running start. As the core of your organisation, volunteers are an invaluable resource providing time and skills to drive your cause. In order to get the most out of these volunteers, it is essential to have a well-developed and effective training program in place. A good volunteer training program should be tailored to the specific needs of not only your organisation but also your volunteers and should be designed to help volunteers feel confident and competent in their roles. There is not one way to design a volunteer training program, but any good training program will follow a few tried and tested rules:

⚖️ Rule 1: Follow a set of clear learning objectives 

⚖️ Rule 2: Use a combination of multiple training methods 

⚖️ Rule 3: Ensure a portion of training is interactive 

⚖️ Rule 4: Learning should not be reserved for new volunteers

⚖️ Rule 5: Great training is regularly assessed and updated

Follow a set of clear learning objectives

First and foremost, it is important to define what you want volunteers to learn. This will help you focus your training efforts and ensure that your volunteers are getting the most out of the experience. This involves identifying the specific skills, knowledge, and attitudes that volunteers need in order to be successful in their roles. This may include technical skills related to your mission, as well as softer skills such as communication, teamwork, and problem-solving.
Before you start developing your training program, consider the soft and hard skills required by all volunteers as well as any skills required to perform specific roles within your organisation. To assist in understanding what these objectives could look like for your organisation, we have provided a set of objectives that would be useful for a community food bank

1. Understand the mission and values of the food bank, and how the role of volunteers fits into that mission.
2. Know the basic procedures for sorting, organizing, and distributing food donations.
3. Understand food safety guidelines and how to handle and store food donations properly.
4. Know how to interact respectfully and compassionately with individuals.
5. Understand the various community resources available to individuals and how to refer clients to these resources as needed.
6. Know how to use the food bank’s database or other record-keeping systems to track donations and client visits.
7. Understand the importance of confidentiality and maintaining client privacy.
8. Be able to work effectively as part of a team and follow instructions from supervisors.
9. Understand the importance of ongoing learning and professional development, and be willing to seek out opportunities to learn and grow as a volunteer.

Having clear learning objectives helps to focus the training program and ensures that volunteers are getting the most out of the experience. In providing volunteers with training, it may also be beneficial to make the training objectives clear to the volunteer. This will assist volunteers in understanding what is expected of them and what they can get out of the training program. 

⭐Volaby Tip: Make each of your training objectives a separate Volaby task for your volunteers to complete. This will provide volunteers with a clear understanding of the key concepts they will be learning and allow them to take their time completing each task and returning to the next one when desired. Furthermore, this will make your training program flexible and malleable to change where necessary. For example, if your code of conduct needs to be updated, you can assign all volunteers the new task without affecting any other training area. 

Use a variety of training methods

 It is no secret that different people learn in different ways, so it’s important to use a variety of training methods to reach as many volunteers as possible. While the easiest way to provide information may be through PDF documents with large amounts of text, most people struggle to take in information through this method. Consider breaking up blocks of typed information with instructional videos and pictures as most people find that visual prompts are an effective way to reinforce information. As they say, a picture says 1000 words. 

In addition to text and videos, a great way to reinforce learning is to include review questions. Asking questions throughout the learning process is a great way to encourage volunteers to reflect and summarise what is important and will increase the likelihood of the information being retained in the long term. 

Effective volunteer training will include a variety of different training methods and will break up large amounts of information using visual prompts to assist in engaging a diverse group of volunteers. 

⭐Volaby Tip: Volaby allows you to create a fully customisable volunteer training course using the task feature. Create an effective volunteer training program and include a variety of different training methods by using a combination of the provided task fields. These include 

• Short and long text
• Multiple choice
• Quizzes
• Attachments such as Documents, Videos and pictures
• And many more

You can even use dynamic fields to create multi-layer questions!

Ensure a portion of training is interactive 

Great volunteer training will involve a balance of passive and interactive training methods that will allow volunteers to have key initial knowledge before jumping in and giving it a go. We understand you may want all volunteers to be trained and ready on their first day, however, most of the learning a volunteer will do will come from being in on the action.

To ensure volunteer training is engaging try to limit online learning to the necessities including information on safety, guidelines, confidentiality and privacy as well as an overview of key procedures and technical knowledge. To help volunteers connect with your organisation and mission, it can be beneficial to introduce information on how your organisation was founded and the values your organisation holds. 

Once volunteers have been briefed on the basics, try and get them interacting with your organisation and your cause as this is where they can do the most important part of their learning. A valuable resource in this aspect of volunteer training will be your experienced volunteers who can become mentors to any fresh faces. These volunteers can share their own experiences and provide valuable guidance and insight. 

⭐Volaby Tip: Keep up to date with incoming volunteers’ completion of face-to-face training by including extra tasks. Create extra tasks that are manually reviewed to track the completion of physical training or attendance of a certain number of shifts.This way volunteers will be able to confirm that they have completed their interactive training and even complete any further questions or feedback. 

Learning should not be reserved for new volunteers 

Training shouldn’t cease once volunteers are placed in their roles. You will often find volunteers eager to keep learning and refining their skills to not only be the best volunteer they can be but also because these skills will often spill over to their everyday lives.

This might include regular check-ins, additional training sessions and access to resources and materials. While volunteers must be kept up to date on any new policies and procedures, consider developing additional resources that can be accessed by your volunteers to fulfil the desire for knowledge that is often displayed by volunteers. 

Ongoing volunteer training and learning is beneficial to both your organisation and your volunteers. Learning and development can also be a great value proposition for attracting new volunteers to your organisation!

⭐Volaby Tip: We understand that policies and procedures are continually changing, which is why Volaby is built to let you add new tasks at any time. Any volunteers who have already been onboarded can be assigned new tasks and will be prompted to provide a response to the required questions. Alternatively, you will have the opportunity to assign tasks only to volunteers who are completing their onboarding.

⭐Volaby Tip: Use the resources feature to provide key resources and documents to all volunteers or a selected segment of your volunteers (using programs, activities, roles and tags). Resources can be accessed by volunteers and are a great way to allow volunteers to access important information when necessary such as technical guides and procedures. 

Great training is regularly accessed and updated

Just like your volunteers, your organisation is constantly learning and growing and this should be reflected in your training program. By gathering feedback from new and ongoing volunteers, you will be able to regularly assess the effectiveness of your training program and make updates where necessary.

Look out for anything your volunteers commonly struggle with to highlight areas that may be lacking. Consider providing training around non-direct volunteer traits such as empathy and teamwork. This can help you identify areas for improvement and ensure that your training is meeting the needs of your volunteers.

⭐Volaby Tip: Edit or add tasks at any time to ensure your volunteer training is always up to date. Your Volaby tasks are built to move and change as your organisation grows!

Conclusion 

A good volunteer training program will be developed over time and will change and grow with your organisation however no matter how big or small your organisation is, the same rules apply. By providing quality training to your volunteers, you can improve productivity, reduce turnover and create a positive and rewarding experience for all involved.