1. Helping with online outreach. At this point, we were looking for ways to stay relevant and to engage with our audience, just like every other organization in the world. And just like for every other organization in the world, the easiest way to reach a worldwide audience is to use the internet. We began beefing up our online content through our social media, namely Facebook posts, games and activities posted on Facebook, and image-based games on Instagram. And hey, we had a group of experts right at our fingertips. I suggested using our volunteers to help create some of this content, such as online presentations (narrated PowerPoints) in lieu of presentations they would have normally given at the museum, and kids activities. I also hoped to later do a "Get to Know the Volunteers"-type series, where we'd profile a different volunteer each week.
Surprisingly, though, I didn't get many takers on these projects. I expected our speakers and docents to want to do online talks, and we have a couple of former teachers I thought would jump at activities for kids. I had a few express interest in the recorded talks, but none completely followed through, and no one for the science activities. I still haven't figured out what the missing key was to this. Swing and a miss on having them help reach out to the public.
2. Socializing with other volunteers. They were, though, still in to the socializing aspect of engagement.
2a. The weekly e-mails. The weekly reading/viewing recommendation list continued, with volunteers sending in suggestions for the others. It even started to branch out to topics that were tangentially related to our organization, which then branched out to things that were related to the tangent. For example, a volunteer recommended the movie Lawrence of Arabia for the history, and commented that its length required an intermission in the theater; another volunteer took that intermission aspect and provided us with a list of four or five other movies with intermissions, some not related in any way to our museum. I enjoyed when our volunteers took these side tracks.
Our volunteers are also taking advantage of these mailing lists as a way to proactively learn or get advice. The all-volunteer e-mails and my call to "Send me anything you want passed on to the others!" has allowed them to interact with other volunteers that they wouldn't normally be in contact with (Wednesday-only docents are rarely at the museum at the same time as Saturday-only docents, for example, event-only volunteers don't see the daily docents, and new volunteers may not know which volunteers know the information they're interested in). Volunteers have sent me questions they've always wondered about our artifacts or related history, and our amazing volunteer base has responded with extremely knowledgeable answers.
Similarly, I got an e-mail from a new volunteer who's interested in getting his pilot's license, and he thought he remembered hearing that some of our other volunteers have their licenses. So I put it in the next mailing that someone was looking for advice, and within a few hours had a number of responses of people willing to chat with him and answer his questions. This makes me feel warm and fuzzy: even from afar, our volunteers are helping each other and bonding (and, *patting self on head again*, they were able to do it through the weekly mailing list I started).
2b. "Face-to-face." We also decided to have a Zoom meeting for our volunteers. We all know how much Zoom and other video conferencing services immediately became an everyday part of our lives while working from home during this closure. Meetings you used to have in person are now through Zoom, and even meetings you WEREN'T having before were suddenly popping up all the time, and held via Zoom. So why not let our volunteers have some socializing time through Zoom? We set up a "virtual gathering" where our Executive Director, Marketing Assistant, Restoration Manager, and I gave our volunteers updates on the museum's COVID closure and projects we were working on, and let them ask us questions; they also got to see us and each other face-to-face (even if not in person), rather than everything being over e-mail.
3. Volunteer Appreciation Week. Let me tell you, I had Plans -- Big Plans -- for Volunteer Appreciation Week. I was going to outdo anything our organization had done recently. It was going to be fun, individualized for each volunteer, but not expensive. It was going to be Awesome. But then this stupid virus happened, and Volunteer Appreciation Week became a virtual celebration.
But just because they were at home and the museum was closed didn't mean we appreciated our volunteers any less, or should forget about the week altogether. So Volunteer Appreciation Week 2020 became Volunteer-Appreciation-Week-While-Sheltering-In-Place. I asked the staff to write shout-outs to our volunteers, and let them decide whether they wanted to thank a generic group (all volunteers, all docents, etc.), a specific group (e.g., our Saturday docents, our event set-up team), or individual volunteers. I found pictures to go along with each thank you, and figured that between our three social media platforms, we could show our appreciation for a whole lot of volunteers, even if we couldn't do a celebration in person.
I can tell that our volunteers are getting frustrated that the museum is still closed, but at least there have been opportunities for them to interact with the public and each other. For those of you out there who have volunteers, how are they feeling if your organization is still closed? How are you keeping them interested, even while your doors are closed?
