Volunteer coordinators discuss their goals and challenges with Nevada Volunteers staff at a recent meeting in Reno, Nevada.

National Volunteer Week, April 10-16, is a time to celebrate those who volunteer. Volunteers are the backbone of any community, providing services that would otherwise go unmet. Although the time a volunteer gives is free, have you stopped to consider the time and energy needed to recruit, organize, direct, and of course, thank them? Nevada Volunteers knows that volunteer coordinators, whether they are paid staff or volunteers themselves, are a vital part of strengthening volunteering in Nevada, and why we focus a good deal of effort in reaching out to them through our website resources and trainings.

Being a volunteer coordinator is a big job. At a recent meeting at the Nevada Volunteers office in Reno, I listened in on a discussion of the challenges two volunteer coordinators face. One of the coordinators, Heather, has been working to set up a volunteer program from scratch, and perhaps the biggest challenge she faces is to educate others about the enormity of the task. “I know how time intensive it is to manage volunteers,” she said, and though her new volunteer program will increase the capacity of her agency to fulfill its mission, those volunteers will need a lot of training and supervision to be effective. (more…)