Chapters meeting 2010/Documentation/Volunteer recruitment

Volunteer recruitment and support

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Australia:

  • core with very active volunteers
  • wants to start introduction/membership kit: information about editing
  • Volunteers mainly in the big cities

Numbers of volunteers

  • some tens per chapter

What do we define as a volunteer for this session?

  • a person active in (real life) chapter activities

Problems

  • easy find people for specific practical tasks, but hard to find people to coordinate activities; they are needed to catalyze
  • problems to use technical infrastructure
  • difference: real life volunteer (is more responsible and more sustainable) vs online volunteer (can quit easily)
  • places to meet
  • how to find leaders; how can they be convinced

What can be done? How can volunteers be attached to different tasks?

  • drop the image of chapter being a "club of wikipedians"
  • start more (frequent) activities; they involve people as members; members can be volunteers in the future
  • money? not important; small grants (given out by chapters): mostly people don't apply for grants
  • announce heads of working groups
  • organize camps; have media coverage and output; people are motivated and an initiative step is done for volunteers (link will be sent by Samuel Klein)
  • a lot of motivational factors have to be considered; WM Indonesia idea: diplomas