Our Event Selection Process

Hi, everyone!

This is the Viking Volunteers board with a friendly PSA.

We've been getting emails recently from club members who are concerned about our process of picking members for events, and saying that they are not getting enough opportunities, despite signing up almost instantly.

We understand this - we've all been subject to that process ourselves over the course of our years with the club. So believe us when we say: we get it. Truly. It can be frustrating, especially when you're sure you signed up early enough to get a spot. So we thought we'd do what previous boards haven't, and give you a little more insight into the way we pick people for events.

Firstly, it's important to understand that we have an immense amount of responses for each event. Many of our club members do what they think nobody else is doing, and instantly sign up for the event, so it is very difficult for everyone to get a spot. Below is the Google Form response spreadsheet for the Brooks Crossing Carnival, as an example. Obviously to protect privacy, we blacked out member names.

As you'll see in the timestamp column that is generated by Google (it's in hour:minute:second format) , many members respond within mere seconds of each other - sometimes in one-second intervals, and some even sign up in the same second. A lot of people think they signed up early enough to get a spot, but this just isn't the case a lot of times.

**NOTE: DO NOT WORRY ABOUT ANY REQUIREMENTS CROSSED OUT UNTIL THE FIRST MEETING**

Yes, the process is first-come-first-serve, but there's other factors we are taking into account, like:

• If you've given us your Pay-To-Participate receipt
• If you turned in your contract
• If you turned in club dues

If you've done all 3 of the above, then we look at:

• How many event requirements you've fulfilled (Have you done 2 yet? Have you done 1? Have you done none at all?)
• How many hours you have (Are you close to meeting the requirements, or do you need all the ones you can get?)
• Have you done an event very recently?

Therefore, the people with highest priority will be the people who signed up first, who have turned in all 3 things (PTP, contract dues), and who have not fulfilled their in-person event requirements. Only after that point do we start looking even deeper.

We concede: on occasion, people do slip through the cracks, and once in a while people do get picked one too many times, but to be fair, this doesn't happen often at all (we would know, we have all the documentation for it), and we're also flooded with constant volunteer opportunities and have to deal with multiple event assignments at once. There's only so many of us, and we're only human, so obviously, we can't be perfect every time.

We are truly trying to improve our selection system by coming up with different solutions to the problem. That was the reason we pulled the list for the Brooks Crossing Carnival and re-did it. We wanted people who hadn't gotten chances to get a spot. For those of you worried about requirements: just keep signing up for events rapidly. Check the membership directory if you're unsure. There's going to be many, many more events: we're only in February right now. We promise we keep you in the back of our minds when making selections. And come to meetings! We do service projects in many meetings, but we don't publicize which meetings - you just have to come. Many times, you will get additional hours for these, which you'll find out when the membership directory shows that you have more hours than our Total Hours page suggests.

We're genuinely doing our level best with the sheer amount of people we have in the club - with 290 of you and only 7 to 15 spots per event on average, it's a very difficult balancing act, given that our hour requirement is what it is to ensure continued participation. Also, please remember: our purpose is to link you to causes in the community and allow you to participate in the most service opportunities possible to reach out and give back. It is not to fulfill each and every one of your NHS requirements and keep giving you spots.

That being said, we do appreciate your feedback. We want to make this club the best we can, and for that, we need your input. We'll keep working to improve the efficiency and fairness of the system, just like we have been for a long time, but we hope we've made ourselves clear and given you a little insight into the inner workings of our system.

Thank you very much, and see you at the next meeting!

The Viking Volunteers Board