How do I recruit volunteers for a Community Garden Project?
Before we can recruit volunteers and gardeners for our community garden, we have to ask ourselves - Why do people participate at community gardens?
Some of those reasons are:
Improving the quality of life for people
Stimulating social interaction
Encouraging self-reliance
Producing nutritious food
Reducing family food budgets
Reducing crime
Exercise
Fresh Air
Meditation
Creating income opportunities and economic development
Fostering a sense of community
Neighborhood Beautification
When you know why people in your community would like to participate in your project, it’s easier to keep them engaged over the long term. Ask your gardeners, “What do you want this garden to be?” Set time aside to do this frequently. It can be done through a formal meeting or by handing out index cards to volunteers to ask them what they love most about the garden. Using this information to make planning decisions can make your outreach and engagement efforts more fruitful.
What do Volunteers Need?
Quoted from Keeping your Volunteers Motivated and Happy - https://blogs.volunteermatch.org/engagingvolunteers /2012/07/09/10-tips-for-keeping-your-volunteers-motivated-and-happy/
1. Healthy Bodies, Healthy Minds
A good volunteer is only going to be as productive as their body and mind allow them to be. Emphasize the importance of a healthy lifestyle to volunteers in a positive way. This does not mean harping on those who appear out of shape or overweight to hit the gym. Rather, managers should encourage volunteers to take breaks, drink water and get a good night’s sleep before showing up. This is particularly important if volunteers are helping to complete a physically demanding project.
2. Respect
Your volunteers may just be numbers to some, but to you they are human beings worthy of receiving respect. Be understanding when volunteers miss a day and be sure to recognize their return to the project afterward. Remember, volunteers are participating out of the goodness of their hearts and no amount of respect and admiration is too much.
3. Hold Regular Meetings
Meetings might be universally mocked among employees in a typical 9-5 office role, but for volunteers meetings are vital. Meetings provide volunteers a sense of direction in the beginning of their service. Later on, meetings keep them in the loop on the overall progress of a project and allow them an opportunity to provide input.
4. Be Accessible
When a manager establishes themselves as a near authoritarian leader, they lose the faith and trust of their volunteers. It is important to walk the line between being the boss and being an accessible individual. Work hard to ensure that volunteers feel comfortable coming to you with questions, concerns and input; and try to check-in with them from time to time, as well.
5. Establish Reliable Go-Betweens
Try as you might, no manager is capable of successfully running a project alone. If you spend the entire day dealing with the little things, you become distracted from your big picture. Establishing a reliable go-between that will honestly and truthfully relay information back and forth is important. This provides volunteers a trusted person who will honestly pass along information, and frees up time for you as the manager to accomplish your tasks each day, as well.
6. Be Accurate And Detailed
Unlike regular employees, volunteers should not be saddled with too great a burden. This is not meant to belittle the volunteers, but rather to present them with realistic goals. Provide volunteers with clear, accurate, and concise goals from the beginning so they have direction and can produce quality results from the start.
7. Praise And Recognize Accomplishments
Don’t forget to recognize and praise volunteers. Recognize their accomplishments, praise their work ethic and thank them for contributing their time to your project or cause. Volunteers rarely give their time for the joy of recognition, but that doesn’t mean it won’t drive them to perform at higher levels or keep coming back to volunteer in the future.
8. Build Community
The more comfortable volunteers feel, the more relaxed they will be and the more likely it is they will turn in productive time. Make efforts to build a sense of community among your group of volunteers by offering them “extras” when they are not volunteering. Host a barbecue before starting the project to allow volunteers to mingle and become comfortable with each other; or consider starting a group athletics league during the course of a project to build a sense of unity.
9. Be Flexible
Remember to offer flexibility to your volunteers as well. Your personal and private life is a roller coaster, and so is that of each of your volunteers. These people are offering up their free time to assist in your project, so understand when they need to be away for a week or two or weekends here and there.
10. Lead By Example!
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, lead your volunteers by example. Don’t demand anything from your volunteers that you yourself wouldn’t be willing to do. Additionally, don’t merely sit around barking out orders and then park yourself in a chair while they work hard. By all means, feel free to be directive, but it is imperative to jump in and get your hands dirty with your volunteers to show them you are willing to work hard, too.
Volunteer Recruitment - Build Your List
Recruitment
Be visible within the community: get to know families and community members.
Build relationships and people will want to get involved.
Identify the movers-and-shakers who support your program and ask them to help recruit volunteers.
Advertise in the school newsletter and through email lists.
Network with teachers; ask them to recommend parents who they think would be interested.
Invite volunteers personally and always follow up by phone or email.
Engagement
The more ownership a volunteer has, the more engaged and committed he/she will be.
Include volunteers in the planning and decision-making process as much as possible.
Work within your volunteers’ level of commitment and interest:
If you have volunteers with specific areas of interest and/or expertise, let them take the lead by starting a new bed such as “The Herb Garden” or implement the Adopt A Bed model, for example.
Create opportunities for casual and one-time participation (i.e. work parties, open hours, harvest events)
Ask Potential Volunteers Directly - Canvassing
The best place to look for volunteers is right in your neighborhood. Many people in the area may not even know about the existence of the garden. By going door-to-door canvassing, you will be able to tell people about your garden, get people involved in the garden, and recruit volunteers. Talking to people that live around the garden can help you reach people that will feel more invested and willing to participate than someone who lives in on the other side of town.
To canvass your neighborhood, start at the garden and work your way over a few streets in each direction. There are probably people that live a street or two away from the garden that have no clue that it’s there. Warren is a city of both homeowners and renters so if it’s been a few years since you last canvasses, their may be fresh faces that have not yet learned about the garden, or they may not understand what you do there. Sometimes there is a misconception about what a community garden is or misinformation about what kind of garden is there. Many people do not venture outside of their regular routines or routes; this is why canvassing can help to get people involved that otherwise would not even know about these things happening in their community.
People want to make their neighborhoods look lovely and given a chance; there is something for everyone in the garden to do, even digital related tasks people can perform from home. Talk to people about their interests and what they like about the garden. Ask them about their skills. People that pass the garden may not feel like they can stop and talk. Make them feel welcome by saying hello or wave to people that may pass. They may come up and talk to you, it might not happen the first, second or thrid day but sooner or later if you greet them enough they will probably stop by and strike up a conversation. When people feel welcome, they will approach you, use this make valuable connections.
When talking to people ask about their interests or hobbies. For example, someone may not participate in the garden because they do not grow vegetables but maybe they grow flowers at home. You could suggest that they help the garden by growing flowers to help bring in pollinators. Everyone has different interests and skills, and you will not know what those are unless you talk to those around your garden. There are lots of non-gardening skills that can help to like social media, accounting, grant writing, photography, writing, etc. These can all be volunteer opportunities for community members that may not garden to get involved in the project.
Mine Your Social Network
Eighty-one percent of Americans have a social media profile. Many people use social media to communicate, make new friends and grow businesses. Using your social media network can help you to reach many people at one time. Many people look for volunteer opportunities on social media. There are two ways to do this. Using your social media profile or creating a page for your garden. We highly recommend the later.
Your social media profile is full of people that live in your area, and if those people share your posts, then it can reach even more people in the area. Many people use their social media profiles to promote what they do, what they like or what they’re involved in. Always add a call to action in your posts. This can include asking people to share or inviting people to learn more about your garden at your next event or a simple ask for them to share the post. Make sure your privacy settings for the post are set to public, or they will not be able to share it.
Creating a page for your garden can allow you to add others as admins and share in the updates to the page. It can let you post pictures of the garden and create events. These posts can also be shared on your profile as well to reach more people. GROW can share your posts and boost them to help them reach a wider audience.
Keeping your social network up to date can help to engage people and keep them informed as to what is happening at the garden and when volunteer or workdays are coming up. Even just posting pictures of the garden can keep people engaged or get them involved.
Make a video tour of the garden or do a 7 day photo challenge. Think of creative ways to promote the garden and get people to your page. Make sure to post something regularly or people may lose interest and unfollow your page. If you post something to your garden page, then also share it to your other social media pages and profiles too. The more it gets shared the more people it will reach.
Post Information About Your Garden
Along with social media, find spaces in the community where you can post flyers for your garden. These can be local stores and businesses, local organizations, or even the garden itself. Provide as many opportunities as you can.
Contact schools and other groups
Schools and other groups can be a great source to find volunteers and engage with the community. Many school groups, church groups and youth groups like to be involved in things just like community gardens. They may not know that your there and need help unless you contact them. Gardening gives youth the chance to grow food and connect with nature. Include administration, teachers, and parents as well. First check with school administrators about your school district’s policies on volunteers (including liability waivers). Some places require that “volunteers who may have potential for direct, unsupervised contact with students must be screened for a criminal background.”
The second thing to do is figure out what you want the groups to do. Then make a simple job description that outlines the tasks. Be specific. You will always be more successful in inviting people to do some-thing they can picture in detail than to ask them vaguely to “give us time for free.” This means never starting a recruitment pitch with anything like “Volunteers Needed.” To do what? People want to know what they are dedicating their time to and if it is even within their skillset. Someone is not going to want to something that they can not do or that will hurt them. Keep in mind that everyone has restrictions and may not feel comfortable volunteering for something they are not sure they can accomplish.
Create fun and specific job titles
The garden is a place to not only grow food but to grow community and friendships. People want to feel welcome and invested in their community, many just do not know how to to just that. This also goes along with sharing leadership. Everyone has some leadership qualities in them, by letting them have some responsibility, they can further develop those qualities and share the managing of the garden. Make a list of jobs that need to be done at the garden, then make up fun and specific job titles that can be assigned to those who want to be involved.
The Comfort Zone, The Learning Zone, and The Freak Out Zone
Training volunteers can be difficult but thinking about “The Zones” can help you develop new volunteers and leaders within your community.
The Comfort Zone consists of tasks and activities that someone may already be familiar. To develop new skills we all need to more out of the zone. It is important to consider that activities that may be in your comfort zone could be challenging to others. Consider delegating some of these tasks to build leaders in your garden as part of their development.
The Learning Zone is the zone where people are learning new skills that you have no completely mastered, putting you outside of your comfort zone. When someone is in this zone, they will need support from other leaders in completing these tasks including oversight and training. Many of your volunteers will find themselves here as they learn about community gardens and gardening in general.
The Freak-Out Zone is when people feel completely out of their knowledge field. It’s okay to find yourself here but learn how to recognize it in yourself and your volunteers. Troubleshooting through this is crucial. If people are in this zone to often while volunteering, they will become discouraged and leave. If tasks seem to fall in this zone for yourself and volunteers, that may signify that it needs broken into smaller pieces or you may need to call on more support resources to achieve the desired end result.
Training Volunteers - Principles of Adult Learning
Adapted from https://ctb.ku.edu/en/table-of-contents/structure/volunteers/training-programs/main
Adults must feel a need to learn. It’s important that they understand the relevance of what is being taught to what they will be doing. For example, if the trainer is explaining group dynamics to a group of people who will be health educators in local clinics, she will probably have a better audience if the trainees know they will be talking to groups, and not just doing one-on-one counseling. If trainees understand that, the information automatically becomes useful, not just another lecture they need to sit through before they can get to the “real work.”
Allow adults to share their previous experiences and relate them to the present situation. Everyone likes to feel that they have something to bring to the discussion; by relating past experiences to the current topic, your trainees will not only feel that they have something to add, but will also have a better understanding of the subject being discussed. It’s no longer academic to them -- it’s something they have experienced, something they know.
People learn better when lessons are centered around solving problems. Instead of a lecture, presenting a problem and helping trainees find the answer is a much more effective way of teaching. People like to puzzle things out and by presenting a problem, you ask people to think, not just passively accept what they are told.
Training should be interactive. You should lecture very little when training adult volunteers, and you should supplement your lectures with other methods as much as possible. Studies show that we retain only 20% of what we hear in a lecture setting, so consider incorporating discussions, observations, role-playing, demonstrations, and writing into your training program.
Balance support with challenging the learner. This is a delicate balance, which will come more naturally with experience. Try to convey to the trainee -- through words of encouragement, written policies, or other methods -- that he or she will always have the support necessary to do the job well. At the same time, however, challenge the volunteer to take on more complicated tasks as confidence and understanding grow.
Urge volunteers to use their creativity. Encourage suggestions, ideas, and improvements that the trainees might come up with, both to improve the training and to improve the program or organization as a whole. Since most trainees are probably new to the organization, they will certainly see things differently than people who have been there a while. Be sure to take advantage of their enthusiasm and fresh points of view!
Remember that people aren’t the same. People learn in different ways, and may respond better to different approaches. The trainer should pay attention to how people are responding and try to modify the training accordingly.
Writing a Training Plan
Now that you understand the principles of adult learning, it’s time to write a training plan. These are very helpful in keeping you on task, keeping an eye on the time, and making sure you cover everything you have intended to cover. These do not have to be long and can be adapted to each work day. If you are training an individual to do a small task, a quick list and some bullet points may be enough to cover that particular training. For more complex tasks, creating a set of jobs and a training plan for each of these may be best.
Individual lesson plans should state:
The learning objectives (i.e., the intended result of the lesson). For example, “At the end of this lesson, trainees will know how to weed and manage the community garden kitchen herb section”
The time allotted for each activity. Although there are no absolutes, this is usually fairly short -- typically under an hour. That way, trainees don’t have time to get bored and are kept on their toes by constantly changing activities. Again, this does not have to be complex.
A detailed explanation of each activity.
Ways to evaluate trainee understanding. For example, a quiz at the end of the lesson, asking trainees to do something based on what they learned. - typically GROW uses a quick question and answer section on some key points for short trainings and evaluations for larger more complex training
A list of resources needed to carry out the activities (e.g., gloves, safety glasses, etc).