Present:  Linda Makohon, (Friends of NCRD), Tela Skinner (Hoffman Center), Mary Corey (Lower Nehalem Community Trust), Emily Volmer (Manzanita Farmer’s Market), Deborah Skidmore(NCRD) Dan Haag  (Manzanita Visitor’s Center), John Benson  (Nehalem Bay Garden Club), Tom Mock (Nehalem Valley Historical Society), Travis Williams (Nehalem Valley Land Trust), Laura Swanson (North Coast Citizen), Madeline Olsen (North Tillamook Library Friends), Melissa Swanson (Oregon Food Bank), Alice Jeffers (Rinehart Clinic), Kathy Jean Hrywnak (Sammy’s Place), Lorraine Ortiz (Tillamook County Arts Network, CARTM) Emily Fanjoy (Tillamook County Women’s Crisis Center), Claudine Rehn and Isabel Gilda (Tillamook Estuaries Partnership), Vivi Tallman (White Clover Grange)

Facilitators:  Lane deMoll and Barbara McLaughlin, Fulcrum Community Resources

Homework: Each group is to write up a summary of the challenges and uses of volunteers.  How many volunteers do you have? Do you keep track of volunteer hours?  How many hours do you have?  What kind of different types of volunteer jobs do you have?  What is the size of your organization?  Do you have paid staff?  What do you need to be prepared to accept volunteers?  What else is pertinent about your organization relative to volunteers? Send your summary to me at barbaraandchuck@nehalemtel.net.

 Meeting Summary: We were very pleased to have a well-attended and lively meeting on the topic of Volunteers.  Several ideas emerged to be acted on:

1.    A committee formed to explore creating a Volunteer Guide:  Alice, Laura and Dan said they’d be on the committee and Laura said Country Media is interested in helping to produce it.  Other committee members welcome.  Lorraine had the idea to do a media campaign about npos before publication of any volunteer guide. 

2.   Lorraine Ortiz is looking for “data geek partners” to collect statistics on the 283 Tillamook County npos. Data to include things like % of workforce; how many events are produced; number of volunteers and volunteer hours, etc. Armed with this information, she sees us as ambassadors for nonprofits to express the value of nonprofits to our community and build general esteem for us.  Mis has data from Community Vitality Projects.

3.    Emily Fanjoy, Mis and, Isabel attended a volunteer training on getting and maintaining  volunteers from NOVA.  Mis is capable of providing the training.

4.   Though it wasn’t talked about much, except for a report from Emily Fanjoy, who helped produce one at TBCC, we could have a volunteer fair in North County.

5.   Fulcrum has the idea to create a web process and presence for npos; CountyMedia can help.  They already have a website created for the 2016 Year of Wellness. tillamookcountyhealthmatters.org.  Part of the Year of Wellness definition of being healthy is to volunteer.  YOW 2016 calendar featuring NPO events will be mailed to every household in Tillamook County week of Dec 7^th

Thoughts about volunteers:

How to inspire new volunteers, maintain existing ones and how to get a commitment.

• Organization needs to develop the capacity to handle volunteers.
• Evaluate what people can do and like to do.
• Have to be able to match skill and need with the task.
• Expectations have to be clear on both sides.
• Good communication with the volunteer that is reassuring and supporting.  Also have to be aware of any possible harm that may come to a volunteer and may have to say no to them if they are not prepared for the task.
• It’s important how the org receives people. “What brought me in was the welcoming attitude of the organization.”
• Get volunteers in the door with something they are comfortable with. Give them a small sample of what they can to so not to be intimidating.
• Be strategic about how to invite people in.
• No shortage of volunteers at the Community Garden because they get something.  What can volunteers get back?
• Acknowledge the differences of organization’s size and budget; all volunteer or paid staff.
• Starting orgs need people that can just dive in.
• Also a need for younger, stronger people to do physical work.
• Find a way to share volunteers between npos.  Create concrete time limited opportunities.  Get over that volunteers help other npos.
• How to reach those not volunteering—are they afraid to get involved?  Make volunteering palatable.

 Sources of Volunteers

• Look for groups that come here to volunteer—possibly AmeriCorps or Vista.
• Retirees
• NKN school groups doing service projects.  Leo (High school version of Lions) has 40 kids; middle school kids who want to be on the honor roll have to do 5-6 hours of community service; senior projects.  Especially since Peter Walczak parted ways with the school district it can be hard for parents to know what/where their kids can get comm service.
• OSU master programs—good at creating volunteers (Master Gardeners, etc).
• Which employers have volunteer incentive programs—banks, Roby’s, Cheese Factory.
• Some npos encourage their people to volunteer at other npos.

Raw notes: Lane started the meeting with a brief background summary of how we got here:  with encouragement from Lorraine Ortiz, Fulcrum received a $3000 grant from Oregon Community Foundation after matching that amount from donations from 19 individual and 14 npos totaling  $3115.  Barbara read a poem from Wendell Berry called “Work Song, Part 2, A Vision”

We first round to say what we’re thankful for and then went around again to say why we are here:

·         Oregon Food bank has resources to share. Looking to see where I can plug in

·         Friends of NCRD wants to grow our membership.

·         Manzanita Visitor’s Center is completely run using volunteers—how to maintain and enhance our pool.

·         NPO’s are good at raising money.  We need to work on “raising people” and take advantage of the tsunami of retirees.

·         In North County, the fraternal organizations (Kiwanis, Lions, Rotary) are losing membership.  (They are thriving in Tillamook proper)  Our members are more rural; how can we involve people in the “New Grange” and the food security movement.

·         North Coast Citizen can facilitate all npos purposes.  It’s in my heart and soul to get information about npos out to the public.

·         Rinehart Clinic – Interested in developing a program to help young people volunteer in the health field; how to engage the adult disabled community as volunteers; what other things we can do for outreach and how we can support the community. We mainly reach out to people who can’t afford healthcare.

·         NCRD – Looking forward to collaborating.  We use volunteers in the fitness center, youth program and Friends of NCRD.

·         The library is a central place for the community.  How to help shape the future so the library continues to be helpful to the community.  Struggle to get volunteers.  Understand how to grow a basic base and then help them become leaders.

·         As Volunteer Coordinator for TCWRC, helped produce volunteer fair at TBCC, which was successful at getting organizations, and had some success with getting the public there.  Hoped to get the college/high school students involved but could have had help advertising from schools. Jane Scott took videos of the npos involved and those profiles will be available on the county website and dvds at the library.  Students can use volunteering towards professional development.  Bridge to Nowhere program helps keep students engaged and on track.  Need to increase volunteer pool, create infrastructure that is easy to plug into.   Took part of NOVA training on volunteer recruitment and maintenance.  Good to have it here.  How to keep the momentum going and interface with the whole county.

·         Hoffman Center has increased its programs and needs more volunteers.

·         Sammy’s Place has a small 3 person board.  Normally do face to face networking; important to have a sense of who is doing what.  Need a broader age demographic for volunteers.

·         We all take on a lot of roles.  Heard a statistic that says 5% of people do 90% of volunteering.  Need to outreach to others.  Develop programs around who is available.  The number of npos has exploded—consolidation may have to happen.