This week, I wrapped up making the contact list for Speak! volunteers, as well as calling our volunteers. We were able to get more results on the volunteer feedback survey which is great, and we were able to get a better idea of what our volunteers are interested in doing! It has been an amazing experience getting to know all of our volunteers, and hear in their own words what Speak! means to them, and what they are passionate about. I feel that all of the feedback I have received from the volunteers has really allowed for me to better understand their needs, and where we need to improve on the business/logistics side of things. Everyone I have talked to agrees, Speak! is an incredible organization and the work they do for these animals is simply incredible, so I am excited to be helping this organization!

Next steps for me are to create the orientation for our new volunteers. My goal is to have an orientation that is both informative and engaging for the new members. It also seems that a solid introduction of key members is very important for our new volunteers, so my goal with this is to help put faces to the names, as well as a name to the different positions offered for our volunteers. There are so many moving elements involved with a rescue so it can be difficult to always have learning opportunities available prior to the work needing to be done. Which is another reason the orientation is so important, we want the volunteers to feel prepared and ready to get involved, which will result in clearing some tasks off the plate of other volunteers – specifically our volunteer board members. Currently, Speak! has several volunteer board members that are involved with 10+ roles within Speak! and that can be really overwhelming and lead to burnout. We want to avoid things getting to that point, which is why the work I do now is so important. I want to help Speak! bring forth the change they want to see!