Should LL hire a Director Of Volunteers?

I worked for awhile as a volunteer at a local library. Libraries know a thing or two about volunteers and community. Many cash-strapped libraries could not survive without volunteers.

In my time at the library, I was privileged to make friends with the library's Director Of Volunteers. She was an invaluable part of the library's volunteer program. She knew how to find, motivate and keep volunteers.

I don't believe that a volunteer program should be managed by its volunteers, but by paid leaders who know how to motivate.

If Linden Lab really believes in a volunteer contingent in SL, I suggest that Linden Lab hire (as in pay real money) a leader with expertise in running volunteer programs. It works for the libraries.

A large aspect of the Director Of Volunteers' job was community outreach. She planned and attended many community events which got the message out that the library was looking for volunteers and that the library respected and appreciated the volunteers it employed.

Think about that for a minute. What type of community outreach (and by community, I mean the world outside of SL) does Linden Lab sponsor to spread the volunteer message? That's right: none. What message does Linden Lab preach in every single interview they grant? COME TO SL AND MAKE MONEY!

As a volunteer-seeking organization, I think Linden Lab has an image problem. The image problem may be due to the fact that Linden Lab doesn't currently employ a volunteer expert. An expert would have already POINTED OUT THE IMAGE PROBLEM.

The image problem may be due to the fact that Linden Lab is not serious about running a successful volunteer program and is just making "community" noises. I don't see Linden Lab as being that crass. However, employing a paid Director Of Volunteers might help to show that they're serious about the volunteer effort.

Hire a DOV and let the DOV do some interviews. Let him / her talk up the volunteer opportunities in SL. Let him try and reach the segment which isn't moved by the MAKE MONEY message. The DOV should be enticing new volunteers to try SL, as well as recruiting from the existing client base.

What do you think?

This looks like a wonderful idea, as I can see it now Jeska currently has A LOT of responsibilities..

Except as noted elswhere, LL is historically loathe to delegate any authority of any kind. Until that changes, even with the best of intentions and drive, you're still kind of stuck.

Obviously I can't but agree.

See also: /204/39/93219/2.html

I concur. Hire a director of volunteers.

This also has the advantage that someone is "officially" in charge of the information being given out.

I think the people who are giving out information right now are awesome, but when I became a Mentor, how was I supposed to know who they were? There is an entire information network (set of networks) that have no "hooks" to help find them.

I think it would be useful--especially since elements of that task seem to be split over several very busy Lindens: Jeska, Jesse, and Torley.

Yes I absolutely agree. It's crazy that it takes 3-5 weeks for volunteer applications to be processed. There is also very little information about what is expected of volunteers or what it entails. I am applying to be a mentor but before I applied, I looked for any information about how often i would be expected to act as a mentor and what specifically that involved but only found the one short paragraph on the website. I IM'd Jeska but never heard back from her, probably because she is buried under a mountain of IMs. Finally I just asked other SL mentors and got the info I wanted, but the system should be more streamlined and informative than it is.

How about they hire (as in pay real money) people to do all the work that is currently "outsourced" to unpaid labor a.k.a. volunteers

We all know that approach 'doesn't scale.'

This is jeska role in this area no? I think they should hire and put a second linden in charge. We need something and fast!

For some time how, I have read this and other threads, encouraging, implying, entreating, cajoling or down right demanding Linden Labs to hire a full time volunteer representative. While, I can agree that a full time volunteer director would provide benefits, I disagree with the notion that it can’t be done with a volunteer resident.

As a teacher in a Pre K-3rd grade school, I have some experience with volunteers. I know that it would be impossible for us to do what we do without volunteers. Volunteer mothers do a lot of the “menial” tasks necessary in teaching, allowing the teachers to spend more time doing what they are trained to do, teach. Our school of a little over 500 students uses a volunteer mother to coordinate the other volunteers. We do not hire anyone.

There will always be a person who naturally takes a leadership position. She may have more experience than the other mothers or she may just be a controller, who wants to do it her way. Nevertheless, someone always steps up. The principle is the one who decides who this person will be. She is aware of what is going on in her school and knows who would make a good volunteer. She makes the final decision.

Frankly, I do not understand why some people are so adamant that a resident of SL NOT be the volunteer. Why not use someone who knows the system, knows the volunteers and, has lived Second Life as a resident?

Jeska is a wonderful person. She is helpful and seems very organized. However, has she ever really lived in the game, as we have? Has she run the gamut of emotions, in this soap opera we call Second Life? Does, she have to balance her volunteer activities with an in-game boyfriend or partner? Does she balance her volunteer activities with her in-game commercial operation? Maybe she does? I really don’t know.

However, my experience with Linden’s (and this may be unfair) is that they swoop in like Greek gods, do their thing and disappear back to Mt. Olympus. Heck, many of them don’t even show up on a radar script, which I resent. It sets them apart from residents.

They are following priorities set down by Linden Labs. These priorities may or may not have the best interests of the residents in mind. Remember, the first priority of any Linden must be to make money for Linden Labs. That is not a moral judgment on my part; it is only a statement of reality, from my POV.

The first priority of a resident/volunteer is; how do we make this environment (SL) better for US. After all, that is why we do what we do. We want to help others and make SL a better place for all.

Hopefully a volunteer director will keep that in mind. He or she is in a good position as an ombudsman or go between the residents and the Lindens. The volunteer director will probably have information privy to Lindens that will help the director in making decisions. I think this is part of the reason Torley is so effective. She understands both sides.

Yes, there will be some of us who won’t like the director’s decisions. Some of us will vocalize them in here and others will quit. This happens in RL too. Most of us, I believe, will be happy to follow most of the director’s decisions.

As SL gets bigger, it will need more organization to keep things running smoothly. The small nucleus of mentors won’t be enough. You won’t know each and every mentor or greeter. Someone will be needed to try and make sure HI and greet requests are covered. I disagree with those who claim it has to be a paid Linden. I like the Lindens. In my experience they have always tried to be helpful. Jeska has done a wonderful job in balancing her tasks. However, if it is time to give her some help, I say let it be a resident volunteer.

Jen

well we are at 681 at the present time........but it would be nice to have a second inchange.......

I think a Director of Volunteer's would be great. I mean technically that is Jeska's duty right now, however she has repeatedly said that she wants Mentors, Greeters, Live Help, and other volunteers to get more pro-active and organize themselves.

Someone to help with certain tasks or duties that Jeska feels would be appropreiate could easily work out well. This person of course would have to have a track record of being trustworthy, shown a propensity of leadership, and excellent behavior. Someone who can work well with others and mediate any problems between volunteers. Someone like Tateru Nino for example.

I hope this is something that is still being worked on and hope to see it come to reality.

Rick

Perhaps there is a middle ground whereby they paid some administrative helper(s) in $L? It seems that there is a backlog of applications building up that will need to be processed and it is true that Jeska is wearing a lot of hats. People work pretty cheaply in $L all things considered. Might be a great way to outsource. Hire hub managers so to speak, for $1000L-$5000L per week who process applications and train volunteers. Why not?

This might be a answer, But adding a second Linden to help run the GROUP(s) might be the answer. Good One ........

There's already a Vice President of Community and Support, isn't that enough?

Well it does not appear to be.....How can one person handle all three groups? Specially the mentor size.

Wow look at some of University the went too......

With leadership like this, do we really need volunteers?

Wouldn't an increased number of mentors reduce the need for additional organizing to see that Help Island gets mentor coverage rather than increase the need?

Invect — how exactly does quantity help to address a quality problem?

+1

there should be some Linden who is really responsible for this and doing all that as main task. And I also would be interested in some more information about mentor duties actually.

I've got a couple of thoughts on this. Firstly 3-5 weeks to process an application isn't a disaster - if they tell you that's how long it's going to take, which I don't think they do.

I'd really like to see two or three things changed about the current system.

One would be one (or more) directors of volunteers - I'm ambivalent about whether they should be lindens or volunteers themselves, there are swings and roundabouts both ways. Why more than one? Well there are a lot of groups and a lot of timezones, and a notional first contact position that's constantly available for each group is possibly a gain for the mentors and hopefully they can play nicely and sort it out to present a reasonably unified face for our needs and LL's needs up and down the chain.

Some training - mentoring is hard work, or can be, in SL as well as IRL. I've both trained as, and trained others to act as, a mentor IRL. It's not rocket science, but it was one of the most useful day's training I've done in life - and it's one of the most rewarding to deliver as well. I'm sure there are training issues around live help etc. too. But there should also be skills training for the various volunteers too IMO. You don't take library volunteers, or teaching volunteers, even volunteer cleaners and say "get on with it" - there's some sort of skills check and training in place for all of those things at every institution I've seen. Knowing how to build in SL, or script, or make money, is NOT the same as being able to help others improve those skills, and very different to being able to develop them from scratch! I'm not saying everyone should be expert in all skills, but a grounding in the common ones would be well worth it, wouldn't it?

If the help page moves to a more html format do you think we could get a help wiki put in? Give everyone read ability, and perhaps all the volunteers and lindens modify and write permissions? Or a wiki link from the help menu. How many times have you seen 'How do Mac users right-click with a one button mouse?'? That should be in the training given to all the volunteers it's so common, but a help wiki that's that quickly accessible would let us all grab the information we need, and point the new resident that way as well perhaps? Even silly things like a list of all the keyboard shortcuts, which is NOT there that I can find would help a lot - and I'd include in that ALL the ways you can do the various things too - I can think of at least four ways to create a new prim in an otherwise empty sim, knowing what they all are and explaining them to people so they can use whichever one is best for them, even if it's not our own 'best' way is part of the deal too when mentoring isn't it?

can`t hurt

We are currently working on methods of scaling the volunteer program, as it has long surpassed the ability for one person to "manage" it. We've been working with Tateru Nino in-world to help with some projects and Kenny Linden has recently joined forces with us and all of our volunteers to create an even better volunteer community.

The first project has already been started, if you go over to Tenera (187, 106, 71), you can see the beginnings of the Volunteer HQ - please feel free to visit, share information with other volunteers, make suggestions, collaborate and hang out

Go, Lindens!