Volunteer recruitment best practise

Alex,

If I understand correctly what you have said, then I agree that one way to recruit to the committee is to simply increase event attendance then rely on the tail of the bell curve of motivation, i.e. that a small minority of people will want to get involved to run events. This might be termed a Sabermetrics approach! A rule of thumb might be that if one in 100 IET members is an active volunteer today (does anyone have the actual numbers?) then if we run an event with over 100 in the audience and mention at the end that we have a vacancy if anyone is interested, one may volunteer and stick with it in the long term. This would obviously be more complicated if IET members make up a minority of audiences at IET volunteer-run events (again, does anyone have the actual numbers?).

Regarding reasons why people attend volunteer-run events, e.g. evening lectures by LN's, and some do not, maybe that is because it depends on whether they find engineering that interesting? I think there is a risk that we, as engineers with higher than normal motivation, can sometimes overlook the possibility that some people in our profession are in it primarily as a job and can't wait to leave the office at the end of the day - and there would be nothing wrong with that. It has always rung hollow to me that engineering is promoted as a way to change the world, any more than another profession. Most people who I have worked with have never seen it that way, and I think that most teenagers are too sceptical to be won over by such a hollow argument. This point undercuts most of the promotional initiatives I have seen come and go, and I can remember the Year of Engineering Success quite well. It concerns me very much!

I agree with your point about the common interest factor in TN involvement. From the LN perspective, what proportion of your audience come to only one or two events per year, i.e. the ones that interest them specifically, and what proportion turn up every single time? Would it be fair to say that in general, the former group are the ones following their interest, and the latter group are coming for other reasons?

Could the answer to the original question simply be to find a group of happy, satisfied volunteers, ask them what they gain from their involvement, and use the answers in some kind of publicity drive?

I would like to add one important point to the original question, however. The aim should not be simply to get people to join volunteer committees. The aim should be to help them contribute productively and efficiently, and therey find satisfaction that enables them to sustain the commitment. Maybe we should look at our norms and practices as existing committee members in this regard.

Alex,

If I understand correctly what you have said, then I agree that one way to recruit to the committee is to simply increase event attendance then rely on the tail of the bell curve of motivation, i.e. that a small minority of people will want to get involved to run events. This might be termed a Sabermetrics approach! A rule of thumb might be that if one in 100 IET members is an active volunteer today (does anyone have the actual numbers?) then if we run an event with over 100 in the audience and mention at the end that we have a vacancy if anyone is interested, one may volunteer and stick with it in the long term. This would obviously be more complicated if IET members make up a minority of audiences at IET volunteer-run events (again, does anyone have the actual numbers?).

Regarding reasons why people attend volunteer-run events, e.g. evening lectures by LN's, and some do not, maybe that is because it depends on whether they find engineering that interesting? I think there is a risk that we, as engineers with higher than normal motivation, can sometimes overlook the possibility that some people in our profession are in it primarily as a job and can't wait to leave the office at the end of the day - and there would be nothing wrong with that. It has always rung hollow to me that engineering is promoted as a way to change the world, any more than another profession. Most people who I have worked with have never seen it that way, and I think that most teenagers are too sceptical to be won over by such a hollow argument. This point undercuts most of the promotional initiatives I have seen come and go, and I can remember the Year of Engineering Success quite well. It concerns me very much!

I agree with your point about the common interest factor in TN involvement. From the LN perspective, what proportion of your audience come to only one or two events per year, i.e. the ones that interest them specifically, and what proportion turn up every single time? Would it be fair to say that in general, the former group are the ones following their interest, and the latter group are coming for other reasons?

Could the answer to the original question simply be to find a group of happy, satisfied volunteers, ask them what they gain from their involvement, and use the answers in some kind of publicity drive?

I would like to add one important point to the original question, however. The aim should not be simply to get people to join volunteer committees. The aim should be to help them contribute productively and efficiently, and therey find satisfaction that enables them to sustain the commitment. Maybe we should look at our norms and practices as existing committee members in this regard.