along this line our school will be kicking off a new volunteer program this year, everything from guidelines, logging of hours, a district volunteer applictaion,volunteer orientation, etc will be covered. WE are also kicking off a star volunteer program in that every volunteer will be required to fill out a volunteer profile, questions are about how many years they have volunteered, where they like to volunteer, best thing about volunteering, their hobbies, favorite quote , etc. From those profiles we will choose random 8 volunteers a month to profile on our new volunteer bulletin board, and will also be listed in our school newsletter. The goal is that EVERY volunteer gets recognized by the end of the year. that is the only way that we can guarantee that no one gets left out...we are very excited about the whole program. We found out while doing the PTA Schools of Excellence in Parent Involvement Assessment that our school lacked in the Volunteer area...so this is a step!!!

The only problem I see with that is that to offer it each semester, you are only allowing a few people to have the spot. No matter what criteria you establish you may have someone who feels they were slighted and that they were more deserving. You can remove that by doing this.... If you establish a criteria (like a certain amount of hours voulenteering)....put the name of every person who meets the criteria in a hat and pick a name out at a meeting and award the parking space.

I have been pondering an idea to have a special parking spot for volunteer of the semester. What is crazy is that I cannot define the criteria for selecting someone. I am trying to establish a volunteer system that appreciates that each person has different capacities for volunteering and different interests. To me the single mom working the night shift at the local hospital who still finds time to show up to an occasional board meeting and to participate in some (minor) way at functions is very impressive. More so, in some ways, than the mom who has the luxury of time to participate in everything. Soooo, I need an evaluation criteria or approach that is robust enough to embrace all of the different kinds of volunteers and our philosophy. Can anybody help?