We Heard You and Are Taking Action

Heidi picking up her thank you gift.

In our last issue we asked you to complete a simple survey to give us an idea about how we could improve our newsletter. We were happy to have received some great feedback and want you to know it has not gone unheard.

First of all congratulations to Heidi Boehm who was the winner of the random drawing for those who completed the survey.  Thank you ALL for your valuable feedback. We'd like to address some of the concerns that were brought up through this survey.

1. 71% of you most like stories about current and upcoming volunteer opportunities. Starting now we will have two features in our newsletter that will help you find the opportunities that need you the most. First our Featured Partner Organization article will tell you a little more about one of our Partner Organizations that are doing great things in our community. You'll also be able to click on a link to sign up for the opportunities they need volunteers for. Second, you'll find our Featured Volunteer Opportunity article which will highlight an opportunity of interest. These opportunities may need a lot of volunteers, may require special skills or may just be unique and we hope by sharing the opportunity it will help the organization find the volunteers it needs.

2. 85% of you agreed that you like the monthly newsletter format. We are excited to see that you are interested in hearing from us and will continue to provide our newsletter on a monthly basis.

3. It was mentioned in a couple different ways that what you want most is to get out there and volunteer. One of the things we are doing to help make the process easier to volunteer is our transition to a new website. In order to better align ourselves with our fellow HandsOn Network affiliates, we will be switching technology platforms later this year. The new website will be much more user friendly, have better search options and offer you the opportunity to let us know what skills you have in case organizations are looking for volunteers just like you.

We are also working on plans that will better utilize Project Leaders (trained volunteers who have taken the next step to help lead others in volunteering) to provide ongoing, managed projects that provide a quality experience with significant impact. Our plans also include better working with our partner organizations to assure that when you sign up for an opportunity you know what you're signing up for (we'll do our best to cover the who, what, where, when and why) and you receive a response from the partner organization (if one is needed - some of the opportunities just require you to sign up and then you receive the address information and can show up to volunteer).

We will continue to provide articles about best practices in volunteering which we hope will help first time volunteers or those looking to branch out to new volunteering experiences. Throughout the year we will also provide ways for all our volunteers to provide feedback so that we can continually work to improve our services. We hope you will continue to visit our website and our social networks to stay up to date on the latest volunteer needs. Again, we thank you for taking the time to provide your feedback and want you to know your voice has been heard. If you would like to provide additional feedback please email HeatherM@uwsn.org.