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Monday, 03 May 2010

Dear all,
As one of the aims of my marketing project is to suggest advertisement channels to St Joseph Pastoral Centre for their recruitment of student volunteers, it is necessary to identify the motivations behind student volunteers. According to Sergent et al. (1990), student volunteers’ motivation could category as below:
l   Affiliation, or the desire to interact with others. These individuals perceive volunteering as a leisure activity.
l   Altruistic needs, feeling good by being a good person and services target value their contributions.
l   Egoistic needs, gaining valuable experience which benefit personal development as well as future career path.
The author also found that people will tend to look for volunteer environment that will allow them to use their skills and abilities and express their attitudes and values. He is suggested that, for example, if undergraduate students who is major in accounting looking for volunteer opportunities. He or she should be asked if they want to volunteer as the position related to their major subject, before arrange them into other position. This suggestion would also go into my report for St Joseph Pastoral Centre, it this way would benefit the participants’ personal development, as well as Career development.
Reference:
Sergent M.T. and Sedlacek W.E. (1990), “Volunteer Motivations Across Student Organizations: A Test of Person-Environment Fit Theory”, Journal of College Student Development, Volume 31.

Monday, 26 April 2010

Dear all,
As part of my volunteer project, I have going through some literature review about student volunteers. Most of them did mention about the benefits to students through volunteering, and I found an article which written by TOMKOVICK et al. put those benefits into the most typical category, they included:
l   Academic development (mastery of discipline material, problem solving, and critical thinking)
l   Personal development (personal efficacy, leadership, and communication skills)
l   Social development (reducing stereotypes, facilitating racial and cultural understanding, and social responsibility)
l   Career development (confidence, networking, and “real world” experience).

The article also support my findings that students are relatively more focus on personal development and career development compare to adult volunteers. Even for individuals with highly altruistic dispositions, they also preferred recruitment advertisements which listed the egoistical advantages. Specially, egoistical advantages included certificates obtain or qualification gaining afterward certain hours of commitment, the possibility to increase ability to get paid job, and getting career related networking connections.

Reference:
Tomkovick, C., Lester, S.W.,Flunker, L and Wells, T.A. (2008), “Linking Collegiate Service-Learning to Future Volunteerism Implications for Nonprofit Organizations”, NONPROFIT MANAGEMENT & LEADERSHIP, volume 19, number 1, Fall 2008

Monday, 19 April 2010

Article sharing:Advertisement Style and the Recruitment of Charity Volunteers

Dear all,
As part of my project is about suggesting advertisement channel to the charity organization that I work with—St Joseph Pastoral Centre. Today I would like to share an article which is very useful to my project. It is call “Advertisement Style and the Recruitment of Charity Volunteers” by Roger Bennett and Rita Kottasz.

According to Bennett and Kottasz (2000), young people were relatively more interested in acquiring skills while looking for volunteering opportunities, and older volunteers wanted to make new friends and enjoy their time during the volunteer process. It is necessary to focus on their different preferences while establishing volunteer recruitment advertisements. Bennett and Kottasz (2000) also support my finding that young people, particular for Middlesex University Hendon Campus’ students in my project, prefer short term commitment rather than long term commitment while looking for volunteering opportunities.
More specifically, students prefer a volunteer position which is not the leader role, have no time commitment, not heavy responsibility and they would be able to leave the position anytime. On the other hand, charity organizations require volunteer to commit themselves so that they would arrange more resources on volunteer training programme. This dilemma is faced by most of the charity organizations. Only a few charities are in the fortunate position of having waiting lists of volunteers. Such as concert halls which volunteer can see or hear performances.

Reference:
Bennett, R. and Kottasz, R, (2000), “Advertisement Style and the Recruitment of Charity Volunteers”, Journal of Nonprofit & Public Sector Marketing, Vol. 8(2) 2000

Monday, 12 April 2010

Dear all,

Today I am going to share an article which is very useful for my marketing project. It is call “Do Not Forget about Your Volunteers: A Qualitative Analysis of Factors Influence Volunteer Turnover” by Andrea Galiette Skoglund.

In this article, the author believes that volunteer retention should be value more than volunteer requirement, and an effective volunteer training programme is the key to maintain volunteers for a significant period of time as it will engage participants in some way. The careful thorough of the initial training experience(especially for the first six months), effective volunteer management and high degree of personal satisfaction achievement will always lead to a successful volunteer training programme. There is some key element in the programme which must included, they are:

-               Makes the participants feel good
-               Recognize about participants’ initially anticipated and help them to accomplish it.
-               Pay attention to the participants’ large projects about their volunteering.
-               Make sure participants’ have the chance to share experiences, communicate with others and develop support groups.

I shall talk about different article related to my project next week.

reference:
Skoglund, A.G., (2006), “Do Not Forget about Your Volunteers: A Qualitative Analysis of Factors Influencing Volunteer Turnover”, Health & Social Work, Volume 31, Issue 3, Pages 217-220

Monday, 05 April 2010

Dear all,

Today I am going to share a bit more from the survey I conduct among Middlesex University Student on the subject of choosing charity organizations for volunteering. Five main factors would be taken into consider when Middlesex University students are about to volunteering in a charity organization, they are:

l   Certificates obtain or qualifications afterward
l   Increase the ability to get paid work
l   Getting career related networking connections
l   Convenient location and time
l   Personal interest in doing so

It shows that students mainly prefer volunteer opportunities which could relate to their future career, it takes three out of the top five. It is very thought provoking though the one with least respondents chose is “services targets value the contribution I make”. Seems like they are not going to value their own volunteer contribution from their services targets, but more prefer it as a kind of formal recognition such as a reference letter or certificate.

I shall talk more about the result from this survey next week.