Guest Post: Carol Blattau, Mariner Management
In the last post, we gave you an overview of how the volunteer learning journey concept was developed as well as how it can help your volunteers take charge of their training thus leading to more qualified volunteer leaders.
In this post, we’ll talk about how to begin building a volunteer matrix that taps into the diverse skills, knowledge and energy of your volunteers, and puts your volunteers into the driver seat of their own training.
To frame the approach, we can start by looking at the 5 basic learning and development levels identified by Mariner Management.
- Emerging or new volunteers are members who would like to contribute to the organization but likely have limited knowledge and skills in the four areas (institutional knowledge, association governance, leadership and project/role specific skills/knowledge).
- Learning volunteers have engaged in their first organized role within organization, working on a deliverable or on a team with a specific outcome to achieve. They are essentially your emerging leaders with a basic knowledge in the four areas.
