Volunteer Lethbridge’s comprehensive approach to vetting ‘revolutionary’

By Al Beeber - Lethbridge Herald on October 29, 2022.

Herald photo by Al Beeber Volunteer Lethbridge executive director Amanda Jensen says her organization is on the brink of something amazing.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDabeeber@lethbridgeherald.com

Amanda Jensen feels Volunteer Lethbridge is on the right path to something special.

Volunteer Lethbridge, which has operated in the city for 41 years, is an organization that connects volunteers to non-profit organizations of many kinds here.

Its model is being examined by other agencies who are exploring the possibility of following in Volunteer Lethbridge’s footsteps.

During a recent funding request to Lethbridge city council acting in its capacity as the Economic Standing Policy Committee, the executive director of Volunteer Lethbridge said the service offered is “revolutionary” and is being watched provincially and nationally.

The organization is seeking an ongoing funding arrangement with the City in the range of $210,500 to $369,700 annually “for the continuation and growth of service to the non-profit sector in Lethbridge.”

Volunteer Lethbridge streamlines the process of screening potential volunteers for organizations here by screening them through that organization.

Screening takes between three and four hours per volunteer, Jensen said Friday at the organization’s downtown offices, and it isn’t time just spent in one sitting. It can take up to five weeks for a volunteer to be fully vetted after a criminal record check is done by Lethbridge Police Service.

By doing the screening, Volunteer Lethbridge saves organizations the work and effort of doing that task themselves, meaning a volunteer only has to be screened once for multiple potential agencies.

Volunteer Lethbridge pays for the background checks if the screening is done through them.

Many organizations are coming back online now that the COVID-19 pandemic has prompted loosening of restrictions and they need volunteers to get back into full swing.

Volunteer Lethbridge plays a role in speeding up that process. Advisors can help people determine what role they are interested in and direct them toward a suitable organization. This speeds up the recruitment process and also helps organizations get volunteers who are ready to hit the ground running.

“A traditional volunteer centre – most volunteer centres – runs in a way that their primary position is promoting volunteer opportunities on behalf of non-profit organizations. And then having a place whether it’s online or in person, where a volunteer goes and figures out what they might want to do.”

Then the volunteer connects with organizations themselves.

“So what ends up happening is the volunteer centre removes itself from that relationship so we would never know how many volunteers we attracted for a certain organization, whether the relationships worked out, basically whether we were being successful.

“It started with a request from the City of Lethbridge for us to create a new more functional database of volunteers for the community that could be filtered by interest, length of time they want to serve, certifications or education that one has, or whether they want a one-off or join a board and do something long-term or whatever,” Jensen said.

Volunteer Lethbridge started down this path a couple of years ago and as it created the database. “We really saw the power of what it could do, not only what it was intended to do but also in gathering data and putting the Volunteer Centre back in the relationship between the non-profit and the volunteer,” she said.

The next step was to talk to the community and ask what they wanted the organization to do.

“We’re here to serve, we’re a capacity-building organization. So what we heard loud and clear was they needed support with screening volunteers, having volunteers that were ready to go once they bridged their door. That is also unique – there’s not another volunteer centre that we know of that is gathering information in this way, screening a volunteer to the level they would need,” she added.

Volunteer Lethbridge does the application forms and administration paperwork for non-profits here – the number of those groups being between 100-150 in a range of segments including social services, sports, health, the arts and environment.

VL’s work not only reduces costs for organizations but also makes volunteering easier because people can be screened just once, she said.

At volunteer fairs, prior to the change, volunteers would stop at numerous tables where they’d have to fill out an application and staff at groups would have to deal with them separately.

Volunteer Lethbridge has groups send people interested in volunteering to them to do the intake and screening and only people who are committed and serious make it through the screening process get to the non-profit.

“Once they get there they can move around to other volunteer organizations without going through the application and screening process again. That’s the revolutionary part of this. For the volunteer, it opens up a whole new world of volunteering,” said Jensen.

“This is also going to allow us to collect so much more data. I don’t think there is a community that is really nailing it in terms of data collection, in terms of community involvement and civic engagement,” like Lethbridge, she said.

“It’s difficult because there’s a lot of things going on that are informal which are wonderful but for the things that are more formalized that we can track, imagine having data that would contribute to the economic and social outlook of Lethbridge as a community in a positive way.”

During the pandemic, the volunteer manager position was often the first to be cut during layoffs because volunteerism tanked, Jensen said.

“The stress that a non-profit organization felt pre-pandemic is just exacerbated in terms of their volunteer management post-pandemic to the point where some of them can’t do it because in order to do it properly, it has to be done off the side of somebody’s desk,” Jensen said.

“I feel like we have this model that is working and it is achieving what we wanted it to achieve but we’re in the position right now where we only have the resources to essentially receive what comes to us and react, rather being more pro-active and ferret out more volunteers to help our member organizations.

“We’re on the brink of something amazing and we need an investment so that we can make it sing,” the executive director said.

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