Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Challenges in recruiting volunteers

I recently agreed to serve as the CYO director at St. Augustine Catholic Church, through my work in development and marketing at St. Augustine Catholic School. With the apparent demise of the Opportunity Scholarship program, it had become clear that we needed to more aggressively recruit parents who could afford to pay the school's tuition (currently $4,700). There are some parent volunteers at St. Augustine School and a strong volunteer ethic at the parish, but the CYO program has been limited to JV and Varsity basketball this current year.

Through signing up for three web-based volunteer services and using my own social network (Twitter, Facebook), I have come up with five volunteers, but only one seems resolved to attend the required 2-hour Child Protection workship and make a fingerprinting appointment, as required by the Archdiocese of Washington. It's also been a challenge to find volunteers in the areas where we have needs (e.g. CYO sports like basketball, soccer, softball and track and field). I am continuing to plug away and have the strong support of the pastor, which I am grateful for.

I am going to be meeting with a charter school head who is interested in talking about volunteerisim. Should be a good discussion.