The AFA Volunteer Assessment – What Happens Next?
Anne Arseneau, Volunteer Coordinator
Amanda S. Bureau, Director of Member Services

In early May, 174 of our 231 volunteers participated in our inaugural volunteer assessment process. That’s an outstanding 75% participation rate and we thank you for your involvement! You may be wondering, “well what happens after I took the time to fill out all those online forms?”

As you will recall, each volunteer was to evaluate their OWN performance as a volunteer, evaluate the performance of their supervisor, and then if you are in a position that supervises others, you were to evaluate all those individuals who “report” to you. Needless to say, it’s a whole lot of data that we now have from this first year! Please rest assured, we are using that data...

Right now, conversations are taking place with EACH board member and the conference chair to discuss the results of the evaluations and look for any trends or possible areas to address. (We chose to do this evaluation process in May so that “mid course” corrections could be made if volunteer appointments were not on track).

After these conversations are complete, the assessment results will be delivered back to you electronically. You will receive a feedback sheet that compiles your own responses to the online assessment as well as the responses of your supervisor(s) and the individuals you oversee. After these results are distributed each volunteer “supervisor” will be expected to discuss the data with the AFA volunteers they supervise. You should hear more about these conversations from your volunteer supervisor during the month of July.

Ultimately, we hope that this will also be helpful information as we enter into the 2007 AFA Volunteer Appointment process (who can believe that is right around the corner?!).

We thank you for your willing participation in this process that we hope contributes to building a better volunteer experience within our Association.