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Municipality of Kincardine must welcome back its volunteers before it's too late |
Letter to the Editor To Comment on this article Click Here |
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| To the Editor: Re: Doors Open Kincardine – Lack of Volunteers As volunteer co-ordinator for Doors Open Kincardine during its six successful years, I have watched with interest and anger the explanations and excuses emanating from the Municipality of Kincardine for the cancellation of the event. Volunteers were always a challenge for Doors Open Kincardine (as with any event requiring volunteers), but we always managed to find enough to fill 80 to 100 duty slots. What was different this year? One of the major differences is that this municipality has gone out of its way in the last year to make it clear that it does not want any volunteers. By killing all volunteer citizen committees it has alienated most of the people who would normally volunteer – for Doors Open or any other event. I doubt if the municipality could now find volunteers for any event. The municipality, I understand, also prohibits its employees from volunteering for any municipal event and from doing any “overtime” work which might be required outside of office hours. A comment from a friend in Walkerton sums up a large part of the volunteer problem. He said “only volunteers can recruit volunteers”. With the successful Doors Open programs, we had a committee of about 10 hand-picked volunteers all of whom were active in other parts of community life. We tapped into their strengths and range of contacts for volunteers. Every one of them spent many hours on the phone talking up the event and recruiting volunteers. We had our team in place by early September and then had a party/briefing event to make them feel welcome and part of the team. Municipal employees, no matter how good they may be, have very little chance of recruiting volunteers. The municipal employees who tried to run Doors Open should have realized this early in the game when they could have stopped the program before its cancellation became a serious embarrassment for Kincardine.
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Timing is also essential for success. We started recruiting volunteers in April for the October event. We had event publicity placed in every possible location in the downtown and in the surrounding area by early May. Event posters were in almost every retail outlet in the municipality by June. People knew about the event and were more interested in volunteering. I never even saw a poster for this year’s event. Until the municipality wakes up and realizes that it needs willing, capable and interested volunteers to make the municipality work, no program like Doors Open has a chance. It may be too late, but, if the municipality is serious about wanting to have events involving large numbers of volunteers, it must make a new concerted effort to repair the damage done by its current policy and create an environment where volunteers feel welcome and appreciated. Paul
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