Friday, March 29, 2013

Weekly Volunteer Update

Dear Fabulous Volunteers and Fosters,

First, let me thank you again for the very warm welcome you’ve all given me. I’m really getting a sense of how lucky I am to be working with such a kind and generous group.

I will be starting to send out weekly emails and, at the same time, reducing the amount of emails you get daily. This may take a little while, but you should look for important info in these emails, like the following!

As you (hopefully) saw in Erica’s earlier email, we’re about to be in foster home crunch. One of the biggest things that you can do to help us is to get the word out about fostering. We have foster fliers that we would like to get out and about, and since I can’t be everywhere at once yet (working on it!), hopefully I can harness the amazing power of numbers of this list. I’ve uploaded 3 flyers onto THIS PAGE. They should open in nice downloadable PDFs that you can print and post. If you don’t feel like printing at home, that’s fine, too- we’ll have some copies of each on Karen’s desk in the office.

You’ll notice that the page is something you’ve never seen before, because it’s brand new, and very much a work in progress: Our brand new Volunteer and Foster blog! (I promise it will get prettier.) Stay tuned because I think you’ll like what’s coming!

Finally, at the bottom of the flyer page, you’ll see a link to track your hours. This is the same link that is on the For Volunteers page on Hopalong’s main site. We are gearing up this data base and it’s time to get everyone in there, and this is NEW- including fosters.  We’ve been informal about tracking volunteer hours for a while now, but it’s very important for grant purposes as well as to grow the program to have a good idea of our service hours. I’d love it if you write me back to let me know you’re out there so I can put you in the database, but if not, you’ll eventually get moved over there anyway. I’m more than happy to help you learn the system, and if you absolutely positively hate computers and databases, I can still accept your hours on paperplease make sure they get to me.
Banshee and happy adopter!

That’s all the coordinating that I’d like to do this Friday, and I’m sure you’re done being coordinated, so here’s my weekly shout-out: Thank you Deb, Jean and Ellie for a great meeting Monday! These ladies came in on Monday evening and filled me in about all things foster. Pro tip: roll up the carpets!

Have a great weekend, everyone, Happy Easter if you celebrate it, and if I don’t see you before Monday, GO A’S!!!