Youth Workin' It

Consultancy and Resources for Youth Workers and Organizations Worldwide

How Can I Stop Forgetting Important Tasks?

By Leave a Comment

Youth work reminders
Planning it old skool

Q: I keep finding myself forgetting to do important tasks and have missed the occasional meeting at work. What would you recommend for forgetful youth workers like me?!

A: Personally, I ‘d recommend using Google Calendar. It’s a great tool to keep track of your schedule, no matter where you are.

I find it to be far more useful and effective than using a paper-format weekly planner; here are 7 reasons why:

1. Unlimited Space

In a regular planner, you have a finite amount of space to enter tasks, meetings, etc. With Google Calendar, you can add as many entries as you need.

2. Time-based

You can add entries throughout each day and specify times for each task or meeting. This makes it far easier when scheduling everything you need to do, as you can see any available spaces in your schedule at a quick glance and ensure nothing overlaps.

3. Reminders

This is the feature that I find most useful. Google Calendar allows you to set up reminders by email or to pop-up for whenever you need them. These can be specified for x amount of minutes, hours, days or weeks before the event or task is due. If you have a smartphone, you’ll also get scheduled pop-ups on your phone if your Google account is connected.

You can set up as many reminders as you like, so for things like birthdays, I set a reminder for two weeks before and then another for two days before just in case.

4. Recurring Tasks & Meetings

With a regular weekly planner, you have to handwrite each entry, even if it’s the same entry each week. With Google Calendar, all you need to do is add an entry once and select “Repeat”. You can then specify when and for how often this task should be repeated.

For example, if your organization has a team meeting at 9:30 every Monday morning, just set this up once and select repeat. This will give you many options to tailor the recurrence, although in this particular scenario there shouldn’t be any change needed.

5. Intelligent Entry

If you add an entry that says “Meeting at work at 9:30am”, Google will automatically set the time of the meeting to 9:30am and the location as “Work” without you needing to adjust those fields.

(n.b. For further useful – but slightly creepy – intelligence by Google, try sending an email from your Gmail account that includes the phrase “I’ve attached”)

6. Invite Others

Google Calendar has an option to invite others to the meeting or task. If they have a Gmail account as well, this will automatically add it to their Calendar if they accept the meeting/task.

7. Accessible Anywhere

Google Calendar is available anywhere that you have an internet connection, meaning you don’t have to carry around a weekly planner. This makes it far easier to check your diary when you’re on the go and to add entries no matter where you are, particularly if you have a smartphone.

Question: What tools do you use as a youth worker to stop yourself from forgetting tasks or meetings? Let us know in the comments below.

You can also connect with us by:

  1. Signing up to receive our posts via email
  2. Following us on Twitter
  3. Liking us on Facebook
  4. Signing up to our RSS feed

 

10 Ways To Recruit, Manage And Maintain Volunteers

By Leave a Comment

10 Ways To Recruit, Manage And Maintain VolunteersQ: I have a hard time getting and keeping volunteers – they either flake out or burn out. Do you have any tips?

A: Recruiting, managing and maintaining volunteers can be a daunting task. Sometimes you have people banging down your door to help, but that’s not usually the case because you don’t work with the cute little kids or the cool college age students… you work with the tweens (‘between elementary and high school’ i.e. middle schoolers) and teens.

We’ll unpack these areas more in the coming weeks, but for now here are some easy tips for recruiting, managing and maintaining volunteers for your youth work:

3 Tips For Volunteer Recruitment

  1. Tell stories – Share positive stories with people about what good things are happening in your youth work or ministry. Everyone loves a good story or vision to get behind.
  2. Make volunteering organized – Be organized when it comes to schedules and rosters for volunteers. Everyone loves clear, direct information.
  3. Make volunteering easy – Be ready for potential volunteers to apply and have application packs prepared, easy to complete and get back to them in a timely manner. If you say you need help, be ready to get people involved ASAP. Everyone loves to feel needed.

3 Tips For Managing Volunteers

  1. Have clear expectations – Have a clear volunteer policy or ‘job description’ that outlines your expectations. Your volunteers will then know what to expect when they get into it.
  2. Get feedback – Meet with your volunteers after sessions so they can know and share immediately what they think worked well and what didn’t. This shouldn’t take long, so they won’t get burned out by long meetings after a session.
  3. Meet regularly – Meet with your entire team regularly – weekly, monthly or quarterly depending on your organizational and volunteer needs. That way, they feel like they’re part of the team and ‘in the know’ about everything happening currently and in the future of the youth programming.

3 Tips For Maintaining Volunteers

  1. Give them breaks – Schedule breaks and sabbaticals into your volunteer job description or policy so they know they will be able to have a break.
  2. Be professional and reliable – Treat them professionally by being on time for meetings and sessions, calling them, making sure they have their resources and valuing their input.
  3. Incentivize them – Give them incentives in the form of training, particularly with useful and transferable skills like computer skills, people management skills and youth work skills. This can help make up for the fact that they aren’t getting paid, but can still build up their resume or CV.

Here is a bonus tip which applies to each step in recruiting, maintaining and managing volunteers:

APPRECIATE THEM

Find ways to thank your volunteers through calls, texts, cards, dinners, gifts, coffees, recognition nights, opportunities for growth/development etc. Whatever you can do to let them know you value them will go a long way in making sure they get involved and stay engaged for the long haul.

Find out from your volunteers how they feel most appreciated and then do that for them. This doesn’t have to cost you a lot of money, but it will cost you time. The investment of time is well worth it though when you have a team of committed and happy volunteer youth workers.

Question: What tips do you have for recruiting, managing and maintaining volunteers in your youth work or youth ministry? We’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below.

You can also connect with us by:

  1. Signing up to receive our posts via email
  2. Following us on Twitter
  3. Liking us on Facebook
  4. Signing up to our RSS feed

 

How Much Should I Charge For A Youth Retreat?

By Leave a Comment

Youth retreat costQ: How much should I charge for a youth retreat? Quite a lot of the young people I work with are from low-income families, so I don’t want to set the price too high. I want to be sensitive to how much their parents can afford, but don’t know the best way to address the issue with them. Can you help?

A: Money is always a tricky subject, especially for activities that cost more like youth retreats. Like you said, it’s important to be sensitive to how much parents can afford without simultaneously embarrassing them that they may not be able to afford to send their child on the retreat.

Once you’ve started investigating possible youth retreat centers, you’ll have a much better idea of how much your budget will need to be. This is because the center will probably be the largest part of the budget. Check out our previous post for a more detailed guide on how to calculate a youth retreat budget.

Before making a final decision on which center to book, we’d recommend putting together a Parent Cost Feedback form.

What’s A Parent Cost Feedback Form?

The form should contain a table that lists the following:

  • A shortlist of three retreat centers
  • Some pros and cons of each center
  • The estimated cost for a child to go on the retreat
  • Empty boxes beneath each option

Try to estimate the total cost of the retreat and put this on the form, rather than just putting down the cost per child for the center only, as this will give the parents a better of idea of how much they can expect to pay overall. It doesn’t have to be a final quote at this stage, but enough to give parents a good idea of what the options are.

You could include more than three youth retreat centers on the list, but this might give too many options to get a true gauge as to how much parents can afford.

Beneath the details of each center on the form, the empty boxes are for parents to indicate which would be their preference. All they need to do is to put an ‘X’ in the box for the retreat center that they would prefer, taking into account the cost along with the pros and cons. Using only an ‘X’ helps ensure anonymity so that parents aren’t embarrassed to choose the cheapest option.

At the end, you should have a good idea as to which is the most affordable option for the parents.

How to get the form completed

How you get the form completed will depend on your contact with parents. Here are some different methods depending on parental contact:

Church

Many youth retreats are organized through churches, so if this applies to you then the best option will probably be to make an announcement during a service. Leave the Parent Cost Feedback form at the back of the church for them to complete as they leave.

Community Center

If parents drop their children off at your youth club at a community center, ask them to complete the form at that point. It’s best to get this done at the beginning of the evening rather than at the end, as parents will probably just want to get home when picking them up.

No Parental Contact

Perhaps you never get to communicate with the parents of your young people for whatever reason. If that’s the case, mail them a copy of the form along with a return envelope with a stamp on it to encourage them to reply.

Another option is to set up a survey through Survey Monkey. This is free and you can email the link to parents if you have their email addresses.

Downloadable Parent Cost Feedback Form Template

When you buy a copy of How To Plan A Youth Retreat, you also get exclusive access to many different youth retreat templates and forms. This includes a sample Parent Cost Feedback form, as well as a blank feedback form that you can complete with details of the retreat centers you find.

Discover more about the book using the link above or buy it from Amazon by clicking on the image to the right.

Question: How do you find out from parents how much they can afford for activities like youth retreats? Let us know in the comments below.

You can also connect with us by:

  1. Signing up to receive our posts via email
  2. Following us on Twitter
  3. Liking us on Facebook
  4. Signing up to our RSS feed

 

Preparing For Christmas – Youth Work Session Idea

By Leave a Comment

Preparing for Christmas youth work session ideaIt’s less than 10 weeks until Christmas, something that seems to have come around way too quickly. It’s therefore worth making plans for any special programming or events you want to run during the holiday season, particularly if you haven’t started already.

Instead of being the sole person deciding on what activities you do at Christmas, why not involve your young people – this can help your young people in making informed decisions, encourages youth participation and helps them gain important life skills.

To help get you started, here are a few suggestions on how you can get your young people involved:

1. Fundraising

Christmas is a great time to organize a youth group fundraiser, so here a few ideas for how to do this:

Involve your young people in deciding what type of fundraiser to organize, how to plan it, when and where to do it, its promotion, etc.

2. Partying

Organize a Christmas party, but one that’s planned by the young people themselves. You could put them in charge of:

Make sure they’re also included in the less fun parts too, like the cleaning up after!

3. Volunteering

Christmas can be a miserable time for many people, whether that’s due to poverty, loneliness or some other factor. Encourage your young people to get involved in the local community and to make a positive change in the lives of others – they’ll find that they’re the ones who benefit the most.

4. Planning

Once Christmas is over, it’ll soon be the New Year. Depending on how far out you’ve already planned, the weeks leading up to Christmas could be a great opportunity to discuss with your young people what issues they’re currently facing.

The answers you receive can then help guide your programming for the forthcoming year, ensuring that the topics you cover will have a true resonance with your youth.

Question: How do you involve your youth when preparing for Christmas? Share your ideas in the comments below.

You can also connect with us by:

  1. Signing up to receive our posts via email
  2. Following us on Twitter
  3. Liking us on Facebook
  4. Signing up to our RSS feed

 

How To Run A Silent Auction – Part 4

By Leave a Comment

How to run a silent auctionFor the last few weeks, we’ve been advising on how to run a silent auction – check out part 1, part 2 and part 3. Today is the fourth and final part of the series:

After The Silent Auction

1. Unpaid items – At the end of the auction, there could well be some items that haven’t been paid for yet. The most common reason for this is that the winning bidder had to leave before the bidding on the item ended. If that’s the case, you’ll need to contact the winner the next day, using the contact details you collected on the bidder registration form.

There may also be winning bidders who change their minds for whatever reason. Although it’s not an ideal situation, the best option is to contact the next person on the bidding sheet to see if they’re still interested in the item.

2. Items not won – You may also end up with some items that no one bid on. Here are a couple of options of what to do in that scenario:

  • Sell the item on eBay – Depending on the item, this might result in greater interest in the item, due to the global nature of this marketplace
  • Retain for a future auction – If you do this, make a note of how much you’d set the opening bid at. Next time, lower this starting bid to encourage at least one bid on the item

3. Check money vs winning bids – Total up the value of the winning bids (that have been paid for already) and check this against the amount collected via cash, checks and credit cards to make sure that it all balances.

4. Deposit the money – For cash and checks, deposit these at the bank in the usual way. If you’ve also accepted credit cards, arrange for this money to be deposited by whichever credit card merchant you’ve used.

5. Thank donors – Send a thank you letter to every person, business or organization who donated an item for your silent auction.

Depending on how much the winning bid was, consider also informing the donor of how much their item raised for your youth group/charity. (This may not be such a great idea if an item with a value of $200 only sold for $20)

6. Thank winning bidders – There would be no items without donors, but there would also be no money without the winning bidders. It’s therefore a nice gesture to send them a thank you note too.

If possible, try to provide them with a tangible way that their money has helped support your work. For example:

  • Your bid of $240 means that you’ve sent two young people from low-income households to our youth retreat
  • Your generous bid of $75 for the movie tickets means that you’ve bought many pieces of sports equipment that we’ve needed for a long time

Put the focus on what the bidder has done, as this will help encourage them to be involved in your next silent auction (or other fundraiser). i.e. “you’ve sent” and “you’ve bought” rather than “we’ve sent” and “we’ve bought”.

This series on how to run a silent auction has also been a part of a larger series on how to plan an evening fundraiser extravaganza. For even more ideas, check out all our youth group fundraisers.

Question: Is there anything we’ve missed from this series on how to run a silent auction? We’d love to hear your additional ideas in the comments below.

You can also connect with us by:

  1. Signing up to receive our posts via email
  2. Following us on Twitter
  3. Liking us on Facebook
  4. Signing up to our RSS feed