When organizing volunteers for an event it is good to keep the rule of 50% in mind.

This rule is fairly simple, and typically holds true. This rule applies to calling people who you have already identified as being volunteers.

The rule is:

For however many volunteers you need at an event you need to schedule twice as many. And to get twice as many people schedule, you’ll need to make twice that in dials.

So:
80 Dials = 40 Scheduled Volunteers = 20 Volunteers

Applying the rule to a real campaign problem could go something like this.

We need to make 2,500 calls this week. We figure that a volunteer can make 30 calls an hour. This will require about 83 volunteer hours. We’ll make calls 5 days in that week, that puts us at almost 17 volunteer hours a day. Figure someone will stay for at least 2 hours we’ll need between 8-9 volunteers a day. For the week we’ll need 45 volunteers to reach our goal of 2,500 dials.

To attain 45 volunteers, we will need to confirm 90 volunteers, and make 180 dials to get them.

What happens if more than half actually show up? Then you are on easy street! Just be prepared for more to show but plan on the 50% marker.

Remember volunteers are the heart of any campaign, treat them like the gold that they are!

This entry was posted by Guy Warner on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 8:27 pm and is filed under Phones, Volunteers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.