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ANSWER REQUIRED IN A TIMELY MANNER
In our community the club initially enrolling a new volunteer is responsible for the reference check. Is marking a reference check complete with the date the same as signing off on a reference check? I ask as I am being asked to do this for a club, but did not myself do the check.
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Hi Maryann,
Yes, if a reference check is marked as complete with the date, that is an indication that the reference check was completed and signed off. Head coaches and team managers should now have the ability to complete this for themselves in the portal. If the club has verified with you (or a CC, VC, or Data Admin) that the check was completed, you can also login to the portal, mark the reference check as complete, and date it.
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Thanks Jay, but I already knew this and you did not answer the question.
With paper forms a signature was required to say the check had been done. With the online initially an email was sent to Farkhanda to state the check was satisfactory; I remember her saying you kept that on file.
In the portal there is no way to indicate who performed the reference check, other then who actually marked it complete. I need a clear statement that if I mark a check completed o behalf of a club I will not be held responsible if later there is a problem. Alternatively I need a field where I can indicate who performed the check.
MaryAnn
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We will be moving to a centralized reference check process early in the new year, so going forward this will not be an issue. Requests for reference checks will be sent out by email, with a link to the online reference check form, and completed reference check forms will be searched daily. I will then add the date of completion in the back end.
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Sure. One point that I am not sure is being taken into account is that we have volunteers who are aged, or otherwise resistant to the online world in general. I have one club whose head coach does not have a computer. There is going to have to be an offline path to do things for a while yet.
Good meeting today btw.
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Here’s the way I look at it: I want our volunteers to focus on tasks that they are willing and able to do. In TO, we have several head coaches who say, “I don’t want to deal with that online admin stuff.” And I’m fine with that – if narrowly focusing on coaching and mentoring is what you want to do, and what you’re good at, do it – IF and ONLY if the club has a volunteer who is willing to be the team manager and handle those responsibilities. Going forward, you can be a head coach of a club with zero knowledge or interest in computers, but you CANNOT be the Team Manager. That is a role that will require using the interface and handling enrollments and other matters online. If you aren’t computer savvy, you can volunteer, you can coach, but you can’t do admin. That genie won’t be stuffed back into the bottle.
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This has bugged me for a while, what happens if a club has nobody willing to take on the IT portion of the job? That situation can exist, especially with the portal being so badly designed. Also, there is plenty that a manager does that does not involve the portal. I am not trying to stuff the genie back into the bottle, I am trying to make the job manageable for my volunteers.
If nobody is allowed to take on the job does the club close down?
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We would treat a situation like the one you describe in the same manner as if a club had no one willing to be a head coach – we would conduct a thorough search to identify a suitable candidate for the role. Using Oakville as an example, we received 60 volunteer registration forms through our old form system over an 18-month timespan. I am confident that a suitable candidate could be found from a pool of that size.
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MaryAnn, of the 57 unique volunteers who sent in forms (three people sent in two), 16 are active volunteers right now (28.1%), 17 more have had an active enrollment within the past year (29.8%), and 24 have not volunteered (42.1%). A conversion rate of 58% is pretty good, although higher rates are possible – Aurora is in the 65% range; Durham hits about 75%.
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Thanks for the breakdown, it is useful. We had a person step forward as volunteer coordinator who did the job briefly. Unfortunately he subsequently quit without telling anybody. When we realized that nobody had responded to about 2-3 months worth of applications we did our best to follow up but not surprisingly many had lost interest. Another volunteer stepped forward but in the end the portal defeated her so I am attempting to manage submitted registrations through to enrollment. I have also been working quite hard to make sure every club has SOMEBODY who can do the basics on the portal. The club I was referring to earlier has had particular challenges so I have been working with them.
I have a question. It looks like the fields for marking a volunteer check completed, and the date of completion seem to be grayed out, I know at one point I had been able to complete these fields. I am assuming that this is towards the ‘streamlining ‘ of the process that you previously mentioned? In the mean time I am telling clubs to follow up on references then send an email to Pratima and Farkhanda, cc’ing myself when that is done. Anything else I should be telling them?
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There was a loophole in the portal (which I mentioned when we were on the conference call with SOC last month) that volunteers could enter in that a reference had been contacted and enter in the date of contact. It appears SOC closed that loophole in the past day or so. As it stands, only the DDs, Farkhanda, and I can enter in that info now – as long as the emails your clubs send include the date of contact, that will be fine. Also, please ask the clubs to cc me on any of those emails. Once the process is fully rolled out, this won’t be necessary, but in the interim (hopefully no longer than a week or two), the process you suggested will be fine.
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