Volunteer suggestions

G* L*

Regarding the message:
"My name is Don McKay....Lethbridge, Alberta......We will have around 
140 plots when finished. But the garden right now is a real mess with 
weeds and no real cleanup.

So I am searching other community gardens for help .    On how to get
members more involved on clean up."
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Following are suggestions from my experiences with the Bryn Mawr 
Garden Club, Minneapolis, MN and other volunteer organizations:

-Complete asset mapping (discussed in a listserve item a few weeks 
agos) and recruit volunteers from this resource.
- Self-promote your community garden whenever possible to maximize 
your volunteer base.
- Host a volunteer party, party with food and drink, describe projects, 
recruit people, display presentation boards showing gardens in the 
past and plans for the future.
- Knock on neighbors's doors and recruit them.
- Phone past garden members and other neighborhood volunteers.
- Organize a cleanup day (it's always more fun to do activities as a 
group).
- Advertise cleanup day with newspaper articles, flyers.
- Provide food and drink for the cleanup day.
- Provide name tages and a sign-up list for the day of the cleanup.
- Provide garden informational demonstrations on the day of the 
cleanup; look to the local equivalent of University Extension Master 
Gardeners for a resource pool of trained volunteers.  Topics could 
include:  composting techniques (since you'll have a pile of garden 
debris after the clean-up), edible ornamental landscaping, preventing 
vegetable diseases through thorough garden sanitation practices.
- Provide volunteers with a reward:  information, new friends, food, T-
shirts, buttons, etc.  (possibly donated by local businesses, 
governement?)
- Recognize the contributions of volunteers.
- Prevent volunteer burnout by holding a minimum number of 
predictable, regularly scheduled meetings (but no more than 
necessary); and by striving to produce quick tangible results.

Good luck to all of us as we seek to increase our volunteer pool!

Greg Lecker
LightSpaces,
A Vision of Michaud Cooley Erickson
Suite 1200
333 South Seventh Street
Minneapolis, MN  55402
612.673.6871
Fax: 612.339.8354
glecker@michaudcooley.com

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