A woman offered to volunteer at a local shelter. She heard back almost a year later.
That story came from Melyssa Jaskiewicz, executive director of Leveling the Fields, a nonprofit that runs sports programmes for third to fifth grade girls in elementary schools. She was interviewing a candidate for a volunteer role and the candidate mentioned it in passing:
“she told me that she’s been volunteering for a local shelter. And when she reached out to them, she didn’t hear back for almost a year. And I said, What?”
— Melyssa Jaskiewicz, Leveling the Fields, on Unscripted Non-Profit
She is fair about it — she calls that an extreme case and assumes something got lost. But she does not think the general shape is unusual: “you do hear a lot about people that reach out to volunteer and they don’t hear back for a couple of weeks or what have you.”
Enthusiasm has a shelf life
Somebody who signs up for a community cleanup is not making a considered long-term commitment. They saw a post, they felt something, they filled in a form. That feeling does not survive three weeks of silence. It barely survives three days.
Melyssa’s fix was a person, not a system:
“putting A volunteer manager in place for us was incredibly important. And we get back to people, I mean, within a couple of hours.”
— Melyssa Jaskiewicz
A couple of hours against almost a year. That is the whole difference between an organisation that grows a volunteer base and one that keeps wondering why turnout is flat.
Be specific about what you are actually asking for
The second half of her answer is the part most event organisers get wrong in the opposite direction. Leveling the Fields gets a lot of interest, which is a nice problem, and a lot of it does not match what they need:
“we’re not your typical show up, pack a bag. And then leave. Like we’re not your typical daily volunteer organization. Like we expect a lot from our volunteers and they’re really the ones running our organization.”
— Melyssa Jaskiewicz
Her programmes are staffed by paid, trained, background-checked coaches, because they are going onto elementary school campuses. Somebody who wants a pleasant Saturday with the kids is not what that role needs, and pretending otherwise wastes both people’s time. So she says it plainly up front, and offers a different door:
“if you wanna join our mailing list, donate, like you can still be a part of what we’re doing. but we wanna be super, super clear up front about what we’re asking of people.”
— Melyssa Jaskiewicz
Why local businesses show up, in their own words
Rick Haggerty has 25 years in home improvement and runs several companies. He sat on a private school’s board of trust for years and encourages his staff to take time for whatever cause they choose. His reasoning was refreshingly free of marketing language:
“we don’t necessarily do it from a marketing standpoint. We do it because it’s just right. You know, I mean, it’s just the right thing to do… whether it’s getting low, you know, getting involved in your local Rotary or the chamber of commerce”
— Rick Haggerty, on Unscripted Home Improvement
That is who is on the other end of your sponsorship email. Not a marketing budget calculating impressions — a business owner who already believes they should be doing something and has not been given a specific, easy way to do it.
A checklist for the next event
- Name one person to own the inbox before you publish the sign-up form. Not a committee. A person, with a target measured in hours.
- Auto-reply immediately, then follow up personally. The automated reply buys you a day. It does not buy you a week.
- Say exactly what the role involves — the hours, the checks, the physical work, the age limits. Clarity loses you the wrong volunteers, which is the point.
- Offer a second door for people who cannot do the thing but want to help. Mailing list, donation, lending a truck, feeding the crew.
- Ask local businesses for something specific. Bags, gloves, a dumpster, lunch, a prize. Specific is easy to say yes to.
- Write down what happened afterwards with a count and a couple of photos, and send it to everyone who turned up. That is how you get them back next time.
The unglamorous truth
Community work does not usually fail on vision. It fails in the gap between somebody offering and somebody answering. That gap costs nothing to close and almost nobody staffs it.
Quotes are verbatim from the raw Riverside transcripts, trimmed only for false starts and filler. More at Cleanup Sparta TN and Community Clean Links.