Documenting a Volunteer Issue

Purpose of Documentation

• Institutional Memory: Staff can keep track of an individual volunteer's behavior over time. This is very useful if a volunteer doesn't consistently come around, or for getting a new staff member updated on the volunteer's negative behavior.
• Liability: Keeping a (secure and private) detailed record of negative behavior is never a bad idea, especially if a really irate volunteer accuses us of overreacting or unfair discipline (i.e. "You never told me I wasn't allowed to look at porn here! Why you gonna 86 me?")

How to Document a Volunteer Issue

• The subject of the RT ticket should always be simply the volunteer's name and their Free Geek ID number
• Refrain from general venting and stick to specifics. Explain what the behavior was, when it happened, who it affected, how they did it, etc. (Think: who, what, why, when, where, how). The more specific, the better.
• Keep it professional and objective; a volunteer issues ticket is not the place for sarcasm or jokes, nor personal comments.
• Here are some examples of volunteer issues documentation:

Bad example: Ali is really annoying and takes up my time with stupid stuff. She's way uncool.

Good example: Ali Briggs (#34390) interrupted me in my office yesterday (8/19/09) to tell me, at length, about how she had just drank 2 Monster Energy drinks in 20 minutes and was really hyper. Although I pointedly told her that I was busy working and that I was unable to talk and that she was interrupting me, she continued to talk about how Faith was cooler than Buffy. I finally had to shut my door.