Hello there, I'm a new voice on here. My name is Megan and I started my VISTA term with the Volunteer Administrators Network and Seattle Works in April. I was thrown into planning a conference on volunteer management immediately. Luckily for me, Bevin Wong (another VISTA at Seattle Works and contributor to this blog) had been working on the project and laid very good tracks for me to follow. The conference happened on June 8, so I didn't have time to blog about the planning process. But now that it's over and I have feedback results, I'm going to give you a recap!
The conference was for VAN, which is a network and resource for volunteer managers. We hosted 85 managers and 14 speakers. The theme of the conference was "Invest in Ourselves" because often volunteer managers are under-valued (and under-paid, under-resourced and any other under- you can think of) when really, they enable organizations to expand their efforts and continue running. So we wanted to give the people who came tools to both increase their productivity and make them feel good about themselves.
Things I never thought about when planning a conference:
-You have to get petty cash for a raffle. Huh.
-Nametags need to be alphebetized otherwise they're impossible to find at registration!
-Speakers are actually pretty willing to present for you, for free, if you ask them.
The good news is that once things are set up for success, the day of the conference goes smoothly! And people had a good time (in the feedback survey, the conference was rated about 3.5/5 in all categories!) which is all anyone can really hope for.
Also, I'd love it if you checked out the VAN website!
Megan Ingram
Professional Development Coordinator
Seattle Works/Volunteer Adminstrators Network
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