I would really like to hear how other programs develop and run their volunteer tutor training. This has been a growing problem for our small center. All of our tutors are volunteers, we have no paid teachers. The no-shows on tutor training days is becoming a real problem.
We used to have a 2 day training weekend - Friday night and most of Saturday. This was before my time so I am not sure why exactly that was changed. It moved to 9-3 on Fridays because it was easier to staff. That attracted a lot of retirees, but not a lot of tutors who wanted to take a day off of work or volunteer at night so we still had a student waitlist. We then switched off every other month - once on Friday, once on Saturday to try to open it up to more people. We then developed a fairly easy online piece (basically go through the volunteer handbook, watch a few (hopefully) engaging videos to introduce you to the 3 programs, fill out forms in advance), then come to a 3-hour session where we ( the program coordinators) meet with our prospective tutors, introduce ourselves, thank them, go over important things about procedure, collect and do some training specific to our programs. This has not really helped our no-show problem or attracted more volunteers.
Any comments or suggestion would be appreciated.
Thanks!
Pam