A volunteer manager is needed to take over part of the work of the executive director because the number of volunteer opportunities and the number of volunteers at PEOI has expanded so much that one person can't do that alone. There may be a need for more than one volunteer manager, for instance for each of the languages or activities. PEOI is entirely run by volunteers, therefore it is crucial that volunteers find their activity at PEOI productive, rewarding and satisfying. The volunteer manager must fully understand the nature of the work at PEOI: this requires substantial time and effort. Once this is completed, just an hour per day will probably be sufficient for writing a few messages to PEOI's new or existing volunteers. Because of the initial investment in learning how to be a volunteer manager at PEOI it is highly desirable that a commitment of several years be expected from a prospective volunteer manager.

The major role of the volunteer manager is to keep PEOI's volunteers productive by making them satisfied with their work at PEOI. This requires to maintain volunteers membership in each PEOI's community by, for instance, recruiting new members, making new members feel welcome and part of their group, checking that a new member is indeed a desirable addition and guiding new members into tasks that are best suited for them. A secondary role is to keep track of the progress made by the members in their work, give recognition for all work, especially if it is well done. A third role is to deal with new volunteers who are not suitable for the assignment they selected, or who become inactive or dissatisfied with PEOI.

Volunteer registration at PEOI:

All volunteer work at PEOI is conducted online with PEOI's procedures. For security reasons, PEOI's volunteers must be registered and their registration is cleared only after their identity is verified. A volunteer unwilling to provide requested personal information will not be cleared. Moreover, since all assignments at PEOI require specific knowledge and skills, volunteers who do not have or can't demonstrate such knowledge or skills, are also not cleared. The executive director, John Petroff, is responsible for clearing each new volunteer. The volunteer manager is notified of new volunteers who express an interest, register and are cleared or not in a listing maintained by the executive director and is accessible to the volunteer manageer once logged in.

Organization of PEOI's communities:

There are seven communities at PEOI according to the activity conducted:

1- students
2- employers
3- partners
4- faculty including instructors, authors and translators: this community develops courses at PEOI and is therefore responsible for PEOI's teaching
5- staff volunteers such as administrators, programmers, illustrators and other support function, some staff volunteers also develop courses
6- board members
7- donors

Volunteer managers deal with faculty (i.e. authors and translators) and staff volunteers.

Members of each community have their own registration and log in methods as can be seen on PEOI's home page. Faculty and staff volunteers must join at least one group. Groups (or teams) exist for

- each discipline
- translation languages
- support activities such as web site maitenance and illustrations

Most groups (but not all) have coordinators or team leaders who are responsible for the work inside their team or group. A volunteer manager is assisting and supporting team leaders by caring for volunteer welfare (and therefore productivity). When a group does not have a team leader, the role a volunteer manager become paramount. In such case the volunteer manager does not need to do the work, but assign it to the team member capable of doing it.

Most groups have projects, and projects are usually divided into tasks. Team members can chose tasks they want to do, or ask the team leader to assign tasks for them. The task assignment and control system is only intended to show what is being done and what remains not done, which can be especially useful for a new member of a team. To do any of the actual work, a task does NOT need to be assigned.

Maintaining membership in volunteer groups:

First of all, the volunteer manager must maintain the team(s) and seek to expand them. New volunteers are recruited from a number of services such as Online Volunteering and volunteermatch.org.In addition, new listing may need to be placed as the tasks in a team change. New volunteer opportunity listings are written by the executive director. A volunteer manager can assist in formulating the volunteer opportunities, and in some case write them. To make sure that the volunteer manager is notified of the expiration of the listings and of new expressions of interest form volunteers, the volunteer manager may become an administrator at Online Volunteering for some of the listings. 

Welcoming new volunteers :

Expressions of interest for new volunteers are emailed to the executive director, and/or to the volunteer manager once he/she is the administrator of some listings. A welcome message should be sent to each new volunteer, along with some guidance on the registration procedure and the type of work best suited for the volunteer's background. It is crucial that the new volunteer be told to join a team, otherwise his/her name will not appear in the team's roster and the volunteer manager will not know that a volunteer has registered. Once the volunteer has registered and completed the email address verification step, the executive director or a volunteer manager should clear the new volunteer's registration.

Clearing, modifying and removing volunteer's registration:

Clearing a volunteer's registration is done in "My registration" part of "My account" of the volunteer manager. The volunteer manager can open the registration form of every member of the team by selecting the volunteer's name in the bottom menu and clicking on either "faculty" or "staff" as the case may be. Clearing the volunteer's registration requires putting "0" (i.e. zero) in the "deficiencies" box, your name or initials in "verifiedby", and the date in "dateverified" (in the form 2005-04-26), and clicking on Save in the "Modifying deficiencies, contact and evaluation" box. Explanations for clearing volunteer's registration appear at the bottom of the "My registration" page. Naturally, the volunteer manager must clear the registration of volunteers only if the registration appears legitimate and worthwhile. If the volunteer does not seem to belong to the group notify John Petroff. The volunteer manager can make changes in the registration form of the volunteer (for instance, if the language of work or the qualification have not been properly set), and can remove the registration of the volunteer altogether (by cliking on "Remove";  which causes the registration to be archived.)

Assigning tasks:

Work in each group is distributed by the team leader (if there is one) or is decided by a volunteer sometime in consultation with the executive director or a volunteer manager (if there is no team leader in the group). After reviewing a new volunteer's registration form and CV (if one has been supplied), it will be possible to suggest appropriate tasks to the volunteer. At the same time, guidance should be provided on where to find explanation on how to complete the task (e.g. in Volunteers needed, explanations in the "Authors" section and each respective procedure). The tasks can be assigned by the volunteer manager (see the explanations in "Select my tasks"), or the volunteer can choose them him/herself in "Select my tasks".  

Creating new projects and setting up new tasks:

Creating new projects is the responsibility of the executive director or team leader, but when there is no team leader a volunteer manager can be expected to do so. As work is completed on some projects, new projects will come on line (such as creating a new course or translating a newly completed course). Some may be initiated by the volunteer manager him/herself. Creating or modifying a project and its tasks is performed with the "Set up projects" procedure which is found in the "Projects" section. There are now 23 standardized project types and 35 standardized tasks. Setting up a project should consist of using the automated process of giving a name to a project, specifying the course for which is intended, selecting from the standardized project types, and when the project is created, using the automated process of inserting tasks in the project. If need be, new project types can be set up with the "Edit project names" (accessible directly from the Set up project procedure). Likewise, new tasks can be created with the "Edit task names" procedure (also accessible from the "Set up project" procedure).

Initial training of a volunteer manager:

A volunteer who applies for the position of volunteer manager must complete a substantial training because he/she must have a comprehensive understanding of all the activities at PEOI, and have done him/herself some of the work of volunteers the volunteer manager will be guiding.

The training starts with

1- reading of all the pages of general text on PEOI;
2- visiting typical courses such as FN501EN and seeing how students study and take tests;
3- going through a careful reading of PEOI's course design explanation in "Authors".

After that, the prospective volunteer manager must register in one of the crucial activity such as author, and preform adequately in that function. Thus, for instance, since you will be managing authors or translators of university courses you must demonstrate the ability of developing all parts of an university which include

1- chapter text
2- assignments
3- review questions
4- concept summaries
5- reading lists
6- automated test questions
7- cases or lab work projects.

Since PEOI's core activity is in develop online university courses, you must be able to create such courses in all its teaching methods such as automated test questions. If you have never taught at a university, you will probably have difficulty with this (and consequently difficulty in advising others how to do it).

For comments and suggestions, please email to John Petroff listed in contact information.