Evaluation of the Managing Spontaneous Volunteers Project: Northern Rivers Community Gateway
Status: Completed January 2019
Client: Northern Rivers Community Gateway
Background
NRCG’s Managing Spontaneous Volunteers Project aims to build the capacity of the local community to respond to disaster events under a coordinated model that integrates with the formal emergency management system, following learnings from the 2017 Northern Rivers (Lismore) flood event.
The Managing Spontaneous Volunteers Project will be delivered in mid-2018 and develop, facilitate and implement a Spontaneous Volunteer Management Framework to manage spontaneous volunteers in the Lismore, Kyogle, Richmond and Hunter Regions. Program staff will apply specialised knowledge around volunteer management, disaster management and community resilience to achieve the following objectives:
identify pathways by which volunteers can offer help and be engaged quickly and effectively with the aim to ‘do no harm’ to the impacted community
enhance the understanding and collaboration between agencies to facilitate a coordinated integrated approach to managing spontaneous volunteers across different organisations
develop a structure for management, supervision and support of volunteers during a disaster response, pre-identify a range of tasks and activities suitable for a range of skill sets
develop, test and deliver ‘just in time’ training
develop a communication strategy and key messages to both help manage expectations and encourage and support ongoing volunteering into longer-term recovery and preparedness activities, from 2 weeks to 6 months and beyond.
Approach
The purpose of this project is to support Northern Rivers Community Gateway through a partnered and collaborative monitoring and evaluation approach for the Managing Spontaneous Volunteers Project. The specific objectives of the project are to:
develop an agreed evaluation framework and data collection plan to guide data collection and evaluation activities in parallel to service delivery (evaluation framework)
provide data compliance and performance reporting over the duration of program delivery (performance monitoring)
increase understanding of the factors that underpin the successful delivery of and outcomes generated through the Managing Spontaneous Volunteers Project and develop options for refining, replicating and scaling (12-month evaluation).