Garden Evaluation
MEASURE: NUMBER OF VOLUNTEERS
What's a unique volunteer?
Each unique volunteer is a single individual who participated in your program. The individual is counted only once during your project. This number is useful to tell how many new people volunteered in the garden.
For example, let’s say you have 15 workdays over the summer, and a total of 15 of the SAME people came each time. It would be misleading to report that “we had 225 volunteers in the garden over the course of the summer ” (15 volunteers x 15 days). In truth, you had a total of 15 volunteers.
Now let’s say you had 15 community workdays, and each time, 15 TOTALLY DIFFERENT people came. Then you can genuinely say that over the course of the summer, you engaged 225 volunteers. See the difference? This is why it is so useful to have volunteer logs! Head counts alone won't tell you if your volunteers are unique, regular, or brand-new.
Click the button below to download and example. Be sure that volunteers are signing in for workdays so you can keep track of who is new and who has been before.
Who are your regular volunteers?
Regular volunteers are great! They demonstrate dedication to your program. Typically, someone who attends over half of available volunteer days is a “regular.”
Your regulars are great to cultivate as leaders, recruiters, and ambassadors of your program. You might also highlight their work alongside more general program data.
Volunteers hard at work fixing equipment and pulling weeds for Little Washington Growing Group's community garden.