- In this proposal the intended audience for Project IV is: Community Service organizers, community leaders, people interested in volunteering
- Why should your audience care about the topic and your proposal? Community service and volunteers are important to the community and being able to finish community service projects are important.
- One thing I think I did well in my proposal is: Trying to explain the importance of having volunteers and keeping them during the length of projects.
- One thing I am not so sure about in my proposal is: Is there enough information, is it clear enough.
The retention rates of volunteers doing community service is a problem all organizations find themselves having when undertaking a community service project. Sometimes the retention rate is so low that the organization has to abandon the project all together or scale it back to a more manageable goal. I have recently, through researching community service projects at my church, how the retention rate affects even small projects. If someone who you are counting on doesn’t show up it might throw off the whole plan and have to rework it at the last minute, or cancel it all together. Community service is something a lot of people talk about doing, or wanting to do, but not many are willing to put in the time to do it. Most people don’t realize how little time is needed usually if everyone works together to do even a large project.
In this paper, I want to research and find out how other local volunteer organizations are dealing with retention rates, especially in this current economy. I wish to find out how they deal with them currently, and how they have addressed them in the past. I wish to find out what current plans are in use, what is working and what is not working, and propose a solution, hopefully, or a combination of ideas that will help all organizations deal with the problem of not only finding volunteers but keeping them once they have them.
I will focus mostly on other churches in the area, but will branch out to other local organizations and find out how they are tackling the problem. Many people don’t realize how important volunteers are to our community and what they actually do. To do the research on this I will be contacting organizations and volunteers groups and there leaders. I will try to find statistics to back up any facts I find, and will use the internet to try to find more sources I might not be aware of.
Peer Review Answer all these questions about your partner’s paper. Be sure to read the writer’s statement so you have a sense of where they are coming from with their proposal.
ReplyDelete1. Read through the proposal. Is the intended audience (as stated in the writer’s statement) evident? How do you know? Also, does the writer use “I think,” “I believe, “I plan..,” or any other redundant phrases. If so, let them know that these need to be changed and/or deleted.
It reads less like something written to community organizers and more like something written inside a journal someplace to remind themselves of what one would like to do. I see this because most of the proposal is a statement of “This is what I would like to do” as opposed to “This is what I am going to do.” A Improper use of there in the final section.
2. Is there a concise discussion of the subject/topic being proposed? What is the topic and where in the proposal is it first mentioned? It should be in the first two paragraphs.
The discussion for the subject of Volunteers and their retension rates is mentioned quite often and throughout the reading. It is first mentioned in the opening paragraph.
3. Is there a concise discussion of the intended focus, aka, thesis statement? This is where you can say “In this paper/project I…” What is the intended focus statement, and where does it fall in the proposal (what paragraph?) If there is no intended focus statement be sure to let them know, and also relay what you as the reader see as the possible focus.
From what I could gather the thesis statement wasn’t really there. It had lots of discussion about the topic but little in terms of action brought about by an interest in the topic. I’m still left wondering how you intend to increase retension rates for volunteers?
4. What is the rationale for choosing the subject/topic? Who cares, or should care? Why? This should be outlined in the proposal. If not, let them know, and also relay what you as the reader see as the possible rationale.
The rationale is that for volunteer services to work properly volunteers need to stay around for the long haul and not show up once in a blue moon because of boredom.
5. Answer this question:
The writer makes me care about volunteer rentension rates, by stating volunteering projects fail because of poor retension rates.
By filling in these blanks, does this answer the question “So what?” Using specific information from the proposal itself, how does it answer it? If it is not clear, let them know.
It answers the questions of why but it’s all in discrete terms. An example of a project that was important that was abandoned or reshaped because of retension rates of volunteers vs a project that was incredibly grand because of the endering presense of volunteers would do wonders for this.