Inspired by some other recent threads: what is it that makes great volunteers great?
I’m less interested in the general “they care about teams” or “they’re on top of their game” and more interested in concrete attributes of great volunteers. These can be role-specific or role-agnostic.
Hoping this can:
I’m going to give some of the special traits of the RI that inspected us this year.
I really like when volunteers (across the board) explain what they are doing and why something is happening. Super helpful from FTAs, CSAs, Refs, Queuers, and Robot inspectors. You need me to queue right now because we’re one or two matches away? Absolutely, we should get moving! You’re inspecting our wiring? Great! Student X can answer any questions. You’re troubleshooting our connection issues by checking the firewall? What a helpful problem solving tip for the future!
It doesn’t always need to be an in-depth thing, but I like information with context.
I also really like when volunteers speak clearly, not too fast, and at a reasonable volume over microphones. This mostly applies to pit admin and on-field talent. Just in case someone can’t read between the lines: Please don’t yell into mics!
Lastly, I like volunteers who are well fed*, well rested, and generally taken care of* - when they’re feeling their best, teams get a better experience!
*Thank you, VCs!
Remembering that they are there not to act as a thin yellow line to keep teams off the field, or a herd of zebra to catch teams cheating, or a bunch of blueberries to ferret out mentor built lying teams…
We’re there to put on a show of the best parts of STEM so students have access to opportunities they wouldn’t otherwise have had.
Volunteers are great! They are key in bringing energy to events. But to me, what makes volunteers great are simply being there and encouraging teams. A few encouraging words to a team slipping off the scoreboard or cracking a joke to bring some optimism when a team’s robot suffers a rough ahem fall can mean the world to a driver. Check out the FTA here (3:05) helping out the red alliance team that didn’t climb so well (relax its my team lol i was there) - I imagine he was suggesting ways to get the robot down lol - would’ve loved to hear that conversation. FYI, in the end the robot was fine.
Afterall, simply being there makes the event actually possible, and hence, without them, we wouldn’t have fun competitions.
…
One of my most fond memories of a volunteer was a talk with the head referee. It was at a Week 1 2020 competition, and things were not going to well for us. Our team had felt that “the field had been misjudged” numerous times, resulting in me, the drive coach, going in and speaking to the head ref about why certain calls were/weren’t made. I believe I went up 9 times.
This last match would be my last in-season match 
(i didn’t know it bc of covid), which makes it sadder. Our team lost to the first alliance (we were 8th) in quarterfinal tiebreaker, and if we didn’t put our climber up a few seconds too early (we had this reoccurring human error throughout the competition causing our driver to break down and program a code to stop it on the way home), we would have won by one point. Because I noticed another alliance partner received a penalty, we were curious as to what it was - we had accepted defeat, we were not looking to question. When I went up, the head ref first congratulated us on our performance, and then continued to calmly explain the penalty, which he did very well (each time as a matter of fact, and their point of view - Afterall, in an argument - it’s about really listening to one another, and not explaining why the other person is wrong but how you see things differently and that its okay). As we finished the conversation, he apologized for having to make such hard calls, and wished us the best of luck in our future conversations.
I remember the ref, I simply don’t remember his name though unfortunately. Regardless, volunteers that simply take the time to congratulate and encourage teams are great. In retrospect, he certainly did not have to apologize for sending us home early as it isn’t his fault. With that logic, if you are a boss that needs to make a tough decision and the workers are split 50-50, at the end of the day, half the people in the room will disagree with you whatever you chose. There will always be some sort of opposition (not 50-50 ideally but who knows). Regardless, he made those tough calls, and clearly didn’t do it out of spite. Lol I was amazed he could tolerate me enough to say those encouraging words by the end of the competition.
It may seem cliche, but still. Volunteers are great for everything, from simply being at a competition to doing your best to help teams and put smiles on their faces.
I’m a pretty big fan of pulling in recently graduated alumni as volunteers. This both works to find volunteers that understand how their actions impact the student experience AND lets college aged students quench a bit of their thirst for FIRST without trying to add on the intense time commitment mentoring a team adds to their already underestimated college commitment.
Examples: pit crew make great RIs and CSAs. They both understand what the hats do to teams and tend to have a good idea of how to get through their respective processes.
Drive team members make outstanding referees. They’ve interacted (directly or indirectly) with referees quite a bit and know the things a referee can do to make life easier on a drive team.
Either make for great judges, scorekeepers, queuers, etc.
It’s been touched on before, but I think being extremely clear about whether a statement is a recommendation or a requirement is important. For an inspector, does “I don’t like the way this is wired” mean it’s sub-optimal, or it’s illegal? For a pit queuer, does “you need to go to the field right now” mean the team is 60 seconds from being DQ’d, or that everyone would be real happy if they got to queue 15 min before their match? Clear and efficient communication can do a lot to help teams minimize stress and maximize their event experience.
The volunteers that stand out to me are the ones that act with a calm confidence and treat the students with dignity. Especially in the simple things. Everyone has been reminded to keep their safety glasses on at some point, especially those of us that flip between regular glasses and non prescription safety glasses. Some folks come at you like a gotcha reporter looking for the scandal and other folks come in assuming that you aren’t trying to get away with a major crime by having the wrong glasses on your face. Simple interactions like that can really set the tone for students, whether they see the “authorities” as adversarial, or more that all the volunteers are mentors they didn’t know they had. There are so many things students need to know about competition, it’s very difficult to sufficiently prep them for every little detail. I particularly like it when the key volunteers such as FTA or Head Ref, come around to the pits and greet the teams individually in their pits and ask questions of the students that aren’t about the robot, such as “How are you doing?” or “Is there anything you want to know about my role?” that is separate from the drivers meeting. This past weekend at the NE Pease event, my kids were so put at ease by the head ref coming around and talking to them towards the end of load in night, her demeanor was excellent, it was a simple conversation, but I could see them visibly relax. I often see the same confident supportiveness by judges. Acknowledging that not every conversation is going to be a hug fest, I appreciate a calm firmness in volunteers as well. I think back on times when our team has signed up for practice apparatus use and another team passive aggressively (or aggressively) refuses to move off when their time is up. Having a volunteer that can calmly correct something without overheating the situation is so helpful to all. I don’t enjoy when students have to call me over for my support because they are shy about getting pushed around by other teams or their mentors, and the volunteers are shy about enforcing whatever their domain is. Sometimes that’s hard for younger or less experienced volunteers, though not universally by any means.
This is really simple: are you there for yourself, or are you there for the kids.
Some people are there for the former. Volunteering is a self-serving exercise. Maybe they want to climb the ladder to be a KV, or enjoy wielding power. Usually this is very obvious when you interact with them at an event.
Guys like Nick Hellewell and Mark Leon were ALWAYS there for the kids. What that means is that every action you take is designed to enhance the experience for the participants that matter: all the students. Being enthusiastic all day, always interacting positively, not letting any negative emotion make it through to them. You can be kind and caring no matter what role you’re in, and every volunteer has the power to make or break the event for the students. I always want to be someone who stands out after events, that the kids remember positively. There were many such volunteers that went the extra mile to make sure I had a great time when I was in high school. I want to be that person for the current generation.
I like to think that there are far more folks there for the kids then there for themselves. As long as the percentage of folks doing this for the right reason approaches 100%, we’re doing good.
As we prepare for the 2023 competition season, I’d love to hear more on this:
What attributes do great volunteers have? Bonus points for lessons that those of us managing volunteers can share with our volunteers (teachable skills, attitude, etc.) or that volunteers can read on their own and adopt.
One that understands the stress of competition from the perspective of the team. For example, I don’t need a queuer raising there voice or speaking down because we’re not in double queue as we’re frantically trying to make last minute, critical fixes to the robot. A great example is an FTAA telling us (again) that we need to turn the robot on for it to connect to the field without making fun of us or anything like that.
In essence, a good volunteer requires a student-centered attitude and an understanding of what it’s like to be a student at an event.
Some of the best volunteers are the ones working behind the scenes that are effectively transparent/invisible during a competition.
I say that in a good way — great volunteers make the event run smoothly and solve problems without affecting the event flow or having to bring in FTA/lead coordinators for help.
If I’m at an event and it’s running on schedule, personal interactions with volunteers are minimal, field setup is accomplished successfully without teams even noticing (because of no delays etc), inspections are quick and effective, queuing is well organized etc, I know it’s a great volunteer effort behind the scenes making that happen
This topic was automatically closed 365 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.