Volunteers speak up!

43% of Store To Door volunteer order takers have been helping elderly clients order groceries for over six years and 26% of current shoppers have been showing up at 6AM to shop for people they don't know for over six years!  These are just two highlights of a yearly survey recently completed by volunteer order takers, shoppers and office volunteers for Store To Door.  Overall, volunteer rated the experience as excellent, were volunteering to support Store To Door's mission and felt prepared after their training to tackle the volunteer task they'd chosen.  
Specific suggestions from shoppers for areas of improvement are:
Reduce downtime between shopping and checkout;
Gauge numbers of volunteers to number of order;
Start shopping at 7AM rather than 6AM.
Specific suggestions from order takers for areas of improvement: 
More hands-on training on the online ordering system
Improve the online ordering system; add more products;
Referesher or back-up training on specific topics would be helpful;
Ability to maintain a list of special order items from order to order.
This tiny summary reflects the tip of a whole iceberg of comments and suggestions for improving the volunteer experience at Store To Door.  There's many items we can impact and several we cannot, at least not in the near term.  But, we (Kristen Hoplin, Volunteer Coordinator, Sarah Skjolsvik, Program Manager and Mary Jo Schifsky, Executive Director) appreciate the time taken for everyone to get back to us and will do our best to show our volunteers how much we do appreciate them.