Ideas for getting to 5% - fast?

[Dale]

I'm looking for some ideas on how to increase our volunteer hours fast. We are well below the required 5% mark. We have approx. 10 volunteers in a broad, mostly rural area; and we are serving approx. 75 patients in this area. Most of our vounteers have a current assignment, and cannot take on much more at this time. I will be training a few more volunteers soon, and have some ideas that will help us recruit more volunteers and eventually get our numbers up. But what about in the mean time... I am under pressure to increase our percentage quickly. Any ideas? Thanks, Dale Willis 573-443-8360

[HVTO]

Here is an example of high school students and their role in hospice. An 18 year old student who is able to be employed at any other institution is able to be a volunteer with hospice. Lots of 18 year old students in high school! The yard work is not just an assignment, it is an opportunity to find out what the patient needs. Granted, this is a more popular route of volunteer hours in the rural communities. In my area, everyone wants their yard cleaned up before all the visitors show. It is a dignity thing, I guess. Surveyors have had no problem with this to date and maybe it is because of the documentation showing how this assistance relates to the emotional well being of the patient.

From the Final Rule of the Medicare Conditions of Participation:
The phrase ‘‘day-to-day,’’
as used, requires hospices to incorporate
volunteer services into their daily
patient care and operations routine in
order to retain the volunteer-based
essence of hospice as it originated in the
United States. The phrase does not
preclude hospices from using volunteer
services for special events or nonroutine
occurrences. Hospices must use
volunteers for day-to-day services, and
may use volunteers for other services as
well.

[Dale]

That's helpful; thanks, Julie!

[Julie Cranz]

Hi Dale. We serve about 100 patients per day and have around 30 direct care volunteers. We typically run 17% so that is well over the 5% mark and I can tell you that our biggest number of hours are also administrative. Here are few things we do:
A local flower shop donates flowers to our hospice once weekly. I pick those up and we have a team of volunteers (3-4) who are here every Tuesday to arrange these flowers in vases (also donated) and then another group of 3-4 direct care volunteers deliver these to our patients every week. This can create several hours as well if this is a possibility. You can also check with your local supermarkets to see what they do with flowers they cannot sell. They may be willing to give you those. The vases are found for 5-25 cents each at garage sales and local consignment stores.
We also have a few "musically-inclined" volunteers who play music one Sat. per month to our NF patients. You may find this talent at area churches. We also just started a Pet Therapy program in our nursing facilities as well.
You may also be able to partner with other agencies (minimum security prisons, state agenies (single moms on state aid programs who need job/skills training) to achieve your goal.
I send flyers to all area churches every spring asking them to announce our need for volunteers thru announcements, church bulletin, via their websites or newsletters. This has worked great for volunteer recruiting here!
I also sent a letter/flyer to the nursing dept head at our local community college, as well as several flyers to be posted in every building of our local community college.
Hope this helps!
Julie Cranz
Hospice of Western KY

[Linda Daniels]

I am curious about this yard work for patients.. with high schoolers also. I do not think these are direct hours with patients and can be counted for hours. according to COPS. Also, using high school students- don't they need supervision because of not being 18+? and also, the liablity to your hospice- Harbor Light does not allow anyone below 18, since HIPPA might be at risk too.

[HVTO]

Your local high school students and college students are a good group to train for the yard work that will be needed to help patients and families this spring/summer season.

We used a local high school health occupations class to go through the online training and now they are preparing to do flower deliveries and yard work. With 10 in the group it should help for some quick hours and the patients/families get a nice yard for the visitors to their home.

[Linda Daniels]

I think you are doing well for having patient's in a rural area. Sometimes bosses have unrealistic expectations of volunteer coordinators. It is wonderful that you will be training new people soon. You could ask each new trainee to bring a friend who is interested-perhaps from their church or any organization they belong to. Get an ad on Craigslist, place a blurb in your community paper for volunteers. I have good luck with Craigslist. Place ads in church bulletins in your area. Ask a minister if you can make an announcement at a church-do you belong to one?
Place flyers in beauty salons, barber shops- coffee houses- etc.
Hope these ideas help.
Volunteers come from many places, but it is not a magic trick- tell your boss in so many words-hospice is a calling- not many people want to do this and many stay for a short time.

[Terri]

Volunteer phone calls to patients (tuck-in program) counts toward your 5% requirement, too.

[Julie Cranz]

Yes. Especially in rural areas, I encourage our direct care volunteers to call the patients at least once to week to see if they need anything, etc. They do not have to travel just to achieve volunteer hours.

[Keith Mann]

Hey Dale, I too am a volunteer coordinator in a rural area. Sounds to me like your number one priority is recruiting and training. My rule of thumb is to have 50% of your census covered by volunteer assignments. For instance, if you have 75 patients, you should have 38 volunteer assignments in place. This means your 10 volunteers are going to need to take on at least three assignments each. This will lead to volunteer burnout quickly!
Try a fun volunteer support meeting and encourage your existing volunteers to bring a volunteer candidate. I suggest a Hospice oriented movie such as Big Fish or The Bucket List. Serve popcorn and follow the movie with a conversation on how the movie relates to the Hospice Philosophy, you'll know right away who your next volunteers will be. Remember in a rural setting, word of mouth is one of your best recruiting tools!

[Dale]

Thanks, Keith. 'Appreciate your thoughts on this...