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Recruit and retain

Need to get volunteers to help out? Here's our top tips; and then the best ways to stop them walking out on you...

How do you attract people? My advice would be....

- Look the bee's knees at freshers' fair. Have a professional-looking stand (rather than a couple of A4 logos stuck to the pin-board behind) with enthusastic volunteers (rather than a couple of mates suffering from a hangover) wearing either branded t-shirts, or failing that colour co-ordinated (ie red t-shirt and black jeans). Make sure your stand says "we take what we do seriously"

- Get details of everyone who comes and visits the stall. Get them to fill in a membership form, have a chat with them about what interests them and once they have gone write down what they said on the back. If you can get a digital camera and get a photo of them.

- Why? Personal touch. Next time you meet or phone them, mention stuff they've said to you (ie "You're interested in news, I'd really like you to meet our Head of News..."). Make them feel that you know them...

- At your intro-meeting or whatever, do a stunt. Make the room go dark and play them 30" of the best bits of your station. Don't run an event, create an experience. Have some-one enthusiastic doing the MC'ing.

- Give all your exec big signs to hold up. You can't expect people to remember exactly who they had to see. Avoid using acronyms and "industry terms" - say "presenting" when you mean "head of programming". This applies as well when you get them to fill out a form (what does "production" mean to someone outside radio? does advertising mean sales or marketing?).

- Get them in the studio. I respect that people have organised training schedules but the worse thing you can do is say "cheers for bothering to put your name down, we'll be contacting you in six weeks to do your first training session". Let them sit in on shows, shadow producers or the head of music.

- What one persons sees as "friendly" another ones sees as a "clique". You can't get rid of cliques (you'd have no friends if you did), what you can do is manage them. Get new members into the conversation, avoid telling "in-jokes" and if you do explain it to the new members, *buy them a beer*.

How do you keep them?...

- You don't restrict them trying to getting a career ... you encourage it. This is how many volunteer organisations work - people who do well from a volunteer organisation are more likely to support it rather than think "great ... they told me I'd never be a presenter and look I'm doing traffic'n'travel at Acme FM"

- Get people from outside to come in and do a talk / demo workshop. It doesn't have to be anyone big or impressive (I'm cheap!), exploit your alumni. One problem with student radio is you will get a lot of ex-hospital radio 18 yr olds thinking "what does this 21 yr old who never did radio until 18 months ago know over me". Again, it's a problem across all the voluntary sector. So people are much more likely to respect and listen to people who have been there and are now working in the industry.

- Special projects are a fantastic way of keeping people motivated. If you've got a full exec then give other people things they can go off and do - from research how much would it cost to get branded lollipops to writing the new record library database for SQL (here my computer terminology stops). People are much more likely to do things if (a) they can see the point of it (b) they are not going to be held back because Fred disagrees / didn't pull his weight.

- Write to your local commercial station when you next have an RSL. Tell them, they will listen. Tell your presenters you are doing that. RamAir in Bradford used to have a really good relationship with the Pulse, and they used to take our graduates and some of our students. Now they've got a similar relationship with Galaxy, and presenters who want to get ahead know that doing well at RamAir means Galaxy will take note.

- Get them to a Student Radio Association conference and definitely the Student Radio Awards. If you ever need to pull a presenter down a peg or two it's when they are at the Awards and they realise that there are hundreds of "next big thing" and they are not the ones on stage. It is a humbling experience...