Other Archived Pages Organizer Coordinator Guides Shift Captain Coordinator Guide As an organizer of organizers, this guide will provide best practices to help you fulfill your responsibilities of coordinating with Shift Captains.
Table of Contents
Onboarding
Scheduling
Maintaining Engagement
Supplies & Resources
Onboarding
If someone expresses interest in taking on additional responsibilities within the campaign as an organizer, you’ll need to help them get situated in their new role.
Scheduling
As the Shift Captain Coordinator, part of your role is to get shifts scheduled, and to ensure that each shift will be hosted by a shift captain.
Add shifts to the Volunteer Signup sheet each week, planning out about a month or so.
Beyond the regularly scheduled shifts, it's good practice to add additional shifts to focus on (e.g. weekdays, different locations and events) in order to make sure we’re not oversaturating certain events, and to attract volunteers with differing availability.
Encourage organizers to add their own shifts to the signup sheet, or to share ideas to a list such as this one .
Message your organizers’ Slack channel with this request.
As you plan out shifts for the month, coordinate with existing shift captains to confirm their availability for their regular shift(s) as well as any others they want to take on.
Ask if they have any upcoming unavailability. If so, ask them to send a message in Slack to see if someone else can cover the shift.
Ensure these shifts either get filled or canceled if there is no one to host. Try reaching out to consistently involved shift captains to see if they can cover.
Each week, review upcoming shifts to ensure there is a shift captain signed up.
If any shifts are missing a host, coordinate with the shift captains to fill it.
Message your organizers Slack channel with the shifts that need to be filled.
Reach out to shift captains individually as needed.
Maintaining Engagement
While organizers are responsible for helping to keep volunteers engaged with the campaign, part of your role is keeping the organizers engaged in their leadership role and holding them accountable.
Check in with newer shift captains to see how they are doing in the leadership role, and if there is any support you can provide.
Check in with shift captains who haven’t hosted any recent shifts (last ~2 weeks or so).
See if they’re still comfortable with their level of involvement.
Confirm if there are other shifts that would work better for them, or if there are potential new shifts that may work for them to host.
Ask them if they’re available to host an upcoming shift.
Message all other shift captains every few weeks to check in.
Confirm they are providing orientation to new volunteers.
Ask if they are still doing a briefing and de-brief at the beginning and end of their shifts.
If needed, remind them to take group photos during their shifts to share on Slack!
See how they're doing and how you can support. We want to be careful to avoid burnout!
Supplies & Resources
It’s important to ensure that shift captains are equipped with all the resources they need to host their shifts.
