Open Forum

How do you facilitate carpools for volunteers in your institutions? Traffic in our city is only getting worse right now. While our Museum is fortunately not in the heart of downtown, due to the geography of Seattle with all the water there are bridges that act as choke points which pretty much every single vehicle trying to get into the city have to pass through. Some of our volunteers carpool but many of them don't really have a good way to get connected to each other to see about creating new carpools, exacerbated by the fact that we have hundreds of volunteers spread over many departments and programs who don't know or talk to each other. With tech these days I feel there are a couple of potential solutions, and I wanted to float that question out to the brain trust here to see what you do.

Thanks!

Sean

We created a "Volunteer Directory" which lists all volunteer alphabetically, and gives contact information, addresses, email etc.  Volunteers can connect with each other to make plans. We find that volunteers who can find others who live near them, or on the way to the Museum or other events, connect with each other and figure out ways to carpool.

I can imagine the directory could also list volunteers by neighborhood or region around the area, indicating that there are several volunteers in each specific area.

For events, I always ask who would be willing to drive and for them to let me know how many their car can hold. Then I try to assign participants to cars randomly, but also with a nod to personalities. And always flexibility and last minute change are tolerated and encouraged!

Kristi

Kristi Lucas-Hayden

Volunteer Director

707.284.1271

kristi@schulzmuseum.org

Charles M. Schulz Museum and Research Center

2301 Hardies Lane

Santa Rosa, CA 95403

How do you facilitate carpools for volunteers in your institutions? Traffic in our city is only getting worse right now. While our Museum is fortunately not in the heart of downtown, due to the geography of Seattle with all the water there are bridges that act as choke points which pretty much every single vehicle trying to get into the city have to pass through. Some of our volunteers carpool but many of them don't really have a good way to get connected to each other to see about creating new carpools, exacerbated by the fact that we have hundreds of volunteers spread over many departments and programs who don't know or talk to each other. With tech these days I feel there are a couple of potential solutions, and I wanted to float that question out to the brain trust here to see what you do.

Thanks!

Sean

How do you facilitate carpools for volunteers in your institutions? Traffic in our city is only getting worse right now. While our Museum is fortunately not in the heart of downtown, due to the geography of Seattle with all the water there are bridges that act as choke points which pretty much every single vehicle trying to get into the city have to pass through. Some of our volunteers carpool but many of them don't really have a good way to get connected to each other to see about creating new carpools, exacerbated by the fact that we have hundreds of volunteers spread over many departments and programs who don't know or talk to each other. With tech these days I feel there are a couple of potential solutions, and I wanted to float that question out to the brain trust here to see what you do.

Thanks!

Sean