Tracking Members Volunteer Time

[RADIOMAN015]

Interestingly recently I attended our local amateur radio club meeting & the US Coast Guard Auxilary made a presentation.  What I found interesting is that the USCG Aux keeps track of volunteer hours by Flotillas & Divisions. The power point presentation showed the following for FY 08 (I rounded the figures):
Operations 3.4K   (25%)
Boat Safety 1.7K  (12.5%)
Logistics, Admin, & Training 8.5K  (62.5%)
Total Division 13.6K manhours

Would be interesting to see what CAP members would report and how differently the percentage would be.
RM 
   

[isuhawkeye]

FYI: the CG Aux has very specific categories, and functions for tracking aux hours.

[PA Guy]

When I first became a senior we kept track of our hours in a little blue book issued by NHQ.  Anyone remember those?

The hours reported by CG Aux in AUXDATA/AUXINFO are notoriously inaccurate and should be taken with a grain of salt.

[RiverAux]

The hours reported by CG Aux in AUXDATA/AUXINFO are notoriously inaccurate and should be taken with a grain of salt.

Well, I agree with that in regards to the type of activities reported on the 7029 form (meeting attendence, etc.) that don't relate to a specific mission (I know that when I was the SR officer for my flotilla only about half the members reported that time at all), but I'm a lot more confident that actual mission time is reported more or less correctly.  Its not perfect, but good enough to count on in my book.

[Climbnsink]

How many hours of volunteer time does it take to track volunteer hours? 

[RiverAux]

Well, they've still got an archaic system that only lets certain people enter time in the system (usually 1 in every unit though sometimes 1 person covers several units in a Division).  If they would let members report their own time directly it would put some efficiency into the system. 

While I don't think tracking general time spent by CAP membership is worthwhile, I think we could and should do better tracking mission-associated time.  That would have some impact when seeking funding from local and state sources.  They don't give a hoot about how much time we spend in squadron meetings. 

[Short Field]

The IMU tracks the hours of everyone that signs in to a mission until they sign out.  You get daily totals as well as cumlative totals for a mission. 

[RiverAux]

But as of now those hours don't leave the IMU and go to a central database where they can be totalled up.  IMU is very focused on mission management, but as far as I know can't be used for analyzing multiple missions.  I suppose you could click through every mission (assuming you had the right access) and assuming all your Wing's IMU data is centrally stored and get it.  Or there are lots of ways it could be done on a squadron or Wing level. 

[Short Field]

If there was a data call, it would probably take at least four hours to pull all the missions over the last year.  I would guess that since the data is stored with/in the WMU, it might even be easier to pull the data.  Again, that is assuming there is a data call by National or even the region.

[swamprat86]

This was an informal topic with some senior Wing staff members.  A benefit of tracking these hours would be to show local and state agencies how much time we spend on CAP as volunteers, especialy considering how much is done by members during non-traditional hours at home.  I am sure that everyone here agrees that a fair amount of our regular CAP work gets done during non activity hours.  A more accurate tracking would better show the level of volunteerism our members have outside of the 2 hours a week and occasional weekend that is outwardly perceived by the public.

[EMT-83]

Does time spent on CAP Talk count?

[arajca]

RMR had a system several years ago that members could log into and enter their hours. It was discontinued due to lack of use by members. It was fairly easy to use.

[RiverAux]

In principle, keeping track of general CAP work time including that outside meetings, could be helpful, but will never be close to accurate as most people won't do it.  Besides CG Aux I'm a member of another organization that had tried it and never got many members to provide info and the comment from RMR seems to back that up in a CAP context as well.

If your purpose is to estimate total volunteer hours, I think you would be better off designing and carrying out a scientifically-based survey of your members asking them something like "how many hours did you spend on CAP this month" and then extrapolating that out.  So long as you designed the survey well it would be totally valid for this purpose (as long as you remember to use "estimated" whenever you mention the hours). 

[heliodoc]

MAYBE CAP could help itself out in laying out an format of what can or can not be done and PROVIDE the proper paperwork for tracking.  Like established criteria what fit CAP's ideas of "PROPER" volunteer service in their eyes.. This stuff is not rocket science

Plenty of volunteer organizations have tracking forms CERT, Firewise,EVEN the Army National Guard has tracking forms on the local level to track community service

With an organization such as CAP and it 65 year history, one would think they were already ahead in this part of the operational world.

Guess not

[MIKE]

The CGAux will give you a ribbon for 750 hours, and attachments thereafter... and people still don't do it.  Can you believe that?  Man, CAP if gave a ribbon for it people would be coming up with all kinds of hours to log. 

309 and counting for me according to the database.

[RiverAux]

309 and counting for me according to the database.

For this year, right?  If thats your overall total, you're never going to be able to claim the AuxieRanger title! 

[jimmydeanno]

I happen to log my volunteer time with CAP with myself.  You never know when it might come in handy.

So far this year it stacks up as:

Weekly Meetings: 120 hours.
Weekend Cadet Activities (activities being done for benefit of cadets): 216 hours
Weekend PD Activities (instructing, etc): 12
CAC Time: 18 hours
"Home Work"(CAP work directly related to squadron operations and planning) : 178 hours
-----
2009 Total so far: 514 hours

[ThorntonOL]

To get our volunteer ribbon as i understand it, the hours have to be  Non CAP Volunteering.

[jimmydeanno]

As it stands right now, correct.

If I were to change it, I would include squadron community service projects in the hours.

[AlphaSigOU]

To get our volunteer ribbon as i understand it, the hours have to be  Non CAP Volunteering.

Or we could revive the Red, White, Blue and Silver Service ribbons. We'd have to create a different ribbon to denote longevity service, as the current use of the Red Service ribbon is different than what it was originally for in the 1940s:

Red Service Ribbon: A minimum of two years service and 500 honorable volunteer service hours to CAP.

White Service Ribbon: A minimum of four years service and 1000 honorable volunteer service hours to CAP.

Blue Service Ribbon: A minimum of six years service and 2000 honorable volunteer service hours to CAP.

Silver Service Ribbon: A minimum of 25 years honorable service in CAP.

Red Service Ribbon - design largely unchanged other than removing the white prop.

White Service Ribbon - original ribbon had a red prop in the center; a moder ribbon removing the prop may be confused with the Exceptional Service Award (though the latter design is distinctive enough).

Blue Service Ribbon - design identical to Community Service Ribbon, white prop in center.

Silver Service Ribbon - plain silver-gray ribbon.

I know... someone's gonna complain about more ribbons to add to the Mexican general's ribbon rack!