Reflecting on six months of volunteer efforts tracked through the IPOOG methodology. While tracking one’s time is challenging, it does help with self-reflection and understand the efforts required to take on major projects. Important information for both a volunteer organization and the volunteer.
- Mid-Term Report IPOOG
- Why Bother to Track Senior Volunteer Time?
- Two Big Volunteer Roles for 2025
- Getting Outdoors, Almost…
- One Time Efforts that are the Norm
- Tracking Time … BLECHH!
- Where to from IPOOG
Where does the time go, 2025 is halfway over! The constant drip of the fourth-dimension is a mainstay in literature and philosophy – but is also a hazard for the human condition. Before you know it, another year has passed by and you wonder, what you have accomplished?
The above graphic is my answer to this existential question. Actually, I accomplished a lot.
Mid-Term Report IPOOG
Last year, I decided to track the things I was doing through the IPOOG methodology (See: Tracking IPOOG Time). I was a test-group of one to answer the question: “is it reasonable for volunteer leaders to track their time?“.
Are there not volunteer management systems and spreadsheets that do this, you ask. For the more classic volunteer activity, there certainly are. My wife signs in when she volunteers twice a week at a local food bank. I myself have stood at a hydration station handing out Gatorade for a charity fun run. In both of these cases, tracking volunteer time is pretty straightforward through manual means (a sign in book) or technology (a phone application).
What is lost are the hundreds if not thousands of hours of effort to run a volunteer organization. Time is spent answering emails, designing the racecourse, or preparing for meetings. Once these activities are completed, they are quickly lost in a dim-memory of the next priority, crisis, or volunteer interest.
Why Bother to Track Senior Volunteer Time?
The loss of these hours is unfortunate. Financially, they can (probably) be recorded against grants received as a contribution in-kind. Administratively, what processes or technologies can/should the non-profit invest in to reduce The Burden of Volunteering for senior-leaders? Finally, when the volunteer leaves, and the organization is recruiting a replacement, what is the nature of the work being done and what is the time commitment?
Two Big Volunteer Roles for 2025
For myself, I had two priorities for 2025 for which time tracking was particularly important: SAPAA and YEGVille.ca.
YEGVille.ca is a passion/retirement project. It started off as a snowshoe guide and has evolved to be an information source of self-propelled activities in and around Edmonton. Visiting and reporting on the sites is half the fun and is done with my other 2025 project, the state of Alberta’s Protected Areas.
The Stewards of Alberta’s Protected Areas Association (SAPAA) is interested in a subset of Crownland generally referred to as Protected Areas. Sandwiched in between Provincial Parks and garden-variety Crownland. These sites enjoy varying levels of protection (hence the name). I am the President of SAPAA and am leading an aggressive re-visioning of its role by answering the question, …
… can SAPAA create a cadre of experienced and well-trained volunteers to safely visit and report on the protected areas?
SAPAA and YEGVille.ca are my two priorities for 2025, a great way to get outdoors and explore Alberta’s natural riches as evidenced by Field Work being the top activity for the past six months, as shown in the following graphic.
Getting Outdoors, Almost…
Oops, Field Work came in a distant fifth behind more sedentary activities such as creating technology, performing analysis, and creating training. Still, these sedentary activities were necessary to support the re-visioning activity for SAPAA and some YEGVille.ca design work.
One Time Efforts that are the Norm
In this blog, I am focusing on the SAPAA efforts because they are a great use-case of what senior volunteers do. Highly motivated individuals will take on a project, put in a zillion hours, get the thing across the finish line and go onto the next interesting affair. The specifics of the 400 SAPAA hours are unique to the problem at hand, ‘determining the strategic direction of an organization at a particular point in time‘. However, if it wasn’t SAPAA, the time would have been spent on something else.
Still, it is instructive (and helps with self-reflection), to see where the 400 hours were spent. It also helps the organization know the skill set if Frank disappears into a puff of smoke (or get distracted with a different retirement project). For example, over the past six months, considerable time and effort was put into technology and developing a Safety Program. This effort is fortunately one-time in nature and will decline considerably. In other words, Frank is very replaceable, which is a good thing for both SAPAA and FRANK!
Tracking Time … BLECHH!
Tracking my time in an IPOOG context started with the question, is doing so a reasonable activity for a busy volunteer? The answer is yes, but unlikely.
The reality is that tracking the time requires discipline, structure, and systems. Systems are the easiest of the bunch to handle. The above data is held in a primary Excel Spreadsheet with a Google Sheet tracking the specific SAPAA time. The sheets are a bit clunky but work okay for me, but then I built them. If there are two or more people entering their time, particularly if they are cyber-phobic, probably a tool such as Monday.com is required.
No matter the tool, structure is critical. Volunteers tend to work on what is interesting and important to them – which is a good thing. But these things may or may not be in the organization’s plan. As well, not everyone can align themselves to structure. Besides, being assigned a task seems an awful lot like going to work.
Finally, someone has to Create, Update, and End-Date the structure. If following a structure is challenging, creating and managing is a unique skill few people posses. Typically, the problem is not too little structure, it is too much. Just-Enough planning and management is an art.
Good structure and systems are important for data integrity and completeness. Looking at the total hours for the past six months, I suspect that I am missing at least 100-200 hours. Despite it being my process, I still forget to start the timer.
There is also the dark side to document one’s time: ‘Realizing How Much Time is Being Spent”. If you only have a vague remembrance of what went on over the past six months, you may be more inclined to continue to contribute – until you don’t. As well, would a new volunteer step forward if they knew what they were getting into. These are questions that are part of The Burden of Volunteering.
Where to from IPOOG
This was a six-month report card. I will make good on my promise to myself to keep on IPOOGing until at least New Year’s Eve and more than likely into 2026 as well. I like seeing what I have accomplished, knowing how much time to allocate to an activity, or deciding each morning what is important and should be accomplished that day, a variation of the Checklist Manifesto.
What are your thoughts? Do you know how you spent the past six months of your life or are you just as happy not knowing? Drop me a comment and see you in 2026 for the next IPOOG installment!
Organizational Biology 