Welcome to our 2nd Super Jooners interview!

Mary S. lives in the Bay Area. She has a son who is in his junior year in college and a daughter who is a freshman in high school. She is currently the PTSA President for her daughter's high school and has served as PTA president and other PTA positions since her kids were in elementary school. Mary and her husband enjoy watching their kids play sports - competitive soccer for her daughter and college ice hockey her son. She enjoys helping and volunteering in the schools. Mary says: "We have a great group of parents and have a lot of laughs while we stuff envelopes, etc. :) "

Here is our interview with Mary.....

How did you first hear about Jooners?

About two years ago I was coordinating a silent auction basket for my daughter's soccer team and one of the other moms suggested the Jooners link to help keep track of the items. I had never heard of the link before.

What do you use Jooners for?

EVERYTHING! I have used it at three school sites to coordinate donation of items for raffle or snacks for classroom parties or luncheon items. I have used it to coordinate volunteers for our 5 day high school registration walkthrough -- we have almost 200 shifts to fill! My daughter's sports teams have needed coordination of fundraiser items. One fun thing . . . we collect baked goods to present each high school staff member with a box of treats to take home during Winter Break. This means we must collect over 2000 items to give each of the 160 staff members at least a dozen treats. With Jooners, all the bakers can see what others are bringing so we get a variety. And, they can sign up for one set of baked goods or put their name in several spots if they are baking machines.

Has using Jooners made your life easier? If so, how?

Oh yeah! Way easier! In the past, I have had to contact several hundred people by phone over the summer to coordinate the shifts for the high school registration (mentioned above). This was days and days worth of leaving messages, calling back, then someone would cancel, then people would say to call them back if we still needed help. I had a co-chairperson working on this so she was putting in the same days and days worth of phone calls and emailing back and forth. Now we can send the Jooner's link our school's online system. Multiple people can check on the progress. If we don't have the shifts filled, we can send a second (or third or fourth) request so easily. And then the 'thank you note' option? Amazing! Or to send a message to all volunteers to let them know the location has changed by using the 'contact volunteers' option (which is exactly what happened two days before our huge high school event). Also Amazing!

What are the three most important things you have learned in your volunteering efforts?

1. I have learned that we have a great community and a lot of people want to help.
2. People are busy and the Internet has made contacting large groups convenient for my available time as well as the time of the volunteers. Some people check their email on their phones or in the middle of the night.
3. If the work is fun (and we always have fun), then it isn't work at all.

What advice do you have for those new to organizing?

Contact everyone and give them the option to say yes or no. They may not be able to help the first or second time, but there might be a time that works for them. If everyone always feels included, you have a better chance of success and a greater opportunity to meet new people. Oh, yeah, and always use Jooners so you never have the headache of coordinating the volunteers once you have them.

Today we look at how you can easily contact your participants on Jooners. Thanks Bonnie M.  for a great question!

Let's say that you are organizing the spring parent-teacher conferences and the designated times and dates are now filled with eager parents. You are ready to get started. 

But...a district meeting gets in the way and 2 of the families need to be rescheduled.  What to do? 

Instead of  resorting to email and the back and forth, use Jooners CONTACT VOLUNTEER button to talk to as many of the signed up participants as you need to. 

Click here for a quick video and here is a step by step guide.  Get more productive with Jooners!  

Happy Thursday!

Today we bring you the first interview in our new series: Interviews with Super Jooners.

Sue C. is an active parent in her community and school.  Married for 19 years, Sue has two daughters aged 9 & 12 that enjoy riding horses, gymnastics, drama and lots of open creative time. The family goes to the beach or takes frequent local trips around the Bay Area.  Sue's personal hobbies are scrap-booking, cooking, design, art, walking and spending time with her kids. 

As an active contributor and organizer of events, she has some key advice on how to make your events and projects successful. Read on and get inspired...

1) How did you first hear about Jooners?

My older daughter attends a school in Sunnyvale, California and the parent organizers at the school used Jooners for fundraisers, classroom parties, and drama productions (to coordinate parent volunteers). The first time I signed up as a volunteer on Jooners, I realized how useful it could be and I became a member.

2) What do you use Jooners for?

I use Jooners to help my younger daughter’s teacher schedule student conferences.  I’ve used it for year-end parties to coordinate parents bringing in snacks and signing up to help. The biggest event I organized with Jooners was a Halloween Pumpkin Patch and Haunted Trail. I forwarded the sign-up sheet link to 1,100 parents and we had 132 volunteers sign up for 15 different event dates. Jooners helped me organize goodies for bake sales, and schedule workers for several carnivals, and many other events to raise money for our school district.    

3) Has using Jooners made your life easier? If so, how?

As a busy parent and a volunteer for many functions myself, I find it frustrating and daunting to receive a blanket e-mail asking for assistance, but not telling me what is needed and when.  Also, if I respond to a general request and show interest, I know I’ll be asked to coordinate it.

People want to help out and serve, but they need a way to see specifically what is needed and when. Then they can put it on their calendar and commit.  

I’ve appreciated Jooners not just as a tool to gather volunteers, but also communicate with them before and after an event. I liked being able to contact specific volunteers with questions or requests. I used the reporting function to send out information and thank you notes. I also pulled together a master list of the people that actually volunteered so I can use it next year. Then I can focus on recruiting more form the list of committed volunteers instead of the larger group of 1,100.

4) What are the three most important things you have learned in your volunteering efforts?

• People want to contribute and the coordinator needs to make it easy for them to do so
• People need clear, concise instructions
• People need immediate feedback.  Even if I don’t know the answer to something, I always send a quick e-mail to reassure the sender that I received their message and will get back with them. Then they feel someone is listening.

5) What advice do you have for those new to organizing?

Don’t be afraid to step out and organize something. If anyone complains, ask them to join in and help you! Or better yet, suggest they coordinate the event next year. I guarantee, you won’t hear from them again. And have fun!

Click on the comment box or on Jooners Facebook page....we'd love to hear from you!

Over the past few weeks, I had the good fortune of getting to know a number of our super members.  Boy, I was in for a treat.  What luck to have all of you using Jooners and how very lucky are your families and communities.  Hats off to a great bunch of people.....

We will start publishing the interviews next week.....Read and get inspired!

On Jooners' Helpdesk, we come across some amazing efforts in our communities.  Take a look at the examples below to find out how a few organizers are impacting the lives and well-being of so many of us. Nothing short of spectacular....

Using a popular sign up sheet, Karen and a team of 12 took advantage of our spring-like weather and cleaned up one of our local creeks this weekend!  http://bit.ly/diq9V4

An auction on the East Bay raises more than $70K annually for this elementary school http://bit.ly/cVYSvE

Amy in Colorado is running a stress reduction class in Colorado. Her students reserve their spots and pay on Jooners in couple of easy clicks...http://bit.ly/a8OXUK

Write us about your community efforts. We want to hear from you! help@jooners.com

Friends….

This week we officially launched Jooners subscription service. A big shout out to all of you out there who have already "discovered" Jooners' subscriptions and voted with your pocket books. THANK YOU!!!! We know your hard earned money and enthusiasm only goes to worthwhile services. Jooners is honored to be on your list and we will not disappoint you.

A big thank you also goes out to ALL who took the trouble to write and to tell us their Jooners stories. You said Jooners was worth it and that you were worth it. You wrote to us about how much time Jooners has saved you. You said that you don’t think twice about being an organizer anymore. You said that your swim team, book fair, snack shack, etc. volunteers do NOT remember the pre-Jooners days. THANK YOU! For the love and for the stories.Your willingness to promote Jooners and forward it to your organizing friends and family warms our heart and keeps us going.

Many thanks to people who helped us clarify our subscription messages. YES, VOLUNTEERS WILL ALWAYS BE ABLE TO SIGN-UP FOR FREE and YES the $9.95 per year LIFETIME OFFER (ending June 1st, 2009) is an amazing deal!

To those of you on the fence....I'd like to take a minute and explain why we felt the need to make Jooners a paid for service. Charging for an internet service may seem counter intuitive in this day and age of "free-everything" on the web. But we had 2 good reasons:

1) We wanted to bring you the best service possible. Building a robust, useful and state of the art web service for organizers and volunteers in our communities is our mission.

2) We wanted to be a viable business. When a service is free, you depend on advertising. We came to the conclusion that depending on advertising would lead us to make product decisions that were in conflict with our mission of bringing our members the best product possible.

If you have read this far.... :-) and would like to talk to me further, please email me at nazila@jooners.com. I want to hear from you.

If you are willing and ready to help us "spread the love"; become our Fan on Facebook, or tell your organizer friends about our Promotion, please do so! We have and continue to count on your generosity.

Gratefully,

Nazila Alasti

CEO, Founder Jooners.com