CURRENT VOLUNTEER NUMBERS

We currently have 4321 volunteers across the globe. During the month of March we 
welcomed 100 new volunteers. Fifty-two volunteers were removed due to the 
newsletter bouncing back to us (user unknown, mailbox full January and February, 
and hosts unknown); 8 removals by staff being non-responsive and 2 because of 
bad e-mail addresses; 69 members decided to leave the project voluntarily. The 
staff doesn't ask too much from the volunteers, just keep us posted on any changes 
you may have by going to http://www.raogk.org/change.html instead of writing to us 
directly. Also, as always, please be sure to acknowledge receipt of a request, 
whether you can fulfill what is requested or not.


FOUND ON THE INTERNET

One of our staff members found a site called: Librarians Serving genealogists:
Genealogy Libraries on the WWW http://www.genealogy.org/~holdiman/LSG/libraries.html 
we thought this might be of interest to all and also a research tool as well.


CHIT-CHAT

I have been told that I don't mention the mailing list for the volunteers to talk 
among themselves enough.  This may be true and I apologize for that. Of the 4322 
volunteers of this organization only 212 have subscribed to the mailing list 
for you to discuss things among yourselves. Those on this list have helped each 
other in determining the best way to research different areas, to vent a little, 
and to give each other moral support. If you would like to subscribe to this 
list you can go to http://www.raogk.org/mailman/listinfo/raogk-l scroll half-way 
down the page and fill in the blanks and hit "subscribe."

Mailing lists are a great way to communicate, usually not having to wait longer 
than a day for an answer to a question. However, real time answers are better or 
even chatting with other volunteers.  We have set up a chatroom on an IRC (internet 
relay chat) server. If you have an IRC application (for example mIRC), the address 
you enter in is irc.maddoc.net, port 6667, channel is #raogk.  If you don't have 
an application point your browser to http://www.raogk.org/chat, fill in a nick 
name and click "Login", it will bring you right to the chat room. Someone is 
usually around. Come join us.


RESPONDING TO REQUESTS

Below is a message that was posted to the "Thank You" area of our site. The person 
who posted that message apparently didn't want to receive any rebuttals as they did 
not leave an e-mail address. I posted it to the RAOGK-L list, and then the debates 
started. My only intent of posting the message was to point out that some of our 
volunteers are really remiss in responding to the requests made of them. Below 
the message I'll state how the staff handles messages that contain complaints 
of volunteers being non-responsive.

"Lately I have had the misfortune of emailing several volunteers for information, 
and have failed to receive any acknowledgement or reply to my request.  Normally 
I get a response from volunteers in a day or two, so this is not the norm here. 
We as genealogists experience enough brick walls in our normal everyday searching.  
Why someone would volunteer to assist others and then not answer requests is my 
question.  It is recommended that you report volunteers to the coordinators, 
which sometime helps.  I believe that the volunteers on RAOGK should have a 
specific time frame to answer requests.  One or two days to reply in some 
form is not unreasonable.  It would surely give the person requesting assistance 
a better idea of how long to wait, or if they need to ask another volunteer in 
the same geographical area for assistance.  Is this something that the RAOGK 
leaders will consider putting in to effect?"

How the staff handles complaints on this subject:

First of all we make sure that the complaintant has sent a followup e-mail to 
the volunteer, giving enough time (at least a week between the 1st and 2nd 
e-mail) for the volunteer to respond. If that criteria has been met, then the 
section coordinator where that volunteer is listed will get in touch with the 
volunteer, letting them know that someone has complained about not having a 
response from them, asking if there has been problems such as illness and/or 
computer problems, etc. If we get no response from the volunteer in at least 
two weeks, we remove the volunteer.

The writer of the above message says they feel "one or two days to reply in 
some form is not unreasonable" apparently doesn't have much of a life outside 
of the computer world, and one or two days is a ridiculous expection to expect 
from anyone, volunteer or not. As you can tell, staff does bend over backwards 
in the time frame from the initial message to them from the complaintant to the 
staff removing them, basically 6 weeks. If you are going to be out-of-pocket 
for that length of time, you probably need to go to the Change Form and put in 
for temporary status (removal from the page with your information intact, to be 
re-instated at the time you specify in the comments box).

All of you do a very fine job, and we do not receive many complaints from researchers, 
but we do receive them. With over 4,000 volunteers the ratio of the complaints received 
to that number is really minute. Keep up the good work.


DID YOU KNOW?

At the bottom of each newsletter there are links to areas of the site that you 
may want to have bookmarked.


Until next month,

RAOGK Staff