CURRENT VOLUNTEER NUMBERS

Welcome aboard all new volunteers; we are really glad to have you. We currently 
have 4301 volunteers across the globe. During the month of May we welcomed 116 
new volunteers. Forty-eight volunteers were removed due to the newsletter 
bouncing back to us (user unknown, mailbox full March and April, and hosts 
unknown); staff removed 16 for being non-responsive or having bad e-mail 
addresses; 68 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 the request or not.


CONFUSION?

During this site's 4 year lifetime, we have tried to make life easier for the 
volunteers as well as the requesters. Sometimes we succeed and sometimes we 
don't, and then sometimes someone puts their own twist to our FAQ's.

Quite a few volunteers complained that some of their requesters refused to pay 
expenses because "those listed on the site are supposed to do it for 'free'."  
Well since the word "free" was NOT located on the site anywhere, I took the 
"assumption" away from those excuses and added to the main page "This is not a 
FREE site."  Since that time, we haven't received that many complaints of this 
nature.

Requesters aren't the only culprits on manipulating the FAQ's, some volunteers 
can do a real good job of it as well. I had a complaint on one volunteer who 
told the requester to go look at the FAQ's again, and that the FAQs stated one 
request only, and since she made a request a year before to the same volunteer, 
she wasn't entitled to another lookup from this volunteer EVER.

Please folks, that is totally wrong. One request per MONTH, per requester per 
one or two ancestors (maximum for requester, minimum for volunteer). Most 
volunteers do a lot more than that. This rule is there for you to refer the 
requester to if they go way overboard on their request and the reason why their 
request has been denied.

URL to Requester's FAQ page:
http://www.raogk.org/faq-requesters.htm

URL to Volunteer's URL page:
http://www.raogk.org/faq-vols.htm


ONE VOLUNTEER'S "FEE"

As you know, we ask requesters to repay the kindness by coming back to the site 
and volunteer for their area for at least one look-up. One volunteer adds to her 
e-mail when fulfilling a request:

	"Go to http://www.raogk.org/ and sign up for whatever you want to 
         volunteer to do.  That can mean as little as taking pics of 
         headstones in your nearest cemetery -- every little bit helps.  
         Do take a look at the site.  There are at the moment about 4500 
         volunteers who have promised to do a minimum of 1 act of kindness 
         per month each (dependent, of course, on their receiving that many 
         requests...).

	 4500 x 12 equals (at the least) 54000 bits of help per year. Or, 
         if you prefer, 150 per day.  Wow!

	 It's fun and it makes you feel good.  You also feel freer to ask 
         people for help, cuz you're helping, too."


This volunteer has gotten several favorable messages in return about those 
requesters she's written to going to volunteer. This is how the site has grown 
in 4 years, by word of mouth, best advertising in the world.



SUMMER TIME BLUES

We are home-based in Lincoln, Nebraska which is located in the area known as 
"Tornado Alley." During the summer, we do get severe thunderstorms and there is 
a possiblity that our electricity may go out. So if you ever try to get to the 
RAOGK site and cannot, you may want to check the weather channel to see if we 
are or have experienced severe storms.


That's it for this month.

RAOGK Staff