January 2006 RAOGK Volunteer Newsletter Volume 5, Issue 1 * WHERE AM I? * HOW DO I? * LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION * POLICY CHANGE * CONTACTING STAFF * ON A PERSONAL NOTE * THERE SHE GOES AGAIN * STATS WHERE AM I? During the course of a month's time staff and I can count on our fingers how many times we get an e-mail asking how can I find my listing on the site. Of course to us, it seems easy, however, we work with the system everyday. The "how to" is covered in the Frequently Ask Questions for Volunteers (http://www.raogk.org/faq-vols.htm) within the answer to the question of "How soon will my name appear on the page?" So where am I, how do I find my listing? To check your listing, go to the page that lists the States and Countries (http://www.raogk.org/listing.htm), select the state or country you volunteered for, and then find the county or territory/region. Remember 90% of the questions you may have about being a volunteer for RAOGK are answered within the FAQ's for Volunteers. Please check with that area before you drop us a note. HOW DO I . . . Change, add, delete locations from my listings? To change your listing (Act of Kindness, e-mail address, status) you will need to go to the Change form (http://www.raogk.org/change.html) and select the proper form to fill in. Anytime you want to add a NEW location to your entry, you must go back to the submit form and submit *new*. Do not go to the change form and select the "Change Act of Kindness" form to let us know you also want to volunteer for another location. Save yourself some time, we are going to tell you to do that anyways when we see your submittal. Do you volunteer for many locations? Need to remove one or more? It is always best to do each location separately. This way no mistakes can be made on our part. Treat each of your entries as if it was your only entry, and you never can go wrong. Changing your Act of Kindness? Type in exactly as you would like for it to appear on the site. If you are adding to your act of kindness, enter what is already in your listing, and then add the text you need to add. If you just send in the wording for your addition, your old entry will be overwritten. LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION Be as specific with your location as you can be. Our site only has a break down as to counties (USA) and/or regions/territories (NON-USA). If you only want to go to certain areas within the county/territory/region then state that within your Act of Kindness. If your act of kindness involves cemeteries and there are only certain cemeteries you will go to, list those cemeteries in your act of kindness. Remember that most of your requesters have not been to your location nor do they know that where they are requesting you to go may be "in the bad part of town." POLICY CHANGE We will no longer accept an act of kindness that states you will do lookups on other internet sites only. We also will no longer include the name of sites that are subscription sites (i.e. Ancestry.com, Genealogy.com, OneGreatFamily.com, ProQuest, HeritageQuest, etc.). Please remember the purpose of this site is for the volunteer to do the *legwork* for someone who does not live in your location. We cannot prevent you from doing lookups if you have one of the above subscriptions, but we can prevent the advertising of you doing so. CONTACTING STAFF When ever or how ever you contact staff, please make sure you are using and/or mention the e-mail address used when signing up along with your location. E-mail addresses are one of a kind entities, while names (as you have found out when researching your ancestors) can be held by many people. If you should contact us regarding your entry using an address other than the one listed on the site, we will have problems answering a problem or fixing an error. As a footnote to the above paragraph. Before contacting staff, please make sure that there isn't a form that could be filled out before sending a message to the administration address. If there is you are going to be requested to go there anyways -- since it is a "procedural thing." ON A PERSONAL NOTE On January 8 Doc lost his mother, and I lost a terrific mother-in-law. She was only 68 but had been battling cancer for many years. I did not know her very long (Doc and I have been married only 5 1/2 years), but she was the type of person that brought light into your life and love into your heart. She will be missed. THERE SHE GOES AGAIN . . . . . . reminding you about the RAOGK Online Shop. For those new to our organization our online store sells RAOGK logoed t-shirts, mugs, baby items, a cookbook and more. Proceeds from purchases made go towards keeping the site online. However, if you have not been to the shop in awhile, you may have missed a few new products added to our inventory. One item is called "Postage Pal". I could create stamps from Stamps.com and add them to the site, but Stamps.com does not allow logos. Postage Pal is a product that is double the width of a stamp. It allows you to have a stamp and a picture next to it as if you had a personalized stamp. Neat. Our sister shop (Genealogy for You) has 2 new regular designs since the last newsletter was published, and 3 new Valentine's Day designs are sitting in our "Special Occasions & Holidays" section. Until February 3rd, you get free shipping (USA Only) on orders amounting to $50 or more with the code VDAYSHIP. URL"S to both are: RAOGK Logo Shop: http://www.cafepress.com/raogk?pid=2851439&tid=0601 Genealogy For You: http://www.cafepress.com/genealogyforyou?pid=2851439&tid=0601 Are you looking for personalized items? We have several sites listed online at our Country Store (http://www.genealogyforyou.com/). Come check all of our sites out. I'm sure you will enjoy them. STATS Last year (at least from February 24th to the end of the year) we had the below number of requests pass through our system: USA 62,192 NON-USA 7,763 Grand Totals 69,955 January 2006 Requests (through January 29): USA volunteers received: 6542 NON-USA volunteers received: 712 CURRENT STATS Month of January (through January 29): Volunteers: Last month: 4384 This month: 4341 New: 49 Left: 45 Staff removals*: 47 *Staff removals are those folks whose e-mail address has been reported bouncing and confirmed or volunteers who, over the course of trying many times, did not respond back to requesters or staff.