Optional Work Plans and Instruments for Measuring Benefits to Senior Corps Volunteers
Senior Corps projects not only address critical community needs; they also benefit the volunteers themselves. The packets listed below provide Senior Corps project directors with materials to assist with measuring the benefits of volunteering. Included in each packet is a sample work plan, survey, and instructions for administering the survey and summarizing the data.
These work plans are not required and cannot be substituted for the required impact and non-impact work plans. However, feedback collected from volunteers can be used to improve your project by identifying strengths and areas for improvement in volunteer recruitment, training, placement, and retention. In addition, positive feedback from volunteers can also be used to build stakeholder support for your project. Because these work plans are not part of your regular work plan requirements, each of the four work plans identifies only one outcome.
Increase in Knowledge Outcome (DOC)
Volunteer Satisfaction Outcome (DOC)
Senior Corps applicants and current grantees are required to complete work plans that specify the need the volunteers will address, what they will do, and what their service should accomplish during a one year period. How the project's volunteers will be deployed determines the number of work plans needed. All volunteers must be accounted for in a work plan. For RSVP, 50 percent of the volunteers must be placed in outcome/impact-based assignments. For FGP and SCP, 90 percent of volunteers must be placed in outcome/impact-based assignments. The remaining volunteers may be placed in work plans that do not specify impact. For each work plan, applicants select a service category that corresponds to the focus of volunteer activities. Most applications contain between 8 and 12 separate Work Plans, including "Performance Measures" Work Plans.
Applicants must select one of the completed Outcome/Impact-based Work Plans as the designated "Performance Measures" Work Plan. By designating a work plan as "Performance Measures," the applicant, if funded, will be required to report progress toward meeting the established targets in each Progress Report during the course of the 3-year grant.
The submission of the optional Work Plans measuring the Benefits to Volunteers is entirely voluntary, and they do not replace the Outcome/impact-based and Performance Measures Work Plans requirements. They are strictly elective, additional work plans to highlight outcomes for volunteers.
