MEMORANDUM

TO: Dr. Jim Henry

From: Ann Madu and Marie Ocampo

Subject: Progress Report

Date: November 5, 2003

Progress Report for Term Project

Scope:

Northern Virginia Family Services (NVFS) is a non-profit organization that concentrates on helping individuals and families to improve their lives and lead them to self-sufficiency. NVFS needs a critical revision of their Volunteer Handbook. Since the handbook was last revised in April of 2000, much of the information provided in the handbook is now outdated. There are also omissions of new information in the current Volunteer Handbook. These omissions limit the ability of the volunteers to provide an efficient service to the organization. In addition, the visual layout of the handbook needs to be revised in order to meet the standards of today’s technical writing, and more information needs to be included such as: thrift shop locations, addresses of new regional offices, and new available volunteer positions.

We, Ann Madu and Marie Ocampo will be revising this Volunteer Handbook. We will begin by conducting research on volunteer services provided by different agencies. We will compare NVFS’ Volunteer program to other volunteer programs such as: The Red Cross and MADD (Mothers against Drunk Driving). Such comparisons will allow present and future volunteers to see what they are doing for their community and what they are doing for the organization. Furthermore, we will organize the language, content, and visual layout of this document in a consistent manner, and we will gather information from the staff members to update and include all the omitted information in the Handbook.

Work Completed:

We have devised a tentative schedule with projected task to accomplish each week. We began with extensive research on the organization in the third week of October. We are researching the services provided by the organization, including their history, client and company demographics, programs, and affiliations. We have maintained this information by entering them in Microsoft Word. This research phase will consume a majority of the project time, so that we may obtain all of the necessary information. Ann is comparing the NVFS Volunteer Handbook to the volunteer handbooks of both agencies for which she has volunteered.

Problems:

On-Site Meetings - With our schedules, it has been difficult to set up meeting times Terri Vito, the person in charge of the volunteer programs. Marie has called a few of their offices to ask about their volunteer programs, but the employees have all referred her back to Ms. Vito. They do not have much insight on the volunteer programs. The NVFS offices all close at 5:00 pm Monday through Friday. As a result, visiting the site locations will be very difficult.

Revising Handbook – Looking at the handbook and website, we are not sure exactly how Ms. Vito wants the handbook revised. The information on the website and handbook are similar, in regards to the wording and layout; therefore, it is difficult to make an assessment of how the handbook should be revised. We have yet to find out if the old template still exists. If there is no template, we might be revising the handbook from scratch.

Projected Work and Schedule:

As indicated in attached schedule, we have yet to visit three different site locations for interviews with staff, volunteers, and clients. However, the visits will begin in the first week of November and end in the second week. We intend to visit these sites at different intervals, and share the information we obtain through e-mails and phone conversations, and we will convene at the end of each week to evaluate our progress. This project is intended to be complete by December 10, 2003. We foresee no delays in completing this task.