Please join me on May 5, 2022 to discuss my research on Spontaneous Volunteer Management Systems. Spontaneous Volunteer management systems (SVMSs) incorporate spontaneous volunteers into organized relief efforts. The term spontaneous volunteer management system is used to describe the process an organization follows to acquire spontaneous volunteers and assign them to duties. This definition includes:
- Points of Distribution (PODs), which can be thought of as the retailers of the humanitarian supply chain where relief supplies are distributed directly to beneficiaries;
- Physical or virtual volunteer reception centers (VRCs) that focus on volunteer registration, training, and deployment;
- Volunteer supply chain network which includes interactions among multiple PODs and/or VRCs.
The study present a preliminary analysis of performance measurements for volunteer management systems that considers the perspective of all stakeholders: the organizations (or volunteer supply chain), the volunteers, and the beneficiaries. Data on SVMS were collected during three events, namely Hurricane Florence in North Carolina, the 2019 February 23rd tornado in Columbus, Mississippi and the March 3rd tornadoes in Lee County, Alabama. During these events data were collected through semi structured interviews and participant observations. Semi structured interviews with stakeholders helped to determine perceptions of what the key performance indicators should be and also the key VMS decisions that influence the performance indicators of interest.Findings will provide suggestions and discuss challenges and opportunities for improvement of SVMS. Understanding and measuring performances of SVMS is important in order to better incorporate volunteers into official response and therefore shorten both response and disaster recovery. This study is funded by the NSF through the Humans, Disaster and Built Environment (HDBE) Collaborative Rapid grant # 1901700.
