VolunteerSpotlight | Lee Johnson
BLOOMINGTON EDUCATIONAL CABLE TELEVISION (BEC-TV) serves cable subscribers with educational and school based programming from all of Bloomington's public and private educational institutions. BEC-TV is funded through a grant by the City of Bloomington's Cable TV franchise fees.
Today, our spotlight shines on Lee Johnson, Operations Technician, BEC-TV. Lee uses VolunteerSpot's online signup sheets to coordinate their volunteer technicians, who help with production of various programs.
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Please tell us about your organization and your volunteer needs.
Bloomington Educational Cable Television – BEC-TV for short, is a local access television station located in Bloomington, MN. We take in volunteers ranging from 7th through 12th grade (ages apx. 12-18) and train them to use our professional video equipment including cameras, audio mixers, video switchers, et al. We have a pool of around 50 active techs at any given time. This number fluctuates greatly depending on the season and between school years. Also, our volunteers are able to participate as much or as little as they choose: we see some techs once a month, we see others multiple times a week, and everything in between. We try to get them involved whenever we can during our 300 or so productions each school year.
Explain how you use VolunteerSpot to coordinate these volunteers.
For many years (and even still to this day), we have called our volunteers over the phone for each and every shoot we do. We tried to encourage students to call us (we have an online Google Calendar with all of our shoots available) and sign up, but this rarely happened. On average, most shoots have 3-5 techs. Some nights things would work out nicely and we would call 3 to 5 techs and have a shoot filled up. Other nights I would personally spend a couple hours calling upwards of 25-30 techs, leaving nothing but messages or hearing the words "I am busy that night." This lost its appeal very quickly!
We started using VolunteerSpot in September 2012 and have so far loved it. We have encouraged all of our techs, new and old, to start using this program as it gives them a greater ability to sign up with us (rather than waiting for our call) and it dramatically gives staff more time for other projects around the office. We still supplement our VolunteerSpot sign-ups with calls, but the system has worked wonders so far.
For the nuts and bolts of how we are using specifically use the program... We have only one activity, and we treat this as a mutli-day activity. Each shoot we have (or other opportunities, such as office work) are designated as To Do Tasks. This method allows us to list multiple shoots in different locations on a given night. From there, we set the max number of techs we'd like for that shoot, designate the set-up time, and then in the extra details we list other vital information; such as shoot location, which system we are using, the set-up time and the event start time, and anything else relevant for that shoot. So far, the way we have used the system has been pretty slick.
What’s one piece of advice you have for volunteers or their leaders out there?
The biggest piece of advice I can offer is patience. We utilize volunteers who are 12-18 years old and some pick up on technology quicker than others. Some are more prompt to set-up times than others. As silly as it sounds, some are more socially awkward than others. And the list goes on. Every person is different, and given enough time, people change, and each member of our staff is a testament to that. We believe that we can positively impact these students' lives, and we understand that change doesn't happen overnight, and so we continue to work with these students day in and day out, knowing that our persistence will hopefully impact them in a more profound way than simply teaching them how to use a camera. The key is patience; because not only does it help to yield a better product, it helps to yield better people.
Why did you decide to use VolunteerSpot?
For the past couple of years, we have devoted a decent amount of time into exploring newer options to reach out to our techs other than making phone calls. The first time we heard about VolunteerSpot, it wasn't quite right for us at that time. We continued (and to this day continue) to explore emailing, automated calls, texting, Facebook, etc. No single option seemed to quite nail it. For whatever reason, this year VolunteerSpot seemed to best address our needs to reach out to techs, put the power in their hands to sign up for our entire shoots calendar, in an easy-to-use interface. VolunteerSpot has been a great success with our newer techs; now we are trying to re-train our older techs to stop expecting calls from us!
Anything else you’d like our readers to know about your organization or volunteering?
BEC has been around for 35+ years and has upwards of 38,000 shows in its archives. Our organization is funded off of cable TV franchise fees – we don't use taxpayer money to fund our operations, staffing or equipment. We are housed in Valley View Middle School here in Bloomignton, and we exist as both a part of the Bloomington Public School District and the City of Bloomington. We have one full-time staff member, our director Tom, who has been around since BEC's inception. We currently have around 10 part-time staff members, all of which have been BEC volunteers at some point in time. Most have college degrees or are actively pursuing one. Those who are not pursuing college degrees hold full or other part-time jobs in the field, either developing state-of-the-art equipment for television stations worldwide or installing & supporting equipment for television stations here in Minnesota. All of this job experience has allowed our technicians a unique opportunity to work with industry professionals, which has historically produced more industry professionals who come back to teach the new wave of BEC technicians. It truly is a one-of-a-kind organization that has gotten state-wide recognition for its ability to produce quality television that is mostly run by student volunteers.
For more information on who we are, our mission, and to get a glimpse of how we work with our student volunteers, please visit www.bectv.org
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We salute Lee and all the other volunteer leaders out there making a difference. If you're using VolunteerSpot, write and tell us about what you're doing and give us a chance to shine our Volunteer Spotlight on you!! Just email us at [email protected].
