How Bryony from YMCA of Hong Kong Matched with the Perfect Volunteers | Time Auction Impact Highlights
Meet Bryony from YMCA of Hong Kong!
Bryony is the Communications Manager at YMCA of Hong Kong, an NGO that strives to provide holistic services for those in need in order to help them actualize their dreams!
Since YMCA of HK already has a well-established volunteer movement of its own, why did they still reach out to Time Auction for help? Even though most YMCA volunteers are in a sense, “alumni” as many are former program participants, most of them are more experienced in their own programs and are relatively young. In other words, YMCA has no existing database to request skilled volunteers for event support!
A Pleasant Surprise!
Bryony recalls initially learning about Time Auction and though she was excited about the prospects of this platform, she felt skeptical hearing that there were already 4600+ volunteers matched with over 360 NGO/SEs, and even more that are part of the community! She asked herself, “Are there really that many professionals willing to volunteer in Hong Kong?” Without any expectations, she decided to take a leap of faith and posted a project asking for event managers/planners to act as the advisory board for their upcoming Youth Symposium which celebrates their 120th anniversary!
Within days, applications came flooding in!
“I was in complete shock! We received 14 highly qualified and enthusiastic applications in a matter of days -- way more than we were even looking for!”
When asked, “What was the most challenging part of this process?” She responded swiftly with “Rejecting applicants! Each one of them was so compassionate and passionate about helping and it hurts me so much to only pick 5 applicants!”
After personally conducting 14 interviews, Bryony made the difficult decision of getting 5 perfect candidates on board!
“It was a perfect combination of diverse applicants but equally passionate and qualified! From newly graduated young professionals to a mid-senior expert, I am beyond appreciative of this team.”
“In our team, we have two young women who are representative of our target audience for the Youth Symposium event. Having access to their personal experiences and opinions allows us to understand what would attract their demographic to come. Meanwhile, the more senior event organizers are able to give us professional tips on how to make things work in each phase of the project. Altogether, the brainstorming sessions with them have been incredible. Seeing them bring their well thought out ideas to the table, contributing whole-heartedly to the project both in-person and in their spare time has been heartwarming and inspiring, to say the least.”
“You can just see from my smile how satisfied I am with the quality of the skilled volunteers that we have recruited. Since everything was so on schedule, within 2 months, we were able to get the entire rundown of the event consolidated!”
Trust the Process!
Bryony urges more people to join the skilled volunteering journey! “NGOs don’t have many resources and we can’t hire that many people! Skilled volunteers help to save money and time while giving expertise that our core team may not necessarily have. The YMCA team sincerely appreciates all who are willing to devote their time to generate more impact for our cause!”
To NGOs, Bryony keeps it short and simple by saying, “Just post the project.”
“Trust the process and the platform because there are so many experienced and qualified people out there willing to help and give back to the community.”
Thank you so much to Bryony for sharing her insights and awesome journey of using our skilled-volunteering matching platform!
To be featured as our community member, embark on your volunteering journey by discovering projects you can help with now: http://www.timeauction.org/projects
Interviewed and written by Katia Shek
