RECRUITING, TRANING, AND SUPERVISING VOLUNTEERS

Recruiting, training, and supervising fellowship volunteers must be a part of the larger RMF volunteer program. This will be covered in detail in the next chapter, "Religious Education."

The quality of recruiting, training, and supervising volunteers will be a tool you and your chaplain can use to determine the effectiveness of many of your RMF's programs. This is particularly true in fellowship programs. No volunteer program, however well planned, developed, and installed, will be successful unless it has the active support and participation of command chaplains. A rubber-stamp approval is not sufficient. Chaplains must understand the purpose of the volunteer program, how it functions, and the necessity for the program, and they must believe that the results of a comprehensive volunteer program will be for the betterment of the entire community.

OUTREACH

Outreach programs are elements and patterns of progressive religious marketing. Outreach programs develop from research based on the needs of the community. While the worship, religious education, pastoral care and counseling, fellowship, and other functions of the RMF will stand on their own, chaplains and command religious programs (CRPs) will set up outreach programs to supplement their efforts to provide quality programs that will enhance the lives of those they serve.

Unlike the other religious programs, outreach programs are basically time-oriented programs; that is, they are presented at given intervals and will usually have a known beginning and ending date. An outreach program can be thought of as an extended hand, a planned preventive maintenance plan, or even a form of preventive medicine. Consider the meaning of outreach programs as delineated in the following quotation:

"As chaplains in a pluralistic sea service environment, we need to interpret outreach in the broadest possible terms. Outreach has many facets and meanings. Outreach is spiritual renewal; it is healing; it is genuine care-giving; it is community service; it is having an influence on command and community.

We have a great opportunity to reach out to sea service members and their families. To understand and meet the spiritual needs of our people, we must listen to them, expand our vision of the future, and try new paradgms to touch the lives of those entrusted to our care."

Rear Admiral David E. White Chief of Chaplains

As outreach programs become increasingly market oriented, most RMFs will tend to set up programs that focus on meeting the needs of particular persons or groups. Most outreach programs are geared to a particular public, such as children, youth groups, single parents, married persons, the aged, or to entire communities, such as the homeless, poor, and orphans. Outreach is used when each of these groups is suitably set apart from the others and is believably large enough to support special, structured care.

The integration of outreach programs into a CRP starts with a state of the mind on the part of the chaplains and RPs. In these programs, the chaplains and RPs will make the recipients the constant focal point for all basic planning and decision making.

As an RP, you should treat each outreach program as if it were a marketing business. To do this, you must be market oriented. In planning any outreach program, take the following steps:

^1. Determine your objectives.

2. Research the need.

3. Look into similar programs by others, both military and civilian.

^4. Establish guiding policies.

5. Prepare by diagraming productions.

6. Prepare budgets and financial considerations, involving advertising and promotion, product development, research, and the like.

7. Evaluate performance.

Let's take a brief look at each of these steps.

OBJECTIVES

In planning your CRP's outreach program, begin with a team spirit and set broad objectives. First, define your customers' needs. Next, look at existing or similar programs. After you examine these programs, establish the techniques and procedures that will work best for you. Remember to weigh the economic factors, the service factors, and the product factors.

RESEARCH

The fundamentals of performing outreach marketing research are gathering, ordering, and evaluating the facts. The primary purpose of your research will be to solve or forestall problems. By performing research, you can increase the efficiency of your efforts by developing, selecting, and improving on the most effective program and marketing methods. In developing your outreach research methods, you must understand the problem to be researched, establish

specific objectives, develop a research plan, choose the proper sample, determine information needs, analyze the information gathered, develop conclusions and recommendations, and prepare the report to be presented to the commanding officer.

Immediately following your research, you should develop a strategy statement that includes the background, history, analysis of current and future situations, a statement of general objectives, policy elements, budgetable elements, research results, a financial summary, methods of review and evaluation, and a general summary. For any outreach program to be successful, you must follow your research with a comprehensive strategy statement of this sort.

With your well-defined objectives, sound research, and complete strategy statement, the chaplain or team can present the outreach program to the commanding officer for consideration. If the program is accepted, you will be ready to enter the next phases of your outreach program-developing a marketing plan and implementing your outreach program.

MARKETING

The adoption of a marketing concept to achieve outreach programs can have a fundamental effect on every CRP. The results of a team-driven, well-planned,

market -minded outreach program will be a tremendous improvement in the way outreach programs are received. As an RP, you may discover that an outreach program will require a great deal of your time and attention. You must also provide time and attention to the area we will discuss next-special events and programs.