How can we reduce transport costs?
Headlines and news items like this are disturbing — Petrol prices getting too much for volunteers:
Volunteer charity workers are resigning because of rising petrol prices.
The Auckland Cancer Society has lost five volunteer drivers since petrol passed $2 per litre last month. …
The Prisoners Aid and Rehabilitation Society recieves 72,000 from the Corrections Department to help children visit family members in jail. …
… many jails are in remote areas, without public transport links, so people simply are not making the visits with the price of petrol going up.
Of course, for things like prison visits and services such as Meals on Wheels there is no simple answer for transport costs — we can’t just suggest phonecalls or emails instead.
But we know that volunteers carry costs for their activities. Attending a meeting costs time, attention and transport fees. Of course, some volunteers welcome the opportunity to get out and spend time with others, to socialise face to face and enjoy the sense and spirit of community.
The petrol prices do give us cause though to carefully examine how we run our events and activities.
Could some meetings be held over the Internet using services such as Skype or video chat?
Could some documents be passed around and discussed via email (or better, using Google Docs or Basecamp or a similar online service) rather than having a meeting to hand them out and discuss them?
Those fuel prices also affect everything that’s transported, including books, papers, magazines, leaflets. Can your group offer members and subscribers the option to receive newsletters and other communications by email or as web pages, rather than as print publications?
Are there aspects of your activities that can be moved online? The Tools section of the Webguide has some details of services your group may be able to use. We have more pages yet to add to the Webguide and can always use your help: have you used a tool or service and could write a bit about it for us?
Let us know in the comments how your group plans to save on transport and running costs.
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