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Toronto Outdoor Club - How You Can Help
TOC does not ask that members pay any dues to join our organization, but that doesn’t
mean that
we don't still have needs to fulfill in order to function. Therefore, we ask that you help us
out from time to time (in return for the good times we provide you).
Volunteer
- Club Volunteers: The Toronto Outdoor Club team consists of the following positions.
Some of these positions are currently occupied, and others are open. If you are interested in an
open position, please contact Jenn Pammett at president@torontooutdoorclub.com
to apply.
- President (Position currently filled by Jenn Pammett):
- Spearhead the planning and decision making activities for the club
- Coordinate, train and coach members of volunteer team
- Deal with member issues (ie. inappropriate behavior, conflicts)
- Coach and train volunteers to perform their duties
- Perform duties of open Positions as required
- Manage the club waiver, rental agreement and other legal document verbiage
- Answer e-mail inquiries sent to legal@torontooutdoorclub.com
Skills required: Excellent communication skills. Professional yet friendly and approachable
manner.
Time commitment: About 20 hours/month, plus time required to perform duties of open positions.
- Vice President (Position currently filled by ):
- Assist President with planning and decision making activities
- Assist President in dealing with member issues (ie. inappropriate behavior, conflicts)
- Learn/know how to perform all volunteer duties, and how to lead events
- Assist in coaching/training volunteers to perform their duties
- Assist President in management of legal documents, plus:
- Store club waivers in a safe location
- Record signed waivers in the club database
- Assist President in performing duties of open positions as requested
- Provide backup for President (e-mails, decision making, etc) when President unavailable
Skills required: Excellent communication skills. Professional yet friendly and approachable
manner.
Time commitment: About 10 hours/month, plus time required to perform duties of open volunteer positions.
- Safety and Equipment Coordinator (Position currently filled by Jenn P):
- Evalute events and assess associated risks
- Ensure member safety is considered appropriately in all club events
- Consult with club volunteers to ensure that safety concerns and issues are
considered and addressed as required
- Identify appropriate rental equipment availability and pricing from multiple rental sources
in the Calgary area
- Provide club members with information needed to acquire required equipment and answer member
inquiries regarding rental equipment
- Answer e-mail inquiries sent to safety@torontooutdoorclub.com
Skills required: Knowledge of outdoor safety and equipment. Good organizational and communication
skills.
Time commitment: About 5 hours/month.
- Treasurer:
- Manage club finances
- Receive member payments for events
- Make event payments to service providers
- Manage club PayPal account
- Manage club donations
- Manage club expense payments, such as web hosting, etc.
- Manage club budget
- Answer e-mail inquiries sent to treasurer@torontooutdoorclub.com
Skills required: Some bookkeeping experience. Must be bondable.
Time commitment: About 10 hours/month.
- Communications Manager:
- Answer questions posed to info@torontooutdoorclub.com, answering
e-mails in a timely, friendly, and professional manner
- Develop rapport and foster a friendly, comfortable atmosphere with people inquiring about
the club
- Distribute club newsletter on a regular basis (approx 2x/month) to club e-mail list
- Gather, and potentially write, articles for the club newsletter
Skills required: Excellent communication skills. Professional yet friendly and approachable
manner.
Time commitment: About 10 hours/month.
- French Liaison:
- Answer questions sent to our "francais" mailbox
- Develop and translate web site content in French
- Foster a positive relationship between the TOC and Toronto's Francophone community
- Content Editor:
- Static Content
- Regularly review static web site content to ensure it is correct and up-to-date:
- About TOC Pages: All
- Membership Pages: "Membership Info" and "Rules" (not waiver)
- Events Pages: "Payment Info", "Paypal Info", "Event Checklists", "Coordinator Checklist"
- Other Pages: "Links"
- Send required changes to Webmaster for web site update
- Event Content Management
- Review Event Details for completeness and accuracy of information. Inform coordinators
of errors and/or edit/fix errors directly.
- Review Event Details for spelling and grammatical errors. Inform coordinators of
errors and/or edit/fix errors directly.
- Review Event Write-Ups for spelling and grammatical errors. Inform coordinators of
errors and/or edit/fix errors directly.
- Member Content Management
- Review Bulletin Board postings, Calendar Postings and Classified Ads for spelling and grammar. Fix as required.
- Review Bulletin Board postings, Calendar Postings and Classified Ads for completeness and accuracy. Fix/expire as required.
Skills required: Good organizational and communication skills. Excellent written communication
skills. Good computer skills.
Time commitment: About 10 hours/month.
- Photo Historian:
- Photo Album Management
- Receive photos from event attendees
- Review all event photos, selecting which ones to post in the photo album
- Crop and enhance photos
- Upload photos to Fotki service
- Manage photo albums in Fotki, for example, rearranging photos to be in logical order as required.
- Slide Show Management
- Select photos to include on the slide show (on the TOC Home Page)
- Crop photos and add date
- Upload photos to the web site via FTP (they will automatically show up in the slide show)
- Remove old photos over time/as required
Skills required: Good organizational skills and computer/internet skills. Experience with photo manipulation software.
Time commitment: About 10 hours/month.
- Partner Data Manager:
- Use the TOC Back Office web pages to enter and maintain data pertaining to TOC Partner organizations (ie. media partners, sponsors). For example:
- Sponsor information records
- Banner Ad schedules
- Sponsored Events
- Event data feeds to media partners
Skills Required: Computer, internet and data entry experience. Communication and decision-making abilities.
Time Commitment: About 10 hours/month
- Webmaster:
- Develop and maintain web site functionality (ASP/MS Access) and content with
direction from club volunteers
- Ensure integrity of club database
- Ensure nightly clean-up routine runs properly
- Regularly back up the club database to local machine
- Answer e-mail inquiries sent to webmaster@torontooutdoorclub.com
Skills required: Minimum two years ASP/Access experience.
Time commitment: About 15 hours/month.
- Volunteer Coordinator:
- Recruit event coordinators from experienced and knowledgeable membership base
- Train and coach event coordinators on club procedures for leading events
- Assist new event coordinators with their first events as needed
- Answer event coordinators' questions and/or put them in touch with the appropriate volunteer
- Monitor events to ensure procedure is being followed properly by all coordinators
- Follow-up periodically with inactive coordinators to ensure that the volunteer page
stays current and up-to-date
- Administer the Volunteer Training Program, under which
volunteers can be reimbursed for approved training upon completion of
an agreed upon commitment to the club.
Skills required: Excellent leadership, coordination and communication skills.
Professional yet friendly and approachable manner.
Time commitment: About 15 hours/month.
- Event Coordinator
Put on a TOC event by sharing with others the activities that you like the most or
special skills you have. For many activities,
you need not be an expert to organize something. (We think almost anyone could lead a hike, for instance.)
Let us know the level of experience you have organizing such an event and we'll
pitch in as much help as you need...and don't worry, an experienced volunteer will likely be along on your event to
help out on the day of your first event.
Once you've chosen an event that you would like to organize, please review and follow the
coordinator checklist
to ensure an event is pulled off smoothly and consistently across the board.
You must follow these simple steps to be allowed to carry through with your club event.
Sponsor
Is your company or organization interested in being a sponsor of the Toronto Outdoor Club?
The TOC is actively seeking sponsors to donate on a yearly (or monthly)
basis. This would allow the club to eliminate the "voluntary donations" on which we currently rely
to cover our expenses.
Sponsors get:
- A banner ad at the top right of TOC web pages. There are a total of 24 banner spots in our
banner rotation, which cost $100/year each. A sponsor may purchase one spot (for $100/year), or
as many spots as they want (out of the remaining available spots). If you purchase one spot, your
banner will appear on at least 1/24 TOC pages (until we have full sponsorship, your banner will
appear more frequently). Purchasing more spots will increase your coverage appropriately (two
spots will make your banner appear at least 1/12 times, and so on).
- Your banner ad, link, and company description on our "Sponsors" page.
- Mention in our e-mail newsletters which are sent out approximately 1/month.
- The option to sponsor specific TOC events ($30/event) which will then have the
'voluntary donation' amount waived. The sponsorship for the event will be recognized with:
- A small icon on the calendar with a link to your company
- Sponsorship notation, banner with link and 'thank you' on the event details for that event
To become a sponsor of the TOC, or for more information about becoming a TOC sponsor, please
contact the club President, Jenn Pammett, at president@torontooutdoorclub.com.
See our current Partners and Sponsors.
Donate
The Toronto Outdoor Club is free to join and most of our events are free to attend.
The TOC volunteers are determined to keep it that way,
but also must find ways to recoup some of the expenses incurred by the club. For example:
- Internet Costs (ie. web hosting, domain registration)
- First Aid Kits and Materials for Event Coordinators
- Research Materials (ie. maps, books, etc)
- Advertising and Promotion (ie. printing costs)
To keep it as fair as possible, we're asking for voluntary donations on a "pay as you go" basis.
If you can make a donation when you attend our free events, simply give your donation to the
event coordinator when you show up.
There will be a "suggested amount" posted for each event on the web site, but, of course,
you are welcome to donate more or less than the suggested amount.
Voluntary Donation FAQ
Q: What is the voluntary donation money used for?
A:
The TOC has a few unavoidable expenses, such as web domain registration, web hosting,
internet photo album service, first aid supplies, and printing (i.e.business cards and waivers).
At times that we have extra money in the bucket, we hope to use that money to do fun things like
partially covering the cost of food/beverages at our anniversary party.
Q: Why voluntary donations, and why on a by-event basis?
A: The club must have a way to cover its expenses. The club volunteers feel that charging a set yearly membership
fee would discourage people from joining the club. Also, charging a yearly membership
fee would require incorporation of the club and bring with it a lot more red tape and expenses. So far, the most
fair way we've come up with to finance the club is to ask people for donations on a 'pay as you go' basis.
Q: Do I have to pay the voluntary donation for every event I attend?
A: There is no obligation to pay every time. In fact, some people pay every second or third time that they
attend club events. Some people prefer to give us a once/year donation (their choice of amount), which is also
fine.
Pay what you can, in keeping with the value you feel you receive from the club. The voluntary
donations are what keep the club going at this point - it is our main source of income.
To ensure that regular participants do not end up
paying more than they would if we simply had a yearly membership fee,
the club volunteers have decided to cap voluntary donations at $20/year for members.
Donations are, naturally, completely voluntary, but
once a member feels that they've paid their maximum ($20, or an amount of their choice), the club no longer
expects them to donate.
Q: Can I do something else to help the club besides making voluntary donations?
A: Absolutely! Volunteer some of your time to the club. There are many ways you can help out:
- Become a volunteer (see our open positions at http://www.torontooutdoorclub.com/aboutus/help.asp)
- Coordinate events for the club. Do you have any favourite activities that you can coordinate for the club? Organize and
coordinate the events yourself, or co-coordinate with a club volunteer who can do a lot of the admin tasks, while you take care
of just doing the event on the day of (and doing the post-event follow-ups). See the Coordinator Checklist
(http://www.torontooutdoorclub.com/events/leaderchecklist.asp) for more information about what it takes to coordinate
an event for the TOC.
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