Key factors

The key factors followed are based on experiences and strategic planning from the FL Copenhagen team in 2019/ 2020.

Team effort: the onboarding process is to be lead by the Community Coordinator, however the more people who takes responsibility over the process, the better. In practice, this means that the entire team shares the planning and execution of the onboarding process.

Start early: ideally the new team shall be officially appointed the day after the last gathering of the program, normally this means in mid-March. In practice, this means that the recruitment process starts already at Gathering 3, usually in December. More time for the current team means less stress, better expectation setting and a smoother onboarding (which in the longer run leads to a higher quality in delivering the program the coming year). By starting early, momentum will be built up during the year and climax and G5 and G6, thus hopefully creating the perfect timing.

Expectation setting: good expectation setting will result in the right people on the right position. Bad, or even no, expectation setting can result in decreased commitment, burn out and frustration among volunteers. This in return, will decrease the quality of the facilitation and delivery of the FL program to the participants. By listening well to the questions asked by applicants and by answering them in an honest and personal way, alignment will be created between FL’s and the volunteer’s expectations.

Flexibility: the program in Berlin 2019/ 2020 was run by one single FL organizer (Robin), Oslo has had a tradition of having two program leads, while Copenhagen had half a person for that mission. Some communities have challengers and six pioneers, other communities have care bears and only four pioneers. The bottom line here is simple: all teams are different, thus we need to have a creative and flexible mindset when new teams are formed. See the possibilities and divide responsibilities according to the resources and the people available.