By Ellen Shubart, Class of 2006
Back in the day, way back, 50 years ago, signing up for CAF tours was simple. Two tours, Glessner House and the Loop, were available and given only on weekends. It was not difficult – docents signed up on the list at Glessner House or contacted the tour director to request a day.
As time went on, the whole process became significantly more complicated. The number of tours – and the number of docents – expanded dramatically. By the 2000s, the signup process was still being done on paper, using the Docent Preference Sheet (see below). Docents submitted their requests, usually in person at CAF, a month and a half before their requested dates. For example, you had to turn your sheet in by May 15th for tours in July.
Charniece Polk, the Tour Coordinator at the time, would receive several hundred requests each month. Docents indicated the number and which tours they wanted to give, whether they would like to give more than one tour per day, or if they wanted to give tours on consecutive days. Charniece then spent countless hours to manually create the master tour schedule, correlating the tour slots with docents’ requests.
Clearly, something had to change. Staff and members of the Communications Committee investigated a number of online scheduling programs and settled on VicNet, a system used by many of the cultural institutions in the city. In addition to tour scheduling, it allowed docents to record service hours, important information for CAF, donors and the Board of Trustees. VicNet debuted in 2009 – and the class of 2009 was the first to avoid paper sign-ups all together.
In November of 2016, after a thorough search, Communications Committee and staff members selected a new scheduling platform, VoluteerMatters. Not only did it have additional features and benefits, but with just one log-on, docents and volunteers could access both the scheduling program and The Bridge, the new docent and volunteer website. It was an upgrade that had been highly anticipated and a long time coming!
What a change over the past 50 years, from two tours to 85 (plus or minus), from a handful of docents to 400, from paper to online scheduling. And as the CAC docent body heads into its second 50 years, the story will continue to change as we move on.
Ellen,
Thanks for the reminders of how signing up used to be done!
Good lord, that form is so complicated it gives me a headache just thinking about how hard it must have been to do Charniece’s job! We complain about technology, but it sure does make a lot of things easier. Thanks for the interesting article, Ellen!
And in a way we’ve come full circle, at least for a while. I just learned that for the ICONS tour, which starts out being given once a week, that docents will be offered the opportunity to request a tour date via an email from the tour directors, and then then the tour directors will make the schedule for the next couple of months ahead.
I certainly remember the paper sign-ups. Charniece did a terrific job accommodating requests and always maintained a positive outlook despite the enormous task.
I live across the hall from David Bennett, who was the scheduler in 1999. then Jason Neises started as a scheduler. What memories they must have
Charniece was much loved snd appreciated by the docent corps back in the day
Great historical view!