Thank you for volunteering to help out with Skookum Gleaners!
First things first! While pickers are not required to be Skookum members, we do encourage you to join the cooperative. Find out here how you can join. A membership share costs only $20 (there is no yearly fee), and that is your membership share in the cooperative. How great a deal is that??
Picker Volunteer Overview
- A stripped-down version of the pick information (with type of fruit/nut produce and general area of town the pick is in) is emailed out to the entire pickers’ list as soon as it comes in. This is to make the process fairer to people who work away from their computers, for people who are not online very often. People who do not use email will still be considered, but will be telephoned for picking details by the Team Leader (see Tasks for the Team Leader below).
- Pickers pick up and read their email, if interested, respond to the call by emailing back to let the volunteer coordinator know.
- The number of spots available for any pick is determined by how much there is to pick, typically 2 people per tree, but this may vary. Once the volunteer coordinator gets a response from the minimum number of pickers, an email message is sent out to the first responder, and he/she becomes the Team Leader.
- If there are more interested pickers than spots available on a given pick, and some responders have picked recently, they are bumped down on the list. This is to allow as many different people as possible to pick.
- If there are more interested pickers than spots available on a given pick, the ones who respond later will be held over to the next pick and given preference there.
- When a person replies to a call to pick, we assume that they will not be bringing friends, children, or others to the pick as well, unless they mentioned this when they responded to the call for pickers. It’s not fair to other pickers to have extra people show up at a pick.
Please click the ‘sign up’ button below to become a volunteer Picker. Be sure to add any special comments into the appropriate space. When you hit the “Submit” button at the bottom of the form, we will receive your information by email and we will get back to you as quickly as possible.
If you have any additional questions, please contact us.
Please note that you will be added to the Pickers mailing list to be sent notification of available picks. This is the only way that you can be notified about picks: we cannot phone you. We will set up a Group WhatsApp chat for those who would like to join, an invite to this chat will be sent to you from your gleaner leader.
Because of seasonal variability and other unpredictable factors, we cannot guarantee that all volunteer pickers will have the opportunity to pick with us. We will do our very best to spread the fruit around as equitably as we can.