A volunteer agreement is a slightly formal way of tracking how our volunteers are going and help the head maker keep track of everyone's commitments. They aren't a legally binding contract, or meant to pressure a volunteer into doing something.
Volunteer agreements are simply a tool that allows expectations to be managed by both BMS and our volunteers. They are also a requirement to become a voting member.
It's really simple! Just contact the head maker (email, discord, or in-person) and ask for one.
The only thing that's required is you have to commit to doing something regularly for BMS. This could be helping run a monthly event, agreeing to take the bins out once per week, or running a fortnightly induction for one of our tools.
Every volunteer agreement is unique and there's a lot of flexibility on what it looks like. Some people commit to weekly things, others might be less frequent like a monthly event or things done on an "as-needed" basis. Once you have a volunteer agreement, the head maker should check in with you about once per month, but this may be less often.
We expect volunteers to commit around 4 hours per month for a volunteer agreement. If you can't commit that much that's cool! You can keep volunteering, it's just not really suitable for a volunteer agreement.
However, they all follow a simple template which can be found here.
Definitely not! If you can't commit to a regular volunteer activity, you don't need a volunteer agreement. Login to our task tracker here or ask in Discord if you want something to do.
Volunteer agreements are mainly for people who want to become voting members or can commit to helping out more regularly.