The Street Count
To determine the number of volunteers you need to recruit, consider the scope of your approach.
- Will you take a full coverage or known locations approach (or a combination)?
- How many zones are you expecting to cover?
- How many individuals are you expecting to interview?
- How long does each survey take to administer?
Typically, you will need 2-3 volunteers and 1 Team Leader per zone. If outreach workers, police, security or other agencies are covering particulars zones or known location, you will need fewer teams of volunteers.
If your survey is especially long, or if you anticipate a large number of eligible participants in a particular zone, you will need to increase the number of volunteers assigned to an area. This will be especially true for known locations.
The Shelter Count
If you are deploying volunteers to the emergency shelters – as opposed to shelter staff providing you with administrative data or conducting the surveys themselves – you will need additional teams of volunteers. Consider:
- How many shelters are there in the community that agree to participate?
- How many shelter users are you expecting to enumerate (note that not everyone will agree to participate - we recommend estimating an 80% participation rate)?
- How many survey administration stations will you have access to at each shelter (this will depend on what the staff can accommodate from a space, operations, and safety perspective)?
You will need one volunteer for each survey administration station made available to you. For safety, you should deploy at least two persons to each participating facility, ideally one volunteer and one Team Leader. Be sure to send a Team Leader who thoroughly understands the PiT Count process. You may decide to deploy a member of the PiT Count Committee or an individual that is heavily involved in the planning process.
It is essential to engage with the shelter providers early and often; key service providers should sit on your PiT Count Committee. It will not be possible to accurately enumerate homelessness in your community without participation from shelters and transitional units. Throughout the planning and implementation of the PiT Count, be mindful of their available resources, day-to-day operations and duty to their clients.
The Headquarters Team
During the count, you will need a central location for volunteers to register, receive training and return to at the end of the count. This location is your PiT Count Headquarters. You will require a team of volunteers to ensure that your Headquarters is well organized and prepared to respond to unanticipated circumstances.
From Headquarters, the PiT Count Coordinator, alongside the members of the PiT Count Committee, should manage the operations of the count. The Headquarters Team should be prepared to: check volunteers in and out, direct volunteers to training, reorganize teams, monitor the progress and safety of the teams, check-in with Team Leaders, deploy additional supplies (surveys, honoraria), dispatch extra teams of volunteers and collect surveys at the end of the count.
Flow of information is essential: the Headquarters Team must be in a position to make quick decisions and the PiT Count Coordinator should be updated regularly on all aspects of the count.
In larger communities, you may need more than one location to welcome, train and deploy volunteers. You will need additional, well-trained volunteers to cover these locations. Satellite training centres should maintain close contact with Headquarters throughout the count.
The COH will publish further guidance on how to staff, organize and operate Headquarters during the count.
Contingency Planning
It is impossible to know how many volunteers will show up on the day of the count. In the communication prior to the count, you should emphasize that volunteers that are unable to make it should notify you via email. Nonetheless, you should be prepared that up to 20% of volunteers could be “no shows.”
You should have volunteers on stand-by, including Team Leaders, which you can reallocate to Teams that are short. If you find yourself with too few volunteers to cover your map zones, ensure that you prioritize the areas of the city where you anticipate the greatest number of individuals that are homeless (these should be identified beforehand).
You will also encounter unregistered volunteers. If you have delivered training prior to the day of the count, unregistered volunteers will have inevitably missed the training. You must decide whether to assign these volunteers to an experienced team or to turn them away. Be clear about your policy from the beginning. If you are delivering training on the night of the count, unregistered volunteers are less of an issue. Nonetheless, be sure that they register upon arrival. You will need a Headquarters volunteer to coordinate volunteer intake.