Where We Spent Our Time

At the end of four months we had collected a substantial amount of data. We each totalled the number of hours we spent working in the various categories and then found the totals for the four month time period. We also totalled the number of volunteer hours that staff had worked during this time, as well as the total number of volunteer hours worked by board members and office or library volunteers. In keeping with the volunteer nature of this project, we were fortunate to obtain the help of Dr. Grace Wiebe in analysing the data. Grace, who is a visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Alberta, converted all of the numbers to percentages to provide a picture of what was happening in the program. She also provided the tables and graphs that or. "art of this report

The most instructive pieces of information related to:

• The hours spent on the intake and support focuses of the core volunteer tutor program i.e. project work not included (Table 1).
• The paid and volunteer administrative hours worked over a four month period i.e. does not include tutoring hours (Table 2).
• The total paid and volunteer hours (including tutoring) worked over a four month period (Table 3).
• The breakdown of administrative hours spent on core work, project work and fund-raising work (Table 4).

Details of the data follow in the form of four tables with accompanying explanation. Interpretation of the results follows in the section entitled 'What Does It Mean?"

Paid and Volunteer Hours Spent on Intake and Support

It was reassuring to see that we were close to being in balance in the amount of time devoted to these two areas. In fact, it seemed we were spending slightly more time in the support area—at almost 52% as compared with 48% in the intake area. This was not really a surprise since we had been making extra efforts to spend more time supporting our tutors and students. So we were pleased to confirm that this was happening.